Some Things I Know and Some Things I Don't Know

My eyes open.  I am lying on my back, or maybe my side, warm between the mint green sheets my mom bought when we redid my room for my 16th birthday.  It's dark, and my eyes slowly adjust to where I can make out the rectangular shapes of closet, door, dresser.  My breath is short, my body paralyzed. I am afraid for no knowable reason, although I imagine a man has broken in, and is coming up the stairs to hurt me, rape me even.  Or maybe it's a ghost -- although our condo is brand new and we are the first people to have lived in it, my mom and me.  Still, what did the land hold before the new construction?

I know I need to move, to get to my mom's room, but my limbs are frozen by fear.  I also know that if I am touching mint green, I will be safe.  I don't know how I know this, but I do. For some of us, magical thinking doesn't end with childhood. So I sit up, stuff my pillow with its mint green pillowcase under my left arm, rub the satin edge between my thumb and forefinger as if it were a rabbit's foot, and push off, being sure to clear the bottom of the bed by at least a foot or two.  You know why.

With my left arm clutching my pillow like a football, and my right arm straight out as if I'm the linebacker running the ball down the field, I begin. The journey to my mother's bedroom isn't far, just through the door and across the hall, but I take what feels like a hundred baby steps before I finally arrive, where I can see the lump of her on the right side of her bed. It's the King she never got rid of after the divorce, even though she doesn't need the space. It takes up half the room. She never sleeps in the middle. There is always room for me on the left.

Softly, I peel back the bedspread, the blanket, the sheet, like origami. I remove the pillow that is there, replace it with mine, recline as slowly and quietly as I can, and re-layer the sheet, blanket, bedspread over me.

I am safe.

I don't know how long I lie in the dark before falling asleep.  But I do know I am on my left side, facing away from my mother, unable to acknowledge that I need her.  Perhaps she is snoring, or breathing the regular deep breath of the dreamer.  She might even be faking it. I don't care. All I know is that I don't want her to know I am here.

In the morning, while we maneuver around each other awkwardly in the kitchen, she could ask, "What happened last night?" or "Why did you come in my room?" or "What were you scared of?" or "Are you okay?"

But she doesn't.

And I am glad.

As a mother of a teenager now, I know that all we can do sometimes is hold space for them.
It is enough.

September 11, 2001

we're all walking ironies now, like -- 

I'm wandering around inside our third house, 

wearing a t-shirt that says:

 "I left my house and went to a show"

and how my body feels more grounded 

after a day in the pool; skin alive 

with chlorine and slight sunburn –

the kind that will turn to tan instead of cancer

why yes, we are all wondering if we're clever

we’re certainly uncertain but determined,

never knowing where we’re walking to 'til we're there

September Eleventh ellipsed around again 

orbiting our psyche like we orbit the sun

and suddenly I can see the exact shade of brown

the carpet was, feel myself sitting crosslegged on the floor

only a few feet from the tv

thirty-four, and still in our first house--

the one off Fillmore

no friends to call; no one at all

it's hard to remember how rootless I was then --

how tender; how almost alone

nursing a nine-month old, a 2-year old

snugged side right (a little too tight, a little too close)

absorbing too-many tears into their tiny hearts

their two tiny hearts now holding 

the heartbreak beat of the twin towers

this doesn't feel like love

out…

we have to go out now, get out now –

to the park, yes! 

(the big park, not the neighborhood one)

other moms!  more babies!

Swings!

and their little swinging feet,

reaching upward toward the blue blue sky so quiet --

so goddamn fucking quiet

balance

the body 

starts with no strikes

against it, and then one day it reminds

you of that time when you were 22,

playing coed volleyball in a dimly lit gym in Seattle

and you jumped up to block a spike 

and came down on the spiker's foot under the net 

and your right ankle rolled --

and then snapped.

She scored the point; you scored 

a ride to the emergency room.

Now, at nearly 60, you're just about ready to down dog

on your lavender yoga mat 

and it's there again, that right ankle.

That -- and the left hip replaced by titanium

and the right breast absent some flesh

and the left elbow ripped by a riptide

and the arthritis in the thumb.

You try to be grateful 

that it's in your left --

because otherwise

you might not be writing this poem.

They say

the body 

keeps the score --

at this point, I'm just hoping for a tie

between left and right.

he doesn't listen

 My 18-year-old son

Left to go camping

Without even saying goodbye

Perhaps because

I kept bugging him about chairs

And sleeping pads

And food

And he was a little bit late

And a little bit anxious

He doesn’t listen

Which feels like rejection

Even though it isn’t

I have too much stuff already

You’re going CAR CAMPING —

You can take whatever you want

He takes the sleeping pad 

But leaves the chairs

And carries a white plastic bag with 8 Cokes

even though I told him

Where the cooler was

Later (about the time I figure 

he is meeting up with his friends) 

I text:

Sorry, I was just trying to help.  Hope you have a  

great time!!!! (tent emoji; canoe emoji)

We have so much shit that I’m taking your car

We have a grill and steaks and shit

Haha!  So you’re taking two cars?

Yes

I want to reply one more time

and say

I told you so

But I don’t

Lord Help Us *

Every- 

thing

and

Every- 

body

Lies

Except maybe our garbage –

So much stuff to stop our scents, tubes to 

whiten and brighten but not 

save and protect, bottles as

evidence of how many ways there are to die, tubs of Trader Joe’s – 

dips we could easily make ourselves 

But don’t. 

Every trashed container containing

maybe a couple more days worth which – if 

added up -- would be enough to 

last us many years

*Not sure if it’s a petition or a confession, but I know it’s a prayer

Gardening contains all the Stages of Grief

The initial elation of DENIAL is in the planting, 

scientifically believing that something will sprout

from a seed.   It's experimental magic.

It isn't even time to pray yet.

Outside, I plant straight rows of peas and gently scatter carrots.

Inside, he sets seeds he's saved into tiny black pots 

he has also saved.  They take up space in the dining room, 

while we watch them grow into tomatoes and peppers.

ANGER is reserved for the animals

even though it's not their fault.

Did we build the fence high enough to keep out the damn deer?  

Don't forget to close the gate!  

How many little black flea beetles did he crush

between his fingers today?  It's the tiniest of battles

in a world wide war, but still,

it's ours to fight.  And it's better than fighting each other.

In July, the BARGAINING begins.

What is the one thing you'd sell your soul for?

Hail netting that holds?  A mild mid-summer? 

At least the devil listens.

There's an abundance ready to cut and clean and cook and eat

and I realize I'd sell my soul

for time to go backwards (just for a little while)

and for one single red beet to pull out of the ground.

When you're down to seeds and stems —

that's DEPRESSION.

When the zinnias turn brown and hang their dead heads 

and the tomatoes go to mush on the vine

and we wonder if it's worth it to water.

He says this is the last salad 

I say these are the final flowers

It's October. The hummingbirds have left.

ACCEPTANCE is noticing the purple hues

of what might be the last morning glory, 

not caring if it is the last morning glory.

There are seeds to save.  Maybe

we'll try for some more lettuce,

or clone some tomatoes and peppers.

I'll put dead flowers in the vase he gave me.

He won't forget to put roses on my grave.

that classroom vibe

INTRO:

Today is the last day of the Advanced Institute of the Denver Writing Project. Coming as it did on the heels of our transition to remote learning and the Black Lives Matter movement, we all had a lot to process. Our assignment, at the end of the week, after much reading, reflection, Zoom meetings, online discussion boards, and three eye-opening, mind-blowing writing workshops with Nicole Piasecki, Jovan Mays, and Mark Overmeyer, was to answer this prompt: "Using your own style and structure, create a personal essay that describes your identity as a teacher and/or your teaching philosophy." Here's what I managed to write, out of a combobulated brain full of so many thoughts...

VERSE 1:

Sunday afternoon

my 19-year-old White son 

went downtown, 

to City Hall

where he stood

next to his Black girl friend

holding a small piece of cardboard 

cut from a box, 

on which he had written in black sharpie:

VIBE CHECK THE POLICE

CHORUS 1:

Monday morning I was asked: “What is your vibe right now? What is your teaching vibe?” The fact that this word— vibe— had entered my world for two days in a row struck me as somehow important.  Synchronous.  Serendipitous. Vibey.  

My vibe right now is worry.  And doing projects to keep from worrying.  Grief and mourning for classroom and country I pour into scrubbing the tub, chipping the paint, baking the muffins, and above all else: re-arranging the furniture.   I wonder if this is a distraction, or a healthy outlet for emotion. Or maybe it’s an attempt to change the vibe in my home, the way I change it in my classroom.      

VERSE 2:

I’ve heard people say 

to check in on your Black colleagues

I haven’t done this

I don’t know how to

Yet

CHORUS 2:

Student writer Nick Speranza, Arts Section Editor for his high school’s online news site The Radnorite, declared vibe to be the 2019 word-of-the-year. He wrote perhaps the best definition of vibe check that I could find:   “A vibe check is a genuine expression of empathy, a joking threat that encourages your friends to be happy, and a bizarre internet joke all at once.”  

On the surface, a vibe check means “How are you?  What’s going on?”

At a deeper level, however, it seems to be asking, “What are your struggles? Are you ok? How can I help?”

You can always vibe check a mother by asking about her children.  Maybe that’s a place I can start.

BRIDGE:

White socks

Black shoes

I bet her mama shined those shoes

the night before, scrubbed

her white socks and white blouse and white sweater 

so clean

the White children would have nothing to laugh at

Ruby was brave

Her mama was braver

Would I have done it?

Allowed my child to be the bridge?

What words did she say to prepare her daughter

before she watched her be marshaled 

away with four White men?

When you walk into that school, 

you old your head high,

Ruby Girl, but remember

to look down when you come to those steps,

‘cause everyone will be waiting for you to stumble

And remember to breathe, ok? 

As long as you just keep breathin’, you gon be alright.

And she was.

Ruby Bridges vibe checked them all.

VERSE 3:

The classroom vibe is everything

I create the vibe

starting from the outside

Good Vibes

don’t happen by accident

You have to orchestrate
them, which requires a magic wand

strings of fairy lights
three comfy chairs and a sofa

mismatched wooden bookshelves
along every wall

(where you somehow know where every book

is even though they are not in alphabetical order)

You even have to re-arrange the furniture

to metaphorically match your genre:

Poetry, a seated circle around a round rug

Memoir,  small groups for sharing

Fiction, sitting directly across from an IR of their own choosing

Informational, rows facing forward, 

Literary analysis returns us to our circle, older this time

Argument, two sides facing in

My classroom isn’t where I work,

it’s an extension of my Self

This is what I am afraid of losing —
If my students cannot feel that classroom vibe,

how will I be able to teach them?

The outer vibe creates the inner vibe. 

More than one student has told me 

that the 90 minutes they spend in my class

every other day

is the only time they feel calm.

How can I re-create that safe haven in a virtual world?  

Have we been liberated from fluorescent oppression, 

only to find ourselves in a blue light sleepless state?

What have we lost?

What have we gained?

CHORUS 3: 

We have been given an opportunity to re-think, re-question, and re-purpose ourselves as educators.  We didn’t give CMAS, and the world didn’t end!  We changed grading and teacher evaluation policies overnight in ways we never would have considered before!  Inequities were made visible and impossible to ignore!  Police have been voted out of our schools, curriculum is being re-visioned, and teachers are realizing that we have a role to play in dismantling our very own system.

Now is the time to examine the questions that underlie the questions.  The time to ask all the hows and whys.  The time to spout crazy ideas that maybe don’t sound so crazy anymore.  

Teachers need to bring up questions, again, about school funding structures and all the vestiges of history that have left our school system, still, in so many places, separate but unequal. We need to ask why our teaching force is still predominantly White, and then we need to ask how can we find and support the young people of color who want to become teachers. Ruby Bridges had to take a test to get into William Frantz Public School — how and why is testing still being used to determine who gets to go where?

And maybe someday soon, Zoom will create a “seating chart” function that, when enabled, will allow me to continue re-arranging the “furniture”.  What if we could make circles, rows, and groups, out of those little windows, in an attempt to create that classroom vibe?   

It’s not a distraction, my need to re-arrange, it’s an acknowledgement that my physical space creates my vibe.  When there is thoughtful order and structure on the outside, only then can I maintain my inner vibe, the one that allows me to show up, speak truth, create community, and be present every day with my kids.

OUTRO:

I became fascinated by Ruby Bridges after writing from a photo of her in Jovan’s workshop (see "Bridge" above).  Afterwards, I learned that her mother actually went to school with her on that first day, and didn't let her go alone, as I had imagined it. They sat in the office for the whole day, watching all the other parents come in to take their children out of the school.  Ruby prayed for the protestors every day on her way to school, asking God to forgive them “for they know not what they do”.  She wasn’t angry at the other kids not playing with her, because she understood that it was their parents who made them do it, and if her parents had told her not to do something, she wouldn’t have either.  

Ruby experienced little trauma from her experiences, according to Robert Coles (a White psychologist who offered to help her pro bono).  Instead, Robert Coles learned from Ruby, about conviction and courage, grounded in faith.  

how learning happens while building a garden bed

1.  Use the appropriate tool inappropriately
2.  Fantasize the result of your labor and assume your binding spell and a little luck will be enough
3. Overestimate your ability to do it by yourself
4.  Confuse the top with the bottom
5. Worry about waking up your teenage son, outside whose window you are noisily hammering
6.  Ignore the details
7.  Forget that preparation and clean up are actually longer than the build

multiple choice

A.

...but What You Do doesn’t fit into these boxes

the head gardener said from across her desk

which is larger than mine which is larger

than my students’.  It does give her some respect --

she’s almost at the top of the school-desk

chain, after all.

I mean, I know I’m just grounds maintenance

-sometimes-

and even need boxes

-occasionally-

But mostly, I’m the one who lets the Portulaca grow.

What I Do doesn’t fit into those boxes

It began so hopefully.

I took a seat, noticed the books that lined the shelves

behind her by authors I didn’t necessarily agree with.

Still don’t, filled as they are with all those foolish

lists and diagrams and charts.

And boxes.  

She opened my file, and with it the End-of-Year Conversation --

“You’re the best teacher I’ve got, you know

that don’t you?”

I mumbled some uni-syllables in some un-rememberable

order: “Wow. No. Um. Yes. Well. Oh. Um. Thanks.”

and considered (not too guiltily, I must confess),

the Pay-for-Performance payout I would get.

… but What You Do doesn’t fit into these boxes

B.  

You see, you and me, we can’t have a real relationship

if your job is to judge me, compare me to my friends,

and by those boxes that you checked

during a half-dozen ten-minute “Spot Observations” --

determine my salary.

Even you don’t like doing it, I get that, please don’t

tell me.  Even within an argument essay,

that's a pretty lame attempt at pathos.

C.

It’s all irrelevant anyway --

there will never be enough money

for us all to be Exemplary.

Race to the Top means someone’s at the bottom --

competition in our world sows even more doubt

and insecurity than we already know.

We are all the lettuce of the parable --

who need more water and less sun and certainly

less blame for not growing well.

D.

And what seeds are we really sowing?

Do we truly believe that the re-seeded Portulaca will bloom

in the cracks of our neighborhood sidewalks?

Or should we weed them out?

Rev up the Weed Eater and lop off their little blooming heads

to make things more tidy?

Don’t judge me for how many blossoms

there are, or how many seeds take root --

because some will never find their way under the concrete to the light

and others have been blown so far away

and planted themselves in places where

the woman holding the garden hose speaks another language.

E.

Schools are not Businesses
Students are not Consumers

Knowledge is not a Product

F.

You wanna know what our schools really need?

We need Professional Development we seek out ourselves

and you pay for it, and we convince all our colleagues

to come along because it will make us all Exemplary,

Racing to the Top as if we were holding hands

in a long line of Red Rover Red Rover

and we’re going to hold so tight that noone we call over

will ever be able to break through.

And we really don’t care if we get more money

for how tight we hold hands or

when our name gets called or

if we break through and get to bring someone over

to our side.   We’re the ones who would rather be

happy than rich and you know it --

and you’ve taken advantage of it for far too long

We need more men.  More people of color.

We will get neither if the seeds

of funding and fairness

don’t find a place to grow

We need accountability -- of course we do.

We would be the first to admit this.   

We strive every single goddamn day to be

accountable to our students -- and ourselves.

But it’s hard, because there’s no box for

Makes Moments of Joy or  

Uses Love to Impart Knowledge, or

Demonstrates Authenticity

And even if there were, there would still

be a gardener, looking out the kitchen window

comparing us to our fellow flowers

in the window box

We need our own mentor texts

(red ones and yellow ones and even some purple ones)

to cross-pollinate with the convictions of youth

and create a whole new, fearless hue.