Soapbox: The Way I see Things

Slice of Life Day 12: So Much Depends…

…upon

an old
brass bell

gathering
dust

in my mother’s
front hallway*

I’m five years old, living in the house on Stoneyside Lane. Like my siblings, I’m out playing around the neighborhood: collecting berries from bushes, riding my bike, sweet-talking neighbors into giving me Lorna Doone Cookies.

Then I hear the bell cutting through the late afternoon air. I know what it means, and so do my brother and sisters: we’d better be home for dinner before that sound stops. In fact, every kid in the neighborhood knows to go home when that bell sounds.

It’s 1979. Late October, 3:30 a.m. I’m home asleep when a sound rouses me from my slumber. It’s…no. It’s not…it is. The brass bell. My mom’s ringing it – am I dreaming? From a Pavlovian place in my brain, I emerge from my room, wandering with my brother and sister down a hallway and through hazy rooms toward that bell. We congregate at a front hallway that’s engulfed in flames before escaping together.

I’m 35, a full-on adult now and mother to my own kids, and the honorary I’ll-be-the-one-to-drive-in-to-help-with-stuff gal. My parents are moving, downsizing, casting off. There aren’t a lot of possessions I covet, but when I see the bell, I know exactly what I’m taking back to Chicago with me. It doesn’t work at calling my own kids back home (believe me, I tried), but I keep it in my front hallway nonetheless.

That bell still occupies a place of honor right by my front door. My mom is gone, and even though I’m 53 I could still use some mothering now and again. And when I do, I walk to the front hallway and look at that bell, remembering it’s there to call me home.

*after William Carlos Williams

Slice of Life Day 11: Currently

Today I’m taking my inspiration from Elisabeth at Dirigible Plum. Her “currently” post is right at the top of ideas I’d like to try writing:

watching: Honestly? Not a lot. The only times I ever really watch stuff is when my husband has the TV going. And maybe I’ll watch the odd Josh Johnson or Hot Ones videos on my laptop.

reading: I’ve got a coupla things cooking here. I’m into my father-in-law’s copy of Minority Report by H.L. Mencken, with The Matchmaker’s Gift by by Lynda Cohen Loigman thrown in to keep things on the lighter side.

listening: I’m a podcast junkie, so I’ve got Judge John Hodgman, the Meyers Brothers, The Moth, and Stuff You Missed in History in my queue. I’ve also got David McCullough’s audiobook John Adams (OK, I’ll admit it’s there to help me fall asleep) and several playlists on Spotify depending on mood (one current favorite: Jesse Welles).

making: excuses for not exercising more.

feeling: a whole jumble of things: apprehension about the world in general, joy and relief that my sons are on an okay path, anxiety over a mounting to-do list, and wonder at the sheer amazingness of my students.

planning: Spring Break, if we can swing it. That, and a workshop about meeting the needs of gifted kids planned for Friday. Eek!

loving: this beautiful sweet girl who likes to keep me company, who has also finally decided she no longer wants to paw at my keyboard, but who would be just fine about things if I closed my laptop and took a moment to commune.

On that note…

Slice of Life Day 10: Seventeen Years

Today’s my blog-iversary!

Seventeen years ago, I started my original, now defunct-ish blog. It was my first foray into public writing since…well, since my creative writing days in college. Here was my first entry:

So what’s the same? The struggle with perfectionism. The love I have for words. The joy I take in PLAYING with words. My incessant need to revise as I go, wordsmithing for effect time and time again. And again.

And what’s different? There’s a lot less impostor syndrome, mostly because I’ve come to see myself as a part of a writing community. I’ve come to see that belonging as earned, both online and with my students. I’ve allowed myself to take more risks, stretching into genres I’ve long resisted (hello, fiction. I’m looking at YOU).

I’m still working to let go, but I’m better at it. I’m still working to let myself write without the need to keep editing myself. I don’t know where I’ll be in another seventeen years, but I hope I’ll be able to look back on even more growth. I guess that’s why they call it the writing…process?

SOLSC Day 9: Not Yet Spring

I know it’s not yet spring,
That there is still snow to come
And visions of iced-over windshields
Await my weekday mornings.

I know it’s not yet time
To put away winter coats,
To feel comfortable removing
The ice scraper from my car.

But I know to take warm days
And treat them as they are:
The gifts to which I am properly entitled
(As a true midwesterner should).

Photo of crocuses — Hello, crocuses. I’ll be seeing you soon!

Photo of greenery — Out of winter’s pall come harbingers of spring…

Photo of buttercups — Buttercups! This lawn is COVERED with them. Oh, my heart.

Photo of moss — That moss. It’s a singular green.

Photo of dogs walking — Of course the girls need to get in on the fun.

SOLSC Day 7: How to Write Something Important

Read the prompt.
Paste it into a new document.
Stare at a blinking cursor for three minutes.
Ponder your life choices.
Open a new tab.
Play a number puzzle.
Remind yourself your work isn’t going to write itself.
Think about other stuff you’ve written that maybe comes close.
Open allll those other documents.
Find about twenty words’ worth of usable content.
Paste it in.
Congratulate yourself on a job well done with a break.
Go pet the dog.
Clean the kitchen. Where did all these crumbs come from?
Get back to work. You’re not helping yourself here, you know.
Spend three minutes locating your ear buds.
Spend another two minutes choosing just the right playlist.
Re-open the laptop.
Stare at the cursor for another two minutes.
Decide that maybe you just need to talk it out.
Spend the next ten minutes word-vomiting using dictation.
Realize you’ve just provided yourself with about four usable thoughts.
Spend ten minutes wordsmithing.
Add more thoughts.
Spend another ten minutes wordsmithing.
Realize that none of this gets to the heart of what you want to say.
Sit and think for seven minutes.
FIND THE HEART!
Write furiously for twenty minutes.
Spend thirty minutes rearranging your work.
Throw out half of it in the process.
Read it aloud to your kid.
Take his suggestions. They’re good ones.
Close your laptop.
Promise you won’t look at it again until tomorrow.
Tell your friends you’re proud of yourself for not overthinking.
Start overthinking.
Look at it again.
Decide you still like it.
Close your laptop.
Ask yourself if you should look at it once more before tomorrow, just in case.
Steel yourself. Discipline, Lainie. DISCIPLINE.
Wake up.
Read again.
Let. the. thing. GO.

Slice of Life Day 5: Not Now!

Today has been…a DAY.

Ups.

Downs.

Craziness.

Random moments of validation, sincerity, success.

The answer is, YES. I’m doing a fair amount of writing.

And the answer is NO, I’m not sure it’s writing I’m ready to share.

Just know I’ve got stuff cookin’…

Will I have more tomorrow? You BETCHA.

Slice of Life Day 5: Every Day is Book Day

A friend of mine posted to her social media story today: Happy World Book Day!

And I thought, what? How on earth did I, a certified Word Nerd, an avowed bibliophile, a lover of literature, a collector of both dust and paperbacks, miss something as significant as World Book Day!?

So being the card-carrying geek that I am, I looked it up, only to discover that World Book Day is actually on April 23, but it’s Book Day in the UK because the April date coincides with the Easter school holiday.

But then…why wait ’til April? Why not celebrate books any old day of the year? So, just as Winnie-the-Pooh takes the privilege of celebrating Unbirthdays, I shall take the privilege of celebrating Unbook Day. And to celebrate, I shall share the books in the queue on my nightstand.

First in Line. Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (yes, the same author who wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”). Imagine men discovering a civilization inhabited entirely by women. It’s…pretty much everything you’d expect it to be. Which is AWESOME. For what it’s worth, this book is a loaner from the very same friend who posted about World Book Day. She’s my reading co-conspirator #1.

Picture of the book "Herland" — My favorite thing about the book so far? The narrator keeps talking about how amazing it is that their clothes have the wonderful pockets that they do. And I think, SEE!? Women’s struggle for pockets is REAL and EVERLASTING.

Next Up. Minority Report by H.L. Mencken. I’ve always wanted to read this book, and my father-in-law happened to have this first publication copy. Still, that’s not the most amazing thing about it. You see, my father-in-law is in the beginning stages of dementia. But before that, he spent a life as an relentless learner. When he read, he would take copious notes. So I don’t just have the book itself, I have all of his notes, numbered and cataloged, as a window into his way of thinking. I can’t wait to spend time there.

Picture of the book "Minority Report," with a numbered note card — Tucked throughout the book are index cards, numbered notes in the end pages, jottings on pages… an embarrassment of riches.

Also Waiting its Turn. The Fish Can Sing by Halldor Laxness. I’m actually not sure about this one. A colleague of mine placed it in my hands and told me it wasn’t her cup of tea, but she thinks it might be mine. I promised her I’d give it a go. We’ll just have to see what happens.

Photo of the book "The Fish can Sing" — How this one will go is ANYONE’s guess.

But Wait! There’s More! I happen to be blessed with a window seat by my bed, which is the perfect spot for a makeshift bookshelf (you can see it up top). While such a “To Be Read” list looks daunting, it’s a comfort knowing I’m not in danger of being without something good to read. All those dear titles, so eagerly waiting their turn. Be patient, my pretties. I’ll get to you soon enough!

Slice of Life Day 4: Mind Blown

Animated picture of a man reading a book

My fifth grade class started out innocently enough.

We’ve been studying allegorical fiction, and we’ve studied over a half dozen picture books in the process. Today, I shared an award-winning allegorical animated short called How to Wait for a Very Long Time.

Students began by watching the film a few times, just to figure out what actually happens throughout and at the end. Once I inform them the story is an allegory, we watch it a few more times to discuss the meaning and draw parallels to the real world. During the viewing, students are allowed to ask me to pause the film so they can either discuss or take notes.

It was during one such viewing that a kid said, “Wait, go back. That part was in first person.”

What??

Indeed, that part – and one other brief moment – were told via first-person narration. As in, we saw the world the way the protagonist sees it:

Photo of a video on a screen — The story is mostly told using third-person narration.

Picture of a video on a screen — First-person narrative view: ya see it?

WHOA.

I don’t know why, in all my years of being an avid consumer of animated shorts, I had never, ever stopped to consider narrative point-of-view as a literary device. I don’t know how I have watched this video easily fifty times already, and I had not yet noticed what this kid saw.

And now that I see it, I’ll be thinking about it all the time. And not just in animated shorts. It’s like taking a video and deciding which way the camera’s going to point.

And now that I’m thinking about that, I guess I’ll have to start thinking about all the craft moves I’m missing with film, video, animation.

You know, I always leave class smiling when students experience a mind-blowing moment. Experiencing one for myself today? Well, it made getting out of bed absolutely WORTH it.

Slice of Life Day 3: Are You Stuck?

There I sat with my fourth-graders today, in the last class of a heckedy-peg sort of day. Together, we were composing stories inspired by the work of Leo Lionni. The room was quiet, save cello music and scattered tapping of keys.

At one point, I saw a student across the room from me. He wasn’t typing, and he had…a certain look on his face. I called his name and asked, “Are you thinking? Or are you stuck?” He assured me he was just thinking, and we both drifted back into our own reverie.

Several minutes later, I must have had a similar look on my face because a separate student said to me, across the room, “Are you thinking? Or are you stuck?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe a little bit of both? I’m trying to work out my beginning.”

He nodded, satisfied with my answer, and returned to his work. But…how much do I love that he was paying attention? How much do I love that he adopted the language of self-advocacy? How much do I love that he’s doing what writers in a community DO?

It was a hopeful end to a tricky day.

And, if you’re interested in what I was working on, here’s the passage I worked on, complete with the crowdsourcing request for my students:

Slice of Life Day 2: Today…

…started with a jolt, with an alarm that buzzed me awake a half an hour early, dogs licking my elbows and a back still in revolt from…I don’t know…doing puzzles wrong?…that brought me, creaking, cracking, out of my pajamas and to the shower, then back into DIFFERENT pajamas for a pajama day at school that I’m forever paranoid I’ll get wrong, showing up to school in flannels when everyone else looks normal and I’m the oddball, straight into the car and to my doctor’s appointment, where I feel the uncontrollable urge to explain to everyone I see that no, I’m not a gal who just goes to the doctor in pajamas, I’m a PROFESSIONAL for God’s sake, and this is part of my JOB, only to wait an insane amount of time for a doctor who’s somehow running over a half an hour behind for a 7:15 appointment (riddle me that, Batman), only to be given a shot in the arm (if only it were figurative) before I’m sent on my way to school, white-knuckled and praying I’ll get there in some semblance of timeliness, right as students are getting ready for the day and I can breathe a sigh of relief that I’ve made it in plenty of time to get ready for my students, who, thankfully, have shown up ready to work and have fun, as evidenced by their earnest storytelling here, surrounded by their adoring fans: