Sunday Sit-Down #12: The Floodgates Open

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. Given that April is also poetry month, I’m also stacking that challenge right on top. As I often say when beginning anything tricky or ambitious, “We’ll see what happens.”

Pump primed, slate cleaned
My education could begin:

My first introduction was
CHIEF
That proud symbol of school pride
And heritage
That everyone has to have
On the sweatshirts we buy
And maybe this is weird while I’m asking
But if he’s so dignified
What’s with the war paint
And whooping and hollering
And the Boy Scout Manual dance
And tomahawk chops
And the clapping along to
“This is the Indian’s song?”
Eh. I could take him or leave him.

On campus I learned the other-ness of being a Jew:
I quickly developed a sixth sense for detecting
evangelical swagger.
The “I-care-about-you’s”
and the “Jesus-will-save-you’s”
and the “Do-you-do-any-reading-of-the-Word’s”
all had a certain look to them
(just as they recognized
the curly hair,
the Semitic complexion,
the tell-tale nose).
It’s why Hillel became my place,
where Yiddish was a form of currency,
Jewish geography threading a familiar, comfortable cloth.
I was among people who GOT me
without introduction or explanation or apology.

But just as I needed the like-me,
I needed the not-like-me
Anyone who would allow me to join:

The Zeta house, where my sisters
Were Christian
And Jewish
And Muslim
And Buddhist
And every color
And our national organization called us
“The United Nations Chapter”
except, I think, they didn’t mean it so kindly,
which is partly why I don’t donate to them now,
but I digress

The Asian-American Association
At the house on campus
And their meetings,
Vibrant and inspired and contentious
And wow are there layers
Upon layers

Salongo
At the res hall,
Spades tourneys and movie nights and step shows
And t-shirts emblazoned
“It’s a Black thing, you wouldn’t understand”
but I saw a shirt that read you MUST understand – shouldn’t we say that?
There are things you must understand. And…there are things you can’t.
Let it not stop you from learning or doing.

Poetry Month Day 3: On Birthdays

Birthdays
should be marked
by cake and ice cream,
Instagram posts and Facebook wishes
Or texts, the kind with hearts
And balloons
And silly memes

but
this time
next time
every time

I’d settle
for
anything
that fills the absence.

I draft and scribble out poems in my head:

a catalog of today’s distractions

our conversation in the sun today

the four times I cried
(frustration, grief, happiness, gratitude)

how I wonder if other people
get to talk to those
long-gone, or not-so-long-gone,
or if I am lucky
or just weird

how dumb it is to depend on words anyway –
the arrogance of insisting
life can always be willed
into poem.

Poetry Month Day 2: Now it Makes Sense

The last days
have felt
like my shoes were on
the wrong feet,
like the stuck wheel
on a shopping cart
or the rattle at the front end
of the car
that has to mean something,
if I could figure out what

I can’t for the life
of me
understand
why words won’t come,
why they feel so heavy and slow,
why they sink
beyond my grasp
why I resist
taking the time to
sit in my
own self
to figure out why

And then
I check the calendar:
tomorrow
Jess would have been twenty

And I know
I’ll have to
write of her
tomorrow

And I know
tomorrow
I will
stop
sit
sink

And I know
my entire self
will brace
against the pain
against the keen muscle memory
of grief
my breath will catch
to feel it sharp, sharper
without knowing how
or when
or if
it may subside.


Poetry Month Day 1: Untitled

is what you call a poem
when you sit down to write
and the words flutter
every which-way
despite your
pleas to
land

is when you have just wrestled
metaphor to within
inches of its life,
nailing it down
tying it
to a
chair*

is for words wriggling too fast
when you try to capture
them, but they keep on
squirming away,
writhing out
of your
hands

so you just shrug your shoulders
and you dust yourself off
and call it a poem
and set it free
and away
you can
go

*a reference to BIlly Collins’s poem, Introduction to Poetry

Slice of Life Challenge 2021 Day 31: Begin, End

Today marks the final day of the Slice of Life challenge. I’ve deeply enjoyed the challenge of writing every day this month. I’ve grown as a writer and as a human in ways I’ll still be thinking about for weeks to come.

I tried to capture how I’m feeling on the last day of this challenge. I know it’s the end, but I don’t want to treat it as an end. I’d like to see it as the universe’s nudge to get me to start writing more often. So I thought I’d put this reverso poem out there. It’s meant to be read aloud from top to bottom, and then again from bottom to top.

I’ll also say this. This poem is a living reminder that I don’t always have to love my work. I will confess that I don’t 100% love this poem, and I’m not fully satisfied. But if I’ve learned anything about writing or myself in this past month, it’s that sometimes that happens. Sometimes I just don’t have adequate words to articulate my thoughts.

It’s still important to write them anyway.

A beginning
Ripe for
Energy, optimism
New and delightful things
To see
Wait around the corner
I can always hope
Gathering close
To hold
Head-full, heart-full learnings
Reflection, wisdom
Brings me to
An end

Slice of Life 2021, Day 30: Here I Am

Today marks Day 30 of the Slice of Life challenge. Join me as I work to write every day in March – and beyond!

For T. You inspire me.

In the middle of a highly scheduled day

In the middle of a hard-fought moment of plan time

In the middle of a to-do list that has grown up to my eyeballs

In the middle of my anxiety about how I’m going to get it all done

In the middle of a technology outage

In the middle of wondering how on earth I will move forward NOW –

There is a note,

An email from a student,

A deeply felt, heart-heavy piece.

It stops me.

It takes me by the shoulders and says look,
Look
At this
Look at what I have given this world
Listen to me
For I give voice to
Those things
Which clamor for surface,
For air
For breath
Despite our efforts to push down,
Turn away,
Ignore

It says
I will not be ignored
Or turned away
Or pushed down
I am your inner voice

And will I speak of light
And dark
And love
And conflict
And rising to the surface
And plunging down again

So speak to me
I am always there
Whether you hear me
Or not

Call me from the shadows
Beckon me from darkness
And
I will learn to spread light.

Slice of Life 2021 Day 29: WHOOSH

Today marks Day 29 of the Slice of Life challenge. Join me as I work to write every day in March – and beyond!

Today. *

Today I blogged.

And before that I cobbled together my bananapants schedule for tomorrow: lesson to lesson, meeting to meeting.

And before that I thought through my lesson I’ll be sharing with kids on mentally preparing for standardized testing. While we’re on the subject, I’m not a fan at ALL of teaching kids to a test. If kids have skills, they have skills. But. Anything we can do to give our loveys a sense of control over their testing environment? Anything that will allow the kids to see how they can keep their wits about them in an anxiety-rich situation? I’m all in favor of THAT. This lesson is a follow-up to one I taught earlier about strategies for keeping cool in stressful times.

One more tool we have for keeping our wits about us!

And before that I checked in with a former student of mine, who’s brimming with rich fantasy worlds she wants to create through graphic novels.

And before that I got to work car line again for the first time in almost a month. I missed those faces!

And before that I shared Leo Lionn’s Frederick with my third graders. I opened up the Zoom chat to everyone in the group. Sometimes that goes haywire. Today it didn’t. They shared such insightful comments and ideas, like – “Frederick was misunderstood.” Yes, yes he WAS misunderstood. And now let’s talk about what it means to be UNDERESTIMATED. (We’ll be going places with that one, friends.)

And before that I assembled as many materials and activities for the self-guided learning my groups will do over the coming weeks. I. Am. Far. From. Done.

And before that I choked down my lunch standing at my kitchen counter with my puppy at my heels because SOMEONE had to let her out mid-day, and that somebody turned out to be me.

I think she likes me…

And before that I cranked my way through morning classes, eager to see students after a week, and trying my best to play whack-a-mole with student attendance, through patchy internet, through sound problems, and all those wonderful things we got to avoid in our week off.

And before that I recorded my weekly pep talk for my kids. I’ve been taking the kids through brief (2-minute) lessons about what it means to be smart, about what that means for the way we see ourselves and others. Today’s pep talk was about explanatory style, and how that feeds into our feelings.

Because we deserve to understand the way we think and feel and move about this world.

And before that I executed my morning routine with the customary military logistics a school day requires: waking, showering, letting dogs out, feeding dogs, making chai, smooching the spouse goodbye, praying the 17-year-old is up, grabbing my stuff and heading out to school.

And before that I felt my alarm buzzing on my wrist mid-dream, wondering why I was being woken at 5:45 when, in fact, it was 6:30…

*Special thanks to Vivian Chen and Fran McVeigh, who first gave me the inspiration to use this form. Visit them. Theirs, I assure you, are some amazing pieces of writing. =))

Sunday Sit-Down #11: On My Way

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. It’s also day 28 of the Slice of Life challenge.

High school.

If you’ve ever worked with high school kids, you’d know that it’s a time of profound drama, often bordering on melodrama. The years are steeped in a quest for self and identity. To a high schooler, it feels isolating and alone – like no other could possibly understand what they are going through.

Adults in the lives of high schoolers know it’s something that EVERYONE goes through.

This is the quirk of high school. It’s also the charm, if you happen to like kids that age.

I was no different. My big quest for individuality had all the major pieces to it: tension with friends, a longing for any semblance of a dating life, pressure to succeed. I was discovering myself, mostly through writing, musical expression, and just plain being a floppy old goof.

And, like absolutely nobody and everybody, I saw college as a fresh start.

It was my time to consider and craft who I wanted to be in this world, and what I wanted to be for myself and for others.

That included my attitude and actions with regard to race. I was hot on the heels of discovering that injustice and inequality was still a problem despite my early learning to the contrary. My high school’s newspaper article on Black English seemed like such a small thing, but it sparked such intense controversy that I knew there had to be more. I just didn’t know what.

So, when I packed my bags for my time at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I set my resolve to “unpack” my current belief system where it came to race and identity. I set out for school with the mission to better understand our world and the people in it.

I’m still not there. I think the “there” of understanding is a moving target, just like any ideal should be. But setting off to college with this intention held a key part in shaping who I am now.

I’ll dig in a little deeper next week. See you then.

Slice of Life 2021 Day 27: Pandemic Passover

Today marks Day 27 of the Slice of Life challenge. Join me as I work to write every day in March – and beyond!

There’s something to be said, she thought,
as she leaned back in her chair,
looked around at the too-small gathering
and gulped that last bit of wine,

for the metaphor of Passover:
a release from plague,
a liberation,
a freedom from bondage
a rebirth,
a journey that lasts
far beyond anyone’s expectations:

the crossing through desert
anxious, impatient, antsy
the wandering, wondering
without end insight
save
the occasional mirage –

Yes, she assured herself,
as she signed off her Zoom connection,
there has to be some parallel,
if only I could think of what it was…

Slice of Life 2021, Day 26: Out of Commission

Today would have been one of those great days to have a slice already typed and ready to go.

Because today, everything I’ve got – my attention, my creative juices, and basically any and all focus I have are going straight to my lower back, which is in the throes of some SUPER muscle spasms. And, as much as I hate the idea of writing about physical ailments for a whole host of reasons, it’s also the only thing my mind gives me the ability to express today.

I’ve tweaked my back before, and I’ve managed to stretch and nurse my way out of it. This time, it’s a humDINGER. Like, a suck-all-the-air-out-of-the-room kind of deal. And really, it’s been happening for a few weeks, but I’m generally too stubborn to admit that it’s an actual thing until I can’t get around it.

A trip to the physical therapist, the urgent care clinic and the chiropractor later, I’m loaded up on breathing and stretching exercises.

Oh. And a whole mess of steroids and muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories.

So, if you happen to notice that I’m not as lively in my participation or responses, that *may* be the reason why.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start ruminating on tomorrow’s slice…