Valentine's Day After

I missed Valentine's Day this year.  Seems I'm always living somewhere in Nostalgia.  Who can fault me, though, for looking over my shoulder at some of my happier moments.  I was five when I first knew anything about Valentine's Day.  My teacher that year decorated a large, round hatbox and sat it on top of the piano in our classroom.  The box was covered in red and pink and white with lots of lacy doilies marching all around the outside of the box.  She cut a slit in the top, and invited us to drop our Valentines into the box.  For days and days, kids carried white envelopes in their sweaty little palms and dropped them dutifully into the large hatbox.  Finally the big day arrived.  Two homeroom mothers marched into the classroom with boxes of fluffy pink-frosted cupcakes. Red paper plates held red hots, sugary conversation hearts, potato chips, and heart-shaped cookies.  Then it was time to remove the lid from the hatbox and hand out the Valentines to every child in the class.  Our teacher picked up the box, gave it one last shake, and went  to work. When I think about that holiday and all the fun things we did, I want to hug someone. I only have warm feelings, the beginning of love, the sweet taste of fluffy pink-frosted cupcakes, and the belief that the world was a happy and loving place.  The hatbox didn't hold a hat.  It held all the romance, intrigue, and mystery of love, tied up neatly in white, pink, and red. What did I know of love?  What did I need to know?  Simple times. No wonder I love Nostalgia.      

Awake for a 5 Minute Friday

I'm linking up with The Gypsy Mama for her 5-Minute Friday writing series.  This is my first attempt, so here goes...

GO!   My take on the word awake is to think of it as two words.  A wake.  A wake is observed when a person dies.  Now don't go calling me dark and depressed, just because I am considering that life will end.  It will, you know.  It will perhaps end when you least expect it.  So my topic is instead life, because a wake could come sooner than later.  Wakes are good things.  Observing a wake is observing the life of one who breathed, skipped, cried, slept, laughed--hopefully, often.  Wakes are evidence that a person mattered.  We need to remember that people matter.  Even if we think some of us matter less than others.  Every life has value and importance.  It's good to remind ourselves of this once in a while.    STOP!




That's it!  Let me know what YOU think, please!!

Time in a Bottle

Here's a suggestion. Make a list of all the digital devices, products, and services you use every day. Even if you don't use a smart phone--I don't--your list is still a long one.  Laptop, cell phone, GPS, Facebook, PDA, Gmail, Skype, iTunes, Twitter, pocket video camera, YouTube, GoogleDocs. . . and the list goes on. And on. And on.  The Age of Digital Distraction is here!  And from the looks of things, it's here to stay.

It's ironic that a lot of that digitalization was actually intended to save our time, not zap it.  How many people do  you know who set a timer in their cell phones as a reminder? How many people buy postage online to avoid standing in lines at the post office? Would you agree that sending an email or posting on Facebook is a faster way to communicate?  But the constant use of these otherwise helpful devices, products, and services has changed the way we view our time.  It has become blatantly evident that we are engaged in a battle for time.  This battle is waged every day in my classroom, and it is a battle that must be managed at all costs.

The battle for time is actually a battle for attention.  Even at my bank, a sign hangs in the window that reads Do not use cell phones while in line, please.  That's a direct request.  It's appalling that it's even necessary to remind people to be attentive to the task at hand.  So the battlefield for the attention of others is waged on many fronts.  The workplace, the medical facility, the highways.  Even my most intimate friends are more likely to interrupt our time together in order to answer a cellphone.  I've grown tired of having my time with that person intruded upon, often multiple times during a single meeting.

If I sound too dramatic, it's because the problem is a large and complicated one.  This problem is complicated because it adds a dimension, a new mindset, for the way people view time.  And by that I mean the way they view the anticipation of time passing, the concept of estimating time required to complete a goal, and the belief that attention can be diverted during the completion of a task with the expectation that the same results will be achieved.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not about to give up my laptop or email or GoogleDocs, or anything else I use.  But I have been affected by the overuse of these things just like my students are affected.  I know it's a real problem.  So what is the solution?  Or should I say solutions?

I recently read a book called the Pomodoro Technique.  It's a short book, available from the website, that can be read in about an hour.  After reading it, I decided to give it a try.  On Monday, I will begin to use the Pomodoro Techinique in my ninth-grade classroom.  We start a new semester on that day.  It's like having a new slate, a new start, a new opportunity.  Stay tuned.  The battle begins.  

Pleasure Dome

I love to read.  In fact, for as long as I can remember, I have surrounded myself with the written word in one form or another.  When I was about eight years old, my dad purchased a set of Collier's Encyclopedias. We started out with 24 volumes, an atlas, a set of ten anthologies, and a yearbook.  Dad even built a great bookcase in the living room where we stored them and used them anytime we wanted.  Christmas vacations would find me curled up on the scratchy mohair couch, reading Hawthorne or Dickens.  One Christmas I read Little Women, and I was hooked.  That set of encyclopedias opened so many opportunities for me.   Books.  Lots of books.  Books that have become my pleasure dome. Never could I imagine then the places I would go in the books that I grew to love.  I have traveled the world!  An ancient wych elm between the garden and the meadow at Howard's End.  A black coal mine where Diamond Skinner will forever be twelve years old.  I am an intimate friend of Valentine Roncalli and Theodora Angelini in the Big Apple, and in my dreams, I slip a pair of their handcrafted-wedding-shoes-since-1903 on my size 6 feet.  I've read every single one of Ivy Rowe's love letters in the hollers of Kentucky.  I've seen Mariam and Laila without the burka, and I've passed the house in Kabul where their vicious abuser is buried in the garden under a tree.  Camel and Jacob, Marlena, Meg, Copper, Edna and Leonce Pontellier.  The names and places roll around in my head like the pieces in a bingo cage.  Grand Isle, I-64, the hills of Virginia, Afghanistan, Sicily, South Africa, England.  Sometimes, when it's very still and I'm alone, I imagine myself in one of those places.  And I have come to realize that there are worse ways to spend a life.  

Slouching Toward Bethlehem

At first, I planned to post a Christmas message in my blog.  It would be one of those you-always-manage-to-make-me-cry messages that my daughter loves to complain about.  There would be plenty of nostalgic references and allusions to my favorite Christmas songs.  I would have invoked Dickens--or at least Karen Carpenter--in my original post!  But this year is different.  This Christmas calls for reality, not fantasy.  For now, not then.  For fresh, not stale.  For Linda, not Karen.  So instead of a traditional Christmas message, here are some great photos.  They are some of my favorites from this year, this Christmas, this week.  They remind me that life isn't a picture at all.  It's actually a movie, a reel of film that plays until it's over.  There are no second takes, no edits, no redos.  These are the people and the things that I love, the life I have made for myself.  I love the tree, even with the needles falling each time someone walks past it.  I love the dusty curio cabinet that holds my family of owls.  I love the scratched and dented, the worn, the imperfect. I love the taste of slightly burned ham rolls, the sink full of dishes, the bundles of wrapping paper that was carted to the dumpster hours ago. I'm not especially bothered by the empty checking account or the stack of bills on the table.  For these few days in December 2011 I have managed to pause, to listen, to notice, to taste, to see, to breathe.  I have tried to let go the useless fear, the worry, the aggravation.  I have tried to focus on the peace of this season, a moment at a time, with all the exuberance I can muster in my imperfect body and soul.  It is a gift, an incredible present, to simply be alive.  What a gift!

Going Home

I believe it was Thomas Wolfe who warned You can't go home again. Thomas Wolfe was right. Once we leave that proverbial nest, it's never the same when coming back.  But we still try, don't we?  My own most recent attempt was last week-end, a trip to my old parish church.  I attended Christ the King until I moved out of state a few years after I married.  So many important life events were celebrated in that little church, so it's no wonder that I have longed for many years to visit it once again.  When I was growing up, my parents were always heavily invested in their faith.  Missing mass was never an option, even in bad weather or tough times.  When the church burned and mass was moved to a nearby mission church, we traveled the extra 15 miles each way, even though the mission church had no heat and snow was on the ground for most of that winter.  Rosary rallies, Holy Name Society, spaghetti suppers, Altar Society, choir practice, church picnic, CYO, Bible school, baptisms, funerals, weddings.  The Church had us covered--spiritually, physically, and intellectually.  And we were always ready to give back.  Mom sewed curtains, drove us to CYO, prepared meals, and taught CCD classes.  She did it all while taking excellent care of four growing and demanding daughters. Dad's job was to raise money for projects, set up chairs and tables for all celebrations, organize the Church picnic, pass out the bags of fruits, nuts, and candy to all the kids at Christmas, take up the collection at mass, and do just about any other job that he was asked to do.  Their friends had surnames like Zando and Kappa, second generation immigrants from Europe who had originally come to work in the coal mines or in other industry.  We learned the old ways--no meat on Friday, fasting before Communion, and prayers on hard, wooden kneelers.  We prayed the rosary and chanted Latin verses that we didn't understand.  When I left that small Catholic community in the early 1970s, there were two Sunday masses and one mass on Saturday.  Almost 40 years later, there is one priest shared by four parishes.  One mass is celebrated on Sunday for  fewer than 30 faithful, and there is serious talk of closing Christ the King permanently.  At one time, the Church fed us, consoled us, and educated us.  Now there is the distinct possibility that the little church will disappear completely.  Its influence, its high moral standards, its beacon of hope.  All will pass away.  Like burned votive candles in an empty church.

Christmas Wish

Mom at Christmas, early 1970's

I have thousands of photographs, slips of Kodachrome in squares and rectangles. Faded black and whites with crinkled edges.  Polaroids whose images appear more ghostly with each passing year.  There are hundreds of sharp digitals and videos. Albums of archived memories that I've organized by year.  I spent the better part of one summer sorting and numbering negatives into neat drawers of cataloged envelopes.  And though my production of hard copies has slowed a bit with the advent of my digital phase, it's fair to say that my habit is a true obsession. Yet among all the pictures in my wide collection, this one is my favorite. It's a picture of my Mom.  It was taken at Christmas, sometime in the early 70's. Time for a story. It was almost Christmas. Mom had been away for four weeks, leaving the day after Thanksgiving to answer an important call of duty.  Though we missed her, we knew it was our responsibility to carry on until she was able to come back home.  Someone had to clean and decorate the house, string the lights, bake the cookies, wrap the presents.  It helped us to stay busy, and there was plenty to do to get ready for the big holiday!  Finally, it was Christmas Eve.  We all spent the entire day in completing the final preparations for Mom's homecoming. Surely she would be here in time for Christmas!  The tree lights were sparkling, the ham was glazed, and a delicious cake sat on the counter. Darkness fell early in the small community.  But still, no Mom.  Finally, in the waning hours of Christmas Eve, the family Plymouth pulled up in front of the little house.  When the back door opened and Mom rushed in, we all knew our Christmas gift had just walked through the door. Though she was tired and it was late, she had this beautiful smile on her face.  A smile that said simply, I would rather be right here, right now, than at any other place in the entire universe.  A happy homecoming.  A special Christmas.  Whenever I look at that picture, I remember that wonderful feeling we all had that Christmas.  I don't remember much about the gifts or the food, who else was there, or what we did.  But I do remember very well the feeling that things were right.  I remember the love.  And I remember the smile on my Mother's face.  As Christmas this year approaches, I want to enjoy every minute.  Not at the usual frenzied pace. And not the super size holiday that exists only on the set of a Martha Stewart show.  I find myself wishing for a simple celebration. For fewer gifts.  For less stress. For time to appreciate one another. For happy faces that tell me I would rather be right here, right now, than at any other place in the entire universe.