Walking to School

This past Wednesday was Walk to School Day. I helped a pass out stickers and fruit roll-ups to Emerson students walking to school. The small town where I grew up is far from urban Los Angeles, but as kids passed by with their friends, I doubt their walks are all that different than the ones Robin, Bianca, and I took most days to school. Those walks were a block of time without adult supervision so we walked slowly toward Pilot Butte or away from its shadow discussing our day, our plans, our fears and dreams. On those walks my friends and I grew closer, or we tested the limits of our bonds and I imagine the same thing happens with my students as they make their way to and from school each day. Here’s an excerpt from Overdue Apologies: a Middle School Memoir, about those long-ago walks.

Morning

Every morning in the house on Jones Road we execute a carefully choreographed dance. Dad starts a fire in the woodstove, and Mom turns on the heater to take the chill off the rooms upstairs. Dad showers and leaves for work before the rest of us race through the shower. Mom makes breakfast and packs lunches. We scarf down pancakes, waffles, or cold cereal. Chet and Laura eat first, and then Mitch and me. We move near one another, through the kitchen, and around the breakfast table. It's a silent dance except for Morning Edition playing on the radio. We brush teeth, and then Chet and Laura rush out to the old Datsun 210 and drive to Mountain View. Mitch and I walk up to Pilot Butte, but not together.

Mornings in Bend are always cold. Even when the sky is clear, the sun's rays can't penetrate the cold of the high desert. In fall, yellow, brown, and red leaves litter the ground and the first snow paints the Cascades a gleaming white. Soon ice will form a slick crust along the roads. Every morning, I leave the quiet chaos of home and wait along the side of Jones Road to walk to school with Robin Crank.

Robin lives across the street with her new-age-mom, step-dad, and two sisters. Her mom buys organic chips and natural sodas. A couple summers ago Robin and I played makeovers with her Fresh 'N Fancy makeup kit, and when I came home wearing pink blush and blue eye shadow Laura said I looked like a clown. Robin has a tetherball pole in her backyard and an indoor pool where we play Marco Polo and Sharks and Minnows. Robin's older sister, Heather, is nothing like Laura. Heather wears thick black eyeliner and lipstick. She's into music and film. Laura never wears make-up, and she's into sports. Robin and I have way more in common than our older sisters, but since we went to different elementary schools we've never become close.

Once I start Pilot Butte though, I see another side of Robin. At school she is popular. She's tall and has an asymmetrical haircut streaked from the summer sun. She wears braces and so many cool clothes that she can go three or four weeks without repeating an outfit. Her best friend is Bianca Weston. Bianca and Robin went to Juniper Elementary together. Bianca is skinny with straight light brown hair. She lives in a huge house on Revere. Bianca has great clothes too and she doesn't repeat outfits forever. Kim Mitchell is their other friend. She went to Buckingham, and she's tiny (even shorter than me). She has shoulder length, wavy blonde hair, and she's a spaz.

I don't know how everyone knows in the first week of school, but already Robin, Bianca, and Kim are popular. Maybe it's the clothes and jewelry that only kids with money can afford, or where their dads work, or the size of their houses. I don't know exactly what it is, but the differences between the popular girls and the rest of us are clear.

Popular girls have Polo shirts, Guess jeans, Swatch watches, Trapper Keepers, rubber jelly bracelets, and Lip Smackers. Popular girls have a different attitude. They smile and laugh as they walk through the sixth grade hall. At lunch, they sit with the cool boys and ignore the rest of us. They are in the best class with teachers who are young and cool.

Not-so-popular girls have Levis, hand-me down t-shirts, bare arms, plain blue three ring binders, and chapped lips. We walk nervously through the halls to our lockers. We grab brown bag lunches and sit with girls from lame teachers' classes.

Still, Robin waits for me every morning for the walk to school. Even though my family isn't rich, even though I don't wear exactly the right things or carry the right supplies, I think maybe, just maybe, I could be popular too.

As Robin and I walk down Jones Road, we leave behind the girls we are with our families and head toward the girls we are on our own. Clouds of breath appear and disappear before us as we talk about school, teachers, and mutual friends. Half way down the hill on Revere we stop at the two-story house with a circular driveway and a broad front porch.

Bianca's mom answers the door in her bathrobe. "Morning girls," she says sleepily as she lets us into the warm entry hall. The Weston's house always looks and smells clean. "Bink! Your friends are here," Mrs. Weston yells up the stairway. "Hurry up!" Then Mrs. Weston turns to us.

"Cute sweater, Robin."

"Thanks."

Robin and I look around the entry hall and wait.

"Sorry, guys," Bianca yells. "I'm almost ready."

"Your nails look nice," Mrs. Weston says holding my cold palm in her warm hand. She studies my fingers and the pale pink polish. "Where did you get them done?"

I've never had a manicure. "I did them myself," I say quietly, worried that doing your own nails isn't very cool.

"I wish I had the patience to do mine," Mrs. Weston says examining her French manicure and the red polish on her toes.

My mom files but never paints her nails.

Bianca rushes down the stairs, a messenger bag flung over her navy pea coat. Mrs. Weston looks her daughter up and down. "Your shoes don't match, Bink."

"Mom, they're fine. We're going to be late."  

Sometimes Bianca makes it out the door, sometimes she sprints back upstairs to change. I walk with Robin and Bianca, the two most popular girls, up the path by the irrigation ditch toward school. We take our time, walk slowly, and I start to understand: If I want to be popular I have to be patient. It's totally not cool to want to be cool. I have to watch for a pattern and figure out what it takes to be popular.

52 Poems: Week 38 Pablo Neruda

A love poem, an autumn image, a love preparing for loss. Such is life and love...

If You Forget Me
Pablo Neruda

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

52 Poems: Week 37 John Keats

Apparently this is one of the most anthologized poems ever, but as a relative newbie to poetry, it's new to me. I'm yearning for cooler weather here in LA where "summer has o-er-brimmed their clammy cells" and this poem captures this season of plenty with quiet reflection.

To Autumn

By John Keats

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

   Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

   With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

   And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

      To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

   With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

      For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

   Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

   Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

   Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

      Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

   Steady thy laden head across a brook;

   Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

      Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?

   Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

   And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

   Among the river sallows, borne aloft

      Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

   Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

   The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

      And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

52 Poems: Week 36 Night Haiku

Night
by Noriko Nakada

It only takes one
breath, one blink, one sigh, to take
in a starry sky

52 Poems: Week 35 Seamus Heaney

We lost Seamus Heaney this week. Upon the news, I dove into his poetry because I hadn't read much of his work, and now I can say I feel the loss. Here is "Digging." You can listen to him reading it at The Poetry Foundation site.

Digging

By Seamus Heaney

 

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

52 Poems: Weeks 33 and 34 Lucille Clifton

God, I love Lucille Clifton. Her lines are short and her poems are brief, but the references she makes to the strength of women raise me up. She makes me want to live, remember, and write better.  I needed a lift this week and Ms. Clifton provided that. Hopefully she will lift you up as well...

harriet
By Lucille Clifton

if i be you
let me not forget
to be the pistol
pointed
to be the madwoman
at the rivers edge
warning
be free or die
and isabell
if i be you
let me in my
sojourning
not forget
to ask my brothers
ain't i a woman too
and
grandmother
if i be you
let me not forget to
work hard
trust the Gods
love my children and
wait.

Memory 

By Lucille Clifton

ask me to tell how it feels
remembering your mother's face
turned to water under the white words
of the man at the shoe store. ask me,
though she tells it better than i do,
not because of her charm
but because it never happened
she says,
no bully salesman swaggering,
no rage, no shame, none of it
ever happened.
i only remember buying you
your first grown up shoes
she smiles. ask me
how it feels.

Thank you, Patriots: Our Public School Parents

The first day of school has passed, is today, or is quickly approaching. This morning when I checked in on the internet, I read headline after headline about first days, teaching, and the state of education. As a public school teacher for over 15 years, I've given the topic pretty fair consideration and despite the bleak picture painted by many, things don't look all that different today than they have for many years. Public school families recognize this.

I want to thank them. I want to thank public school parents for doing what I think may be the most patriotic thing you can do today: sending your kid to a public school.

It shows you trust your skills as a parent and the judgement of your child to navigate a multitude of different situations. It shows that you value the good of the whole over the good of a few. It demonstrates that you trust your most valuable resource, your kids, to a system the elites claim to be failing on every level, because you understand that with a public education your children have much to gain.

You don't believe the hype that public education is for other people's children. You don't believe your child will suffer from being around other people's children. You don't believe in segregating your children away from our country's socio-economic and cultural diversity.

Thank you for not fleeing our public schools because you've heard a couple of unsubstantiated rumors. Thank you for being involved, for showing up to school events and seeing first hand that your child is learning and thriving, or has a few missing assignments.

Thank you for believing in the value of a free and fair education for all.

You are public education and so am I.

Here's to a great school year.

52 Poems: Weeks 30, 31, and 32 William Carlos Williams

It's the first day of school and I need to start the year right: caught up on my poems and back at writing on the daily. I'm thinking a lot about public education and it's perceived success or failure, but I'm going to write about that later. Today I want to post a few poems by William Carlos Williams, short and sweet like a small, cold, ripe plum which you might recall from your school days...

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.


This Is just to say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


To a Poor Old Woman

munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand

They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her

You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand

Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her

52 Poems: Weeks 27, 28, and 29

Ah, I was doing so well, but vacation does strange things so I didn't post or read any poems for the past few weeks. Here are a few haiku I've penned along with some photos from vacation to get us caught up.

Lincoln

A sweltering day
wading in a cool green pool
cousins sweet laughter

 Portland

Family and friends

on perfect, long summer days

finish with ice cream

 Bend

No longer the town

where I grew up but the

river, the mountains 

A Visit with Jason at Teachers Fountain

My friend Jason and I met in middle school, those formative years when we are all trying to land on who we are going to be as adults. Over the years we’ve stayed in touch and we manage to get together every so often to catch up. The last time we visited was a couple of years ago while I was in Portland for the holidays. Jason, his wife and two kids welcomed us into their home and we caught up the way you catch up with childhood friends. We talked about jobs, and schools, parenthood, and city living. We sorted through our adult lives and reminisced over fond memories as Connor and Lyla danced around our adult conversation without a single care.

Much has changed since that visit. David and I had Kiara, a huge life-changer, but things have shifted even more dramatically for Jason and his family. The summer after that visit, Connor, Jason's oldest, was diagnosed with brain cancer. I followed Connor's treatment through Jason's emails and Facebook updates. I ached for my friend when I heard the news and celebrated when Connor responded well to treatment. But I didn't get by to visit Jason and his family the last few times I was in Portland. I hoped it was because I was busy, but I know it was, in part, because now, as a mother, I could begin to fathom how hard it must be and have been for Jason and Emily to see their little one fight through surgeries, MRIs, and chemotherapy. I remembered our last carefree afternoon together and knew our next get-together would be very different.

This week we were able to make a visit happen. On a clear, summer Portland afternoon Jason and I sat together as our kids splashed around in Portland's Teachers Fountain. We caught up on our increasingly complicated adult lives and at the end of our visit I hugged my old friend, wished him well and as we parted, I hoped he could feel just how touched I have been by the strength and courage he has shown over the past two years. I am so inspired by who Jason has become: a papa, a teacher, a husband, and a friend. Although I've only caught glimpses into his family's journey, I can see through his kids how well they're weathering this storm. Although so much has changed, Conner and Lyla danced in the sunlight without a single care.

Jason will be running the Portland Marathon this fall to help raise funds for the Children's Cancer Association and Connor continues to raise funds for the Cure Search Walk. Here is a link to their site which provides more information about this courageous family and links to their fundraising pages.