The Purple One

Ann and I are tucked into a small cabin by the Metolius River just outside of Sisters, Oregon. The cabin is so old, we walk downhill to enter the kitchen, but it's quiet and clean and just the place for us to be after seeing the puppies for the first time. The picture above is of the "purple one" -- a sweet boy who we held today and may end up being "our dog"...though there is another male (a blue one) who may also be the choice. It's up to the breeder who will choose based on personality and not by the color of the little bands they wear around their necks.

We'd be happy with either...they are so, so adorable (a word I usually avoid using, but today, while holding them in my hands there was no other word for their puppy breath, their puppy smell, their puppy kisses).

It's been a whirlwind trip. Tomorrow we drive 6 hours back home and then back to work Monday morning. Ann has had even more of a whirlwind this week. She left for Madison on Monday morning, returned on Thursday night, we drove to Portland Friday morning and then to Sisters this morning. Sisters isn't close to anything so we drove back and forth between this little cabin by the river and the house of puppies further north, stopping in between for soup and a sandwich at Russian deli and dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

And through it all, we've talked only about the puppies!

Terrie, the breeder, was wonderful. Kind, informative, and very concerned about her dogs, their health, and the health of the puppies. She's an animal person, for certain, with a blue crested Amazon parrot in her kitchen and a bevvy of dogs in the backyard and in the house. She used to own horses, but doesn't have the time for it anymore. Her husband is a painter, but pays the bills contracting a few days a week. We didn't get to meet him, but we saw his paintings. While we would never buy them, he is talented and hopes in his retirement to paint full time.

We originally chose this breeder because she was recommended and the mother of the current pups is named Abbey, which happened to be the name of the first dog I ever owned when I was officially an adult. But the more we talked today, the more we realized how much we had in common with the breeder. She and Ann talked about esophogial (sp?) cancer, which both of their fathers have been diagnosed with -- Ann's father most recently and Terrie's a year ago. Terrie gave Ann some hope because her father is now cancer free. In addition to the father/cancer connection, I used to own an Amazon parrot so we swapped stories about parrots and their funny antics. There were many more connections, but listing them doesn't seem important. What was important is that we felt wonderfully confident that this was EXACTLY the woman from whom we wanted to purchase our next dog.

Meanwhile, Sisters is a trip. I've been here many times before, but Ann never has. I love the scenery and I really enjoy the high desert air, but amazingly I've forgotten how redneck and white the place is. The only people of color we've seen are the Mexican owners and workers of the recently opened Mexican restaurant where we ate dinner tonight. Everyone else is either cowboy boot and dusty conservative or sinfully wealthy and well-pressed Republican. The only moment we felt like we belonged (aside from being with the puppies) was in the local bookstore whose liberal offerings and folkie music (The Weepies -- which the clerk was surprised I'd heard of...) made us sigh and relax a bit. It took over an hour to get seated tonight for dinner and I felt very much as if the "gay girls" were forced to wait while the Republicans all took their seats. Ann thinks I'm being paranoid, but it sure felt odd to be stared at for an hour.

Still, it's been a very successful trip. In a month we'll come back to Sisters, pick up the new pup and head back to Hillsboro to stay with my brother and sister-in-law who've graciously allowed us to stay at their house while "passing through" to puppy land. If you're reading this big brother and dearest sister-in-law, you're absolutely going to go ga-ga over the pup (who I'm pretty sure will be named Rueben or Reuben because that's how it was spelled on the lunch menu at the Russian deli...or maybe Rubin so there won't be any trouble with e before u or u before e...)

Ann says she can't hear it, but the man in the cabin next door to ours is snoring. Could spell trouble, but earplugs solve everything.

Long drive tomorrow...best get my rest tonight. A sweet goodnight to all family and friends who read these blogs and who, we know, are awaiting the new puppy as much as we are.

It Goes Like This

I hear the doorbell. I scoot down the hall in my stocking feet and slide to the front door thinking maybe Cecilia's come by or perhaps Dely or Laurie to check up on me while I'm "alone" for the week with Ann off in Wisconsin.

I look through the peephole, but I don't have my glasses on so the person outside the door just looks like a bundle with rain dripping off the edges.

Cecilia?

I open the door and there stands a man I think I know, but am not so certain I know. There are lots of homeless folks around the neighborhood. I saw three such men today, huddled in a driveway a few blocks up the street. When I walked by, they got quiet, squatted closer together and eyed me from under their rain-soaked baseball caps.

There's also a number of crack addicts. They wander the streets in sleeveless shirts oblivious to the rain or the wind or the recent cold snap. I see them early in the morning as I walk to school swaying their arms like they haven't got a care in the world. They strut, pacing a street corner in frenetic circles waiting for their dealer to drive by or walk by or once, to my amazement, bicycle by. They shout out nonsense peppered with insults and curses and toss their heads to the sky like god is carrying on one half of the conversation.

So the man at my front door could have been homeless or drugged up, but he was submissive and calm and stood like a wet puppy on the first step of the stairway so it was hard to tell. He looked up, "Hi, I don't know if you remember me, but I used to live across the street and I once borrowed gas from you."

When we first moved into the neighborhood, the house across the street was abandoned. Squatters occupied it occasionally and one night a mid-sized RV pulled up to the front curb and ran an electrical cable to the basement of the house. They sat their for days until the police showed up and moved them on their way -- which happened to be one block over and one block up.

The man on my front porch lived in that RV and to earn money, he mowed lawns, hauled away people's garbage, and busied himself as a gruff handyman. Two boys in the neighborhood worked for him and he ordered them around, cussing and swearing loud enough that the engine of the mower couldn't drown him out.

We did give him gas for his lawn mower, but just once. He always said he's pay us back, but he never did. Instead, he just kept showing up and asking if we could spare some more gas. Eventually, even Ann's midwestern kindness faded.

We haven't seen him around for about a year now, until tonight when he stood at the front step, drenched and deshevled.

"I just need a bit of work," he kept saying. "Do you have anything for me?"

I'm always torn by those who are down and out. Part of me wanted to give him money. The other part knew that giving him money meant he'd be back next week and the week after that like a woodpecker on a dead stump. And he didn't really look like the same guy who used to boss around young kids making them do all the work while he hauled in all the cash. That man was strong. He stood tall and barked his orders with authority.

This man looked lost. He stood hunched, his head down, and he barely looked me in the eye. He was beaten. I don't know if it was drugs or hard times, but he really wasn't the same man we'd tried to help years earlier.

I decided not to give him money partly because, with Ann away until Thursday, I am home alone with no dog to signal warnings. There have been robberies of late -- the neighbor up the street, the neighbor just behind us -- and it's hard to know if this man still has kids working for him. I doubt it, but still...And I didn't give him money partly because, even though he didn't look like the same man, he claimed that he was and the man he was before was not a man I liked very much. He was mean, he was deceitful, and took advantage of kids who were just trying to earn a dollar or two.

"If you don't have no work, could you spare a dollar?"

When the crack addicts ask me for money on the corners, it's easy to say no. I know exactly where my money would end up. But occasionally, when the homeless ask for change, I give it to them. Like the old man who stands outside Walgreens with a cup and his cane and smiles a greeting as I pass by. I give him change and he nods and blesses me. Once he was in line in front of me at the grocery store buying a loaf of bread. He didn't have enough money so I paid for the rest. He blessed me then, too.

Folks in the neighborhood tell me he's not really homeless, that he lives in an old run-down house behind the grocery store. Giving him money seems to have a point, but giving money to someone who just knocks on my door early in the evening doesn't feel right.

When I finally shut the door, I could hear him still asking away. "I don't mean no harm, miss," but I couldn't listen. I don't want to be cold and cruel. I don't want to be someone who turns their back on those in need, but sometimes it goes like this -- you just have to close the door. You have to choose and all the reasons for choosing are screwy sometimes and sometimes it's just a matter of what's in your gut. There was doubt in my gut tonight and I tried to listen to it.

Sometimes it just goes like this.

It Came Down To This...

We talked for a long time this weekend. In between the basketball games and the laundry and Ann packing for her trip back to Wisconsin, we weighed our options. My options, really, but they will impact both of us. In my head I created the plus and minus columns and tabulated the results the deeper into the discussion we went.

And it came down to what was best for the new puppy we are soon to get (about a month away). I have always loved animals. No matter where I am, if there's a dog or a cat in the room, they climb up on or next to me. Perhaps I was a house pet in my previous life, but no matter the aura, they are as drawn to me as I am to them.

A dream I've always had (aside from spending my days writing) is to be a dog trainer. I never really knew how to go about it, but took opportunities to help train friends' dogs whenever I could. Since the Dog Whisperer has gained such popularity, the dog training profession seems to be a bit more prestigious. I've looked into earning a certification many times before, but now that I'm back in the city, the options are limitless.

I want to raise our new pup as a therapy dog -- a calm dog who ventures into children's hospitals and nursing homes to lay his head on some soul's lap for comfort and scratches. We chose to get a Labradoodle precisely for this reason -- a non-shedding, hypo-allergenic dog bred for a calm disposition and intelligence.

Staying at my current job allows me to raise the puppy literally at my side since I can take the dog to work, put on his "working dog" vest, and train him to stay calm amid the adolescent chaos of a middle school. Plus, we live 6 blocks from school and if I need to keep him at home, I can race back to the house during lunch or breaks to check on him.

If I left my job, the dog would be less of a companion animal and more of a pet. His therapy training would happen in between my work schedule at an undetermined business and I wouldn't have easy access to home or to work.

So here's the plan: One more year of teaching and while I'm teaching, I'll get my dog training certificate, build a network of job opportunities (outside of classroom teaching) all the while training our dog to do therapy work in and out of the classroom.

One more year. I need to stay focused, work on my boundaries, and give all my attention to my students for just one more year.

Who knows what will come with that decision. Right now, there are a few opportunities that just might open up -- a trainer for an anti-bullying program, working with the "horse whisperer" to teach parents better parenting skills, joining forces with a dynamic woman who is using current brain research to help eliminate the achievement gap in schools, or even REI with its excellent benefits and equally wonderful opportunities to move up into something like training or educational work with local kids. Or even just being a dog trainer...

"Don't just react," my friend told me the other day. "Take your time and everything will unfold as it should."

There's a lesson I can learn.

As for the dog, we travel down to Sisters next week to meet him...yes, it will be a him although we don't know which him it will be. At the end of April, that him will come home and the next weekend we begin our "therapy" training every Saturday morning way out in Woodinville, which a friend from Rhode Island pronounces as W00- Din- Ville versus "Wooden" ville..the way it's pronounced out here. It will be nice to have something else to focus on. It will be nice to have something to ground me, lower my blood pressure, and make me laugh. It will be nice to remember Chester and what an amazing dog he was. It will be nice to take the new dog for visits. It will even be nice to clean up his messes.

It's come down to this...

Our Current Focus

Today was a weird day. I worked at home, meeting with our Dean of Faculty and one other teacher to write up our assigned section of the accreditation document. It's a beast. And frankly, once we get approved for accreditation, the document will sit on a shelf somewhere and no one will pay any attention to it.

Still, we blurred our eyes and fried our brains editing, rewriting, and rephrasing the document...again and again and again.

It's hard to stay motivated when I feel so torn about work. I love my job on the one hand -- the teaching, the kids, the families -- and abhor it on the other -- the lack of structure, the deceit, the inability and unwillingness to diminish the chaos. I went back and forth today between leaving at the end of this year and staying for one more year ...

...and then the phone rang and we got the message from school that one of our students (she was in my class last year) has been diagnosed with cancer. That makes student number 2 with such a diagnosis. They aren't sure exactly which kind of cancer, yet, but it's not looking good.

Why, my teaching partner asked me over the phone, do the most messed-up families have to cope with such tragedy?

It's true...E. who is battling leukemia, lives in a family that can barely dress themselves let alone raise a child. V., the recent student diagnosed with some kind of lymphoma, has parents who can barely say a kind word to each other and are equally torn about their expecatations for their daughter.

There's weird ju-ju in the atmosphere...I'm telling you...weird-ass ju-ju.

So instead, we're focusing on this...

One of these cute bundles with their eyes closed will be ours. We drive down to Sisters, Oregon next weekend where we'll meet them along with their human owners and spend our time rolling around on the floor smelling their puppy heads. They're only 2 weeks old in this picture, but by next weekend, their eyes will be open and they'll be moving around a bit more at 4 weeks old.

I can hardly wait. I'm already so excited about a new dog in our house, I'm not even sure I can wait until the end of April when we drive back down to Sisters to pick him up. Yes, it looks as if it will be a him and one of the darker, redder hims piled somewhere in this photo.

I find myself dreaming about the puppy wondering how he'll do during our long drive back from Sisters to Seattle with a stop along the way at my brother and sister-in-laws house so we can spend the night and let the little guy meet his four-footed relatives, Hope and Ringo. Should be interesting.

I dream about our walks through the neighborhood and our first visit to the vet. I dream about how much he'll enjoy our doggie friends -- Monty and Lulu and Josie and Lucky and Salal and Ben and Keenan. I dream about our ferry ride to Bremerton to see Grandma and Grandpa and then Fossilguy and Bookworm. I dream about how everyone will "ooh" and "ahh" and giggle and snuggle over the little fur ball. And dreaming of it all keeps my spirits up. Knowing we're ready for a new dog in my life gives me hope.

I can hardly wait to feel his soft, full belly and listen to him sleep deeply, twitching his little paws as he dreams next to me.

When does the stronger come?

I am on a three-year cycle. Every three years (or sometimes six) I think about quitting my job or changing my job or going back to school. This time it's three years...three years in my current teaching position and I can't even contemplate coming back next year.

Not because of the kids or the teaching or my colleagues, but because of the politics and mismanagement. It's all too complicated to write about so I won't, but needless to say I feel exhausted, unmotivated, and nasty. Why do people treat each other this way? Why do "institutions" always resort to such misguided, inhumane tactics to get to their glorified goals?

Or is it just me?

Last week I experienced the worst convergence of early menopause (sweating, irritability, and rage) on top of pre-menstrual angst (bloating, headaches, and snappishness). It wasn't pretty. I was all emotion. I kept it in pretty well until the faculty meeting where the Head of School lied without actually lying, avoided confrontation by agreeing with me, and forged on ahead like an enormous bulldozer rolling town a tiny stream. "By god we're moving forward no matter what delicate ecosystems we destroy."

I felt like my head was going to pop off my neck. I turned bright red. Still, I kept the emotion somewhat contained and what do you know, the next day an enormous cold sore popped out on my lower lip.

So much for containing emotions.

Here's the dilemma:

My teaching partner is leaving. Our Dean of Faculty was essentially fired (that's where the lying without lying came into the conversation), and I feel left hanging without any support systems for next year. I look around at the rest of the faculty and while I respect them, there isn't one person I feel I can ally with, one person who I can be supported by at the same time support them.

Teaching without M., working without the Dean, A., bringing in a new partner is like starting a new job all over again, but one I'm not sure I would have chosen if there was any choosing to do.

To make things even more complicated, IF I were to quit, I'd be leaving the school in a really tough spot as I am the only anchor for our grade team -- I created the curriculum, I've been teaching it for 3 years, and I'm the one who really understands how the whole thing works. I walk away and I'm not really certain what impact it would have on the school. Would the new enrollees pull their kids? Would the administration demand that I explain everything before I go? Who knows.

Ann and I talk endlessly about our options. There are many, but is it the right time? Is it just a three year itch that I need to work through? What if I stayed another year? Would things get better? Would I feel better?

My fear is that I'll be completely overwhelmed by a new teaching partner and all the nasty politics that keeps flicking its dragon tail through anything that appears normal or balanced. I don't do well in chaos, yet our school is founded by a woman who creates chaos in EVERY aspect of her life.

Maybe I'm just middle aged. Maybe I'm just hormonally imbalanced. Maybe, as my dear friend Jeanne tells me, I'm a victim of my own passion -- it drives me and it burns me. Whatever it is, I feel like I'm at another crossroads and I can't decided which choice to make.

What was it my therapist said to me years ago -- a choice is just a choice, nothing more, nothing less.

Perhaps, but it feels like there are weird cosmic rays penetrating earth and we're all warped by them and every choice is wrinkled and slighted twisted.

It's not just at work, either. Our neighborhood has been hit with numerous house and auto robberies. A woman at work had her car broken into in the middle of the day right on the street in front of school. The bad boys from down the street are out of jail and they have taken to "hanging out" on every street corner the cops aren't patrolling.

Closer to my heart, FG is on the cancer fence...how much time, how much pain, what kind of treatment? This not only impacts me, but a whole bunch of people I love deeply -- FG, of course, but BookWorm, too as well as my parents all the friends who love FG as I do, probably more than I do.

One more zap from the cosmos came when we found out last week that Ann's dad is dying of esophageal cancer (she's flying back to Madison next week). I wanted to go with her, but I'd have to take unpaid leave (how's that for a family friendly policy) and the airplane tickets are outrageously expensive. Meanwhile, she's unsure of exactly how she feels about it all. He's been drinking and smoking himself into a stupified lump ever since his wife (Ann's mother) left him 40 years ago. Every time Ann's seen him she's unsure how to connect. He gets nasty at times and when Ann calls him on it, he gets quiet. She loves him or the him he used to be, but she says she doesn't really know him anymore.

Convergence.

That which does not kill you makes you stronger.

When does the "stronger" come?

A New Campaign

Epiphany: (Noun) A sudden intuitive leap of understanding, especially through an ordinary but striking occurrence.

I leapt the other day. I was sitting at my desk at home with the radio on in the background. Throughout my two hours of work, I heard the phrase “Children are our future” at least four times during a conversation with an educational analyst who was dismayed at the lack of funding and standards in American schools. I found myself agreeing with this analyst one moment and then, struck with an “intuitive understanding” I realized he had it all wrong.

Children are our future. How often do we hear that phrase? How often do we use it? My firm belief in that expression has driven my work as a teacher for my entire career. In a time of social and political anxiety, I find hope in my students, in the knowledge that they will be the compassionate leaders I long for; that the world will be a better place in their thoughtful hands. Sitting at my desk, correcting papers and planning lessons while half-listening to the radio, my epiphany came fast and strong as I imagine most do. We’ve set ourselves up for failure by doing what my father always warned against: Putting off until tomorrow what we can do today.

Americans have a paradoxical relationship with time. We attend Zen retreats to learn to live “in the now,” but spend hours overworking, saving money, and acquiring the “things” we think will make us happy someday. We schedule our weekend in date books or on Blackberries at the same time we reflect on past mistakes. We race from one place to the next in an effort to “get there” wherever there may be, not really paying attention to the journey and then spend thousands of dollars in therapy to learn how to slow down.

In America, the future is both motivator and excuse, the thing we work towards at the same time fear. We put off homework (remember cramming for the test the night before?), we delay scheduling doctor appointments, paying taxes, cleaning the cat box, flossing our teeth, writing thank you notes, getting to the gym and on and on and on. We procrastinate and in the same breath grow impatient with slow drivers, congested traffic, grocery clerks, long lines, technology, arrogance, and with impatience itself. We rush and multi-task our way through life torn between working too hard and not getting enough done. Our lives are filled with doing and avoiding, and in this oxymoronic relationship with time we throw out the phrase, “Children are our future.”

No, children are our NOW! We can’t wait until tomorrow or in the future of tomorrows. Children are not bills to be paid or traffic to race through. They are not commodities to fund or employees to promote. They are not cargo to move or packages to pick up. They are not the destination, they are the journey; they are the now we pay money to find.

If we continue to put our children’s lives in the undefined future, we avoid our daily obligations on both personal and political levels. A futuristic commitment holds no weight; it’s too easy to disregard the consequences of our daily actions. By saying children are our future we avoid the magnificent and daunting responsibility of raising thoughtful, compassionate, and critical citizens of the world right now.

Children are our now. Say it. Hear yourself say it. Better yet, hear yourself commit to it. Do you feel the shift? Do you feel the urgency? Imagine how priorities might alter if we made such a commitment on a state and national level. Demand that our leaders say it and hear themselves saying it, committing to it.

Children are our now.

Demand an epiphany.

Now.

Thrown Off Course In A Starbuck Moment

From Bookworm's Writing Workshop...thanks for the writing time, BW!

I find myself searching for balance in an unbalanced world.

It happened this morning. Exiting Starbucks, the man in front of me flung open the glass door and slammed it unintentionally into the face of a man passing by. I saw it coming and gasped, spilling my cup scalding onto my hand. The man who walked into the door smacked into it face first, a split in his forehead spurting a tablespoon of blood upon impact. In that silent moment when everyone paused and held a shocked breath, I expected to hear the injured man shout obscenities or at least a “What the hell?” Instead, his apologies spilled forth like the blood from his wound.

Meanwhile, the man who’d pushed open the door smiled innocuously and said nothing. He walked off while I ran back into the shop for napkins as a compress for the bleeding man. There was no apology from the door opener, no sense of worry, not even a helping hand – just a smile, perhaps even a giggle, and then off to his day, a bloody man in his wake.

In the parking lot, I watched another man drive off with his recently purchased vente double pump on the roof of his car. I thought to stop him, but I was still lost in thinking about the man with the gashed forehead. In the end, the driver didn’t hear the thump of the cup or the sloppy spill on his bumper and sped down the avenue oblivious, in so much of a hurry it seemed as if he’d forgotten he’d stopped to get coffee at all.

Later, the drive on the freeway to my appointment was about counting red-tailed hawks perched in hunger on the light posts. Twelve in total, watching for rats, I imagine – unbalanced predators doing their best to dent the burgeoning populations of unbalanced prey. The president was on the radio using words I could not hear and I was thinking about work and how I want to leap and change and manifest myself into something different, something balanced.

Yin and yang, and in these troubled times I feel caught in between.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said that he “cracked up” when he could no longer hold two opposing thoughts in his head at the same time – to be hopeful, for instance in the time of hopelessness.

I feel neither hope nor hopelessness nor do I feel as if I am cracking up. Cracking up, I now think, is more a matter of feeling one without feeling the other – the heavy weight of hopelessness flinging the scale vertically or the equally profound import of hope catapulted by the reality of despair. Balance is quantified in dosages. A bloody forehead and famished hawk. A bouncing coffee cup and a long, fast drive on the freeway.

I have often wondered, at what point did the Romans know their empire was crumbling? At what point did they throw up their hands and say, “Well, folks, it was a nice ride but this isn’t working anymore? We are too far out of balance, we must begin again.”

I know it’s not that simple, that change does not walk in the plain clothes of a monk. Change is layered, like a beggar dressed in pants on top of pants, shirts on top of shirts, wool coats covered by wool coats. Good happens. Bad does too, and we mark our days with what went well and what didn’t, with the memories of a smile or the flame of someone’s anger. The scale tips, first in this direction and then in that and we are forever trying to hold out our arms and balance it all as skillfully as we can.

I find myself counting the weights placed on either side of the scale, observing, speculating, determining if indeed one disaster here can outweigh a thousand little pleasures over there. Can laughter compensate for grief? Can a compliment counteract an insult? Can a drop of compassion stop internal bleeding?

I want to believe it can. I want to believe that balance is achieved not by stacking the weights in our favor, but by relishing the gentle nuances – the rise and fall, the delicate swing at the fulcrum.

There is the man with the bloody forehead apologizing for something that happened to him, something he could not control. And there is the man who walked away, inattentive and seemingly pleased with the world at that moment. We can live in those extremes or we can live in the middle, swaying as if on a ship, our legs firmly planted on the deck piloting this stormy sea of an unbalanced world.

Naming

Why is it, I asked Ann the other day, that people learn the sex of their unborn child and decide to name it right then and there while it's still in the womb, but when they get a new pet they feel they have to "get to know" the animal before they name it? What would our lives have been like if our parents had waited to name us after assessing our personality?

I wonder what my parents would have named me? What was my personality at birth? I had a head of hair, I hear, and I was active. Harry? Harriet? (depending on my gender) Or maybe Spunky or Curly or Frolic? Who knows?

We are getting a puppy. One of these...

We're not sure which one of these, but one of these nonetheless. They are tagged with a colored ban so the breeder can tell them apart. They are not yet named (aside from the color), but when I think of a puppy, names cascade through my mind and I blurt them out.

"Rubin!" I shout at Ann while we watch the latest Netflix movie or "What about Quasi or Psuedo, ya know because they are not quite labs and not quite poodles."

At first, she engaged in these conversations. Then she just rolled her eyes. Now she just ignores me.

We watch the credits scroll by at the end of a TV show or a movie and I try whispering, "Tilly's a nice name. What about Mavis? Phineaus is long, but I like it."

I try to ignore her ignoring.

We're not sure what we'll get. We like the red colored Labradoodles and I think we'd prefer a boy, but then I think, "Ginger's a nice name. Or even Opal or Zelda."

I try to sneak in names. "I met this man Oscar today. That's a nice name, don't ya think?"

No response.

I try a different approach. "You know, there are so many kids whose names I don't like. I'd never name a kid Tyler or Justin," I say and this usually gets a response because, as teachers, we've met one too many Tylers and Justins who are screwy and out of control. "And no way would I name a girl Ashley or Amber or Brittney." Then I say, "So we could name our dog Rumor or Banjo or Splash, ya know, something nonhuman."

Ann turns away. She will not engage.

Nell. Prudence. Abner. Rufus. Wiley. Herschel. Odetta. Ivy. Flora. Archie. Darwin. Oliver. Grover. Flora. Cleo.

Still no response.

So, I've taken to writing the names down on a scrap piece of paper and leaving the paper in obvious places like by her coffee cup in the morning or in her underwear drawer...just in case...just in case Ann decides that it's time...now that the puppies are out of the womb and we can see pictures of them like this...

Now that's personality, don't ya think? Who needs any more information? Rupert, I think, or maybe Ivan or maybe Grace or perhaps Nell ..."