Plan B

The conversations I've been having lately with people who are my contemporaries are interesting and new.  I know some really  cool people.  And we are in a stage in life when things are coming together and at the same time, are so NOT coming together.  There is distinct reckoning happening in most every single person's life that I know.  But the late twenties definitely seem to typify something specific about this.  I've been thinking about the concept of Plan B.  Culturally we know this is something that you begin to live or discuss or notice when the things that you thought were going to be just...aren't. 

There is definite sadness or grievance in some of this, but instead, or in addition to that, I am beginning to see layers and years and more of something else entirely.  Plan B is very very good.  It is, at this time, salted with experiences that had to be lived through and seen.  The weight of candor and conversation and what is in front of people is etching its way into life.  I find that I am enjoying this time of the great wide open unknown in front of me.  WAY more than the great wide open (whatever that means in the first place) being available right out of college. 

Witnessing the Good

I am intensely proud of my 8th grade students this week.   

They have worked so hard this month and yesterday I witnessed success happening for them. It was so, so beautiful to me, and something I experienced alone but want to share with everyone. 

I have required that they learn and recite the presidents in order.  When I said it in December, they were definitely surprised.  I think I was surprised too, but we were doing this.  I thought about it, and realized that there's so much value in it, and it pushed them.  It pushed me too. 

It made me think of the reverence I was hoping for yesterday when reflecting on Anne Lamott's good advice about looking around. 

Reverence and Kindreds

I've been reading 'Bird by Bird' in pieces these days, picking it up whenever I feel inspired to listen to Anne Lamott talk.  Now she's someone I'd like to have dinner with.  She's alive and real and honest, and these are my favorite kinds of people.  This shows up in my life...often, my closest friends have not become cookie cutter reflections of me at all.  But if they face life honestly and see it right in front of them and try to do something with it...I love that person. 


When Anne Lamott wrote 'Bird by Bird', she was sought after as a writer, and had been plied with requests for cure all writing tips.  She stayed to the mark though, and didn't let herself get picked up and taken away to a transcendental sort of mindset about her work.  I like that about her too.  Sorry to say it, since I've never met the guy, but I did not get that impression of Ben Franklin when I read his autobiography in college, and it's been difficult to talk about him in a very animated way with students ever since. 

January Cold

For the past five days, I've been sick.  Your classic January cold..runny nose, watery eyes, weird breathing, restless sleep...it's all there.  Other people got sick over Christmas Break, I know, but I got it now.  I kept telling people that I was on the verge of getting sick when they asked me if I was ok, until someone just said, 'Sorry, but you're just sick.' 

It is the kind of sick where you are bored and cagey inside but your body won't obey you and get  better, and so there you lay.  I had to cancel Friday evening plans.  And then everything got very singular.  I watched a movie.  I slept.  I made tea.  I ate a cough drop.  I blew my nose.  More tea.  More movies.  More sleeping. Very basic living here. On repeat.  I've talked to 3 people on the phone all weekend, and I've begun to feel like it's just me in the world and a bunch of 90s movies I'd forgotten existed.  There was not energy for anything more. 

New Book

"All serious daring starts within."

- Eudora Welty

This was the first line I read in a book I found today at the bookstore.  I bought it, took it to Caribou, and read the first half of it this evening.  This book was a perfect find, and brought back to me an earlier self, lately hidden.   It was about journaling.  It was also about what you do when you have a collection of diaries and know that they are an accumulation of life but have no direction.  This book was an answer to many internal questions.  It answered the question I finally asked myself.

'Why did you stop?' 

Tell Me Once Again

Simply and suddenly this weekend, I stopped.

It was so, so necessary.

Life does not seem to be traipsing along these days. It is barreling forward and it continues to be intense. We all feel this to some degree, I am sure. Many things fill time and space and schedules. I was loving this earlier in the week, but then I became exhausted by it. 

I came home to blissful silence, and realized just how many conversations I'd had, and how many people depended on me.  A thousand tasks accomplished. So many people need my time and attention. For a while I could not get away from the feeling that teaching is sometimes a very heavy burden.

Post-Reckoning

I am really enjoying teaching these days.  It's the part of the year when certain things click, and in addition to that, the dynamics of both classes and larger grade levels continue to be fascinating and eye opening.  Sometimes this blog has become more of a discussion for loss than I had first anticipated it would be.  But I am gaining so much in life too.  I woke up today and wanted to share that.

Before Christmas, students and teachers are learning the ropes.  I make myself stay very diligent with expectations, follow through, and my own style just like everyone says you should (except I DO smile before Christmas, thank you very much) and then one day something changes and teaching that bunch of people gets a little easier.  I have learned to eagerly anticipate the day that something unthaws a little and it becomes really naturally fun to be with them, and I don't have to give myself pep talks inside because they feel awkward saying hi to me.  Dialogue is more more meaningful.  Or personalities fill the room.  Or something.  There is some moment of reckoning, and then something changes. 

I love this about teaching.

The Dawn Has Come

I have been friends for the last five years with a little old Danish woman from my hometown named Ordell. And on Christmas Day this year, she died. She was 90 and I went to her funeral over the weekend. 

We became friends because she saw the announcement in the newspaper saying I had graduated from college (hello, small town) and she called me to say something about it.  I knew her from church and I remember it well because I was bewildered by the invitation. She said,

"Congratulations.  Now come on over."


It was really beautiful to know someone like her. She asked about other people all of the time, and had interesting things to say, and kept up on the news in the world, and prayed for everyone. She was a great hostess and her husband, Virgil, was a great host. Instead of saying, "How's it going?" she'd say, "What's the score?" and when you talked, she really listened.

Crisis Averted

Yesterday at school, I made a fairly sizable mistake regarding a test I had given the 8th graders in December. In retrospect, that was quite a week...I was probably not in the best shape to even make a key for the test that would be accurate.

So I messed up on the key to my own test, but in addition to that I had accidentally begun to grade half of the tests with a 7th grade key, and then had to cross everything out and start over. Another clear sign of fatigue before Christmas break. I guess you are supposed to sleep and eat at normal times and think about things besides history and connections through time. Seriously, point taken.

Reset and Go

It's 2012 now, and I'm back to the job again. 

After a night of reckless dreaming....(fighting a turkey, and winning??...being held hostage by two French people?...suddenly getting on a plane to go to Washington, D.C.?...running a relay race?...someone coming up to me and cutting off all of my bangs?)

..I woke up.