Not my brother - the people you meet

My brother just walked into the cafe. No, not really. My brother has been dead for over 20 years. It's just the kind of guy that reminds me of my brother. I see him all the time.

He looks unnaturally skinny but with a small paunch hanging over his belt. Unhealthy looking. It's a fairly warm day but he wears a long-sleeved button up shirt. Maybe it's unfair, but I assume he is wearing the shirt to cover the track marks on his arm rather than because he felt chilled when he got dressed. Maybe it's both. His black canvas bag looks designed to hold a laptop, which my brother never had. But I imagine, were he alive, my brother would have, like this guy, adopted headphones and smartphone as a way to block out the world.

People behind the counter know the guy, at least enough to greet him by name. He's quiet though, a word no one ever used to describe my brother. My brother's voice carried, whether it was appropriate to be loud or not. This guy seems like he's better able to regulate his voice. He can't stop his leg from bouncing, though, and his hand shakes as he raises the sandwich to his mouth. It's a Friday afternoon and he's not at work. Of course, neither am I, neither are most of the people here. But since this guy is my brother I imagine he doesn't have a regular job to go to.

The book I saw sticking out of his back jeans pocket turns out to be a thin black and white composition book, folded in half so it will fit. Yeah, my brother would do something like that, get a free left-over book from some organization and use it to death. I don't think my brother ever wrote. Maybe he did and his words were lost to the trash when he wasn't around to advocate for their preservation. I know he was a reader. This guy is reading the newspaper, left behind by another customer. Free. I bet he has a beaten up paperback in that black bag.

I'd probably enjoy a 15 minute conversation with this guy, get his take on Game of Thrones or Mr. Robot, then never see him again.

I like his face.

He reminds me of my brother.

Not my brother - the people you meet

My brother just walked into the cafe. No, not really. My brother has been dead for over 20 years. It's just the kind of guy that reminds me of my brother. I see him all the time.

He looks unnaturally skinny but with a small paunch hanging over his belt. Unhealthy looking. It's a fairly warm day but he wears a long-sleeved button up shirt. Maybe it's unfair, but I assume he is wearing the shirt to cover the track marks on his arm rather than because he felt chilled when he got dressed. Maybe it's both. His black canvas bag looks designed to hold a laptop, which my brother never had. But I imagine, were he alive, my brother would have, like this guy, adopted headphones and smartphone as a way to block out the world.

People behind the counter know the guy, at least enough to greet him by name. He's quiet though, a word no one ever used to describe my brother. My brother's voice carried, whether it was appropriate to be loud or not. This guy seems like he's better able to regulate his voice. He can't stop his leg from bouncing, though, and his hand shakes as he raises the sandwich to his mouth. It's a Friday afternoon and he's not at work. Of course, neither am I, neither are most of the people here. But since this guy is my brother I imagine he doesn't have a regular job to go to.

The book I saw sticking out of his back jeans pocket turns out to be a thin black and white composition book, folded in half so it will fit. Yeah, my brother would do something like that, get a free left-over book from some organization and use it to death. I don't think my brother ever wrote. Maybe he did and his words were lost to the trash when he wasn't around to advocate for their preservation. I know he was a reader. This guy is reading the newspaper, left behind by another customer. Free. I bet he has a beaten up paperback in that black bag.

I'd probably enjoy a 15 minute conversation with this guy, get his take on Game of Thrones or Mr. Robot, then never see him again.

I like his face.

He reminds me of my brother.

writing bravery

My birthday is a few days away and I have decided to give myself a present. I have decided to write. I was going to say that I would give myself the time to write, that I would take the time from my busy day, stealing it away from my family and other responsibilities but the truth is I have always had the time to write. If I said to my husband and the girls that I was going to take a few hours to sit at the computer to write and please don’t bother me they would say “great!” and my sweetheart would probably quietly refill my coffee cup with only a briefly distracting kiss on the neck. If I got up an hour early every morning, or took an hour after dinner every night or otherwise scheduled daily writing time, they would be on board, enthusiastically on board. So, I don’t have to give myself the gift of time; my family would give that gift happily. What I need to gift to myself is bravery. 

Writing scares me silly. I doubt my abilities, doubt the value of my voice. I worry what people close to me will think, even those generous and loving supporters who would rally behind my efforts. Will I be discovered to be a faux intellectual fraud? Will my version of events be challenged, or cause pain? Will I disappoint myself when, after three days I no longer have anything to say?

I’ve been back on track with daily writing for about a month now, after a long silence. When I look back on the difficulties I had this year I think there has to be a connection between my struggle to understand and deal with the complexities of life around me and my lack of writing. Writing is thinking for me. And that in itself makes it scary to share. Writing is thinking, processing, coming to an understanding. There is value in sharing this process. But sharing also inspires me to polish it up, to make my thinking clear to other than my own cluttered brain. In my job, as in most, clear communication is crucial (alliteration just plain fun). Giving myself the gift of writing, and sharing my writing, will help me in the process of becoming a better teacher and choosing the path to follow. 

But its much more personal than that. Writing is a spiritual process, and here is a statement that requires lots of that bravery I mentioned so I hope my birthday gift arrives on time. Writing is spiritual. I have long been reluctant to talk about my spiritual journey with anyone, have barely recognized the existence of a journey. It's a topic that makes me feel like a new-age poser even though I admire several writers who took the time to tell about their own journeys, and gained so much from their sharing. Spirituality is deeply tied to my thoughts on writing.

I grew up Catholic and we went to church every Sunday and “day of obligation.” I attended Catholic School through 8^th grade and in high school, as a sort of self-imposed penance for some missteps, I taught Sunday School to young kids. My family was “openly religious” but we didn’t really talk about spirituality. There were a few religion classes at school, especially with Sister Roberta who had me thinking about becoming a nun in 7^th grade, where we talked about the joy and mystery faith but for the most part it was all about obligation. I’ve struggled with finding my spiritual path as an adult. I’ve attended a few Sunday ceremonies at different churches and have been drawn in by some of the ritual there. I was incredibly moved by my mother’s funeral mass, filled with familiar prayers and songs, but when I attended my father’s anniversary mass, a regular Sunday with intentions for his soul, I was angry by the time I left at all the changes which felt like change for change sake because frankly I hadn’t been a part of the church or the conversation around making them. That mass was a betrayal to my memory but more importantly it separated me from the spiritual comfort of mass at a time when I thought a move back to church might become part of my haphazard spiritual journey.

Wait. This is not how I envisioned this post about giving myself the gift of writing courageously.

What I really want to say, to myself since I am my only guaranteed reader but here in public so I can feel as if I’ve made a commitment, is that I am going to write. I am going to write at the risk of becoming a disappointment, of being disappointed. I am going to take the time to be brave.

Happy Birthday to me.

end of the year motivation

The 1 1/2 week break from school, and all the hype around the New Year often inspire me to do a lot of writing and work on projects I have only thought about in the past few months. 
This morning I spent an hour in Panera watching my daughter struggle through a section of her fiction she didn't quite know how to write. She interrupted her sister and I at our reading to pose questions and lay out possible scenarios and then pounded out her ideas in that one-handed way of hers. A frown of concentration and dissatisfaction never quite left her face. 
My own hands itched to type.
That itch felt good. I had left my laptop at home since it has been a long time (a really long time) since I had written so much as a journal entry. I have restricted my writing to lessons and report card comments and email, so focused on the work of teaching 4th grade that I neglected the work of me. 
So, that divine combination of break time and New Year's Resolutions means scratch the itch. And maybe even schedule in some writing time for the next few months so I don't forget that I want to be a writer when I grow up.

Happy Thanksgiving

My mother’s spirit woke me at 5:00 on this Thanksgiving morning reminding me to put the turkey in the oven. It’s just a 5 ½ pound turkey breast that we’re cooking for sandwiches later, not the 30 pounder she would put in her oven the night before, but still she knew I should get it in there before the bustle of the day. Our tradition includes getting the girls to school to prepare for the game, spending some time in the stands to watch the half-time show, then rushing over to the lake to have dinner with the Andersons. Later, we’ll be back at our house to host some Lamarres for soup and sandwiches and dessert. And, because of my mother’s thoughtful spirit, I am up recharging in the quiet of my house, the turkey in the oven my coffee hot in my mug, being alone the way I need to be before a crowded day.

I am thankful.

scenes from a birthday

My baby turned 15 today. She is both excited to reach this milestone, and frightened by what it implies. Growing up isn’t easy and it can stress teenagers out to think about fast-approaching adulthood. So, when asked how she wanted to spend her day, she fell back on some old standbys – out for lunch and sitting in the bookstore for as long as we can. It’s a ritual that brings us back to when they were little and I could spend the day with them all the time. Still, here in the truth of the day, teenager interests were ever-present. We shopped for fun clothes and new bras, the girls checked out all the cool stuff at Newbury Comics, and she is now listening to pop music while reading fan fiction on her phone.

It was great to be able to skip school together today and enjoy her day, doing all the little girl and teenage things she wanted to do.

Of course, this is how I still think of her . . .

wandering past the creation story

I love creation stories, those tales people told/tell to explain how it all began. When I worked in a local museum I developed programs that told lots of different creation stories: how the town began, why the city became known as a Queen Slipper City, the childhood of it’s famous residents – all the stories that helped explain creation of this or that. But my favorite story was the one I told about the creation of the world itself.

All cultures have ancient creation stories designed to tell how their people came to be on that land, designed to remind us that the earth is a gift and that we were not always on it and so, it seems implied to me, we might not always be. An important story for many in the Northeast is The World on Turtle’s Back, the story of how Sky Woman fell and was rescued by the animals in the ocean who created a place for her to live on the great sea turtle’s back. The animals and the woman worked together. The world grew and still floats on that great turtle through the universe.

That’s a powerful story that was somehow more meaningful than the one from my tradition about a lone creator populating a garden with disobedient children.

I loved that story. Something about it spoke to me. I told it during my History for Half Pints programs to pre-school and kindergarten children. I helped students plant seeds on a soil mixture attached to a paper turtle shell so they could recreate the story. I asked older kids to imagine being there at the start of things and to draw and write about what it might look like. I was given a stone turtle necklace and have little turtle statues scattered around the house and garden. I regularly included that story in the bedtime ritual with my own little girls.

I haven’t worked for that museum in almost a decade and my own little girls are in high school now. I think of the story every time I put on that necklace, but haven’t told it in a while.

Last week we were in the Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, Maine wandering around a section we hadn’t visited on our last trip and stumbled upon this.

The guide we ran into later says she calls this rock formation the whale and when I heard that I worried that I would stop seeing the turtle there – the power of suggestion is so strong. But I still see Turtle, and my girls see Turtle, and my husband sees Turtle. Our long connection to the creation myth overpowered her image of the barnacle-clad giant.

Here is a reminder of our earth’s and our people’s origins; here is a reminder to care for that tenderly built little place on her back that so many worked together to build. What a gift it was for my family to wander by.

NOTE: There are many versions of the story, all with different details but the same core message of creation. You can read one here.

I wanted to make this post a part of the great community of bloggers who join every Tuesday to share a Slice of Life. You can go there to get a glimpse of the lives of other writers/thinkers/teachers/creators. I haven't participated in this community in a while, and it is nice to sneak back in.