Solstice Thoughts

When my students arrived at school today, they were beaming and wearing their favorite pajamas.  Some carried a favorite stuffed animal, eyes twinkled, and little random stories and facts spilled out of their mouths.  I don’t think I can easily articulate how important today was for me.  As the first graders trotted through the hallways, jingling their bells and trying to remember the words to Frosty, (I think I heard one boy yodeling , “with a corn dog pipe…”) I saw old first grade friends, cheeks less round, glowing with knowing smiles that said they remembered the fun and comfort of their own Polar Express celebration.  A colleague of mine slipped me two packets of cocoa, a memory of my desperate cocoa hunt two days prior.  So many generous gifts, tangible and symbolic, piled up in the warmth of the day.

As the day progressed, I was reminded in that back-of-the-mind, front-of-the-heart way, that since last week, and other events preceding it, I’ve been impressed with how critical, how vital, Aibileen’s striking words are for children: You are kind. You are smart. You are important.

My son knows he is, and my students do, too. Upon the frequent occasions of students’ being spontaneously and thoughtfully kind to one another, I now state it as plainly as I can: You are so kind. You are thoughtful.

There’s this teacher at Langston’s school, who for months has greeted him by name when he arrives. She waits with older kids just outside in the mornings, for the bus. And for months, I thought, for all his racing to the door, his focus on our routine of punching in the beepy numbers for the entry code, that he didn’t notice or hear her consistent, friendly greeting. I’d often apologetically either  model a greeting for him to repeat, or say another lame thing, “We’re so excited to start the day…,” etc. 

But then this thing happened. A few days ago, as if a switch had been flipped, one morning Langston hopped out the car, wriggled into his backpack, as always, and as we neared the crowd of students, he walked up to the group, winding his gaze, spanning it toward the teacher, like a seeking tractor beam.  “Hi, A.!” he chirped. Every day since then, his face, with that wide open clarity that only our sons can have, seeks her out when we arrive, smiling and ready with his purposeful greeting. This morning, the teacher was speaking with a parent, and while he missed his chance to deliver his greeting, the moment of his smiling searching gaze was not lost on me.  There’s a former student of mine who is like this, so connected to the people he knows. He could be in a crowd of a hundred, and if he knows you’re there, you, one of his people that he knows and loves, his eyes will find you. And when your gaze finds his, his happiness is perceptible, this thing you can hold in your hand. There! There she is.

I’m so grateful for the little people that I am honored to live and work with. I’m grateful for the teachers who for care for my son, who fall in love with his quirky talents and know just the right and fair time to say no to him, to help him learn what is right. I am grateful for all parents: mine, whose gifts are boundless, like the apples, branches and more of the story – you know the one – and the parents I’ve met in my professional life, who trust us to keep their children safe and happy.

We are smart. We are kind. We are important.

Scattered Leaves and Thoughts

Last March, my son was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. None of the impressions that follow here relate to this, or convey anything, I suppose, other than my conviction that we are in exactly the right place, and that we are home.

When the hurricane was at its most present, weather.com reported that winds might accelerate up to ninety miles per hour around three in the morning. I don’t think that they were higher than forty-five, but I was nervous as each of the rooms in our apartment is entirely bordered by tall trees that were swaying crazily. So before the power went out, I had dragged Langston’s twin mattress into the thin hallway, wedged in the wall space between the bathroom and the pantry closet.  Bedrooms doors were closed, in case a window might not make it.

The lights went out at the end of dinner, and Langston was briefly upset, insisting that they be put back on, but as I lit a collection of candles and began our bedtime routine, he came around. After he managed to settle into to sleep, it was the sweetest thing to be camping out together in the hallway, high winds whistling and shrieking outside. 

Several days later, we walked in the great woods which are just outside our doorstep.  The trees, stunning and full of vibrant orange and reds the week before had been stripped, many felled close to the path, with stubble where branches had been. A dense carpet of beech leaves layered on top of the ground’s previous tenants, mostly maple and oak leaves.

There’s nothing quite as peaceful and enjoyable as the three to four mile hikes that my son and I take every weekend. We rarely run into another person on the trail, and walls of towering trees are the perfect frame for our home.  As we crunch through the paths, Langston points out what are becoming our favorite landmarks, from a slim white birch trunk which he balances across, to the huge boulders of rocks which rise like buildings, to the slippery steeper sections of the climb where he now mockingly  anticipates my, “Carrrreful steps! Carrrreful steps!”

Walking in these woods with Langston a deep feeling of satisfaction prevails: that we should be there, together, happily tripping along, grasping each other’s hands at time for balance and connection. I can only imagine how good it feels for Langston to be in such a space, free of the mechanical beeps, screeches, and other cacophonous terrors of the world, to feel the thick sink of his boots in a layer of leaves, to hop with his two feet together and land safely off a large rock. Every now and then, worried that he’ll tire, I may ask if he wants to turn around and go back or keep going. “Keep going?” he asks. 

That’s my New Hampshire boy.

 

 

Hidden Treasure

            For Ruby

All I need is a branch

            Solid in hand

To separate the soggy wood chips

            The sweetly moist earth

Dark and soft from last week’s snow.

The sudden surprise of a little town:           

Worms wriggling fast, but not

            Fast enough.

A live creature twists in my palm and

            I am king.

I turn it over like a gold coin

All run to catch a glimpse

As I pass my find, hand to hand,

Like an expert archaeologist before an audience

            Fingering some small bone

Such as the tooth of a diplodocus.

There’s more over here, someone shouts

And I scramble purposefully

My first worm almost forgotten

            Dangling from my fingertips

As I stand over the digging site

            My voice ringing out

An empress insuring her right to rule.

Love to Hate Writing Poetry

I remember being in a PD workshop session while still at CPS, not too long after our kindergartners had begun their work with writing poetry.  "Amanda loves poetry," some colleague put forth.

"I do," I admitted. "I want to take a bath in it."  And it's true. As much as I love poetry and poets, most recently, Billy Collins, and in the past, Langston Hughes (of course,) Whitman, Creeley, Sexton, Sandburg, Frost, and oh, I just can't name them all - I absolutely loathe attempting to write poetry.  I remember coming across three poems I had written in my painful pre-teenage years of Midwestern suburban hell while I was going through old school papers, post-college.  The absolute agony of pre-adolescence was captured in a drippingly angsty poem entitled, believe it or not, "Sacrifice on the Altar."  It was eerily reminiscent of this:



Since those embarrassing times, whenever compelled to draft a poem in a class or teacher's workshop, I sometimes like it for a minute, and then wad it up immediately.  Everything clever, sarcastic, absurdly saccharine or revelatory has been written already, you see, by great and mediocre poets alike, and what my pen hurls (that's right, hurls) onto the page is usually tinged with a smidge of Hallmark pus.

Anyway. I teach, therefore I write. It's not fair to ask kiddos to write poems about everyday objects, or from the heart, without attempting it occasionally in front of their eyes.  So a few weeks ago, in the "everyday object with a poets' eyes" lesson from Calkins, I brought out my treasure chest of rocks, shells, and dried leaves as possibilities for poetry fodder. Not wanting students to mimic too closely my writing a poem about a pine cone or a dried leaf, I mentioned getting a gift from one of my tutoring kiddos the previous afternoon.  "S. knows about this," I confided with a nod to the gift giver. "It's an everyday thing, right? A puzzle. But Langston was crazy about this one. 100 pieces, and it covered the floor of his room! So I think I'm going to write my poem about that. I'm going to see that puzzle with a poets' eyes."

So I started writing on poster paper, and a few choice schmalzy phrases were trimmed in the final minutes of composition.   "Pieces fitting together," my marker squeaked onto paper as students followed with silent eyes. "Clinging!" a girl blurted. I felt goosebumps rise and turned. "Yes. Can I steal that word, E.?" She nodded seriously.  A few other student changes were suggested, sometimes without the strictest adherence to our sacred mini-lesson rules.

Here is the final draft of a poem that I won't, perhaps, crumple up:

A Puzzle For My Son

A shower of 100 pieces

Rained out of the box

Let’s find the corners first

The edges, too

So it all

Makes

Sense

Now we have a picture frame

Pieces clinging together

Like you and me

When we hug

In the mirror

The Hardest Thing

I was thinking about a Chicago friend of mine, who, when reminiscing fondly, I always picture offering one of her terse, sometimes painfully direct observations. Grappling one afternoon with my antiquated digital camera* and unfamiliar video camera, I was struck by a memory of C. She and I were riding the bus through Lincoln Park. I forget where we were going. At the time, I think, I was in between relationships, and she and I were talking about the whole having a family thing. If I'm not lucky enough to find a partner, I told C., I'll do the single mom thing at some point, likely before I'm forty. C. began to list, grimly and convincingly, all the reasons why my decision, albeit premature, was a terrible one. (I should note here that I don't resent her for this. She's just a woman of strong opinions, and her talents are many.)

You'll want a break, she asserted, and the kid will, too. They'll need to have someone else to go to. I don't remember all of the specific reasons that she enumerated, but what I do remember is that they all made sense. Someone else to take the weight of the burden and all that.

I've thought of our bus conversation fleetingly since Langston was born. And as challenging as it is doing what I do, when scooping my son up with strong arms as he's being sick or stuck and learning how to be, I don't think my friend had it right. I mean, it's true, there are days when I need a break, but somehow, more and more, I am able to take advantage of Langston's growing independence to take moments to rest. And maybe later, he'll want someone else to go to, a good cop to my bad cop when I say firmly, no. But for now, the only thing about being a single mom that is so tough it stings, is that there's no one to hold the camera. Just me.

Maybe when we're older, Langston will have a collection of the photos taken of our faces, some cut off or blurry because I didn't have it just right, and he will look at them with love and see us smushed together through circumstance and family. Sometimes, when we're dancing together in the kitchen by the big full-length mirror, Langston looks at our reflection and says, "Langston and Mommy." And I always say, "That's right."

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

*My digital camera requires four AA batteries. Also, if I leave the batteries in, it sucks the juice out of them, so I have to open the little latch everytime I'm done using it to dump the batteries into a bag. It's about the size of a small sub sandwich.

Love, Love, Love

I'm struck with how perfectly and utterly I love my son. I miss him when he sleeps, and I go in to watch him sleep for a second or two. There he is, his skin glows paler than in the daytime, hands are tucked away in a blanket or around his little stuffed cow.

As I'm standing there, sweetly missing the delight of his giddy humor and the funny way he sneaks up and plops his hands on my shoulders for a piggyback ride, I think ahead to the morning, when I'll walk in after listening to him talk for a minute or so, and I'll open the curtain, and he'll blink through his smile, like he's looking out from under a shade. Every morning, we're so happy to see each other again.

Words I Like, Today

recalcitrance
equanimity
pretext
anticipation

Words, today, that I like:

sojourn
onerous
cheeky
sinuous

Nostalgia and Wrigley Days

In the past few weeks, I've had momentary twinges of nostalgia for Chicago things. Small things, little spots of experience, really. Wrigley Field is one of the things I've been thinking about lately - which is silly, really seeing as how it's really not the time...

Anyway. Wrigley is one of my absolute favorite Chicago things. The rich ivy, the stretch of skyline framing the bleachers. Peanuts on the floor, ground under shoes, cold beer in hand, eyes riveted. The first night game I ever went to was surreal. I felt like the Ray Kinsella character in Field of Dreams when the huge spotlights are switched on in the middle of the cornfield. That dazed look on his face, you know? I've taken everybody I love or loved to Wrigley Field, with or against their consent. I remember taking my dad to his first American baseball game. The rules and action were vague, I sensed, and initially, little seemed to be happening. "Let's just stay until 'Seventh Inning Stretch,'" I pleaded. He hung in there, and I was delighted when a home run finally occured, and the crowd surged up and we stood as well, though it had been a split second thing, out of sight. Finally, at the seventh inning, everyone sang. "We can leave, now?" He suggested. I grudgingly conceded.

There's this absolute perfection, this quintessential Chicago poetry that happens when you're sitting there, wedged into the seat, teenagers loopy in front of you and tourists in back, and the buzz of the crowd, the beer, and the giddy thumping organ incites you take it all in and then, you see the El, this steel serpentine thing, weaving through the rooftops in the foreground of Chicago's stunning landscape. Stumbling down the ramps at the end of the game, conversational snippets both speculative and vapid abound, but there is one characteristic all Wrigley visitors carry, along with flushed cheeks and loud voices: a huge, toothy grin.

Words I Like

ballast
insouciance
pervasive
quantitative