Graduation Day

Tonight is the quietest night, the air is still and there seem to be no trains in the distance, no birds twittering in the twilight. Even my neighbors are silent. It's as if the world has taken in all the excitement and let it out with one enormous hushed breath.

I left graduation this afternoon with a feeling of elation I couldn't explain, not to my parents nor to Dan in the voicemail I left for him. They aren't my children, but they were mine. For four years, they were mine. And today, I let all 360 of them go.

A glass of wine in an empty house seemed the way to mourn their leaving. And I am inexplicably sad. I know that each and every one of them will go on to do amazing things, some more amazing than others, but each in their own unique way. Last week, my class president asked me to give the class of 2009 advice on film, to be recorded for senior night and for reunions to come. I was caught off guard, told them I loved them, shared my favorite quote by poet Mary Oliver, and wished them well.

Now, there are things I wished I had told them.

1. Hold out. Hold out for true love, not the idea of love. For the right time to have kids. For someone who will take care of your heart like they do their own. Hold out for good champagne, cheap stuff will give you a headache. Hold out for friends who will support you and keep your integrity.

2. Travel. Alone. At least once. Find your own adventure.

3. Get a theme song. Play it in your head when you walk into a room.

4. Party like a rock star. Don't let the moment go by and wish it back later.

5. Drink. Even if it's only a Seagrams Cooler or more orange juice than vodka. Enjoy the small things in life like a pre-dinner cocktail.

6. Dance every day.

7. Rock those jeans, no matter what size you are! Love yourself.

8. Listen to your inner voice. Take the time to be quiet. Yoga.

9. Let yourself float high, but never lose touch with the earth.

10. Do one thing every day that scares you.

I stood on that stage this afternoon, called out each name with joy and reverence. This was a new experience for me, to be on the other side of the podium for once. To know what it is like to look out upon the potential of our future generations...that is something I will never lose, something that is mine to hold. For this, I am grateful.

This is My Religion

Lately I have been thinking about religion. Two months ago I stopped by St. Mary's church on my way home from work, dragged my daughter through the church basement, up past the after school program, across the parking lot and into the rectory offices demanding to know when ccd started. I was like a woman possessed....but by what? Religion? Catholicism is something I am sentimenal about, not passionate about. I signed us up as part of the parish and left, never having returned since.

I thought about church, felt guilty about not attending. Wondered if I was somehow harming my daughter by not allowing her that foundation, questioned whether or not I could provide it for her from my own memory. I could tell her the bible stories, I reasoned. Selfishness set in. Why should I give up my time at the gym on Sunday mornings? Doesn't every person need to do something good for herself?

I lay in bed on Sunday morning, the whir of the ceiling fan and the sounds of the wind in the pines bringing me to consciousness. The gently moving Spring air stirred the tiny golden hairs on my arms and I turned over to see the man I love lying next to me. I listened to his breathing, deep and relaxed. My daughter was sound asleep in her room down the hall, and I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. I didn't need to be sitting in a church pew, listening to someone tell me how to be a good person or how to save the world. I had my very own little world right next to me. This I realized...this is my religion.

Potentiality

A tiny flame grows into a roaring fire in seconds plus oxygen. A simple wish becomes a lifelong dream with every 11:11 I encounter. My daughter is five in the blink of an eye. I'm afraid to close my eyes anymore.

There is a little stone house amidst the lavender fields in Provence that could have been mine. A cottage by the sea in Nantucket that called out to me. A cocktail waitress job on the beaches of Fiji I passed by. An orange grove in Key West caught my eye, and a tiny bookstore in the Upper Peninsula whispers to me, even now.

There was a life waiting on a mesa in New Mexico, and one in the valley of Boulder Colorado. Tumultuous waves reached for me on the shores of Lake Michigan, and peaceful highways led east to the Atlantic sea.

And I have managed to embed myself in small town suburbia, the same in which I grew up. I read once that half of Americans live within 50 miles of where they grew up. I am not one of those Americans. And yet I am. I teach in a high school just like the one I attended so many years ago, we even have the same school colors. The students, they are the same ones I went to school with, only outfitted with cell phones and ipods instead of walkmans.

There is a girl with long blond hair in my creative writing class. She longs to be different, a poet, a tortured soul, an ingenue. And yet she is the same as all the other teens, growing up in a tiny bedroom town, privileged, and I recognize myself in her dreamy stares, her hand scribbled words on notebook paper. There is so much potentiality out there, so much she can fly away with, if she is brave enough.

I want to be brave. I want the happy ending. The second chance. The house on the shore. The life I know I was supposed to live. No matter how many shells I bring home or what I affectionately name my beach house in the burbs, I am far too long from the shore. The potentiality is there, so thick I can taste it like honey, golden sweet on the tongue. Spring must be around the corner, for I can hear the waves calling.

Brevity

It has been too long since I last visited my own blog, my own writing, my own soul. Finding time has been my excuse, finding inspiration the reason hiding behind it. I am back to teaching creative writing. Baby steps back into my own voice as well. It is is rumored that Hemingway was once asked to write a story in six words. The result? "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

This is the ultimate in brevity. And so I have been writing my own six word memoirs. Here are some of the results:

Always taking chances on Prince Charming.

Found my soul on the beach.

Conservative English teacher: secretly a rebel.

Have cat and child, will travel.

Married, Divorced, then fell in love.

Living life as if on vacation.

Old soul at 8, young at 33.

Life got in way of writing.

Lost soul mate, found real one.

Pointillism

There is this painting, housed in the museum of Fine Arts in Chicago called Sunday in the Park with George. It's featured in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I've seen it well over 20 times in person, and yet I am still quite enamored with the entire idea of Pointillism. It is this theory that when one looks at something close up, really focuses in, he sees nothing but a series of dots. It's really the big picture that makes sense. When one stands far from the painting, each individual dot blurs into this absolutely amazing piece of art.

If one stands too close to me, will he see only insignificant dots? Every little bit of who a person is may not exactly fit who he is as a whole. Push me away a little bit and you might just see the struggling teacher/mother/artist/lover. Hold me too close and you may only focus in on the pieces of me who want the laundry folded, the homework done on time, the support in a time of temper tantrum. Is this too much? Might one only want to look from afar?

The truth lies in the little pieces, up close and personal. If you don't like what you see, it may be time to switch to Impressionism where everything is one giant landscaped blur of color.

Everyone is at War

"Everybody's at war with something. I'm at war with my own heart sometimes."

--Tupac Shakur

Another September. Another back to school. Teachers measure their years in Septembers. I've had a lifetime of them, yet only 5 on record. Somehow I missed August. I know how I missed August. Somewhere between the ESL workshop, Memoir graduate class, Summer curriculum work, vacation in Arizona, and the first few days back to school, I lost August. She's gone, though she was never my favorite, I still wish I had her back.

I'm having a tough time going back to school this year. I keep telling myself to smile and nod, smile and nod, even when the students ignore me, when they fail to do their homework, I still smile and nod. I have a class whom I've (somewhat affectionately) nicknamed my "street urchins" and they are harder than most. Every day is a war in that classroom, every lesson a struggle. But they are young, most haven't learned how to hide their emotions as I have. Smile and nod. One girl has no mother at home, another has no self confidence, one lives in the shadow of his brother, and another is smart but plays dumb to fit in. Each is involved in his own internal war with something greater.

Restless. If the Santa Ana winds could blow through New England, I would swear they had made their presence known today. I feel crazy and wistful, on the verge...of what I haven't any idea. The gypsy is back. She is at war with her own heart again.

Duneland

Left-of-center-people fascinate me. I had the beach all to myself on a gorgeous hot & sunny afternoon, just me and my novel. And then I noticed a man walking toward me, most likley one of the "joggers" I usually saw on the beach, I thought. He was an attractive older man in his early 60's an he stopped to say hello. And then he just kept on talking. Thirty minutes later I knew this man's entire life story. And he revealed to me that he was pentecostal. He spoke to me about god and his visions and how a non-believer became a believer. I politely listened and when he was gone, I went back to my novel.

But this guy, Vince, he came back and found me on the beach the next day as well. He asked me if I had any "insights" during the night. I laughed and told him nothing except a deep desire for Lake Michigan. My dear reader, I drove around Beverly Shores like I usually do, dreaming about living there, when I saw a for sale sign pointing down an empty beach road. I decided to follow it (the proverbial pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow) and there was a house...it was perfect. Built in 1929, one of the original that Frederick Bartlett built when he designed the town of Beverly Shores. It had the original spanish tiled roof, that ochre colored brick that just says "duneland" and an acre of land, quietly settled...I got out of the car and took one of the brochures that listed all of its amenities. I must have stared at that house for a half an hour. And then I started crying. Have you ever wanted something that badly and you knew there was such a slim chance of getting it...even now my eyes are brimming because I can't help thinking that I simply belonged with that house, that original structure of the town that takes up so much space in my heart. This amazing landscape that I swear no one else cares about like I do, and it feels so very far away. I went home and told my parents about it. They paid very little attention to me and my "silly whims," as they put it. And I felt it...another loss of that life I had simply imagined or dreamed up somewhere along the road. Am I a believer? I went back to the question...and simply found that I had another of my own to ask. What exactly is it that I am supposed to believe in?