to the "strong in the broken places"

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” Ernest Hemingway

Earlier this week I roamed the downtown area of Oak Park with a friend. We went in search of discovering the roots of a distinguished American author. The town takes great pride in their once resident, although I find it fascinating that the pride wasn't shared by the individual.

Ernest Hemingway wanted a different life, so he reinvented himself. He broke from his family, religion and hometown and traveled to Paris, Spain, Florida, Africa, Cuba and ultimately Idaho where he took his own life at age 62. The same age my dad was when he passed just this November.

The meat of Hemingway's messages is in the unsaid: One true sentence. What is whispering in the background is the immense difficulty in that venture. As if truth were readily tangible. As if this crossroads on which I pace suddenly illuminated one distinct path. Hemingway was constantly reaching, so am I and coincidentally so are my sentences.

It's unsettling to grasp at the ghost of what was. Maybe Hemingway dealt with that discomfort by moving or marrying another broad. I wonder though, if the bigger challenge isn't to pick a path and run full speed down it, but rather to stay and face what is.

I didn't know my father and he didn't know me. And since this was a fact even when he was alive, I wasn't convinced that much would change when he was gone.

That's one truthfully ugly sentence.

But somehow, everything has changed because options are no longer available.

You sit at that proverbial crossroads too long and alternate roads disappear. (Back off eternal optimists who claim it's never too late to do something.) It is too late for me to have a working relationship with my dad, roots that for so long I was convinced I should be separated from. I missed many opportunities but then, so did he.

Hemingway, if we could sit across from one another, I'd order you and me a mojito and ask for your truest sentence. If I'm brave enough, I'll stay and try to find mine.

I don't believe it is possible to put things behind you, not when it has already become a part of you. You can go on, fortifying new memories and work to enrich the here and now but what has preceded will always be step-in-step with what is.

So as the skeletal eyes stare back at me from the hospital bed, I can't help but feel like I've been here before.

The question is, does he know it?

Date: 6/16/11 - Location: Dublin Airport - Time: 9am

The flight out of Chicago O'Hare was a success. It was the longest flight I have been on to date BUT it had the right tools to keep you occupied: games, movies, music, food -- just not enough sleep. I could have used a few more winks of that. Melissa let me sit by the window (nice girl) and we marveled at the cumulus clouds and the sunset above them and eventually at the glowing effervescent moon. As we were landing in Dublin I watched the landscape change from bubbly endless clouds to calming vast farmland - fisherman were out early this morning having a great day, no doubt, as I could eye the little ripples in the bay made by the numerous fish touching the surface. What a great day to be alive.

The airport is an interesting place - mixed with bittersweet emotions - a place that brings together as it tears apart - a place of relief - excitement - yearning - but overall waiting. You wait. You wait. You wait some more. Sometimes you do that waiting standing, sitting, sometimes with a breakfast sandwich in hand, sometimes on the phone with your mother as she tells you her embarrassing customs story when she tried to bring a plant from Holland back to the U.S. There she was sternly instructed that you couldn't bring into the states anything "growing."

All in all, I feel extraordinarily lucky to be here...waiting for our plane to Paris.

6/15/11 O'Hare Airport

C: "Sometimes I think fiction is truer than non-fiction...I'm going to let that muddle"

M: "I get what you're saying"

C: "You smell what I'm cookin?"

M: "I do...it smells good."

EDU 601: Contemporary Issues in Education

"To have emotional resources that are healthy, one needs to have an identity" (Ruby Payne, A Framework for Understanding Poverty)

My finger stops on this sentence. Then my mind. Then my heart.

While the class gets up for a bathroom break, I run my pencil over this sentence that I've copied in my notebook. I'm almost certain that whatever the questions may be, this right here, is the answer.

form and function: a lesson in

i like that i can
just

SHOW YOU

and
you
get
the
point.

if the choice is words
or space

i always choose

just say yes to the memory

Sometimes the impact or significance of an experience doesn't hit us until much much later when you have had ample time to reflect, joke, reminisce, obtain distance and with that then clarity or understanding. And yet in other moments we feel the depth of the event as it marks us, alters or adds to who we are and how we see the world... ("the secret that know one knows - the root of the root - the bud of the bud - and the sky of the sky")

I hadn't known that junior year of high school, while wasting away the morning minutes, as was our soccer team tradition, that writing in permanent marker, "Hannigan drinks her own pee," would be a memory I would be laughing about with that good friend ten years later. We are amused at the recollection of just how frantically I tried to erase the crude remark from my poor coach's dry erase board, (although, now thinking about it, I'm sure my coach who also taught biology could have figured a way to work that into the curriculum). It was a moment. Seemingly insignificant, but over time, valuable because it was shared. Our lives are made up of many many instances like this -- something may have even happened to you today, that you'll push aside and over the years will become a gem.

But then there are also those moments that as they are happening, you feel as though time has stopped and taken a picture; you are frozen in the emotions, cemented in the weight of the frame as if somehow you are directing the camera but simultaneously playing a role. It was an honor to be at that door that night. We grouped, we gathered, and we rang...I was clutching the neck of a champagne bottle with my left hand and biting my lower lip with great anticipation, as if I were playing the lotto, ticket in hand, breathlessly waiting for balls to drop and for life to change. As the door opened and we saw her floored face the frozen frame shifted to a flip book that took me back to the moment they met: A fateful weekend in the mountains, flash forward to the day he asked her to just say yes.

And she did.

Melissa handled her waves of surprises (first wave being engaged and second having all her friends know about it and show up for a make-shift engagement party celebration) in true Melissa fashion, with grace, gratitude and the truest form of happiness known to mankind. The rest of the evening was spent hearing both sides of their story and toasting to the future Mr. and Mrs. The ring was glowing although it had strong competition with Melissa's smile. Her father excitedly filled up my wine glass multiple times and we had laughs and tears interrupted by bites of cookies and cakes.

I don't need time or distance from this memory to understand its significance because each time I think about it, I'm there, in the moment.

There may only be a few of those in our lives and how lucky am I that I was able to share in it?

How lucky are we for knowing these two who show us what it means to love?

a day in the life of... or ... the musings of the middle...

April 13, 2011 marked the third annual Hobby Day exhibition at the middle school. This is a day where teachers have been asked to indicate a hobby that they are interested in paired with a brief elaboration of what that hobby entails. Then this list is dispersed to students who rank from 1-10 the hobbies that they would like to experience. A fabulous and dedicated colleague organizes and creates a schedule for each individual student in our building (over 700!) and we prepare for the great adventure that is Hobby Day.

When I received the email months ago during the preliminary stages of this planning, I contemplated and critiqued my hobby. "Creative Writing" -- Will any of the students even be interested (especially amongst the other choices of tie dye, bags, storm chasing etc)? What exercises can I do that will stimulate their brains? Will they engage? Is is possible for me to create a sense of community in 90 minute sessions with students that I don't necessarily know? Should I tone down my enthusiasm which takes most students at least a few months to get used to...if not, do I run the risk of scaring them into silence?

Ultimately, my anxiety lead me to two conclusions: 1.) I would embrace this hobby regardless of the outcome and 2.) I will purchase food and candy to help prevent potential mutiny.

The evening prior, I called a colleague to run my proposed agenda of the day by her and procure some feedback. I swear that even as a teacher of 20/30 years I will forever be doing this -- I'm so thankful for those who like to talk shop! -- Unfortunately the reception in my building was poor and she only heard bits and pieces of the ideas I had prepared; however, She told me what I really needed to hear at 8:30pm at night, still on the job, eyes puffy and red, body operating in robotic mode, she said simply: "It will all be fine."

Sometimes we just need to trust a little more in that.

On the morning of April 13, I arrived at school earlier than usual, which is saying something. I arranged the room with the attention as that of a painter to an easel: desks stacked in the corners making the room seem quite spacious, front table cleaned and including a bucket of my favorite pencils , nostalgic yellow notepads and of course, as planned, an abounding arrangement of cookies and laffy-taffy. A colleague graciously granted me the use of her carpet squares, of which I arranged in an expansive circle. I pressed play on my "creative writing" list on itunes and let the musical stylings of Cloud Cult and the look of the newly transformed classroom send me to a hopeful place...projections of a productive day.

What continues to be an overwhelming sight for me, even after year four of education and it being April of this school year, is the spectacle of students who round the hallway corner after getting off the bus. The abrupt change of the once barren space between the walls to the growing boisterous voices of effervescent 8th graders always gives me the illusion of a heightening wave about to crash on the sandy shore. Today, just like any other day, the shore greets the crash with a "Good morning and thanks for coming!"

As the students designated to be in my room arrive, I try to read their faces to make an initial impression. Are they tired? Are they curious? Excited? The unfamiliar students politely sit in a circle, grabbing a cookie or two and a stack of laffy taffys on their way to their seats. The door closes. The show begins. The truth of the day only moments away.

We opened up the discussion with introductions of our names and why we like to write and perhaps some idiosyncrasies that make us who we are. I started out with saying that if I didn't write, I think I would burst into a million pieces and attested to the importance of stories. I discussed my insistence on the type of pencils I supplied and how once I get into the writing zone, few can distract me from the trance. As I passed the torch, the responses were so thoughtful I had to write them down, the first entries of my yellow notepad were the words of the insightful learners in our formed community.

"Writing offers up a whole new world for me, a world more fun than this one."
"Writing gives me an outlet, a place I can write it all down when I'm feeling overly emotional"
"Writing is an escape"
"Time can just slip away when I'm writing"
"I look at life like a movie trailer and write in cliff hangers"
"Nobody criticizes me there"
"It's where I can make the impossible possible."
"I want to carry a message, I want to create change with my words."

Wow. 7th and 8th graders. Some with whole novels written already. Some that think only in poetry. Some who excitedly shared their ideas generated in our session and some who responded to those ideas with enthusiasm and support. All of them with the greatest potential in the world.

For the students (and colleagues for that matter) whom I pass by daily and don't necessarily know their stories, I continue to be grateful for the opportunities that allow me to break barriers, for the moments that allow me to connect in meaningful ways. And in a world that can so often yield itself to communication breakdown in and outside of ourselves, to then be in an understood place, for any amount of time, could possibly be the greatest gift.

For K (I fear the loss of)

I'm a teacher. Audience of three, you know this. And so for part of my spring break I digested some adolescent literature -- I have to be that literary bridge, stories that venture from my hands to the students. One of the books was a delectable and quite witty tale entitled, Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer. This book had some of the most noble characters I have come to know. Certainly Good people to pass a few hours with. To give you a taste, one of the main characters, G.T. Stoop, is the proud owner of a fabulous diner in rural Mulhoney Wisconsin. While fighting for his life as he battles leukemia, G.T. also fights for the town that he has lived in his whole life and deeply loves. He learned about the corrupt mayor that has served their town for years and wants more for his beloved neighbors and friends. So he decides to run. As you read, you imagine how absolutely easy it would be to become wrapped up in the messiness of politics. To lose yourself in the rhetoric. To fight so hard that you compromise some of your morals as you do so.

Not G.T. Nope. He remains throughout the entire novel, through and through one of the finest men I have known. To quote, "You want to know why to vote for a man who's fighting for his life? Because no one understands how sweet life can be, how blessed every minute is, how important it is to say and do what's right while you've got the time, more than one person who's living with a short wick." Who wouldn't want to know this guy? It's lines like this that run rampant throughout the text that make the reader reflective on their own lives: How can I be living it better?

In always yearning to be a better person, I'm often reminded of a quote that one of my friends chooses as what I perceive is her life motto: "I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all." -Leo Rosten

I think G.T. would agree with this quote and I think it helps put matters in perspective. If I want to be the best version of myself, if I want to be the most useful, the most compassionate, I have to let go. I have to forgive myself. I need to not let my self worth rest in the acceptance of one person. As the cursor blinks at me, it seems to say...you have filled in the blank Carolyn. Now actually feel it. You write, let go; now go and do it.

To matter. To count. To stand. To be the difference that makes a difference. I'm grateful to all the G.T.'s in my life and in the world that do well to remind us what it's all really about.

Here's to Act Two; Here's to You

Through the encouragement of a friend, a loyal reader (thank you my dear), I've decided to revisit this picture with a little more text to support the sentiments above. Andy Warhol, whose style I stole, wouldn't approve of the venture though. The man who omitted any sort of direct explanation for his art; he let it rest in ambiguity as the unknown offers itself up to many different interpretations...but somehow, I figure, even if I tell you what I think you can still go on thinking your way too. Alas...

In high school I remember the intensity of the melodramatic yearning. I would write in my journal (journal writing existing for me at this age because NOBODY UNDERSTANDS me) "Please send me someone to love me, someone I can love. I have so much love to give." Dance after dance, date after...actually, there weren't that many dates, I would return the pen to the page and reiterate the same wish.

The summer before senior year of high school I was sent an answer. His name: Patrick. His passions: Notre Dame football and fried chicken (specifically the chicken-fried-chicken at Cracker Barrel). Qualities: Humor and relaxed disposition. Ambitions: History major. Although I wouldn't come to know all this until a while later. What I knew first and foremost was just how absolutely adorable he was.

I remember the first night I met him. Friends of friends, isn't that a well-known story? How we come to be in the right place at the right time, seems to indicate a higher force of some kind, no? There was a bonfire. There were smores. There were good laughs with girls whom I had run cross-country with for three years now and felt were my family. And then, there were boys. Catholic school boys. No more smores. Nervous yet hopeful laughter. And him. Jovial. Comfortable. Someone who seemed to know who he was and where he was going.

If you ask him today, he doesn't remember that night well. But I did. He face, burned in my brain as brightly as the bonfire that warmed us on the chilly June evening. The summer went on, and I continued to think about him and melodramatically write about it in my journal. "Do you think he thinks about me too??"

As August approached and pre-season training started for cross-country, I asked my running family what they *thought* of him. More specifically if he was dating anyone. This line of questioning always causes an eruption as the implications are obvious. "YOU LIKE HIM! YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DATE!" Those girls, committed to making it happen set up a gathering at one of their houses. Patrick had been told in advance about me, a discussion I had okay-ed, but I have feeling my approval wouldn't have mattered. Once these matters fall into the hands of teenage girls, your individual weigh is 0.0. No pull whatsoever. It was reported back to me that Patrick was excited. And if I decided to ask him to our Homecoming dance he would say yes.

Patrick and I spent the evening on the roof of my friend's detached garage, getting to know one another better. Me. Patrick. And the stars. Conversation murmured below us none of which I was aware of or cared about. I sat with my arms linked underneath my knees, nervously avoiding opportunity after opportunity to ask him to the dance. I couldn't do it. We eventually lowered ourselves off that garage...Patrick possibly thinking I had changed my mind. He left to get something from his car and I was packing up to leave. As he was returning to the backyard I was heading towards my car, we gave each other a passing goodnight and then I said, "WAIT!" We turned and I continued, "Would you, by any chance, want to go to my homecoming dance with me?" He said, "I would love to!" I left smiling to the night sky, he allegedly returned to group with a jump and double click of the heels.

As this post is already nearing narrative hell, sorry dear reader(s), I'll simply state that my high school dances were nightmares. Classically horrific tales, that I tell as tales so that I can pretend they didn't happen to me. My senior homecoming with Patrick was by contrast, fairy tale worthy. (Are you gagging yet? No, then let me include that we even danced cheek to cheek. Surely that did it, yes?)

That moment jump started "Act One" -- this is our terminology for the evolution of our relationship. Act one was filled with lots of hormones, repressed fights and our problem-solving skills lacking. We entered into our college careers unfit to conquer the hurdles that a long distance relationship involve. We parted ways. A decision that never felt right for either of us.

Intermission. Grab a Snack. A drink?

Lights flicker.

Back to your seats.

Act two: Patrick is dressed in colonial gear greeting myself and bus load of rowdy eighth graders to our field trip back to the 1800's. We nervously smile at each other - I ask a brilliant question when we visit the printing press, "Is that where hot off the press comes from," a question he dismisses (claims later that was nerves).

We were reconnected. Right place right time --almost makes a full blown believer out of me.

Give something time and it can be something else. While in many ways we are still that same wildly in love couple from our high school years, (the same picture repeated) - we are telling our story this time using different color bricks meaning we have grown up and yet continue to grow with each other. We've learned how to fight effectively: I no longer hang up the phone when I'm upset - he pushes himself to articulate his emotions. We have learned how precious time is because we felt it slip for many of those intermission years. You can change what is going on in the background of our lives, ups and downs, strikes and gutters, yet here we are. Each others constants.

And I couldn't be luckier. Here's to him. (And to you, for reading!)

xxoo

Beginnings are always good places to start. I can hear Julie Andrews belting so from the mountains of my childhood. As a six year old, I was fascinated with the liveliness of all of those children and the drama of their lives: beloved mother dies, Fraulein Maria becomes the next best thing, proven prominently by vocals of the captain sweetly serenading his children with the tune of "Adelweiss." It was one of my first (recalled) images of searching and yearning for more, one of my first visuals of a surrogate. The movie seemed to answer my question of whether or not success down this avenue was possible, promising and fulfilling.



Cut Scene.

Enter Reality.

Role Film.

"I'm defeated lying there on my new twin sized bed. With a single pillow underneath my single head."

They say a lot of things:

1. They say you shouldn't wear white after labor day.

2. They say that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

3. They say that time heals everything.

4. They say that it is better to have love and lost then not to have loved at all.

5. They say that you should write what you know.

Here's what I know. I know that none of the above is certain. I'm actually not convinced any of it is.

1.) As for the white after labor day... It may just be my mother who is still the sole person perpetuating this phrase. My sisters and I learned to be wary of her word choice rather early on in life. While running around the gym for a warm-up in 7th grade P.E. class, my sister's scrunchy came loose. The annoyance of her hair slapping her in the face urged her to scream out, "Ugh! My hairpiece!" Surely having survived middle school you know that it takes less than a series of milliseconds for just about any utterance, event, moment, to be distorted, fabricated and then shared by all. My poor sister and her middle school balding rumors.

I remember making a little vocabulary chart in one of my puffy heart-covered diaries:

mom's word ------- actual word
hair piece ------- scrunchy
boom-box ------- radio
cream rinse ------- conditioner
thongs ------- flip flops
do-hickies ------- just about anything

So I vote that you wear the hell out of that white, no matter what the day.

2.) As for the second...They also say it takes one to know one. Yeah. No shit. Why do you think I know where to aim the stone? And you know what, if I could, I'd throw one at my own house too. Sometimes it just feels good to throw the goddamn stone.

3.) Number three and four are personal favorites. In my corner, time isn't really doing much for me, which is what brings my fingers to the keys.

4.) With each letter I can feel the weight of that love that is no longer and the weight of the wonder if it ever was at all. I'm reminded of one of my all time favorite poems by Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art."

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Bishop knew that when time couldn't keep up its end of the bargain there was always writing. "Write it!" she screams at me. So here I am. It's not as if my story is something new, something you haven't heard before. But it is mine. And maybe, if my words can find your mind, perhaps even your hearts, you can be the they who say, it will be okay. Because let's face it, they always say, it will all be okay (or at least one illusive morning it will appear that way).

5.) Here's what I know to be true...people will disappoint you for a multitude of reasons. But instead of picking up stones, or waiting for the healing hands of time or even weighing whether or not the love was better had and lost then never at all...write it!

write it!

Write it!

Write it!

the family that becomes our blood

Today is the day when two become one
so they say
as they may
But he and she live above the clichés
Seamlessly
Side by side

He says
“My better three quarters”
She smiles
revealing the mirrored truth

Together they are more than one
forever better; forever fitted

She says
“let’s travel the world”
He smiles
Vowing a shared compass

Together they are the world
Forged landscapes; finding dreams

He and she stare at the same sky
Knowing their mirrored compass will
always answer.

I do.
I will.
Forever.

mindless movement

kept her from the cracks

the hands moved to her beat

each stomp a word

each word a scream

but all good things

must

break

and

fall

all good things

seemed destined

for the cracks.