Burn and Release

My soul craves ritual. I have seasonal rites of passage that must be observed, and the interruption of one can lead to chaos. For example, I had a stomach virus on New Year’s’ Eve last year, and I still write 2008 on all my checks. Every year on the last day of school or the night before, I have a Burning and Release Ceremony. It involves candles, incense, matches, and watermelon margaritas. I say a word or two about each kid, or about groups of kids (such as “the Mean Girls” or the “Lost Boys”). I light a candle for that person as I talk about him/her/them. Some people have bigger candles than others. If I’ve experienced great pain in a year, or I’ve deeply connected to someone, or I’ve tried and failed with someone, they get a bigger candle. A longer speech. A deeper severing of ties. I have to do it. I can’t carry all of them along with me from year to year. If I did, I wouldn’t have any room for the new ones, and that wouldn’t be fair for anyone. I am not a perfect teacher, and I don’t write this to play the Hero card or the Martyr card. I wish, sometimes, that teachers could just be like every other job – that the most skilled would be best paid, that the goals could be specific and measurable, and that negotiations could be pursued for vacation time. (I want to go to be able to go to Disneyworld in January!) These are not necessarily popular views.

I have many weaknesses as a teacher. I’m easily distracted, slow to return grades, preoccupied with other jobs, sometimes. But when I’m on, I’m on. When I am invested and in the flow, I help kids learn. I am still so humbled by that, not one bit lessened after this, my fourteenth year. When I was finishing college and living with Ben and Elise in Rolling Green, I prayed for this. I wanted to be a teacher with my whole heart and soul, and even though it was so challenging to get there, I always knew that eventually, I’d have to be a teacher, and I’d have to do a good job. My first class ever, the Dillon/Amy/Nicholas/Etc. class, taught me that I was allowed to love them. I was allowed to just be myself, and not adopt some Teacher Persona just because I was supposed to. It was safe to just open my heart, be real, and by doing that, I might be able to convince some of them that it’s worth being. Whatever they are is worth being, and that their tribe is out there. As I taught, I learned that if I was going to teach that, I had to be that, too.

All of that “realness” all the time is freaking exhausting. Draining. Energizing and draining at the same time. And so, at just the very end of the year, I Burn and Release. I sat on my back porch tonight after grading my last Portrait Project – the personal reflections of a boy whose mother died when he was six, whose best friend moved last year, who had a wounded little heart and a flock of angels on his shoulders all the time. I watched the swallows, and the bats, and felt that loosing in my chest begin. That first breath of summer. In Tuck Everlasting, which I teach religiously to every class, the author says life is a wheel, with the first week of August hanging motionless and hot at the very tip top. I am on the edge of that…the cusp of languid, spacious, dreamy, slow, my favorite stops on the wheel. Yes, there’s my camp. Yes, there are still children to discipline, and daughters to discipline, and a house to clean and a basement to declutter. But I have space in my spirit to do it. I release the ones that cling to me, knowing that some of them will never leave…Ashley and Sarah, the twins, Noah, Dillon, Jimmy…some always linger, and I value that. But leaving a little more space for my children, for my husband, for my own voice is what I value more. I think that’s how it should be.

Welcome, Sweet Summertime.

Top Ten

I just found a blog site that’s full of people’s Top Ten Lists. Anyone can pick the top ten…anything, and just write them down and explain them. Top Ten Summer Fruits. Top Ten Things to do Before I Die. Top Ten Reasons I like Taylor. Top Ten Books that Made Me Cry. Top Ten Reasons I’ll Never Forgive My Mother. (These are all real ones, by the way. I didn’t make these titles up. www.storyofmylife.com ) And if you’re going to go visit it, great. But…could you finish reading this first? Thanks a bunch.

Now, not only is a top ten list a cool way to get to know things about people you already like, it is also a way to make a connection to a random stranger. I just read one called Top Ten Reasons to Write Your Life Story. Some of them didn’t click with me, but some of them resonated. One of the ones that dinged for me was “No one has your unique perception of the world.” I am always so interested in ordinary stories about ordinary people who have ordinary feelings because it makes me realize there’s no such thing. Every person, every life has its quirky sunny points and its dark underbelly. Everyone has weird childhood stories and some creepy relative and embarrassing crushes and insecurities. And everyone has things that they think are special about themselves and reasons why they enjoy their own company. I like hearing about all of those things, the quiet parts, and seeing into someone else’s unique perception of the world.

Top Ten Lists have those ordinary parts, I think. You don’t manage to be a contributing member of society by spending too much time thinking about your Top Ten Favorite Movies, but they are a snapshot of you. They are little shafts of light into your character. I also think it would be interesting to know what people would choose to make a top ten list for. That was the first question I asked myself when I stumbled onto the website, so that’s where I started this exercise. Plus, I figure if I compile a list of potential top ten lists, whenever I feel stuck about something to write about I have ten topics ready to go. There are the obvious ones, of course, about your favorite books, or your “a ha!” moments or your favorite movies. But I would bet everyone’s Top Ten Top Tens would have a few surprising ones.

So, without further ado…My Top Ten Top Tens List:

1. Top Ten Friends Who Changed Me (I could make this one several times over…and I can’t think of why I deserve to have been that lucky.)
2. Top Ten Ways in Which I Have Been Incredibly Lucky
3. Top Ten Coolest Things About Being a Teacher
4. Top Ten Formative Songs (Jack Wagner singing “Lady of My Heart?” Yeah. There’s a story there.)
5. Top Ten First Kisses. (I've already written about two of them on this blog. But there were others. Oh, wait…is ten too many first kisses? Maybe it’s not a conservative enough number. Which leads me to…)
6. Top Ten Random Insecurites
7. Top Ten Pet Peeves – Entertainment Edition. (The movie and tv crap that pisses you off, like talking babies, alarming news teasers, and food words like “juicy.”)
8. Top Ten Pet Peeves – Social Edition. (People who crack their knuckles in public, for example.
9. Top Ten Surprises About Being a Mom (So. Much. Laundry. Aaaaaaannnd...vodka.)
10. Top Ten Old-School Movie Star Crushes. (There’s a LOT I could share about James Garner and Jimmy Stewart. And don’t even get me started on Dick Van Dyke…)

Maybe you will pick one, or make a top ten of your own. I’d love to hear it if you do.

Counting Down

Teaching during the last month of sixth grade feels like dragging fifty heavy, bored, struggling boulders up a very high hill. In the rain. Wearing stillettos, after having eaten only lettuce for a week. Some of the boulders are crying, some of them are throwing spit-pebbles at the other boulders, and some of the boulders' parents are complaining that you're not pulling hard enough, and their precious boulder deserves to get to the top of the hill just because they are a Nice Boulder, and Mommy Said So.

This week, I kind of wish I were a plumber. Or a zoo-keeper. Or a dentist. Actually, I kind of feel like all three.

Of Scientists and Snails...

Okay, fine. Fine. I confess...I do NOT understand PHYSICS. I am an educated woman. I can manage complex issues with challenging people. I can organize huge projects single-handedly. I can whip you up a scrapbook or a pot of chili or a rhyming poem, but I cannot grasp the concept of antimatter. It's matter, or it ISN'T. How can there be an anti?

We're going to see Angels and Demons on Saturday night, and I'm really looking forward to it. I loved The DaVinci Code, book and film, and I love any excuse for a date with my husband. I have been determined to read the book before I see the movie, and I swear...I had to read the first 40 pages like EIGHT TIMES to understand what the hell they were talking about before I finally said FORGET IT. I will just allow for the fact that there's this canister of swirling liquid stuff that could destroy Vatican City. FINE. Now, when does the kissing start? When do we climb into the creepy crypts?

I love the parts with the complex symbology clues from the great masters of poetry and art. I love the descriptions of the streets of Rome and the St. Peter's Basilica and the sassy, scientific heroine. All good. But I do NOT enjoy an entire plot based on a scientific premise that I should get, but don't.

When I was in high school, we were offered Physics as a science my senior year. I only had to take three science classes in high school, so my alternative for Physics was Level Five French. Now, if you took Level Five French, you were promised a field trip in May to Le Bleh Bleh Bleh, some fancy French restaurant in Boston. So, my options were studying Newton's Laws, or eating escargot. I picked the snails. And you know what? We didn't even get to go. I forget why we didn't get to go, but for some reason, she wouldn't take us on the trip. It could have been the fact that Andy and Bruno took every test with their head swiveled behind them to steal answers, or it could be that we all confessed that we didn't particularly enjoy having to read Satre in French (Huis Clos...though I do remember frequently to this day the concept of hell being other people...and I know who mine are!) I loved Le Petit Prince and Le Monstre Dans Le Metro...but sadly, those two titles pretty much sum up my entire remaining French repertoire. (Oh, wait...doesn't repertoire totally count??) The point is, I took an entire year of advanced French and never got to go on the freaking field trip. Chris and Lisa opted for Physics, and Lisa will tell you that Chris, who was brilliant at it, got her through it. (Funnily enough, Chris is now the Science Department Head at the high school that Patrick attended. Yeah. My life's weird.) It somehow makes me feel better because another Smart Woman I Like did not understand physics, either.

I sometimes think that I need to repair my disappointment about the French Restaurant, since it's been exactly twenty years and CLEARLY I'm not over it. I should just go and buy my own damned escargot. I might need to put that on my list of things to accomplish in this self-declared Summer of Vibrancy and Joy.

Anyhoo...the book's great, and I'm more than halfway through. I'll forgive myself the physics and enjoy reading about Raphael and John Milton and Michelangelo, and keep my knowledge of Galileo on the need-to-know basis it's been since high school. I've survived without it pretty well so far.

Escaping Into the Open

Elizabeth Berg, my favorite author, is positively luminous in person. She is sparkly and real and has a smile that radiates best-girl-friend warmth. I met her last night at her reading with tears in my eyes, and she signed her book about writing, called Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True. I love it because she shares her Secret Formula about writing...which is, there IS no secret formula. Just write. Tell the truth. Listen to what's inside you and you can't help but bring it out.

She made me think even more powerfully of the Writer's Life I want to have, which is very like the one she has. She wakes up, makes coffee, goes to her little office and just writes for a few hours until...she doesn't have to anymore. Then she takes walks with her dogs, and maybe has lunch in a diner, or calls her best friend on the phone, all of which, she reasons, can be considered part of her work. She notices everything, and stays completely open to any moment that might spark something - the glint of gold in the old-fashioned plastic diner seats, the way the nametag on the coffee shop waitress hangs defeatedly perpendicular, a snippet of conversation between the old couple wearing matching windbreakers, sitting together on a park bench. That observation IS work, and it all counts. Being with people counts. Being alone to listen to herself think counts.

I love, too, that she came to writing late in life. She was a nurse for a long time, and she feels like the sort of honesty that she had with her patients helped her find the sort of honesty she needs for her characters. I related to that, because as a teacher, I've had literally thousands of spirits come through my life in fourteen years. So many lives in flux, mid-discovery, and I have prided myself on being as true and open with my students as I possibly can. (Within reason, of course.) I have told myself that I'm not "ready" to "be a writer," that I'm too busy with the girls, or there's a show to direct or a projects to grade, but look! I'm doing it. I'm being it, here, to start. This is my beginning.

Actually, though, when I think about it, this is really my middle. The beginning is decades old... notebooks upon notebooks full of writing: dreams, reflections, frustrations, observations...more than twenty-five years worth, and I never let that "count." I'm still learning, still finding my way, and I don't know where it's going, but I feel, finally, like I am on the road to something. I am on the road I have always wanted to be on, with no more excuses. I always hoped that I would just know when the time was right, and I'm feeling that. I always hoped that my life would continue to expand and deepen, and that I would listen when the Universe "showed me a sign" that I should just DO IT, already. And finally, it wasn't about waiting for the right time. It's about making time, however I can.

I confess that I'm writing this right now while my students are in gym class. I already graded their Latin root quizzes, booked the library for Friday book return, wrote a congratulatory note for someone I like who is retiring, returned three parent emails, did some money-stuff from last week's play, talked to one of my students who was ill in the nurse's office, and copied Friday's Greek History test. Then, I wrote this. It took me twenty minutes. And in these twenty minutes, I gave myself the boost of energy that will get me through reading the next chapter of Homecoming yet again, and through taking both classes outside to the huge rock to rehearse their Greek Mythology plays, and through the praise-giving, and the love-for-learning inspiring and the pseudo-mothering that I will have to do with fifty twelve-year-olds from now until 2:45.
But, what if...what if the burst of energy from twenty minutes of writing could lead, instead, to more writing? What if I could sit in my pajamas at my desk, looking out at my woods, and take that energy and put it instead onto a page, into characters, into a story? Then, the energy from that writing could go to...what? Parenting? Wife-ing? Observing and living? I feel ignited when I picture a life with that creative cycle, full of momentum and discovery. In just the past few months, after a lifetime of hoping and visualizing, it feels like it could finally be within reach.

Phenomenal Women

My friend Betsy sent me this quote this morning:

"Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit."

It made me laugh, but it also felt very true to me. I have a friend who had a new baby two days ago. My cousin's wife is in labor right now. I have a friend starting law school, another on her eighth Master's degree (okay, maybe not eighth.) My friends create homes, nurture their men, care for their children, build businesses and careers. They read good books and trashy magazines. They watch their weights but still know how to enjoy a good cheesecake. They focus and toil and strive, and from time to time, we share a martini or take a pole dancing class or put on a little black dress and dance up a storm.

Women are amazing. I never seem to get over it. Phenomenal. Especially the ones that I've been blessed to know and love. I often wonder just how I got so lucky.

Here's one of my favorite poems, which maybe you've read a hundred times, but I think it bears repeating...

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Seven Swans a-Swimming!

I checked on them this morning, and they were all still there, my sweet grey cygnets paddling around with Mom and Dad. I still feel kind of like Snow White.


Tomorrow night I'm going to see my favorite author, Elizabeth Berg, at a bookstore in Wellesley with my Mom. If you've never read her, I suggest starting with Joy School or The Pull of the Moon, my two favorites. She has a way of capturing characters that makes you feel like you know them intimately - what they eat for breakfast, what kind of mailbox they have, how they feel about rainy days, what kind of pajamas they wear. Her stories are always interesting and compelling, but mostly, its who she chooses to people them with that always fascinate me. I'm so excited that my Mom is going with me to see her. We don't always have similar tastes in books (she loves medical thrillers and Dean Koontz-type psychological thrillers), but we have shared some favorites. (And if I tell her that I especially love one, she will always read it - most notably Anne, Joy in the Morning, the Harry Potters, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the last of which always reminded me of what she must have been like as a girl.) And it was my mom, more than anyone or anything else in my life, that inspired and supported my love of reading, and among the many things I appreciate about her, this is very high on the list.

And speaking of my Mom, we are going with Auntie and Katie to NYC for a girls' weekend away at the beginning of June, and I can't wait! We're seeing 9 to 5 and Guys and Dolls, and staying at the Marriot. I hate to admit it, but one of the funniest sights in the world is Mom and Auntie after their second martini, and I love a chance to take my Mom out on the town and help her to relax a little. She loves a good time, and really appreciates and values a "moment," (another thing I can thank her for instilling in me), and a trip to the Big City is chock-full of Mom-Moments.

Now, to find just the right gay bar to take them to...