This evening I saw out the doors of my gym a sun shower and after showing a six year-old how wonderful the smell of rain is
I dodged the drops to my car all the time looking at the contrasting steel gray sky
Knowing this was the perfect time and place for rainbows.
I craned my neck as I walked, then drove, scouring, searching, wondering how there could NOT be one anywhere
And then it hit me that there are some times we want signs we pray for them and search for them but that won’t make them appear
Until I drove north and was doubly rewarded so I’m not sure if it’s a sign to be guarded in my sign-seeking or if it’s a sign that maybe I shouldn’t ever doubt in the magic of signs
a box that arrives out of the blue with an armful of books and a brainfull of ideas
or a pupper who plays, overjoyed with absolutely every single toy she can find (especially when they squeak)
the smell of lilacs coming to me in odd waves as I step out of the car or turn the corner around the block
and some bits of joy less plain:
the kid who originally gets the answer wrong but makes you realize that yes, masks can be wonderful because they are scary because some people have fun in the scaring
or the teenage son telling me I’m like cheese or potato salad in human form and knowing it comes from love
because joy must be accepted as a gift, with both hands, however it is dressed or wrapped or bagged or handed over or slopped on a plate
Joy, even in its least flattering forms, is still joy.
Of the ohsomany soapboxes I yell from, there’s one that lies at the bottom the one upon which all others stand
It’s the one I first uncovered in the dimly-lit museum at the base of the Gateway Arch as I listened rapt to the storyteller
and I couldn’t even tell you who it was and I couldn’t even tell you what they told just that I wanted to be up THERE doing THAT
And it was this soapbox that got me my first teaching job after the interview was over when the principal came back into the room and said you said you were a storyteller tell us a story and so i did
And it is this soapbox I get to dust off every so often when I visit a classroom and share in the magic
And it’s no surprise to me the way they listen the way the rowdiest the goofiest the trickiest of all to reach the squiggliest cans of worms stop to listen rapt (I knew they would)
And it’s no surprise when the struggling readerwriter stands on that soapbox and flies shines thrives when it’s their turn to speak what’s in their bones (I knew they would)
A single dandelion is just a weed, poking its spiky leaves right where it has no business being
and yet
a field of them is a wonder to behold, I thought as I gazed at the carpet of yellow and green on my way in from today’s fire drill.
And then I saw her, her kindergarten fingers clutched clumsily around the stems she picked and held while she was in line and wanted to carry inside I didn’t see her go in
but
I found these where she had stood.
Did she get bored? Was she told to leave the outside, outside? Did someone tease her? Was she startled when someone said boo? Was there a grown-up too preoccupied To see and recognize her gifts?
Perhaps one of those things. Perhaps any of those things. We will never know what she intended, only what she left behind:
glimpses of beauty yellow, fragrant, withering along the sidewalk
Each Sunday, I’m working my way through my experiences with race. I’ll share stories and memories from throughout my life. I know I’ll encounter moments of growth that I wish I could relive. I’ll also have to think back on choices that I wish I could remake. Come join me each week.
I remember in college having room in my schedule for a couple of extra classes so I signed up for multi-culti studies
which is where I first learned
about white apologizing and also what-about-ism masked as curiosity
and I remember how hard I worked to understand criticism of dominant culture
and I remember I tried so hard with my Nation of Islam paper to understand how people could hate my people so very much that I almost explained it away, rationalized the caricatures in the Final Call comic strips
but Professor McCarthy said no sometimes prejudice is what it is, regardless of whether it comes from the disempowered and I thought
huh
well I guess that’s something new.
And I remember trying to make sure my student teaching experience brought questions of diversity past FOODFOLKSFUN so we had a debate about immigration which was actually pretty eye-opening (as a matter of fact, so were the swastika doodles one of my loveys drew in his notebook)
and I also realized that for most of my kids the question was not about color of skin but the freeness of their lunch
(and something tells me much of that is still the case, and that if people really figured out that the shaft is given to people across the racial rainbow some folks would really be in trouble)
so sometimes what they needed was to keep making their New Year’s Dragons, their Kente cloths, their tissue paper flowers
as long as the love poured free and so did the morning snacks.
There was a lot that I enjoyed about writing today’s poem. For one, it came as a surprising counterbalance to yesterday’s post. I also gathered inspiration from my time today with an incredible group of educators through the Just Schools Cohort. The work my colleagues do inspires me to do better, to be better.
That, and the fact that I’m a complete math geek at the heart of things. It’s nice when I can flex that muscle every so often.
Those who wish to perfect this world who wish it to be smooth and round and beautiful forget that a perfect sphere is only a thing mathematically:
understand. A circle is but a collection of points, the round world a fractal consisting of infinite corners, with infinite spaces between them
(and no matter how close those points stand, we can find infinite points between them, and points between them, which is why pi is such a big deal anyway)
so maybe the question is not about making our world perfect and round
but
whether we can connect those corners those tiny spaces within and between our selves and others, bending into formation, connecting point to point to point
and
perhaps, rather than a sphere, the shape of a perfect world
What do you do with all of your ideas, they wondered that you gather during the day?
She thought a moment, pursed her lips looked real hard to her left (as if something were there) then she shrugged her shoulders and said,
Depends.
The idea might be thin and wispy so I’d carry it like a scrap of paper, tucking it wherever it might fit best
Or it might be rough and scrabbly, so I might work it with my hands, roll it around my brain until it’s smooth and shiny
For the one that might be handy I’d plunk it into my pocket and carry it around with the keys and the loose change and the day’s worries until I needed it
Some others still just need to live in my mind, traveling in and out of rooms whispering when they want to and shouting when they must.
Soapbox: The Way I see Things 