The stars poke through the small crack in the roof.  You make a mental note to fix it, at the same time recalling the image of your dad, standing precariously on a ladder, blowing nails through a nail gun years (years?) ago, to set the frame that would support that roof.  Trying to decide if the brief sleep would be worth the abrupt awakening, you draw the already tight sleeping bag around you, hoping to find just a bit more warmth as the temperatures fall, once again, below freezing.  Cold, but necessary to keep the sap flowing.

The phone rests comfortably in your hand, the white cord snaking up your chest, waiting for the next command from your aching thumb.  Everything aches, but it is so familiar now, that you don’t really notice.  Except when you do, your body throwing warning signs at you, reminding you that you are not the same man you were 10 years ago or, even, last year.  This thought takes you to another and then another and before you realize it, the barn walls have disappeared and you have traveled down a path you didn’t even know existed.

Forcibly pulling back to the present, you extract yourself from the cocoon, slip your feet into the cold boots and stumble out to stoke the fire that has been working to transform the gift received from the trees into a gift for those who appreciate the process of creating the syrup.

Spring had been dancing in and out of our lives for weeks, but this was a morning that solidly declared that winter was no longer welcome. It was late April and the day demanded attention. So I surveyed the laundry mountain that had taken up residence in the living room (clean, but begging for an organized return to drawers), and we headed out into the front yard. With my two month old strapped onto my chest, I opened the garage and began surveying the potential entertainment for the older two. Our five year old had been thoroughly enjoying his “scoot” bike the past week, ambitiously graduating from the previous year’s safe zone of The Driveway to his new track, which began at the front door, headed straight out the front walk, before picking up speed down the sidewalk, and ending with a quick turn into the driveway. We live on a ridiculously steep hill, a dead-end that spills dangerously out into a main road that crosses the border between the city and the flight-filled suburbs to our east. The road is almost impossible to cross on foot or in a car, despite the changing traffic light swinging above the intersection. Drivers capitalize on the long stretch of road that somehow fosters speeds double the limit and, far too often, is combined with a complete disregard for the yellow–sometimes red–light.

I hauled out the bike while my two year old retrieved some sidewalk chalk and my husband busied himself with leaving. I was highly aware of the story that was writing just beneath the business of the day (his siblings were assembling in the midst of an unraveling cancer diagnosis for their father) and I kept the kids focused on the work of making space for some serious play. As Aaron drove away in our only car, I saw Emma, who lived just beyond the treacherous border of the main road, coming up the hill, one child attached to her in a similar assembly as mine, dog on the end of a leash and her daughter excited to join the fray.

The kids settled into their play, Judah riding over and over again from the front door to the driveway, his friend K. watching and dancing out of his way, while his sister drew intricate patterns on whatever surfaces she could find. Emma and I stood beneath the new leaves of the tree, talking in fragments as we always seemed to do, and I unstrapped Arthur so that I could watch him take in all of the newness surrounding us. It had the potential to be a perfect day.

And then I saw it. Judah turned the corner onto the sidewalk, K. stepped left instead of right and he lost control, crashing with the full force of gravity and velocity into the brick retaining wall that had just moments before served as a canvas for an elaborate chalk art masterpiece. Bike, child and peace crumpled onto the ground. I lay Arthur on the blanket I’d spread out earlier, and crossed the yard in strikingly calm strides. I gathered my screaming child into what had always been a safe embrace. The blood was coming from somewhere that I couldn’t identify and I was highly aware of the stream of water trickling down the sidewalk from the neighbor who was washing his car.

“Stop,” I commanded. “Stop and let me see inside your mouth. I need to see where the blood is coming from.”

He opening his mouth and I saw gleaming white teeth…no blood. Pink tongue. No blood. But the blood was everywhere! I tried to calm him and tell him that he was okay, explaining that there wasn’t any blood in his mouth. I kept telling him that he was okay. I reached under his chin to unstrap his helmet, wondering if the blood was coming from his head, and I saw another flash of white, but this was from his jawbone. The skin that was supposed to stretch and grow with him, that would one day sprout whiskers, was hanging open, revealing the whitest white I think I have ever seen.

“Call 911,” I yelled to Emma and took my sweatshirt off to hold against the unnatural hole. I sat down in the growing puddle of water, cradled my sweet child and did what I knew I was supposed to do: I applied pressure. I reassured him in a calm voice that he was okay. I kept his neck steady and his body still. I made sure that my daughter was safely away from the road. I made him focus on me and on my voice. I listened as the sirens came closer and the world expanded. I finally broke away from my son’s eyes and released him into the hands of the paramedics.

The hours after were comparatively uneventful: ambulance ride (I heard them say no sirens necessary), stitches (too many to count), scans and x-rays (no cranial damage; clear spine); anesthesia that took far too long to wear off. Aaron came, children were attended to by various relatives in different homes nearby, and I left the hospital, at one point, to nurse poor Arthur, who needed it as much as I did.

I spent the rest of that spring trying to gather up the courage to walk my children across that road at the bottom of the hill. What had once been an annoying obstacle that required careful consideration now paralyzed me. I could not walk them across the road. I just couldn’t. I surrendered to the fear and we drove the short distance to the playground and even to visit Emma, but the stroller and bikes stayed in the garage. I now knew that the world could break my children.

**I did overcome my fear of crossing the street with the kids and the eldest, now able to examine how the whiskers skip around the scar that marks his jawline, often takes off on his bike, crossing that road alone and moving out beyond my view.

Today was a rare day when I began my class not really knowing where I was going to go.  I am definitely not the teacher that has plans written out in any kind of a book (I gave up ordering “plan books” a few years ago, acknowledging that they were always blank after mid-October), but I usually have a vague sense of the path that I am on.  But today was very different.  Unsettlingly different.  I knew that I had items to check off my list, but I couldn’t figure out how they were going to fit together.

• There was an introduction to All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, a novel that few of them have read but we are “sharing” a visit from Kiely with our high school and I want them to know more about him before…tomorrow.
• Somehow getting them to dig a bit into their family stories to uncover questions that would, hopefully, spark genuine inquiry,  (My one and only outright refusal to participate in the 7th grade curriculum is that I do not have my students write a traditional research paper.  It took me years to move away from bibliography cards, dozens of white index cards with ONE fact, formal outlines and the stacks of papers that were all painfully similar).  Of course, that doesn’t mean we don’t “do” research, it just looks very different.  I guess most things do in my room.
• Writing…independent writing of their choice.  We’ve been away from this for a few weeks, longer than I’m comfortable, working through writing associated with Black Panther, world mythology, oral storytelling, persuasive speeches and NPR’s “This, I Believe” podcasts.  But I wanted–needed–to get them back into their notebooks and to begin cultivating the seeds for their next wholly independent piece, where they choose the topic, the genre and the audience.

And it is Monday. And I am tired.  Not just tired because I didn’t sleep well–awake at 2somethingAM trying to decipher my vivid and violent dreams–but weary from last Friday’s demoralizing conference day and drained from my early morning study group that is full of great ideas and visions of a better way but that always ends with the reality of our institution.

It took most of the day, but by the end I had found a way to weave together the voices necessary to tell the complicated story of racism and police brutality in our country, the questions that could generate stories of their own past, however that is defined for them, and the space and time for them to sow some seeds in their notebooks.  We talked openly about Trayvon and heard directly from Jason Reynolds about the power of machetes and the machine that churns them out.  We argued, a bit, about who owns stories and about whether or not someone else could tell our story.  We contemplated the idea that maybe the combined perspectives of a single event could be a total story, or maybe just a different one altogether.

I sent them off with their one and only homework assignment for the year:  go home and gather stories.  My homework is to figure out what tomorrow will look like.

I am not a member of a 12 step program, but I do know the necessity of taking it day by day, moment by moment when the whole journey is just too overwhelming.  I also accept that occasionally, the demons are stronger than the warriors, and that the weaponry held by each can enhance that disparity.   Fighting seems futile and retreat can be an attractive option. Sometimes I can’t decide if I  should place my feet on the cold floor and rise up  or bury myself inside of myself.

This afternoon I am trying to decide where I want to go with my students.  We have a visiting author coming in on Tuesday, so there is some prep to be done with that.  I had a plan to take them on a venture into their family stories–however they choose to define family–and use that as a springboard into some authentic inquiry.  Poetry calls me loudly, demanding more of a presence in the lives of my students.  I also wonder about a few visual genres that could be a nice place to settle, especially before the beast that is our NY State Tests comes around in another week or so.

I am paralyzed by these decisions.  Sometimes the big ones get me, but sometimes it’s just the seemingly insignificant choices that stop me in my tracks.  Today it feels like I am tripping over pebbles.

 

 

 

Waking up just moments before the alarm reverberates with its low, harmonious tone (meant to take me gently from one consciousness to another), I stretch my body long, feeling all the spaces beneath my skin fill with life.  In one fluid motion, I swing my feet to the floor and rise up, barely disturbing my sleeping mate.

“It’s early.  Go back to sleep,” I murmur, needlessly, as he has already fallen back into the gentle rhythm of deep, slow breaths.

The dog barely notices my movements as I make my way down the hallway to the kitchen to begin the ritualistic brewing of the sacred elixir.  First I fill the kettle and set it to boil, then I pour myself a large glass of water and leave it beside my glasses on the table to wait.  The yoga mat awaits in the closet, and there is exactly enough time to unroll it, step solidly onto my mountain and fold into a few, glorious, forward bends, before the rumbling of the kettle ushers me back to the kitchen.

Coffee steeping in the stainless steel French press, I pick up my water, push my glasses back onto my face, and look out the window at the winter whiteness that has challenged this year’s coming of spring.  Breathing deep the memories of so many years of waiting for spring, I smile to myself and claim, yet again, another badge of living in Upstate New York: snow falling where blooms should be bursting.

After a few extra moments by the window, I drink the water, pour the coffee, and settle into the chair to read, to write and to wait for the house to awaken.

 

**************

Reality:  I forgot to “unset” my alarm and it shocked me awake at 4:30, disturbing the two children nearby and my poor husband.  Slamming the phone around to silence it, we all fall back to sleep…sort of.  The youngest of the kids is up and moving now, and it is just a matter of time before he hits upon a task that he just can’t do without some assistance.  I  haul myself out of bed, but not before selfishly pulling the covers around me to protect me from the winter that never seems to end.  The light streams through the window, leaving my husband no chance of actually continuing to try to sleep, and the dog begins to bark incessantly at the back door, incredulous about the fact that no one has let him out yet.  I open the door and release him into the yard, cursing the snow that has, once again, covered any hope of a morning walk.  Ignoring the few dishes still sitting in the sink, I microwave yesterday’s coffee, appreciating that the task of cleaning the pot can wait a bit longer.  I glance at the closet door and think, briefly, of my yoga mat, before choosing to catch up on the Mueller investigation and the morning news instead.  I sit down with the computer, the coffee and realize, too late, that I haven’t had any water.

 

 

A day of PD.

A day of listening to people tell me all that I don’t know.

A day that portens to help, to teach, to develop.

A day that has made me question my abilities & my instincts.

Today has left me ruminating about my place in this institution.

Today has beaten me; I am waving my proverbial white flag.

Today, words fail me.

Or at least that was my working title this morning.  I had an image of me gobbling up the world as I moved through it, moving outside of my perceived impotence.  Piles of papers to grade? Done.  Ineffective administrators? Tell ’em what to do!  Unmotivated students? Light up their fires like the fourth of July.  And it worked…for a bit.  And then I remembered that Cookie Monster doesn’t actually have a throat and that all those flying cookie pieces are just for show.  No substance, that guy.

There is a Phoebe Snow song that beautifully shows the human tendency to vacillate between two extremes.  Occasionally, the melody will make its way into my head until the lyrics begin to form the concrete reflection of my emotions.  Like today.  I wasn’t expecting her words, but they arrived and insisted that I pay attention.

This trope is a familiar one in the music that I love.  Over and over I can scroll through my playlists and see the pattern.  These songwriters–the ones who some days provide the only oxygen that I require–are able to articulate something so deep in my being that the clarity left behind feels permanent, even though I know it is not.  It is the way that I sometimes digest the world, trying to understand the duality of what others seem to see in clear singularity.  Like the bulldozer that is Cookie Monster…focused so completely on one mission, knowing exactly which direction to go, which words to articulate, which emotion to settle into.

But me?  I am as much Cookie Monster as I am the complicated subject of Phoebe’s song.  And again, I have circled around to where I always seem to begin…wrestling with the contradictions that define (my?) life.

This morning I crafted words in my head that attempted to capture the overwhelming sense of mediocrity that I was feeling. I was struck at some point in the middle of the night by the contradictory notion that I am, like most people, extraordinarily ordinary. Not straying too far to one side of any spectrum, I have safely occupied this space both in my personal life and in my professional world. (This, of course, makes me wonder if I have anything worth writing about.)

Tonight was our Synagogue’s Purim celebration (it really can only be described as Jewish Halloween, with less candy and more noise). Superhero was the theme. Mild mannered teacher by day, but at night…Normal Girl? The Average Avenger? Madame Meh? My husband was already off and running with his phenomenal depiction of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. My children had transformed themselves with old t-shirts, felt cutouts and random items from our house. But I  spent far too much time wondering what alter-ego could possibly capture the essence of who I am by day; so I threw a scarf around my head, harnessed my inner hippie–not such a stretch–and told everyone my superpower was Flower Power.

When we finally left, exhausted and full of a bit too much white flour, I turned the corner to see just the tip of the giant super moon poking out from behind the trees.  “Do you see it?” I asked my kids, excitedly.  They did not.

We crested a small hill and the light brightened just a moment in the distance, this time sandwiched between two houses, and my daughter exclaimed, “Oh, there it is! It’s huge!”  She helped her younger brother find it before it slipped away again.

“Should we chase it?” I asked them.

“Yes.”  And we did.

 

He works out the intricacies of a rich & complicated life through the tiny, plastic interlocking figures, as the story plays through the lightbulb.  Yes, through the lightbulb.  A gift from his aunt.  At the time I thought it was ridiculous…a bluetooth lightbulb?  What use could we possibly have for that?  But now, as he plays happily, absorbed both in his elaborate world of Legos and the audiobook that surrounds him in some rich narrative, I can sit to write, finally, uninterrupted.

Except for the man-boy curled up next to me, with my classroom copy of Catching Fire, wearing his father’s sweatshirt (which he will outgrow soon) and his graffitied baseball cap (who is Weezy, anyway??).  He continues to interrupt my thoughts with distinctive reactions to the complicated world of Katniss, occasionally sighing or giving his commentary on the characters.  Realizing that I am writing about him, he pauses just long enough to tell me that Weezy is Lil Wayne’s nickname and I realize that I already knew that.  But before I can tell him this, he is back in the book and I can sit to write, once again.

Until she appears in the doorway, exactly halfway between the complicated calculations about her ten-year old financial dealings and wondering when, exactly, am I going to be able to read to her.  She has not only written out her budget, including the money that we owe her hastily written out in an IOU, the money she will earn in the next few days, and the money she has on hand, but she has the names and prices of several different purchase options.  I beg for fifteen more minutes and remind her that she still needs to pick a suitable book for her and her younger brother, not to mention don pajamas and finish whatever other details that need to be attended to before we can settle in to our reading time.  Off she goes, leaving me, temporarily, with the space to focus on writing.

I don’t have much time; I am flying solo tonight…Aaron is off entertaining his dream of hiking the Appalachian Trail and I have to juggle the intricate bedtime routine that I both loathe and cherish.  And there’s the writing that I haven’t done yet.  I am determined.

My children’s life revolves around story.  It is an amazing phenomenon to witness.  There are always stories…audiobooks, podcasts, chapter books, picture books.  Stories that they write with words and create with Legos and other toys.  Stories that define their play and their learning.  Always, they have always had story.  It was a little bit deliberate, but it is also, I realize, just the way that we move through this world.  It is the way that we explain this world–in all its iterations–and the way that we attempt to understand it.

 

 

“It must begin with the determination that you want to really know yourself completely and utterly, so that you don’t have any private rooms and nooks and crannies that you’re concealing.” –Pema Chodron

When I was pregnant with my third child, my husband and I hired a hypnobirthing coach:  a lovely woman who came to our home and worked with me, him and our doula  on self-hypnosis techniques that would somehow alter the plan that nature ultimately had already written.  I had attempted to naturally birth our first two children, but, in the end, both were emergency c-sections.  I was determined to break this cycle and we found a doctor who was willing to support me through this third pregnancy.  I had never undergone hypnosis (unless you count my 4th grade teacher who kept making us stare at a triangle on the board to “calm our breaths” whenever we became agitated), but I was open to trying and I was intrigued by the notion that I could somehow will my body to do what doctors kept telling me was improbable.

In one of the foundational exercises, I listened intently as my coach took me into the rooms of my mind, going deeper and deeper through the winding hallways and stairwells until I came to what she referred to as the Control Room.  It was in this room that I would, ultimately, be able to switch off pain and fear and other related reactions to the birth of my child.  I loved this exercise.  I loved wandering through the interior of my consciousness.  I recall being in this semi-dreamlike state and wondering about the other rooms, the ones I passed each week on the way to the Control Room.  What did they contain?  Who was in there?  Could I ever go back and explore?  If I could find the controls to pain and fear, could I control other emotions?

My son came into this world via c-section, despite my best intentions, just over 8 years ago.  I have never gone back to this hypnotic state, but I was instantly transported back there this morning when I read these words from Pema Chodron.  That there are nooks, crannies and entire rooms hidden deep within me is something I have always known.  So I guess the only question really is:  do I invite others in to sit for a time on the worn couches and wobbly chairs?