More silliness, honesty, kindness.

Be silly.

Be honest.

Be kind.

The above are just a few of the wise words that Ralph Waldo Emerson left us with. They have been my words for the week, posted on my white board to give me inspiration.

Usually, I leave a quote up for about a week, then erase and write something new, but I feel like I need to keep this one around for longer. Of all the philosophical and spiritual books I’ve ever read, no author has so completely captured the key to a wonderful life. Simple words, complicated admonition.

I love my life. My husband is romantic-comedy wonderful. Tom Hanks would play him in a movie (though Greg has better legs). And my daughters are spectacular: smart, funny, kind, creative, beautiful. I have a good job, a great place to live and an extended family and friends network that gets me through all of the struggles of life. Who could ask for more?

I could.

From myself.

I want to be more silly, more honest, more kind.

You’d think that working as a second grade teacher I’d have my full share of silly. But, as any public school teacher will tell you, there is no longer time for silly. I have benchmark reading assessments to get through which means the rest of the students need to work quietly while I test. I have a new Math unit to begin and make sure that the students are ready for the test in two and a half weeks so we can squeeze in one more unit before the end of the year. Through all this assessment, I need to maintain routines, oh yeah, and prepare materials for the move-up process to sort the second graders into third grade classrooms. There is no time for silly.

And honesty? If I were honest with myself I would have allowed for three days to curl up in a sobbing ball of grief this weekend because it’s Mother’s Day and I miss my Mom. I feel nauseous and sad and filled with amazing love – a ridiculous combination, but honestly my own.

Kindness has actually been my focus this month. I’m trying to approach all things with kindness – my restless second graders, my hormonal daughter, my disoriented neighbor, my . . .self. I’ve taken a few steps forward, stumbled a few steps back, but managed to keep kindness in many of my days. I am even learning to accept the kindness shown me.

In trying to be kind to myself, I took time away from work and chores to play in the garden. Growing in scattered spots throughout the yard are the remnants of my old neighbors Solomon’s Seal, which she shared with me after I giggled uncontrollably at them growing in her yard. They are like an illustration in a Dr. Seuss book the way they poke out of the soil in singular long stems. When they unfurl, they’ll hang like umbrellas and my neighbor had them planted behind her Buddha statue to shade him all summer long. It was wonderfully silly. I think of her, and that happy, round Buddha, every time I see this plant in my yard. So, maybe I don’t need Emerson’s

 

the day after the Boston Marathon

I’m in the parlor, listening to the news stream through my laptop, descriptions of the grief and fear from yesterday’s bombing. I can hear my girls in the family room waking up with giggles after their sleepover with a friend. It is not so incongruous.

In the past year, I have reflected a lot on the phrase life goes on. In the midst of chaos and sorrow and bad things happening there are always children giggling, moments of joy.

I don’t believe that “God gives us only what we can handle”; I don’t believe that “everything happens for a reason”. What I believe is that yucky, crappy things happen and so do great and wonderful things. And that’s life.

I also believe that our daily decisions about how to react make a difference. Before I knew to turn on the news yesterday, I was already thinking about how to make my classroom a more peaceful place. I have made mistakes and I want to stop making them. I have gone through whole days without reflecting on my contribution to the conflict. One goal for my week-long break was to reflect on my behavior and my reactions to behavior and see how I could do better. That goal gained urgency at 3pm yesterday.

This school year has included way too much tragedy and I want desperately to blame someone and make them reform. What I have to do is much harder. No blame, just thoughtfulness in all my actions. Not easy. But, in the name of first graders in Connecticut and cheering spectators in Boston I will try.

Weekly Slice of Life

Artifacts of a life - my father's Bible

As I was cleaning out my parents’ house I found my father’s New Testament, the book he used to study to become a Eucharistic Minister. He had left a few sheets of paper inside with notes from his class and oddly, I had practiced my newly learned signature on one of the pages. I took the bible home and it sat on my shelf for a year unread. 

About a month ago, I started reading it, slowly; I am still in the Gospel of Matthew. But I keep pulling out those sheets with my father’s notes. On one he wrote, “Jesus died a lonely man.” I feel my father’s sorrow each time I read that sentence. How very sad to think that one so revered had a lonely death, misunderstood by all around him. Each time I read it, I think of my father’s death. Once we understood he was dying, my father was never alone. We formed shifts without a schedule so that someone held his hand constantly. On one of his last nights of consciousness, he laughed and made jokes and reminisced. As he slipped into a morphine-induced sleep, he used his waking minutes to speak love. And, when he couldn’t open his eyes, we spoke love softly to him.

I don’t think my father felt lonely. I may never completely understand the man he was, but I understood the love he had for me and I was grateful for it. Am grateful for it.

Perhaps what Jesus needed was a wife and 10 kids, like my father.

Poetry

My students have been immersed in reading and writing poetry this month. We’ve been talking about line breaks, rhythm, and imagery.

Last week we took a common classroom object, our white board, and looked carefully at it. We brainstormed a whole list of things we noticed, then chose the best and arranged them with rhythm. Here’s what we came up with:

The White Board

By Room 102

The white board in our classroom is

            big,

            dirty,

hard, and

smooth.

We put stuff on it

            with markers

            and magnets.

It’s awesome,

            marvelous,

            and cool

Until ----

            Mrs. L. A. puts homework on it.

I was thrilled with the collaboration. They had fun and I especially appreciated the twist in the last line. So, this morning, I introduced the idea of personification. We had read a few poems that made use of it, and spent a few days on “Who Likes the Wind” which has a kite, a boat and thistle all talking. The idea of these things acting like people inspired a great bit of fun. I turned back to our writing about the White Board and wondered how it would have described itself. The students were up for the challenge:

The White Board Talks

By Room 102

I like people to draw on me

I like when people stick stuff on me with magnets

I like when people erase the drawings;

            it tickles.

I like when people use me.

BUT

I do not like when Mrs. L.A. writes homework on me.

It has been fun to watch my students play with words.

I love National Poetry Month.

day off

I did not go to school today. It’s a really weird feeling to know that my students were there and I was not. I’m worried. Silly, isn’t it? As if they cannot get through a day without me. Although, sometimes I feel as we they can barely get through a day with me.

Anyway, when my appointment wrapped up way earlier than I expected, I was wishing that I just put in to be late. But how was I to know? And, once a sub is called, I can’t show up. So, I spent the day getting ready for this weekend’s Massachusetts History Day contest (I help coordinate the event), reading an article on making sense of addition and subtraction story problems, searching my internet resources for guidance on helping my ELLs through those story problems, and writing a parent letter. I even had time to meet my husband for lunch.

Here at the end of the day I feel rested and ready for the evening’s running around: soccer practice and play rehearsal back-to-back.

When I mentioned to a friend that I was sorry I hadn’t planned better and just taken an hour off, she said “On your death bed, are you going to remember this day as the day you enjoyed a nice surprise lunch with your husband, or the day you wished you had gone to work?”

Nothing like a good friend to give you perspective.

Happily back to work tomorrow, but happy too that I took today.

See lots of Slices of Life at Two Writing Teachers 

What if today is all you get?

For no particular reason, I was thinking of my last outing with Mom.

It was the Thursday before she died; she died the very next Thursday.

She had wanted to go out to breakfast with my girls, but they were at camp that week. I told her we’d bring her to their favorite spot the next week, but she asked if I’d bring her that day so she could tell them how much she liked it. (She did like it.)

Today, for the first time, it occurred to me that she knew she was dying; she knew she would not make it to the next week.

I spent this morning reliving that morning. I could feel her lean into me as we walked across the parking lot. I could hear her voice as she asked about the girls’ camp and their summer and their lives. My heart skipped again as I saw her stumble. My skin tingled with her love.

When did my mother know those were her last days?

What would I do if I knew these were mine?

What if I could honestly take each day as the only guarantee?

Would I give a memory worth remembering?