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"Make each day your masterpiece."
Coach Wooden and the Class of 2015 |
Over the past couple of years, a dedicated teacher at my school has founded and grown an award-winning speech and debate team. This year, she and I worked together to select speakers for our eighth grade graduation using the speech and debate guidelines for writing an Original Oratory. I have been awed whenever I hear these students speak and prepare for competition, and after seeing the expectations for this particular speech competition, I decided to try to write one as well. I haven't made an attempt at a graduation speech since I was in eighth grade, so it was an interesting exercise. I read it to my students this past week because they all helped me through a difficult time in my life. They have, and so have you, so I thought I'd share it here as well.
Today
Just over a year ago my mom underwent surgery. It was eighth grade field
day and I received text updates from my sister as I watched my students soaking
in the sun and pools. I stood with my feet in the grass enjoying a few final
hours with these students, but my mind often drifted to my mom, hoping for the
best.
Over the next few days, Mom’s condition worsened so I flew up to Oregon
to be with her and for the first time in fifteen years, I missed Emerson’s
graduation. I sat in a cold hospital room while my students crossed the stage,
making their way out of my classroom and into the world.
That is when I began months of missing, missing the students I never
said goodbye to, and missing my mom who never recovered and crossed over a few
days later. In these months of missing, I lived in the memories of the past. I
remembered many moments with my students from the school year, and I remembered
a lifetime of moments with my mom.
I was still remembering and missing when this school year began. My
drive home was always the hardest part of my day. I used to call my mom each
day as I drove home and as I navigated the busy LA streets, those streets bore
witness to many tender moments of grief. At school, I missed the familiarity of
my former students and thought of them as they started at high schools all over
the city, hoping only for the absolute best for all of them.
But as the days and weeks passed, as summer gave way to fall, I started
to move into the present. Instead of grieving for my mom as I drove home from
work I began to think about what she might say to me today. As I got to know my
new students, they brought with them joy, curiosity, and new stories to share.
Great American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Finish every day and
be done with it. You have done what you could.”
I needed these words to remind me to let go of all my yesterdays and
begin again to live: today. I needed these words to help me remember my mom and
my former students, to allow them to continue to teach me, but I needed to stay
grounded in the present, to be here: today.
Emerson also says, “Write it on your heart that every day is the best
day in the year.”
Today this might be easier to do than every other day because today is
your graduation. Today we celebrate all you have accomplished; all of your hard
work and perseverance but isn’t that what every day is? Hasn’t every today been
built on all of the hard work of every day that came before?
Yes. I am the sum of all of my days, as are you, but I will try to let
go of yesterday and live in today, in the present, in the moment, with you, the
people who with me share these days, these experiences, these moments.
While I was with my mom in her final days, I read Ruth Ozeki’s novel, A
Tale for the Time Being. In it one of the narrators states: “A time being is someone who lives in time, and that means you, and me, and every one of us who is, or was, or ever will be.”
My mom was a time being and because she continues to be with me, she is
forever one of my time beings. You, every one of you, is a time being, as are
all of my students from last year and the year before that. You are all my time
beings as are all of my students yet to come.
So
as you cross this stage and graduate into a new chapter in your life, I urge
you to live each day. Let go of yesterday, be done with it, and make space in today
for all of your time beings. Stay present in your life. Remember the past,
learn from it, and then let it go. Coach John Wooden says, “Make each day your
masterpiece.” I cannot wait to see what you create in your lifetime of todays.
My mom loved Christmas. Last year, her sudden passing was too close to try to do family Christmas in Portland, so our family trekked to Tahoe. This year, however, we are here in the cold rain of Portland, staying in Mom's home with all of Mom's collected holiday trinkets: snow globes and advent calendars, angels and stockings, but there's no Mom. It's strange. But I feel her presence in so many small moments. When Kiara plays with the dolls Mom kept here for her grandchildren, when Kiara and Gabe squeal at the little snail that all of Mom's grandchildren played with before them, when a squirrel scurries across the backyard fence and Kiara screams, "Squirrel!" And I feel her when I pull out the boxes of Christmas ornaments to decorate the tree.
Tonight as I decorated the tree, carefully hanging the ornaments Mom held on to for all of these years, I wanted it to be perfect. But Gabe was clingy and whiney, still recovering from the flu. Kiara puked several times in the course of my decorating, and rather than helping me trim the tree as I envisioned, she curled up in a ball and watched, occasionally complaining that she still felt so sick. But now, the kids are in bed, hopefully recovering from this stomach bug, and I'm gazing up at Mom's tree. She would say it looks nice, although maybe a little plain. I shake my head and think of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote: "Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could." In that case, today was perfect.
