We all do it.  Most of us multiple times a day.  Often, it’s just a reaction, not a conscientious thought.  Sometimes, though, there is a perceptible pause, just long enough to conceal entire untold stories, from the detailed exposition right through to the last breath of the resolution.  But then the pause ends and the answer tumbles forth, as if there had never been a break.

“How are you?”

“Fine.” Or, “Good.” Followed quickly with the return volley. “How are you?”

But what would happen if we answered honestly and thoroughly?

“How are you?”

“Dizzy with the weight of the possibilities that lie in front of me today.”

“How are you?”

“Terrified that someone will see through my facade and expose me as the imposter that I am.”

“How are you?”

“Thoroughly distracted by daydreams of the life that I am not currently living.”

Perhaps tomorrow, as I trundle through my morning, I will give space to the pause and allow for a bit of the story to seep out.  And, perhaps, when I make space, others will, too.

 

 

I can feel the sun’s heat on the back of my neck.  It has warmed me through the window as I sat perusing the day’s Slices, avoiding the headlines completely & dodging the platitudes that seem to define my social media feed.  The March sun has boldly sat in the sky, defying the shelf of grey that has threatened to roll in all day.  But if I were to go greedily outside to immerse myself in the rays, I would be hit with the reality of 30 degrees, minus the factored-in wind chill.  So, I sit here, and gently touch the skin that holds the whispers of summer.

There is something to be said (and I suppose I’m supposed to say it?) for choosing to eschew reality, for making the conscientious decision to select the fantasy, or the promise of the fantasy, over the callous truth.   This is especially tempting when the truth has the power to bring down the entire facade that has become the only foundation you may have ever known.  Some would say–have said–that the damage of accepting the truth would be–would have been–so damaging, that the continued lies far outweighed the alternatives. But what if you could do both?  What if you see the entirety of it and, with all the information fully disclosed, are still able to choose? Or to not choose? Or choose not to choose?

I read recently that we don’t see ourselves in mirrors the way that others see us.  That we can’t see what others see because we only see ourselves in reverse.  But this backwards version of my face is all I know; it’s the same face I have scrutinized all my life. Occasionally, I am surprised by the beauty that reveals itself in a photograph that I don’t hate.  A rare picture can disrupt the narrative I have chosen about my space in this world, forcing me to question everything.

My father was an expert at holding two things at once, but not in the same way that my best friend attempts to do.  Where my dad skillfully constructed a life that was marked with deception, mistrust and false pretense, Emma lives hers striving to honor the myriad of emotions that are often contradictory.  While my father’s legacy was a duality that is sometimes hard to articulate, I envy Emma’s honest commitment to authenticity.  I am often more like my father than I like to admit, but, unlike him, I have an Emma to remind me that I am not just the woman in the mirror or the woman in the photograph.  I am both…and more.

 

 

When I received the text that the transformer at the high school had exploded, it confirmed my belief that today will have to be a day to retreat.

My early morning study group hates the book and my coffee was cold by the time I took  my first sip.  Plans today required the use of technology which is impossible because, well, the transformer blew up.

Then, I discovered an old notebook with the starts and stops of heartache and couldn’t figure out where to tuck it away so that I will forget that it exists.

Stories came at me from New Zealand before the sun even rose and I am still unable to catch my breath.

I want to be able to bring together all of these disparate thoughts, but I am listening to my children playing in the surprising March sunshine (it is Upstate New York, after all) and I am readying myself for a weekend of push and pull, and I can’t, for the life of me, remember the lines of the poem I read just before I saw the NYTimes headlines.

 

Time is a funny thing, especially when it is time in my classroom.

I try really, really (really!) hard to make sure that I am treating my 7th graders like authentic readers and writers.  I tell them early in September that half of my challenge is to “unschool” them…and that the other half is to show them the power of their words.  Inevitably, one of them always asks if these two things are related and then the real fun begins.  We talk, a lot, about authenticity and about not writing for a grade.  I show them, over and over and over, their workshop rubric, which is the basis for all of the grades that ultimately make up the letter they eventually see printed on their report card every 10 weeks.

The rubric simply and clearly puts into words what the process should look like each day in a workshop (having the right tools–materials– to do the job, staying focused on the job at hand, utilizing the resources to get the job done and working consistently to complete whatever the job is in front of them).  But assessing process, at some point, means that I am assessing how they use their time.  And, to be completely committed to this concept, I have to honor that how they choose to use their time will, often, be very different than how I think they should use their time.  They are 7th graders, after all.

I watch them now, today, working out how to teach their chosen creation myth to the rest of the class.  I have given them a week to learn the myth, learn about the culture, create a lesson plan, prepare the lesson which they will deliver early next week.  I have modeled in our mini-lessons, each day, how I teach other creation myths, I have given them the parameters (include the history of the culture, especially the geographic information, and tell the story creatively so that they engage their audience), and I have set them free.

I find myself sitting on my hands and biting my tongue.  I am hearing them talk about this afternoon’s pie eating contest in the cafeteria (in honor of Pi Day) and I want to say, calmly, “Stay focused.”  I am watching them talk to members of other groups as they move in and out of the classroom to get a computer or a drink or just stretch their legs and I want to say, a bit less calmly, “Don’t waste your precious workshop.”  They move chairs around to get more comfortable and I want to say, “Worry less about your butt and more about your plan!”  I watch and smile and answer the random question, usually before they even send a delegate to my desk to ask it.

But I say nothing.  They are focused.  They are using their workshop time.  They are doing what real teachers do when we try to learn about a new topic and determine the best way to creatively teach it to our students.  And they are human.  Perhaps recognizing that is really the hardest part about focusing every aspect of the classroom around the concept of authenticity.

 

I was young, maybe eight or nine, maybe even younger, and I climbed the steps, without permission, to the attic.  It was off limits to me, but I knew that my oldest brother and his best friend were up there, behind closed doors.  So I climbed, slowly, expertly avoiding the weaker spots.  (As the youngest, I was used to quietly moving about the house, trying to uncover the secrets that defined our family.)  I sat on the top step, straining to hear the mysteries that were just beyond.  I could smell the sweet smoke, different from the pungent cigarette smoke that enveloped my father just after dinner, and I could hear muffled laughter, plucking guitar strings and, occasionally, the cacophonous sounds of Led Zeppelin, The Who or some other band of the time.  Inevitably, my brother would open the door, or my other brother would expose me (loudly), and I would retreat to my own room, spinning the dial on the radio to find sounds similar to what I had heard.

Twice a year, we would travel to Ohio to visit our closest family friends.  There, I was the youngest of six, our family temporarily doubling in size, giving me another set of parents, along with the extra siblings.  And again, there were closed doors, sounds of  muffled music, and conversations and laughter I seemed to always be too young to fully comprehend.  But the attic steps in that house led to an open door and to a room that enveloped me completely.  Here, the eldest of the combined households, allowed me to join her and her friends, listening to music and openly eavesdropping on the chatter that never seemed to end.  Here, the music played and I was given album covers to explore and liner notes to read.  The double albums were treasured books that would open, revealing collages of images of rockstars and their dedicated fans.

While I spent far more times perched on the top step outside my brother’s door, it was really the few weeks each year under Becky’s accidental tutelage that ignited my passion for music.  James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, CSN, Bob Dylan…the smooth woody sounds of the guitars mixing with the harmonizing poetry transported me to a place that I have never been able to fully describe.  For the four decades since, I have continued on this musical journey, gathering up the old and the new and finding time and space to allow myself to travel deep into their encompassing sounds and stories.  Whether it is the never-ending roll of a Grateful Dead bootleg or John Hall’s “Warm Power of The Sun” recorded in 1979 at Madison Square Garden or a live Adam Ezra concert, music has never failed to be able to take me safely away.  Or, rather, music has never failed to bring me back to that nebulous space that seems to exist somewhere deep inside of me.

 

 

The other day I came home to find my husband (my stay-at-home and take care of all things related to the household husband who is also homeschooling our three kids…a post for another day) washing all of the plastic containers that had been shoved into the bottom kitchen cabinet for the past several (thousand?) years.  The house was moving around him, as he stood at the kitchen sink, taking one brightly colored piece of plastic out of the sudsy water after another.  On either side of the sink, piles of plastic rose up slowly as we relayed the details of our day to one another.  When he was done, the piles stayed to dry, and we retreated to our life.

On Sunday morning, I returned to the scene, accepting that it was finally time to attempt to take all of the pieces and try to match them up.  Of course, the tops and the bottoms didn’t pair up simply; in fact, the tops vastly outnumbered the bottoms…begging the question about the location of the missing containers.

There are so many questions I have about the fate of the missing pieces…but tonight, writing this, I am thinking about the idea of partnership.  Obviously, the metaphors abound, but I think that tomorrow I will return to an earlier draft that pushes me out of my comfort.  Tonight, I will have to be satisfied with a clean cabinet and a bit of order.

 

I am highly aware of the darkness that lingers in my edges.  It’s just outside of my space, most days, but there are mornings when I am listening to music and the house is in its own rhythm and I can feel the presence.  On those mornings, the sky is more grey than blue, the tones are deeper and full of melancholy, and I am so far away from everything and everyone, I wonder if I might float off into that darkness.  No, that’s not right…I am much more active in this moment; I wonder if I will retreat into that darkness.  If I will settle into it, pulling it over me like a warm blanket.

It is a choice for me and I realize that it is not a choice for some.  Having the power or the control or the freedom to choose brings with it an incredible sense of responsibility.  And the guilt is so intense on the days when I find myself settled into the darkness.  It feels unacceptable to stop and park myself there for any extended period of time.  The guilt is enough to propel me back into the world that has continued around me, but I arrive with resentment.  It’s a strange thing to admit and I’m not sure I fully understand all the emotions involved.

I knew a man who once shaved all of his facial hair, including his eyebrows.  He wondered if anyone would notice (they did) and then he wondered how long it would be before he looked less like a plucked chicken and more like a man again.  This was in the 80s, and he not only shaved his face, but then sat and watched The Wall for several days, naked-faced. I remember hearing about this after the fact (I didn’t meet him until well into the 90s, when he was, presumably, over Pink Floyd and had found other ways to sink into his darkness), but the story stayed with me, even after he faded into my history.

 

 

 

Yesterday, I left school as soon as logistically possible, got into my car and drove, with one of my closest friends, almost three hours to another state to hear live music. We drank, we ate, we danced, we talked and we laughed. I rolled home at 2:15 am, only to wake up three hours later next to my youngest child, who wanted to know if it was time to wake up.

The activity of my life carried me through until now, when I lay down, once again, beside my youngest to help him off to sleep.  There are dishes that need to be done, laundry that is overflowing, and a thousand details that were pushed aside for today.

I feel like a truck has slammed into me and I have no idea how I will make up for this tomorrow, especially since I will have one less precious hour.

But I promised myself that I would write every day in March. So, I wrote.

 

Today, I taught the Brown Girls.  Today, I found myself ignoring the other students, focusing in my attention and my words, specifically, for their ears.  I didn’t mean for it to happen.  I was a little surprised when I realized it was happening.  There were, of course, lots of other students in the room, listening and, hopefully, learning.  But I wasn’t concerned with them.  I was completely and totally focused on the young women who typically don’t find themselves front and center in the texts that we study.  They are in  the texts, sometimes, but typically on the side or as a way to discuss “urban” issues.  But not today.  Today, our text showed their power.  It showed their intelligence.  It showed them all that they are and all that they can be.  They saw themselves and their history raised up and honored, revered for the totality of what it is, not what it is lacking and not in comparison or contrast to the Pink people (because no one is white except for Casper).  Their strength and power was not just displayed, but was celebrated. And I seized the opportunity to connect them to this text, to this power. Today, I taught the Brown girls, and I was humbled and grateful.

 

I was up this morning, energized by an unusually solid sleep.  My only waking moment at 3:33am, which I found fascinating at the time, before I slept for another 47 minutes, when my alarms (yes, two) prodded me back to this world.  As the coffee steeped, releasing all of its caffeinated goodness, I unrolled my yoga mat and stepped into myself.  Afterward, I settled into my chair with my coffee.  Opening the laptop, I checked my email, made a few adjustments to my plans for today, and spent time reading the slices that had already been posted.  I was ready, I thought.  It was time to write.

And then the internet went out.  The modem or the connection or the invisible bunnies that keep my wireless world moving without any assistance from me had ceased to do its one job.  The internet was out.  I did what anyone would do…I restarted, redirected, opened and closed my laptop.  But nothing.  So, I waited.  With my coffee and my defunct laptop, I sat in my chair in the wee hours of the morning and waited.  Actually, I just sat.

Writing this a few hours later, I wonder what would happen if in those moments when life gets interrupted–traffic jam, a long wait in a line, a meeting that is cancelled, technology failure–I wonder if, instead of filling the empty time, I just sat in the space.  Fully present in the nothing.  Today, I am going to breathe into the times that will find me waiting and try to just sit with it.  And, if I can get there, maybe I’ll even forget about the breathing and do nothing.  Be one with the nothing.**

 

**Apologies, as well, to The NeverEnding Story