I was not in a good place last spring. Professionally, I was not being treated well. My co-workers and I went on strike for a week to address some major safety concerns and workers' rights issues, and we were condescended back into our jobs for a few months before we all left, got let go, or were bullied by supervisors into quitting. It really sucked. (Side note: that's the first time I've been able to talk about that situation in such a succinct way, instead of rambling on for hours about all the details of how the cards intentionally got stacked against us. I think that's progress.)
The summer was a time of relaxation and low finances. I stayed with SEA part-time, keeping an ear open for any alternative classrooms looking for Instructors.
I went in to interview with SEA's partner site at South Seattle Community College, wearing new slacks, a button up shirt, and my hair in "teacher mode", pulled back and held up in a clip, hoping to be taken seriously and look older than 15. The directors explained their program to me, I handed over a template for how I tutor math and a storytelling lesson I designed. They said they'd let me know, and did I have any questions for them. "How are the dynamics of the entire staff?" I asked, trying to sound as casual as I could.
The directors started explaining how they don't want people to sit alone in their office, the whole team really likes to know what everyone is going through and help each other. "In fact," said one director. "We don't actually want you dealing with any discipline issues. You're the teacher, your job is to teach. We're the directors, we want to handle any discipline issues you're facing." I almost started crying at the idea of a boss being so supportive, but held back and reminded myself I was in an interview and to be professional.
The second director chimed in and told me I wouldn't have many discipline problems anyway, the students were really great and really serious about their education.
I got offered the job, and I've been teaching Junior English and Pre-Algebra for several quarters. And that director is right, these are the greatest students in the world. There's hardly any apathy in the classroom, each student is incredibly engaged. I assign a persuasive essay, and I get emails asking if they can design a poster and present their essay to the class, it's an important topic that they want to share with their peers. I walk by the group of students known as the talkers sitting in the back of math, and see them explaining to each other how to divide decimals, jumping over one another to figure out these problems.
I hand out an evaluation and ask them how they feel about math. "Bittersweet," writes one student. That's one of the more positive remarks. "I don't have a problem with math," writes another student. "Math don't like me." Despite their anxiety and negative history with math, they put in 11 weeks of diligent note-taking and studying and piles of homework, and by the end they are multiplying improper fractions, then breaking them into number bonds to convert them to mixed numbers for final answers.
English is a little easier to goof off in, it's not going to help you figure out how to pay off your student loans someday. But still, the discussions students have after reading novels and plays are enthralling. My favorite question to ask them is, "How is our society different from this book?" followed by, "How is it similar?" Slowly they started to draw some similarities to The Giver, "We're told we can do what we want, but we're kind of set on certain paths in our education that lead us toward specific jobs." After we read A Raisin in the Sun, the comparisons flowed a lot faster. "People will still try to tell you where you can and can't live." The students hated Walter Lee at first, all he did was whine while the women in his family worked so hard. Then came the scene when he was finally going to invest the money, and he scooped Travis up and told him how things were going to be different. They paused. A few of them are parents themselves. "He wants his kid to be proud of him." Connections developed. Empathy was enhanced.
Their final assignment was to do a text response in class. They could write an essay on how the time period, author, genre, impacted the work. They could write a scene that wasn't in the play (What was it like when Walter borrowed his friend's car and drove and drove and drove? What was it like when Mama went around looking at houses? What happens when they move, and Bennie doesn't have money to finish school, and Mama can finally grow a whole garden, but the neighbors are threatening?). They could write a poem from the perspective of the main character. They could draw a scene that represented an important theme in the text.
One student had written his persuasive essay on climate change and greenhouse gases, which he had learned about in History that quarter. His text response was a picture of Chicago in the 1950s. The sun radiated dreams for the Younger family: school, investments, a house, a garden, a new baby, an office, travel. Then the greenhouse gases of bigotry and prejudice trapped their dreams, until they dried up like a raisin in the sun.
I pace around the classroom for hours, feeling like a hummingbird jumping to each student with a question. I run to grab lunch and pick up the copies before class starts. I stay late to get the student who missed class caught up, then finish my lesson plan and order my supplies for the next day. And I still leave more energized than when I came, feeling content and smiling to myself about something a student said.
I'm sorry to sound so sappy, but I have the greatest job in the world, and I'm so grateful to have found it.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
A Morning Person's Observations #6: Life and Death in the Pea Patch
One professor who introduced the concept of sit spots to my class told us to not always sit in the same spot. "Get up and explore around your spot," he said. "See if you can find the paths and homes around your spots, where other travelers are coming through."
This has been a dry, sunny, not too cold, clear winter in Seattle. One morning before daylight savings, there was still only a corner of the Pea Patch in sun. I went and stood under the Doug Fir hanging over the fence, the opposite corner from my usual bench sit, to soak in the morning Vitamin D while I sipped my coffee.
The chickadees were out that morning. I know I'm not running late if the chickadees are still in the Pea Patch. They grew more and more comfortable with me standing below the Doug Fir, and flitted to branches closer and closer to me. Finally, one hang upside down from a cone and started pecking at some of the seeds. I hadn't been close enough to them yet to see what they eat, it was amazing.
It's been a year since David and I moved to the Pea Patch apartment. A year of sitting and sipping my coffee back here. I just noticed this morning that the white flowers on the tree have blossomed again. It's important to notice this when it happens, because in a week or two the first spring storm will take them all down. I love that I've sat under this tree for a year and am familiar with this pattern.
But I love how the Pea Patch continues to surprise me too. A gray cat slipped under a bush and came up to me meowing, and rubbing against my legs. I pet this gray feline for a bit, then the cat went down toward the tulips and slipped out of site. About five minutes later, the chickadees started a call and response. Some other birds chimed in, one that did four long high notes. And the arpeggio bird, which I haven't heard in a long while! I've never seen it, or I should say I've never connected its call with a bird I could see, but when I first heard it at my sit spot at IslandWood, it sounded like a young child learning arpeggios on the piano, eagerly jumping up and down along the notes.
The intensity and rapidness of the responses toward the calls made me wonder what the cat was up to. It seemed like they were pointing the feline friend out to any other birds, which was good of them since no one had belled the cat.
Somehow or other a crow died in February. Its carcass hangs from the one of the top branches of the chestnut tree, swayinh ominously above the apartment building in the breeze. As the weeks go by, it doesn't seem to have decayed much. There are certainly more flies in the Pea Patch at first, then not too many. I wonder if they've eaten out the core of the carcass and moved on, and all that hangs now are feathers on bones. But there'd have to be meat holding the feather to the bone, right? No way to explore this further, the carcass is so high in the tree. It will be a fun item to pay attention to, what happens to a decomposing crow that's so far out of reach? Can't get scooped up like roadkill, can't get eaten by anything except creatures that can fly/climb that high.
Some patterns are repeating in the Pea Patch, and some new intriguing ones are just starting.
This has been a dry, sunny, not too cold, clear winter in Seattle. One morning before daylight savings, there was still only a corner of the Pea Patch in sun. I went and stood under the Doug Fir hanging over the fence, the opposite corner from my usual bench sit, to soak in the morning Vitamin D while I sipped my coffee.
The chickadees were out that morning. I know I'm not running late if the chickadees are still in the Pea Patch. They grew more and more comfortable with me standing below the Doug Fir, and flitted to branches closer and closer to me. Finally, one hang upside down from a cone and started pecking at some of the seeds. I hadn't been close enough to them yet to see what they eat, it was amazing.
It's been a year since David and I moved to the Pea Patch apartment. A year of sitting and sipping my coffee back here. I just noticed this morning that the white flowers on the tree have blossomed again. It's important to notice this when it happens, because in a week or two the first spring storm will take them all down. I love that I've sat under this tree for a year and am familiar with this pattern.
But I love how the Pea Patch continues to surprise me too. A gray cat slipped under a bush and came up to me meowing, and rubbing against my legs. I pet this gray feline for a bit, then the cat went down toward the tulips and slipped out of site. About five minutes later, the chickadees started a call and response. Some other birds chimed in, one that did four long high notes. And the arpeggio bird, which I haven't heard in a long while! I've never seen it, or I should say I've never connected its call with a bird I could see, but when I first heard it at my sit spot at IslandWood, it sounded like a young child learning arpeggios on the piano, eagerly jumping up and down along the notes.
The intensity and rapidness of the responses toward the calls made me wonder what the cat was up to. It seemed like they were pointing the feline friend out to any other birds, which was good of them since no one had belled the cat.
Somehow or other a crow died in February. Its carcass hangs from the one of the top branches of the chestnut tree, swayinh ominously above the apartment building in the breeze. As the weeks go by, it doesn't seem to have decayed much. There are certainly more flies in the Pea Patch at first, then not too many. I wonder if they've eaten out the core of the carcass and moved on, and all that hangs now are feathers on bones. But there'd have to be meat holding the feather to the bone, right? No way to explore this further, the carcass is so high in the tree. It will be a fun item to pay attention to, what happens to a decomposing crow that's so far out of reach? Can't get scooped up like roadkill, can't get eaten by anything except creatures that can fly/climb that high.
Some patterns are repeating in the Pea Patch, and some new intriguing ones are just starting.
Monday, January 19, 2015
Missing a Misanthropic Humanist
"O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again" by Thomas Wolfe was one of his favorite quotes. I slipped it into an email once and he was elated.
This has been the most confusing grief I've ever felt. I don't know what happened, so please don't ask, and I don't think that matters anyway. I find myself getting irrationally annoyed and upset when someone asks, and with many other things recently.
When I first heard the news I was completely and entirely numb for a matter of seconds. Time stopped in that moment and it was meaningless, pointless, no big deal.
Zohar didn't buy it, which was smart, and then five seconds passed and I felt sad and lonely and grateful and confused down to my core. She later told me when she heard the news the night before her heart broke for me. "To have loved someone, that's such a particular experience."
It was a very particular experience. I stayed up that night and calmly read through all the emails I had. I was away from home, so I didn't have the letters, the pictures, the notes, but I had the emails. I read them until 3 in the morning, then I crawled under the covers and bawled for what felt like hours. I was staying in my sister's old room, and I thought about the time Jesse visited me in D.C. when the Blythes were there over Christmas. He and I took a nap together in that very room. He went upstairs first and lay down. I felt exhausted and almost all the family was gone so I gave in and went up to the trundle bed rolled up against the window. He had his headphones in and was listening to music. I asked if I could crawl in and lay down with him, and he was pleasantly surprised by my tenderness and scooted over while encouraging me to slide in next to him. I felt the presence of that moment so strongly.
There were so few precious moments like that, because we were long distance the whole time we were together, which makes all the tangible moments stand out in such a special way. But most of our relationship was the emails, and the phone calls, and the letters. The 14 page letter about philosophy and existentialism and the way the world works and how we all have a scared bunny inside of us. I'm so grateful for all those words and thoughts now, but I remember throwing that specific letter on the floor of Lizzy and Rachel's room. Jesse later admitted he realized how frustrating it must have been to get that letter instead of one about...feelings. We both would get so scared, and would say anything but how we really felt about one another. I was talking a big talk about vulnerability and the power of it at the time, but I wasn't practicing it with Jesse, at least not about him.
These feelings are so complex and painful. I can't imagine what his family is going through. One of the feelings I have is that I'm not supposed to feel anything, that it's unfair to carry this grief compared to what others who have been closer to him in recent years must be carrying. But then I look through the pictures, and I see the tattoo on his ankle, MH with arrows at the ends of the letters. And I know that he was very special to me and I was very special to him, and there's plenty of feelings for Jesse to go around.
We had one year together, when we went sledding and then drank hot chocolate in the kitchen, talking until very late. We would sneak into the graveyard or an older building on campus at night to write poetry. We would go for road trips, always daring one another to try new and exciting things. Jay But's love for life and adventure was infectious. I couldn't help but get swept up in the moment when I was with him.
But that year flew by, and then there were long distance phone calls with my calling card from my dorm room. One conversation in particular jumps to mind. We'd just seen each other and had a lovely time, and then got into pointless fights on the phone afterward because we missed one another and didn't know how to face that, and then I was struggling with a completely separate demon from our relationship. I remember Jesse's calm voice through that conversation as I admitted how hard things had gotten for me, and how negative I felt. He told me to find a mantra that grounded me, and to repeat it and breathe. The atheist say all things shall pass he informed me. "But don't use that as your mantra!" he quickly added. It was funny, but also so touching, how quickly he disregarded the worldview's advice which he so fiercely defended in every other conversation, because he wanted me to find something more comforting in that moment.
It was through those conversations on theology and philosophy with Jesse that eventually pushed me to want to go back to church. I stopped believing in the need for a church as an adolescent, when most of us reject the traditions and myths we're raised in. But suddenly in discussions and debates with Jesse I felt myself defending churches and organized religion, and wondering why I thought it so important that they not be misrepresented. His intellectual search for the universe's meaning pushed me to wrestle with my own.
The summer I first ran Fraser and was in way over my head, I remember calling him every weekend and processing everything that had happened throughout the week. I was completely overwhelmed and he would just listen and remark on how impressed he was with what I was doing, so supportive and so attentive.
I didn't tell him for a long time after, but I remember when I first fell in love with him. He wrote in an email to me, "My phone is always on for you, my door is always unlocked, and there's always a space and pillow for you in my bed." It was such a poetic, and vulnerable while protected at the same time, way to tell me his feelings, and I suddenly felt so grateful for how he was in my life. Even though we were so physically far apart and couldn't have a traditional relationship with dinners and movies and hanging out together, I loved who he was and I loved how he was a part of my life.
One of the longest emails he ever wrote me was a two page rant after he finished the 6th Harry Potter book and found out Dumbledore died. He confessed he wanted to write me an email longer than Jeana's but have it be about absolutely nothing but Harry Potter.
I feel it's really important not to romanticize how things were between us. We had a bad phone conversation in 2011. He texted me the next day and apologized and I asked him to not contact me for a while. Looking back through the email chain, there are memories of other arguments, miscommunications that became fights, and times when we flat out hurt each other. I wouldn't take any of it back. I grew so much through those formative experiences, even the ones that stung or weren't the nicest sides of me.
I also don't want to demonize things. When we were together, he was such a thoughtful person. The Christmas he visited me, he played his guitar and came to church for Grandfather. He tried so hard to befriend the cousins, although some of them were not impressed with an older cousin's boyfriend crashing the family party, but he didn't let it phase him. His gifts to me were always so thought out. He gave me a pocket journal before I left for New Zealand, so I could carry it on any adventure and record my happenings. He didn't know I'd bought a journal, to make for him. Those five months eventually helped us realize we would only hurt each other the longer we tried to pretend long distance was working for us. But I spent the five months with him gentle on my mind, and put every experience, every adventure, every thought and feeling into my journal for him. When I sent it to him, he promised me he'd give it back to me in five years. He said there was no way he could keep it forever. I told him I'd love to see it again someday, but I made it specifically with him in mind, every single page.
He respected my wish and we didn't talk much since 2011. Then, last spring, I wrote him an email:
Jesse replied:
We played Mafia as we have for the last 6 years, and all I could think about was getting back to my parents' house from Shabbat at Zohar's with Jesse and Josh. We didn't hear anything, and we walked around the main floor and it was completely empty. How could none of the 16 of them be here? They obviously weren't hanging out upstairs, so we went to the basement and found all of them chanting about who to eliminate.
"We need an anthropologist to help us figure this out!" my dad yelled and looked at Jesse.
"All I can say is, that no matter how this game goes, I hope we can all agree that we're going to play this again!" Jesse responded.
When the round came up where he became Mafia, he killed me off first, knowing I would read him better than anyone else. It was the second game when I was killed off the first round, so he got a lot of trouble from everyone for that. Aunt Julie was watching the next game and saw he was the Angel and saved me. "I've got a message for the angel," Aunt Julie said while the narrator tried to move us along. "It's too little too late!" Jesse got a kick out of that.
I look through the emails and I see some darkness and guilt and heaviness that he was carrying. I also see some beauty and inspiration. I remember the phone conversation when he told me he had gotten on a plane and was looking down at the earth, and knew his purpose was to create. I didn't say anything in response, which must have sounded weird on his end, but I felt chills, and I thought about that anytime he'd play me some music or share a piece of writing with me, how he was living out exactly what he knew he wanted and was supposed to be doing, and how beautiful that was.
I'm taking his advice to pick a mantra to keep me grounded. When I think about him and feel sad and lonely and confused, I frantically repeat "Beatpeacebeatpeacebeatpeace be at peace be at peace...be at peace.........be at peace..................be at peace" until I can begin to believe that he is.
This has been the most confusing grief I've ever felt. I don't know what happened, so please don't ask, and I don't think that matters anyway. I find myself getting irrationally annoyed and upset when someone asks, and with many other things recently.
When I first heard the news I was completely and entirely numb for a matter of seconds. Time stopped in that moment and it was meaningless, pointless, no big deal.
Zohar didn't buy it, which was smart, and then five seconds passed and I felt sad and lonely and grateful and confused down to my core. She later told me when she heard the news the night before her heart broke for me. "To have loved someone, that's such a particular experience."
It was a very particular experience. I stayed up that night and calmly read through all the emails I had. I was away from home, so I didn't have the letters, the pictures, the notes, but I had the emails. I read them until 3 in the morning, then I crawled under the covers and bawled for what felt like hours. I was staying in my sister's old room, and I thought about the time Jesse visited me in D.C. when the Blythes were there over Christmas. He and I took a nap together in that very room. He went upstairs first and lay down. I felt exhausted and almost all the family was gone so I gave in and went up to the trundle bed rolled up against the window. He had his headphones in and was listening to music. I asked if I could crawl in and lay down with him, and he was pleasantly surprised by my tenderness and scooted over while encouraging me to slide in next to him. I felt the presence of that moment so strongly.
There were so few precious moments like that, because we were long distance the whole time we were together, which makes all the tangible moments stand out in such a special way. But most of our relationship was the emails, and the phone calls, and the letters. The 14 page letter about philosophy and existentialism and the way the world works and how we all have a scared bunny inside of us. I'm so grateful for all those words and thoughts now, but I remember throwing that specific letter on the floor of Lizzy and Rachel's room. Jesse later admitted he realized how frustrating it must have been to get that letter instead of one about...feelings. We both would get so scared, and would say anything but how we really felt about one another. I was talking a big talk about vulnerability and the power of it at the time, but I wasn't practicing it with Jesse, at least not about him.
These feelings are so complex and painful. I can't imagine what his family is going through. One of the feelings I have is that I'm not supposed to feel anything, that it's unfair to carry this grief compared to what others who have been closer to him in recent years must be carrying. But then I look through the pictures, and I see the tattoo on his ankle, MH with arrows at the ends of the letters. And I know that he was very special to me and I was very special to him, and there's plenty of feelings for Jesse to go around.
We had one year together, when we went sledding and then drank hot chocolate in the kitchen, talking until very late. We would sneak into the graveyard or an older building on campus at night to write poetry. We would go for road trips, always daring one another to try new and exciting things. Jay But's love for life and adventure was infectious. I couldn't help but get swept up in the moment when I was with him.
But that year flew by, and then there were long distance phone calls with my calling card from my dorm room. One conversation in particular jumps to mind. We'd just seen each other and had a lovely time, and then got into pointless fights on the phone afterward because we missed one another and didn't know how to face that, and then I was struggling with a completely separate demon from our relationship. I remember Jesse's calm voice through that conversation as I admitted how hard things had gotten for me, and how negative I felt. He told me to find a mantra that grounded me, and to repeat it and breathe. The atheist say all things shall pass he informed me. "But don't use that as your mantra!" he quickly added. It was funny, but also so touching, how quickly he disregarded the worldview's advice which he so fiercely defended in every other conversation, because he wanted me to find something more comforting in that moment.
It was through those conversations on theology and philosophy with Jesse that eventually pushed me to want to go back to church. I stopped believing in the need for a church as an adolescent, when most of us reject the traditions and myths we're raised in. But suddenly in discussions and debates with Jesse I felt myself defending churches and organized religion, and wondering why I thought it so important that they not be misrepresented. His intellectual search for the universe's meaning pushed me to wrestle with my own.
The summer I first ran Fraser and was in way over my head, I remember calling him every weekend and processing everything that had happened throughout the week. I was completely overwhelmed and he would just listen and remark on how impressed he was with what I was doing, so supportive and so attentive.
I didn't tell him for a long time after, but I remember when I first fell in love with him. He wrote in an email to me, "My phone is always on for you, my door is always unlocked, and there's always a space and pillow for you in my bed." It was such a poetic, and vulnerable while protected at the same time, way to tell me his feelings, and I suddenly felt so grateful for how he was in my life. Even though we were so physically far apart and couldn't have a traditional relationship with dinners and movies and hanging out together, I loved who he was and I loved how he was a part of my life.
One of the longest emails he ever wrote me was a two page rant after he finished the 6th Harry Potter book and found out Dumbledore died. He confessed he wanted to write me an email longer than Jeana's but have it be about absolutely nothing but Harry Potter.
I feel it's really important not to romanticize how things were between us. We had a bad phone conversation in 2011. He texted me the next day and apologized and I asked him to not contact me for a while. Looking back through the email chain, there are memories of other arguments, miscommunications that became fights, and times when we flat out hurt each other. I wouldn't take any of it back. I grew so much through those formative experiences, even the ones that stung or weren't the nicest sides of me.
I also don't want to demonize things. When we were together, he was such a thoughtful person. The Christmas he visited me, he played his guitar and came to church for Grandfather. He tried so hard to befriend the cousins, although some of them were not impressed with an older cousin's boyfriend crashing the family party, but he didn't let it phase him. His gifts to me were always so thought out. He gave me a pocket journal before I left for New Zealand, so I could carry it on any adventure and record my happenings. He didn't know I'd bought a journal, to make for him. Those five months eventually helped us realize we would only hurt each other the longer we tried to pretend long distance was working for us. But I spent the five months with him gentle on my mind, and put every experience, every adventure, every thought and feeling into my journal for him. When I sent it to him, he promised me he'd give it back to me in five years. He said there was no way he could keep it forever. I told him I'd love to see it again someday, but I made it specifically with him in mind, every single page.
He respected my wish and we didn't talk much since 2011. Then, last spring, I wrote him an email:
- One of the volunteers in my classroom was looking through the etymological dictionary she got for my students. She was talking with the students about the "mis" words. Misogyny, misandry, misanthropy. "What would be the opposite of a misanthrope?" Lisbet asked.
- "A humanist," I explained. I couldn't help but smile. Hope you are well.
Jesse replied:
Wow.... I wish reading that message didn't have this visceral response I'm prone to where my eyes kind of light up, my smile slowly creeps up, with one side higher than the other (this is my signature after all) and I wish I there wasn't a warm feeling that was slowly and radiating from my heart outward in a manner so graceful and sage it acts more like water.
Susan, right now I am in a place where my mind is allowing clarity, sanity, happiness, optimism and even this fossilized sentiment of hope and excitement for what's to come. So am I doing well? In the past five years I have lived, mentally and physically in places so horrible, demonic and just dark that where I am now is something akin to enlightenment.
Long story short, I am good.
I hope you are well also, you know, even with the physical distance and the dispassionate temporal march which carries us on our own separate trajectories, creating further distance - nature's inevitability I suppose, I digress. Even with all that, when I reflect upon you, our friendship and the MH times nothing but happiness and contentment for the times we had together were indeed incredible, amazing and just as magical in our hearts and minds now as they were when we set out as four innocent freshmen.
Shit... Closing words. I would wish you well but I have not an iota of doubt in my being that you are anything but. Life's never perfect, but my faith is that you are well. Take care Sweet Susan, One day there will be a one in a million recess which will inevitably bring us to the same swing set, until then - au revoir.This was a hard winter break. When we got on the plane to Dayton and I realized we'd have to drive straight through Richmond, Indiana, I wondered if subconsciously I hadn't realized that and was pushing for it. I bought a six pack of Guinness at the Meijers off the highway and drank most of it over several nights in Kansas. My body has changed a lot in the ten years since Jesse and I downed Guinness' together while trying to figure out what exciting thing we could do in Athens (Sarah took us to the cherry trees on OU's campus so we could climb them). The beer was delicious and heavy and slow to go down.
We played Mafia as we have for the last 6 years, and all I could think about was getting back to my parents' house from Shabbat at Zohar's with Jesse and Josh. We didn't hear anything, and we walked around the main floor and it was completely empty. How could none of the 16 of them be here? They obviously weren't hanging out upstairs, so we went to the basement and found all of them chanting about who to eliminate.
"We need an anthropologist to help us figure this out!" my dad yelled and looked at Jesse.
"All I can say is, that no matter how this game goes, I hope we can all agree that we're going to play this again!" Jesse responded.
When the round came up where he became Mafia, he killed me off first, knowing I would read him better than anyone else. It was the second game when I was killed off the first round, so he got a lot of trouble from everyone for that. Aunt Julie was watching the next game and saw he was the Angel and saved me. "I've got a message for the angel," Aunt Julie said while the narrator tried to move us along. "It's too little too late!" Jesse got a kick out of that.
I look through the emails and I see some darkness and guilt and heaviness that he was carrying. I also see some beauty and inspiration. I remember the phone conversation when he told me he had gotten on a plane and was looking down at the earth, and knew his purpose was to create. I didn't say anything in response, which must have sounded weird on his end, but I felt chills, and I thought about that anytime he'd play me some music or share a piece of writing with me, how he was living out exactly what he knew he wanted and was supposed to be doing, and how beautiful that was.
I'm taking his advice to pick a mantra to keep me grounded. When I think about him and feel sad and lonely and confused, I frantically repeat "Beatpeacebeatpeacebeatpeace be at peace be at peace...be at peace.........be at peace..................be at peace" until I can begin to believe that he is.
Lullabies
My family helped me craft the Children's Sermon about Lullabies I gave during Advent, so I promised to post what I said.
I started with one I assumed they would all know:
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As I recited the words, I looked at blank faces. I glanced up at Pastor Ned, but he shrugged and shook his head, and seemed to indicate with his face that only a crazy family would make up a song about Teddy Bears' picnics. We used to read a book that had this song in it, how could they not know it? (After the service, one set of parents said they not only sang this song to their daughter, but had played it for her on guitar, and were surprised she didn't say anything!) Things weren't looking good, since I thought I would start with the one they were most likely to recognize.
I started with one I assumed they would all know:
Picnic time for Teddy Bears
The little Teddy Bears are having
A lovely time today.
Watch them, catch them unawares,
And see them picnic on their holiday.
As I recited the words, I looked at blank faces. I glanced up at Pastor Ned, but he shrugged and shook his head, and seemed to indicate with his face that only a crazy family would make up a song about Teddy Bears' picnics. We used to read a book that had this song in it, how could they not know it? (After the service, one set of parents said they not only sang this song to their daughter, but had played it for her on guitar, and were surprised she didn't say anything!) Things weren't looking good, since I thought I would start with the one they were most likely to recognize.
Little Ducky Duddle
went wading in a puddle
went wading in a puddle quite small (quack quack)
said he it doesn’t matter
how much I splash and splatter
I’m only a ducky after all (quack quack)
Crickets chirping and more blank stares. Again, after the service, one of the children's dad's acknowledged this one. He said it'd been a long time since he'd heard it, but he definitely remembered it. Back in the children's sermon, and we have zero recollection and a slightly panicky Susan. I decide to skip Camels and Bears altogether and move on to Waltzing with Bears.
Waltzing with Bears
My Uncle Walter goes waltzing at night!
Chorus
He goes wa-wa-wa-wa, wa-waltzing with bears,
Raggy bears, shaggy bears, baggy bears too.
There's nothing on earth Uncle Walter won't do,
So he can go waltzing, wa-wa-wa-waltzing,
So he can go waltzing, waltzing with bears!
One of the kids threw me a bone and said he recognized it, but his dads told me afterward he was just being polite, they'd never heard of that one either.
So for the grand finale I went with one they most definitely wouldn't know, since it was by the Beach Boys and altered by my dad.
Sloop John B by the Beach Boys
We come on the Sloop John B
My grandfather and me
Around Nassau town we did roam
Shopping all night
Looked at the sights!
Well I feel so broke up
I want to go home
I remember that one sounding the saddest and darkest as a child. Let that poor sailor go home!
I told the kids what my mom said about why we sang lullabies: "The lullabies we sang to you were the ones Grandmother & Grandfather sang to us. It was nice as an adult singing it to my kids and remembering my mom & dad singing it to me. . . and to have a quiet time together as day slips into night and we’re surrounded by love."
Then I told them what my Aunt Gretchen said, that lullabies were a good way to calm down a fussy niece or nephew, and in turn it calms the adult down who's singing to the child, which then calms the child down.
So, I said, we don't just sing lullabies when things are good. We could sing them when we're scared and things aren't so good. I told them about Mary's Magnificat. How Mary was pretty freaked out when she found out what was happening to her and probably pretty scared. So she sang herself a song to calm herself down and comfort herself. She wasn't expecting this to happen to her, but she had faith and hope that this would bring someone into the world who would tear down the mighty and bring justice for the poor. She sang it until she could believe it. And we can sing ourselves through our crises and into a state of peace. I didn't put it quite so eloquently or succinctly, but they got the idea, maybe.
Monday, September 22, 2014
A Morning Person's Observations #5: The summer's colors
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| The birds sit on top of this tree |
The p patch is full of dark greens. I went out this morning to sit on the bench and take in the world and it was actually wet for the first time in months. A light morning rain had made the whole garden smell earthy. There were some birds on top of the Douglas Fir, they were robin-sized but their silhouettes showed skinnier beaks.
Before I get swept away in the excitement and beauty of this fall in Seattle, I want to take a moment to reflect on my gratitude for this summer. The p patch gave some amazing colorful moments and helped me relax. I went from a stressful anxious time to a positive, relaxed attitude thanks to many things, one of them being mornings in the p patch with the plots of summer colors.
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| I wandered lonely as a cloud... |
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| These remind me of the Lupine Lady |
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| And this makes me think Tom Sawyer and friends were here |
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| "The summer sun will set," she said, "if you leave it up there long." |
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| Maybe someone else likes drinking coffee in the p patch :) |
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| That floats on high o'er hill and vales |
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| These flowers lasted through the first April rain, then turned to summer snow! |
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| Rosemary! |
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| David thought these were centipedes when we walked out to the p patch at night! |
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| The squirrels love these chestnuts! |
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| Another alleyside, same old dinosaurs :) |
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| Can you spot the snail? |
Saturday, September 20, 2014
Dark days
I don't know what to say about what happened at work. I'm still in shock over how fast things deteriorated there. I don't want to hurt the folks still at the center with my words, but before every interview this summer I've found myself pacing around and spiraling over negative thoughts. I can't get out the door on time, or get myself to have a positive attitude. I feel stuck, doomed to fail, sure that things will not go well. I know this comes from the fact that I'm carrying a lot of pain I need to find a way to put down, and writing it out might help.
The most important takeaway I want people to know is that it has nothing to do with the youth, the participants, the students. Teaching there was my dream job, and I loved working with all of the students that came through the doors. I really miss that classroom.
In talking with one of my former co-workers about how much to share our story with the public at large, he pointed out his reason for hesitating. He told me everyone he had talked to about the center acted like it was a crazy idea to have a bottom-up, grassroots center run by homeless youth. He felt all they would take was that a flawed idea had failed, that there was no way a center like that could ever succeed anyway.
Upon hearing that, I've become incredibly grateful that I don't have to worry about that in my community. While talking about the center to friends and family, folks seemed incredibly excited by the philosophy of having the participants who were affected by services be the ones that get a voice in what those services should look like. I saw everyone reach out in their own individual way, and as an institution, to provide funds, space for events, conversations and relationships over dinner. And when things started to crumble, I went to my community again, this time in distress, asking for help and support. The message I got whole-heartedly was that everything given to the center in the last year and a half to build relationships was worthwhile and there were no regrets, and now that energy will be re-directed because what is happening here isn't ok.
I haven't felt as truly rooted in Seattle as I did when I was going through that crisis. So many people offered a listening ear, advice, support, and affirmation that we weren't out of line and things were not ok. When going through the organizational outlets for expressing concern and distress are blocked one after the other, and you are told to not use words that describe your situation like "safety", "retaliation", and "staff splitting", asked to take care of your employer's feelings while they cause you harm and their unsafe behavior toward you is escalating, you start to feel like you're the one not currently checked in with reality. It was gas lighting in my opinion, what was happening to the line staff, and it was beyond frustrating. I don't know how I would have held myself together if there weren't good people around me keeping me grounded. Assuring me one after another, "This is not ok, and we respect you standing up for yourself."
One of the most powerful times that happened was when it came from the participants. They had a lot of questions for us about what was going on, and they weren't happy with some of our choices. I know how it looked, and can only imagine how it felt, when the people with keys (literally) to services refuse to show up and open the doors. But when they heard us explain ourselves as best we could, there were tough questions and statements, and then there was the message: "How can we support you?" And again as I was leaving, "I'm sorry if we didn't do enough to support you." That sentiment meant so much coming from the youth, who were caught in the middle of the internal dysfunction that they didn't cause but was affecting them the most. So I have nothing but good thoughts about the youth there, and hope they either find a way to take back their center, or find new places to offer them community.
When a participant came to the center and said that the people there were their chosen family, I could understand where that feeling came from. Organizing and uniting with the other staff members made me feel like we were becoming a chosen family together.
But then, hearing those same words from the management that had the power (and used it) to let go of some of these co-workers feels...different. I got invited to a "Family Dinner and Picture" by a member of the management who had refused to meet with the staff when we said we had to leave the center we felt so unsafe with our employer. To be frank, it pissed me off. I felt like I had been tricked into connecting with my co-workers and the participants by hearing the higher-ups refer to us all as a family, and then I was continuously reminded who could take that all away from me. You don't fire or 86 someone from your family, so if you have the responsibility or power to do that at the center, stop using that word. I'm fortunate to have a positive relationship with my given family, but for my co-workers and the youth who don't have that same privilege, it feels even more unfair to know that folks who have the power to select who gets to be a part of this community would still try to sell that this is a "family."
I'm not doing well with this. It still anxiously haunts my dreams every few nights. I run into these members of management and feel completely shut down.
But I know I'll also be ok. I don't get migraines at 6:00 p.m. anymore. My mental, physical, and emotional health has improved a lot. During interviews this summer, I've usually said phrases like, "I work very well on a team with other positive folks bouncing ideas off one another. What are the dynamics like between the staff here?"
At the current program where I'll be teaching, when I asked that, they told me, "We really don't like for people to go into their own offices. We like working together as a team. Oh, and if you have any discipline problems, we don't want you to deal with that. We're the directors, that's what we're here for. You should send those students to us. But you won't have many. Every quarter we ask our students to give us hard feedback so we can improve our teaching, and they're always just so nice and grateful, they never tell us anything mean." I tried to remind myself that this was a professional interview so I needed to hold back my tears.
I was blessed to go on lots of low budget trips this summer. A week at the cabin, a weekend at IslandWood, time with folks in North Carolina. I tell folks the story over and over. Sometimes I feel farther away and lighter, sometimes I feel I'm carrying it worse than ever. Time and space keep doing their work while I try to do mine. Every morning there's something new to see in the pea patch, something new blossoming and opening. And writing it out, even ambiguously, does feel like it helped.
The most important takeaway I want people to know is that it has nothing to do with the youth, the participants, the students. Teaching there was my dream job, and I loved working with all of the students that came through the doors. I really miss that classroom.
In talking with one of my former co-workers about how much to share our story with the public at large, he pointed out his reason for hesitating. He told me everyone he had talked to about the center acted like it was a crazy idea to have a bottom-up, grassroots center run by homeless youth. He felt all they would take was that a flawed idea had failed, that there was no way a center like that could ever succeed anyway.
Upon hearing that, I've become incredibly grateful that I don't have to worry about that in my community. While talking about the center to friends and family, folks seemed incredibly excited by the philosophy of having the participants who were affected by services be the ones that get a voice in what those services should look like. I saw everyone reach out in their own individual way, and as an institution, to provide funds, space for events, conversations and relationships over dinner. And when things started to crumble, I went to my community again, this time in distress, asking for help and support. The message I got whole-heartedly was that everything given to the center in the last year and a half to build relationships was worthwhile and there were no regrets, and now that energy will be re-directed because what is happening here isn't ok.
I haven't felt as truly rooted in Seattle as I did when I was going through that crisis. So many people offered a listening ear, advice, support, and affirmation that we weren't out of line and things were not ok. When going through the organizational outlets for expressing concern and distress are blocked one after the other, and you are told to not use words that describe your situation like "safety", "retaliation", and "staff splitting", asked to take care of your employer's feelings while they cause you harm and their unsafe behavior toward you is escalating, you start to feel like you're the one not currently checked in with reality. It was gas lighting in my opinion, what was happening to the line staff, and it was beyond frustrating. I don't know how I would have held myself together if there weren't good people around me keeping me grounded. Assuring me one after another, "This is not ok, and we respect you standing up for yourself."
One of the most powerful times that happened was when it came from the participants. They had a lot of questions for us about what was going on, and they weren't happy with some of our choices. I know how it looked, and can only imagine how it felt, when the people with keys (literally) to services refuse to show up and open the doors. But when they heard us explain ourselves as best we could, there were tough questions and statements, and then there was the message: "How can we support you?" And again as I was leaving, "I'm sorry if we didn't do enough to support you." That sentiment meant so much coming from the youth, who were caught in the middle of the internal dysfunction that they didn't cause but was affecting them the most. So I have nothing but good thoughts about the youth there, and hope they either find a way to take back their center, or find new places to offer them community.
When a participant came to the center and said that the people there were their chosen family, I could understand where that feeling came from. Organizing and uniting with the other staff members made me feel like we were becoming a chosen family together.
But then, hearing those same words from the management that had the power (and used it) to let go of some of these co-workers feels...different. I got invited to a "Family Dinner and Picture" by a member of the management who had refused to meet with the staff when we said we had to leave the center we felt so unsafe with our employer. To be frank, it pissed me off. I felt like I had been tricked into connecting with my co-workers and the participants by hearing the higher-ups refer to us all as a family, and then I was continuously reminded who could take that all away from me. You don't fire or 86 someone from your family, so if you have the responsibility or power to do that at the center, stop using that word. I'm fortunate to have a positive relationship with my given family, but for my co-workers and the youth who don't have that same privilege, it feels even more unfair to know that folks who have the power to select who gets to be a part of this community would still try to sell that this is a "family."
I'm not doing well with this. It still anxiously haunts my dreams every few nights. I run into these members of management and feel completely shut down.
But I know I'll also be ok. I don't get migraines at 6:00 p.m. anymore. My mental, physical, and emotional health has improved a lot. During interviews this summer, I've usually said phrases like, "I work very well on a team with other positive folks bouncing ideas off one another. What are the dynamics like between the staff here?"
At the current program where I'll be teaching, when I asked that, they told me, "We really don't like for people to go into their own offices. We like working together as a team. Oh, and if you have any discipline problems, we don't want you to deal with that. We're the directors, that's what we're here for. You should send those students to us. But you won't have many. Every quarter we ask our students to give us hard feedback so we can improve our teaching, and they're always just so nice and grateful, they never tell us anything mean." I tried to remind myself that this was a professional interview so I needed to hold back my tears.
I was blessed to go on lots of low budget trips this summer. A week at the cabin, a weekend at IslandWood, time with folks in North Carolina. I tell folks the story over and over. Sometimes I feel farther away and lighter, sometimes I feel I'm carrying it worse than ever. Time and space keep doing their work while I try to do mine. Every morning there's something new to see in the pea patch, something new blossoming and opening. And writing it out, even ambiguously, does feel like it helped.
Friday, April 4, 2014
A Morning Person's Observations #4
The New Sit Spot
The first morning in my new apartment, I sat on the steps on my patio thinking this would be my new sit spot. Goodness am I excited about that patio, but it would not be a nice place to drink coffee each morning (apparently I'm a coffee drinker now). There is nothing but wood and concrete, and I heard some birds, but didn't see a single one fly overhead on the day I sat on the terrace. There are some empty pots for a garden underneath the staircase, so I figured if the landlady didn't mind I could create some greenery to watch each morning.
Then I went to throw out the trash and explored a little in the alley behind my building. To the right there was the sign of a garden plot. As I got closer I saw it was actually a ppatch! There was a bench leaning against the wall, with the perfect spot to sit and watch the ppatch as someone sips on their morning tea, er, coffee.
There's a sign with a number to call if you want a patch. I'm sure the waiting list is enormously long, but I got on the interest list anyway. However, if I only spending a year in this apartment, never get a ppatch, but still sit and enjoy the setting every morning with my cup of coffee, that will be enough, that will be perfect.
It's Lent and I'm feeling lost. Since the GED changed, everything at work feels like a different moving part, moving away from the rest of the puzzle instead of coming together. I'm trying so hard to figure it out, to give the students concrete steps forward with their education, but everything I say sounds like a broken promise. "No we don't have the practice tests yet," "No you don't have enough credits," "No your old scores aren't saved anywhere." All of this is out of my control, but it's so frustrating and trying to navigate the pieces has burnt me out.
So, I'm giving up doing too much work and taking on sitting in the ppatch. I'm giving up going out and taking on cooking long, slow dinners at home. I'm giving up spending my evenings glued to the computer screen, and taking on long, slow baths, reading more books, seeing more friends, playing more games, and longer nights of sleep.
The ppatch has already given me hopeful signs of spring, I think one bush must be the Indian plum, because it was buds when I first started sitting in February, and now its blossoms are the size of my hand. They look like hands opening to the sky during meditation. The chickadees and robins make frequent appearances, talking to one another as they pass through and check me out a little. Two pigeons, darker than most, spent a flirtatious morning cooing and following each other around the adjoining balconies and gutters. This is what I love, having a moment in the secret world that is always here, that I tune out when I'm focused on my human schedule.
This morning the crows came and sat on what Ann (a smoker and coffee drinker in the ppatch I met today) says is a chestnut tree. One held a large twig, the other stared me down for a second, as if to challenge my place in the patch. I didn't back down and took a sip of coffee without batting an eye. Then the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the row patches, and the crow accepted me and took off.
The highlight was a month ago, creeping slowly and quietly into the ppatch, trying hard not to spill my tea (back when I still could get through a whole day on tea, sigh). I looked to the top of the Doug Fir that is on the other side of the fence, but hangs generously over the ppatch. Often on the bare branch sits a crow or sometimes a robin. Today there was a hawk! It had been making an alarm call that I mistook for a squirrel. After I sat on the bench it stayed a little longer, scouting the situation. It gave up, possibly thinking I'd scared away any prey. As justice, it soared away calling out again, scaring away any prey for me.
My hawk identification is horrible. It was tiny for a hawk, and almost all white on the underbelly. My initial google research suggests it was a Short-tailed Hawk by the looks, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature says that hawk is keen to stay tropical, so back to square one. Hope it shows up again and gives me a better look.
The first morning in my new apartment, I sat on the steps on my patio thinking this would be my new sit spot. Goodness am I excited about that patio, but it would not be a nice place to drink coffee each morning (apparently I'm a coffee drinker now). There is nothing but wood and concrete, and I heard some birds, but didn't see a single one fly overhead on the day I sat on the terrace. There are some empty pots for a garden underneath the staircase, so I figured if the landlady didn't mind I could create some greenery to watch each morning.
Then I went to throw out the trash and explored a little in the alley behind my building. To the right there was the sign of a garden plot. As I got closer I saw it was actually a ppatch! There was a bench leaning against the wall, with the perfect spot to sit and watch the ppatch as someone sips on their morning tea, er, coffee.
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| Spring sunlight in the ppatch |
It's Lent and I'm feeling lost. Since the GED changed, everything at work feels like a different moving part, moving away from the rest of the puzzle instead of coming together. I'm trying so hard to figure it out, to give the students concrete steps forward with their education, but everything I say sounds like a broken promise. "No we don't have the practice tests yet," "No you don't have enough credits," "No your old scores aren't saved anywhere." All of this is out of my control, but it's so frustrating and trying to navigate the pieces has burnt me out.
So, I'm giving up doing too much work and taking on sitting in the ppatch. I'm giving up going out and taking on cooking long, slow dinners at home. I'm giving up spending my evenings glued to the computer screen, and taking on long, slow baths, reading more books, seeing more friends, playing more games, and longer nights of sleep.
The ppatch has already given me hopeful signs of spring, I think one bush must be the Indian plum, because it was buds when I first started sitting in February, and now its blossoms are the size of my hand. They look like hands opening to the sky during meditation. The chickadees and robins make frequent appearances, talking to one another as they pass through and check me out a little. Two pigeons, darker than most, spent a flirtatious morning cooing and following each other around the adjoining balconies and gutters. This is what I love, having a moment in the secret world that is always here, that I tune out when I'm focused on my human schedule.
This morning the crows came and sat on what Ann (a smoker and coffee drinker in the ppatch I met today) says is a chestnut tree. One held a large twig, the other stared me down for a second, as if to challenge my place in the patch. I didn't back down and took a sip of coffee without batting an eye. Then the sun broke through the clouds and lit up the row patches, and the crow accepted me and took off.
The highlight was a month ago, creeping slowly and quietly into the ppatch, trying hard not to spill my tea (back when I still could get through a whole day on tea, sigh). I looked to the top of the Doug Fir that is on the other side of the fence, but hangs generously over the ppatch. Often on the bare branch sits a crow or sometimes a robin. Today there was a hawk! It had been making an alarm call that I mistook for a squirrel. After I sat on the bench it stayed a little longer, scouting the situation. It gave up, possibly thinking I'd scared away any prey. As justice, it soared away calling out again, scaring away any prey for me.
My hawk identification is horrible. It was tiny for a hawk, and almost all white on the underbelly. My initial google research suggests it was a Short-tailed Hawk by the looks, but the International Union for Conservation of Nature says that hawk is keen to stay tropical, so back to square one. Hope it shows up again and gives me a better look.
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