write stuff

Teaching can be pretty tough, and October can be a hard month. I have developed a number of coping devices, most of them starting with vodka and ending with 'ini,' but some are less damaging to my liver and reputation. Like writing - as long as I've been able to grip a crayon in my left hand (well before that grip grew accustomed to the stem of a wineglass and my fingers learned how to pluck out 80 wpm), words have been my friends. They are my promoters, my bodyguards, my confidantes even.

I have coloring pages proudly signed in a scrawl of capitals & lower case letters, picture books clearly & legally identified as mine, clever handwritten stories from 6th grade, rejected poetry from 11th grade creative writing, and a secret drawer filled with embarrassing revelations in the form of junior high, high school, and even college journals. I think I am physically incapable of stopping myself from putting every thought & feeling into words, much to the chagrin of many former boyfriends.

Writing makes my brain feel alive. I will craft poems and blog posts as I drift off to sleep, sometimes scribbling them down but often waking to find them still lodged in my semi-consciousness; I'll edit, revise, and perfect as I shower then push those words out of my head & into a document as soon as I step out of the water.

Nothing feels real until I shape it on paper, whether real parchment or a blank screen.

My favorite quote when teaching writing is from Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 

Poetry is the right words in the right order.

I think I get the right words in the right order sometimes; I know things feel less hard when I've done some writing. And my liver doesn't suffer a bit from the trials.

It's NaBloPoMo. Watch me write every day for a month. Or start drinking more heavily.

now like then

When I was growing up, I remember wanting to be four things: a mom, a teacher, a psychologist, and an advertising copywriter.

I see my little self taking care of our beloved wiry, ratty terrier Elly May, though "taking care of" meant to me running around with in the weeds, letting her tug on and tear tiny holes in my jacket sleeves, and inspiring her to howl on our trailer porch while I played my shrill recorder at 1000 decibels. When she was hit by a car [not on my watch, for the record], my (s)mothering attentions turned to my baby sister whom I doted on until she was old enough to open the door to my room and mess with my books & records.

I recall the numerous times I set up a classroom of stuffed animals & dolls - everyone in neat rows facing my propped-up garage sale chalkboard - and carefully called roll, pausing to wait for imaginary responses. My grandpa gave me old ledgers from his wrecking yard business that I used for recording class lists and assignments; my uncle gave me old worksheets from his teaching days that I kept in a briefcase and 'corrected' with a red pencil. When my younger cousin was around and later when my sister was old enough, I volunteered them to be my real-live students. We (I) loved every minute of playing School.

I envision my serious face as I studied stacks of teen-girl magazines, applying my rudimentary understanding of subliminal messages and reverse psychology and propaganda tactics. I was determined to resist the pull of Popular Fashion, at least in the sense that I would not be consumed by it; I attempted edgy style with fake military medals on my denim jacket, I bought EPs of The Cult and The Smiths, and I joined Amnesty International. Though I still secretly wanted Normandy Rose jeans, leather Nikes, and hair that could hold a decent curl, if only for just one day.

I revisit the solid certainty I felt in my whole 19-year-old being as I solemnly watched thirtysomething every week, vowing I would become one of those smart, hip adults with smart, hip friends and a smart, hip career. I would design advertisements with a conscience, I would lead people to make intelligent choices, I would change the world for the better. I would be real.

And now, I am a mother not of a wily canine but of two wondrous children; occasionally I run through weeds with them and let them rip things for fun; I've also been known to lock them out of my room, but they do have their own books to mess with.

Now I set up desks in not-so-straight (yet always orderly) rows and real students make up my class lists, but I never use red pencils. I (we) love most minutes of School.

Now I am pretty confident in my analysis of advertising, even when I succumb to its nefarious ploys and buy things I know I don't need. Yet I am never too proud to find my fashions & furnishings at garage sales and thrift stores, in fact I am a zealot about recycling, reusing, and repurposing.  My life is nothing if not conscientious; I am all about changing the world for the better whenever I can. Which leads to my final youthful aspiration - to be smart and hip, with smart, hip friends and a smart, hip career.

Done, done, and done, if I do say so myself.

And I feel real.

maybe not

Things I don't regret not doing in my life:

Buying a Pet Rock

Trying out for cheerleading in high school

Taking math my senior year

Smoking

Following my thirtysomething dream of being an advertising exec

Wearing gauchos more often

Becoming an elementary teacher [God bless you guys!]

Loving tequila

Having a one-night stand

Figuring out how to put on lipstick

Giving up on a certain supercute noncommittal freshman when I was a junior cougar Cougar

Forgoing a modern Mocha Digital Plaid beauty in exchange for my beloved pimped-out dinosaur laptop*

*Right? I won't regret making the trade, letting go of the stickerliciousness?
I might need a little therapy on this one.

mayday, mayhem, may i try again?

I need to write every day. I want to write every day. I need you to want me to write every day. Things feel especially difficult to balance lately and I'm not sure why *cough*premenopause*cough*, but May's nablopomo theme is "look up" so that's what I'm doing.

Good stuff in my world that I haven't blogged about but totally should have:

1. Disneyland!
2. Visiting with amazing, lovely SoCal bloggers & good friend from elementary school at Disneyland
3. Visiting with best guy friend from high school & his beautiful family at Disneyland
4. Visiting with best girlfriend from high school (not at Disneyland but still fantastic)
5. My school's first prom - complete with streamers & shiny stars and without spiked punch, freak dancing, sex in bathrooms, or other potential teen horrors
6. Recovery, rehabilitation, and return to school of our injured student
7. Getting poetry students to recite for other classes on Poem in Your Pocket Day
8. Fitting into cute shoes again
9. Regularly going out to 80s Video Dance Attack night (and actually dancing)
10. Winning Audience Haiku at LiveWire! [and being hailed as having "excellent penmanship" - a lifelong aspiration]

So be prepared for some pretty exciting UPlifting posts this month, people. And thanks for hanging around.

best (& worst, to keep things in perspective)

In honor of the new year and my return to insanityland everyday posting, here is my Best & Worst of 2009, succinctly narrowed to 5 things each for efficiency (and not including givens that I am happy & sad about - health/pain, shelter/nasty weather, et cetera).

Best of:

1. Husband getting new job
2. New CARnotminivan
3. Watching a game in Cowboys stadium + meeting fellow blogger Texan Mama
   [These occasions happened together; I am not cheating]
4. Reconnecting with friends/closer connections with cyber-friends on Facebook
5. Rollerskating birthday party weekend

Worst of:

1. Best friends divorcing
2. Husband losing beloved job
3. Not traveling to see family @ Christmas (filed under "bunion fun")
4. No Disneyland or Europe trips (I know, waah)
5. Still didn't get invited backstage with Fountains of Wayne
   

Here's to a blissful 2010 wherein some of last year's worsts are transformed into next year's bests. And I'm not arrested in the process.

haunted

I have loved scary movies since I saw The Exorcist and the original Halloween at the drive-in with my dad. When I was ten years old. To this day, when I am 10-plus-30something years old, I get the same rollercoaster-stomachache feeling when I enter a theater to watch a horror movie. And it is good; I thrive on plunging into the depths of fear and emerging whole.

But ever since those first viewings, I have realized that the scariest parts are not the ones filled with monsters or blood or gore (nor spewed pea soup). What is most terrifying is the remorseless emptiness in the villains - that sense of not caring when people are sick with fear, when they are stunned & paralyzed by the ugly indifference & utter violence from former loved ones. Not only not caring but reveling in the terror they inspire. That is the part I most wish wasn't real.

 

Here is something truly heartstopping: my job, as a high school teacher, contains so much of this kind of scary that I occasionally [often] dare gory imaginary monsters to try overrunning my school; I could see myself going totally Buffy on supernatural creatures in a minute; I can feel the adrenaline rising in my usually unenergetic body right now.

Unfortunately, taking on the abusive, monstrous mothers or fathers or stepparents or siblings of my students is painfully impossible. Not just because many of them are distant or disappeared, but because they are still loved and protected by my students, their victims. How do you fight a perpetrator that the victim refuses to identify? I walk a tightrope between disputing horrific behavior - people telling children they are stupid, unwanted, good-for-nothing - and upholding the sanctity of family. Even beaten-down teenagers want to believe they have mothers & fathers & stepparents & siblings who love and protect them. If I say those people are wicked and wrong, what do these kids have left? Just me and my colleagues, but we're only available to them 8 hours a day. I like to think 8 hours a day for 180 days a year can make a difference, but I'm not so sure.

All I can do is pray for them, by the minute sometimes, and show up every day, just in case.

Their pasts, and their future, haunt me.

____________________________________

watch me try to post everyday for NaBloPoMo in October