Uniqua

Every once in awhile there are children who come into my classroom that I want to adopt, as in take home and be their parent. It doesn't happen often and while you may think me cold and heartless, it's not that I don't see kids who need better parents it's more that I do not view myself as parent material.

But this year we have a student who has tested my parent boundaries. Do to the nature of my job, I cannot tell you her name, but instead will call her Uniqua to reflect the odd nature of her real name and because she is truly that, Unique.

Uniqua is a survivor. She lives in a household with many brothers and sisters (most of them halves not wholes) and a mother who is a recovering drug addict, though many wonder if she's either still using or "overused" by her former addiction. Her sole focus in life is surviving the hole she's dug herself into financially and emotionally and while she's busily (and admirably) trying to better her life, her children (Uniqua is her youngest and suffers the most) are neglected and must therefore fend for themselves.

By fend I mean...feed themselves, shop for themselves, clothe themselves, get themselves up and going, organize their lives, keep track of schedules, and just about anything else children generally don't have to do if they come from a semi-functional family (note the "semi" please).

Uniqua does all of this and more. She has yet to miss a day of school. She hasn't so much as been tardy. Occasionally she's not had breakfast, but we have a stash of breakfast bars for children who miss breakfast at home. Before enrolling into our pricey private school, she attended the local neighborhood school, walking the 10 blocks to and from school every day. Her walk took her past our doorstep and one day, so her mother tells me, Uniqua declared, "I want to go to that school, Mommy."

And so she is.

This is one bright kid. Street savvy, yes, but intelligent bright as well. Unforunately, there are things she's never learned or never experienced and when she raises her hand in class to ask, "What's that mean?" all the other kids look at her in surprise. But Uniqua doesn't care. Whatever it is she doesn't know, she finds out and then says, "Okay, that's cool", storing it in some enormous memory bank of newly understood information.

Last night was Curriculum Night, or open house where the parents come and listen to presentations by the teachers about our curriculum, our philosophy, and get a layout of the year. Uniqua's mom wasn't there even though she lives 3 blocks from the school.

At the end of the month, we're taking a long trip to attend an environmental learning center for a few days and the paperwork involved is enormous. Uniqua never got hers turned in, so one of the secretaries (who belongs to the same church as Uniqua's family) walked over to the house and got mom to sign everything that we needed.

Today, we looked at the packing list for our overnight field trip and I realized Uniqua probably didn't have a rain coat or a pair of sturdy hiking shoes or even a warm hat and gloves, so the secretary and I brainstormed what to do. In the end, we decided to ask the church if they would donate money to Uniqua's cause and get her some shoes, a rain coat, hat and gloves and perhaps a pair of long underwear for the cold days in the mountains.

And through it all, Uniqua has the confidence, this survivor savvy that she will succeed at whatever she takes on. It's like those yuppy t-shirts that state "NO FEAR" in flaming letters. Uniqua has no fear of anyone or anything, nor does she care what others might say about her -- to her face or behind her back.

You might think that she carries those emotional bruises with her, but she really doesn't...it least not as far as I can tell. The other day, for instance, the kids were sharing items that meant a lot to them. Kids brought in stuffed animals, pictures of their pets, and gifts from foreign countries. Uniqua brought in a picture of her mother and father's wedding dance (very romantic) and then said, matter of factly, "But they got divorced last month." I said, "Wow, that picture must be very special to you in such a difficult time." She said, "I like the picture, but I like that they're divorced. Now I have two houses." There's no way to describe her smile after she said this...it covers her face and lights her eyes. Genuine. Authentic. The real deal.

The truth behind the story though is that her father left her mother because the mother almost accidently burned down the house while all the kids were asleep at night -- a smoldering cigarette, though no one is clear about it -- and dad has sort of dropped out of the picture.

All the kids in our class have "cubbies" or storage areas where they can keep personal items like a hairbrush or a pencil or a reading book. Uniqua's is stuffed with about 7 books, no hairbrush, and an odd collection of broken and semi-usuable pencils and a huge fuzz ball she's creating from the fuzz of our classroom rug. One day last week, she came into class with her hood over her head. The secretary came in and said, "She probably didn't have anyone to braid her hair." Sure enough, as the day grew warmer, Uniqua's hood comes off her head and her hair is Little Rascals, straight up and uncombed. I sent her to see the secretary who I knew would braid her hair for her (I'm telling you, the two secretaries who happen to be sisters, are lifelines...not just for teachers, but for the kids, especially kids like Uniqua who live in the 'hood where our school is located).

Often, in novels written for kids this age, there are these almost unbelieveable characters who overcome one obstacle after another. Rarely are the characters African American though there are a few authors who have recently written more authentic fiction for kids of color. Uniqua could be one of these characters. Her life is like a book in many ways and she is functioning, overcoming odds that most of the kids we see never have to face.

I worry that Uniqua will make no friends. She's fringy in many ways (her clothes are wrinkled, filled with holes, often dirty, and many days she wears the same set of clothes she wore the day before) and at a private school for girls, fringy doesn't really have a huge following. But Uniqua doesn't seem to mind. Her head is always held high, her voice is always strong, and I don't really know how to describe it, but she walks with a confidence that makes me believe that one day she's going to rise far above her circumstance and be the "woman leader" our school always advertises as our mission.

I know adopting her is selfish and may be viewed as coming from this position of white guilt, which is probably partly true. But there's another part that's equally true and that's this viseral feeling I get when she smiles or laughs or dances to the music we play during clean up, or the size her eyes when we showed pictures of the moutain goats and the cougar that live in the park where we'll be taking the girls for their first overnight (no worries, it's not like the cougar is a daily sighting, but it IS the mountains and wild animals do live there).

Today the kids wrote letters to their parents about their experiences during the first 8 days of school. Uniqua wrote in her first sentence, "I'm really excited I am going to school here, mommy. The biggest highlight of my week is that I get to go to the mountains and sleep in the woods where wild animals live."

I cried when I read that. Uniqua lives in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of Seattle. The gang-bangers hang out at the park a block away from the school. Drugs are openly sold at the small grocery stores where they sell fried chicken and cheap beer. On weekends, I've seen Uniqua running down the street or riding her old squeaky bike, her nappy head uncombed and flying straight to the sky. She waves at the alcoholics who congregate on the bench by the public phone. She smiles her big smile at the prostitutes who slink by in their high-heeled shoes and sagging stockings. She gives a high five to the young thugs in their oversized coats and their super white shoes. Everyone in the neighborhood knows her. Everyone looks out for her. The wild animals are rampant in her own backyard, but everyday she walks into that classroom a sponge, ready to soak up the next lesson or the possibility of adventure in the woods, and she does it all with her chin resting high on the breeze of her confident walk.

She creates a feeling that anything is possible. She gives me hope. That's the kind of kid I wouldn't mind sharing my life with. The truth is, though, I need her in my life more than she needs me. She'll survive. It's written on the wake she leaves behind her. I'm just thankful I get to be a part of her amazing life.

Brown Water Nirvana

I don't know much about nirvana. In my mind it's a place of bliss and happiness, where the world runs on greased wheels. I'm sure that's not what it actually is, it's probably more a state of mind, but today I realized how much I've been searching for such a place -- mindless bliss.

I don't know much about Kurt Cobain either...not even sure if I'm spelling his name correctly, but with the first official day of school underway, I came to a realization that drugs didn't kill Cobain, his belief that nirvana existed did.

I've been back at work since August 7, participating in workshops, learning about the brain, and planning with my co-teacher for the upcoming year. All has been going well. I've learned a lot. I was ready for today in every way.

Yesterday, after laying out everything for today, I set off to the gym for a hard workout. I came home, sweaty and relaxed, fixed dinner and sat down to watch some TV before I headed up for a bath in our luxury bath tub (my 5' 9" frame can finally stretch out fully in the bath!) as my final before-school-baptismal. I ran the water, added bubblebath, and then proceeded to get undressed.

As I was about to step into the tub, I noticed the water was brown, the bubbles, too and the first thought in my mind was, "Shit, our pipes are shot."

We've watched others in our neighborhood remodel their houses over the past four years. Within three months after moving back in, their sewage lines burst, too much strain on very old systems (Seattle is notorious for our clay drainage pipes). Ann and I thought we'd avoided it, trusting that our contractor had replaced all the pipes to the street. We called him at 9 last night. He reassured us it wasn't his work, but something wrong on the city's end.

So we called the water district, only no one could tell us exactly which district we were. Luckily, the woman on the other line was quite helpful and told us what to do -- run your water for 20-30 minutes and see if it clears. If not, call back.

We did -- both.

When we called back, she told us to check with the neighbors and see if their water was brown. It was, therefore it wasn't our pipes, it was the water main.

Finally, she told us to call 911 and tell them about our situation. Which we did. They hooked us up with the appropriate water people who explained that a "citizen" had "accessed" a fire hydrant earlier that day, flushing water through pipes that have sat idle since the last time the hydrant was accessed. What we were seeing in our water was grime and god knows what else from that flushing. Running our water for 20-30 minutes wasn't going to help. They had to send out a crew to flush the system.

By this time it's almost 11 and I was still sticky and sweaty from my workout. And I had to get up and teach the next day -- first day of school and all.

"Don't take a shower," the water woman tells me. "It would be like taking a shower in watery dirt."

So I went to bed sticky with dried sweat and set the alarm early so I could go to the gym for a shower before the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!

I slept very little and luckily, when I woke, the water was clear, the shower at home was available, and my life went on as planned.

The first day of school went without a hitch. I'm tired, but not from teaching. I'm tired from not sleeping or tossing and turning in my crusty remnants.

What did the brown water teach me? Nothing really expect a lesson I've been on the verge of learning for quite some time: Believing nirvana exists can kill you.

Then this afternoon, as I was walking from school to the gym for another sweaty session I remembered Michael Tolliver, my favorite character from Armisted Maupin's series "Tales of the City". Michael talked about the curse of three -- the belief romantics have that you can have all three -- a nice house, a great lover, and a good job. If you've got two out of three, you're doing well, but once you go for all three, you're doomed.

I actually have all three I realized on my walk. Michael was wrong about the curse. It's not that the three aren't possible; the curse is your belief that if you achieve all three, all will be right in the world. That you, in essence, will have reached nirvana.

But there are wrong things in the world -- personally and globally. From brown water to Karl Rove, from fire hydrants to war in Iraq.

Perhaps nirvana is what F. Scott Fitzgerald described as intelligence..."...the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise."

I can be at peace with my life and still have water troubles. I can love my house, my job, my partner and still be furious at the government for the layers of lies it's heaved upon the world. My heart can hold both kindness and frustration, patience and anger, and not die under the weight of their opposition.

In fact, in holding both perhaps I have reached a state of nirvana -- equally grounded in hope and hopelessness, never letting either of the extremes kill me.



PS -- I've just reread this post and while it sounds as if I am depressed or sad, I am not. I feel at peace with my life both personally and professionally. As I said to Ann tonight, I like this life...it took me a helluva long time to get here, but I really like it even if the water runs a little brown on occasion.

Lesbian in the closet

If I were not a nice person I would post a picture of Ann painting the guest bedroom closet in her underwear.

Alas, I am a nice person most days and so I will not take the too cute picture of Ann stretched out with the painting roller in her right hand, reaching the tall corners of the rather large closet, her tan underwear, holey and frayed, jiggling as she strokes the paint across the walls.

This is our last big paint job within the house. We still need to paint the fence, but today it was too hot and frankly, we were both taking it slow. Now, as the air cools off and we listen to the WNBA semi-final game between Detroit and Connecticut, Ann paints the closet and I rearrange the hallway closet to hold office supplies instead of everything else we've collected in four years of marriage...

gloves
hats
lightbulbs
bike locks
boxes of nails
boxes of razor blades
snowshoes
elastic exercise bands
an electric air pump
a mangled bike pump
tennis rackets
cannister after cannister of tennis balls
the clock I bought Ann for her birthday a month after we met
a compass
camping matches
bug repellent
an ice scraper
bungee cords
two frisbees
and an umbrella

I'm avoiding the sorting through of such detritus and the game is not going in the direction I'd like (Connecticut is losing).

The cure for procrastination...or perhaps a productive extension of it...blogging.

And still Ann paints away, her bottom smiling at me from the closet.

The Second Buoy

In preparation for the Danskin Triathlon, I've been swimming in Lake Washington. Unlike most competitors, I love swimming in the Lake. I love being surrounded by something larger than myself. I feel like a fish in the ocean, an insect in a rainforest. A speck. Insignificant in a world of significance.

While training, many swimmers practice their open water swim at Seward Park, a beautiful park at the south end (though not the farthest south) of Lake Washington. There's a protected beach just beyond the designated swim area (where technically we're suppose to swim, but no one does) and a buoy about a tenth of a mile past shore.

For the triathlon, the swim distance is half a mile so technically if you want to swim the equivalent distance while training you go out and back to the buoy 4 and a half times. Yes, the half leaves you stranded away from the shore, but swimming back is either a cool down or some people just swim half way out and then come back.

But there is a second buoy farther out in the lake that I have always eyed with envy and doubt. The Ironman triathletes swim out there all the time trailing a bright orange swim buoy behind them and wearing swim caps of new green or yellow. These are elite athletes, dressed in their full body wetsuits (I wear what is called a shorty -- short legs, tank top arms) and their bodies are tall, lean, and sinewed with well-defined, but efficient muscles.

The second buoy is 4/10 of a mile out into the lake and while that may not seem far, swimming is nothing like running or even walking for that matter so it takes quite a bit longer to reach a swimming destination versus a walking destination. Hence, the reason why many competitors hate swimming and particularly hate swimming in a large open body of water.

Tonight I went for the second buoy partly because I was feeling the need to challenge myself (after sitting in meetings for hours these past few days) and partly because, contrary to most days at the lake, there weren't any boats in the inlet where everyone swims. Boaters tend to be idiots never fully comprehending that their large power boats are actually weapons. But that is perhaps a generalization (or not).

I knew I could swim 8/10 of a mile (out to the second buoy and back) because I've done it in training in the pool, but training in a pool is significantly different than training in open water and there was a wee little part of me that wondered if I'd fall into the fear zone once beyond the first buoy.

But I'm a strong swimmer and better still, I'm fairly good at "sighting" a straight line in open water (unlike some competitors who weave their way from one point to another). So I squeezed into my wetsuit, donned my googles, and dove in.

Today was significantly cooler in air temperature than it's been the past few months. A fall chill is in the morning air and even this afternoon there was a stiff breeze from the south. When I plunged in, I could feel the cool water seep into my wetsuit and with the wind behind me, it took a bit of time to warm up.

The first buoy came quickly and as I passed it, I treaded water for a moment to set my sights on the next buoy, which all the sudden looked signficantly farther away than it had from shore. "Of course it is, " I told myself as the first buoy is only 1/4 of the total distance from shore -- I still had 3/4 of my swim left to reach the second buoy.

So I kept swimming.

I wish I could describe how beautiful swimming is even in a not so clean lake (lots of weedy vegetation at times and certainly not the clearest water I've experienced). I like the rhythm of swimming and the constant rush of sounds -- water, breath, strokes -- that add to the rhythm. I like how, when I take a breath, I can see the sun reflect off the water or the houses on the shore fuzzy in the distance. It's meditative and I have to swim with intention or I'll drift off into this nirvana and lose sight of where I'm going curving off track to some point even farther out into the lake.

And every time I looked up to spot that second buoy, I realized how much farther the second buoy is from the first. "Ummm," I thought, "It doesn't appear to be getting any closer."

Many years ago I flew in a small plane from Port Townsend to San Juan Island for a workshop that took place once a month for about 6 months. To get to San Juan Island requires about an hour drive to the ferry, an hour wait for the ferry, and a 45-minute ferry ride to the island. It's long, expensive and a lesson in hurry up and wait. But to fly to San Juan Island takes 15 minutes because unlike the ferry, the journey is a straight shot -- as the crow flies kind of thing.

Sitting in a small Cessna suspended over the watery distance of the Strait of Juan de Fuca is very similar to my experience of swimming to the second buoy. In the plane, I knew we were flying by the roar of the engine, the diligence of the pilot, and well, the height at which we flew, but when I looked down at the water far below me or off into the distance at San Juan Island, it felt as if we were just dangling there not making any forward movement at all.

That's how I felt today. My arms were moving, my legs were kicking, my heart was pumping, and my lungs were breathing, but I felt suspended, trapped in one place in a rather large lake.

I can see why people panic. It's a weird feeling. Really weird. All of the sudden the beautiful water feels more claustrophobic -- you're no longer just "in" it, you're surrounded by it. The only thing keeping you from drowning is you and your ability to just keep moving your arms and legs and trusting that despite all outward appearances, you are getting closer to your destination.

I didn't panic today and I doubt that I ever would because I am confident in my swimming abilities, but still, I understood the possibility of panic and while I had no great epiphany about it all, I now understood why I always looked at the second buoy with such envy and doubt.

Once I got home, though, I did sort of see the metaphor of it all as lately I've been feeling like ... well, like an old fart. I'm starting my 21st year of teaching in September. Our staff is amazingly young and energetic (only one other teacher has more experience than I do) and there are times when I feel stuck between buoys, so to speak. I know I have experience, I know I've done some great things in my career, but there are times when I think that maybe I've lost a bit of my mojo, maybe I've become bitter or cynical about the possibilities.

By possibilities I mean lots of things, but mostly the possibility that we can do all the things, achieve all the goals we set out for ourselves at the beginning of the year. I found myself today thinking, "Yeah, but when September hits, we'll all be so overwhelmed with the day-to-day aspects of teaching and all our brilliant plans and ideas will fall by the wayside."

I don't want to be that kind of teacher -- negative, discouraged -- but I also want to be a realist -- that second buoy is a helluva lot more work and effort than the first. Are we sure we can swim that far? And what if we can't? Will we have the courage and intelligence to turn back?

Perhaps I am the voice of reason with such a young faculty, but even that role scares me a bit as I'm not sure I'm ready for it. I liked being the innovative dreamer, the idealist who worked to achieve amazing things in my classroom, but frankly, I just don't have the energy for it anymore. Okay, I have some energy, but that energy needs to be balanced with the rest of my life, over a long year, with sufficient supplies held in reserve for the tough times of the year -- like September and October, like March (a long month without a break), like April post Spring Break when June still feels so very far away.

Tonight swimming to the second buoy, I felt good about the energy supplies I held in reserve. The trip back from the second buoy (yes, I made it) was more difficult than the trip out there, not because I was tired, but because the wind that had been at my back on the way out was now a not so pretty headwind that made the water choppy and my straight line swimming all the more difficult (I kept veering away from going headlong into the waves, which was the direction I needed to head to make it back to shore).

Still, I'm tired tonight -- my arms are a bit rubbery and my stomach muscles a bit sore -- and I know my weariness is not just from swimming to the second buoy. It's also from swimming into my 21st year of teaching -- the school year is long and once again I must not only swim out, but I must swim back.

Lesson One: Rats Dream

I am back in class. We are preparing for the upcoming September. This year, as opposed to the two previous years, class is good, useful: Brain research and how to use it to organize our teaching.

Today I learned that they've studied the dreams of rats. No couches with rats stretched out remembering their mothers. No questions answered with questions. Only MRI's of little rats (or not so little rats) after they've spent a day doing repetitive activities. Their brains (when awake) show rainbow colors in certain areas telling the researchers which parts of their little rat brains are active during the repetitive tasks. Then, while asleep, the rat brains are monitored again and the rainbow of colors are in exactly the same spots as when the rats were awake. They are reliving their day.

Result? We create and store memories/knowledge not only when awake but when asleep. Our dreams are practice for our neurons, firing back and forth to create neural pathways so the next day, when asked to find the food in the maze, we know exactly what to do because we've practiced it again and again in our sleep.

Odd insight: We have mirror neurons. When we see someone doing a task, say mowing the lawn, our brains record (in an MRI) the exact color patterns (active areas) as the person who is actually mowing the lawn. Our brains learn by mirroring the activity visually by observing someone else doing the activity. This, researchers believe, is the reason why pornography is so addictive...when observing pornography, are brains are mirroring the same activities as the person actually IN the pornographic act.

How does this relate to teaching? No pornography, but still, those little ones are watching what we do whether they are aware of it or not, whether we are aware of it or not. Actions speak louder kind of stuff.

It makes me wonder many things, but today I wondered, "Does Bush dream?" and if so, "Do his neurons ever fire?"

While I'd rather be climbing another mountain or kayaking on a serene lake, I'm glad that this year's classes are interesting and useful.

Tonight I shall dream of waterfalls and canoes just to see if I can build memories of places I rather be than places I have to be.

Back in the Saddle

I know this shot doesn't look like I've gone back to work, but I have. We have "classes" during the month of August, so before I put my nose back on the grindstone, Ann and I headed out to the mountains on what we thought would be a 10 mile round-trip hike, only it turned out to be a 16 mile round-trip hike.

It was beautiful, though. Sore as we were the next few days, it was worth it schlepping up to Snoqualmie Lake in the Alpine Lakes area of the Cascades. In fact, when we got to the lake, we met a woman and her partner who were camping at the lake and fishing in the chilly waters for trout. They'd never been fishing before, but lo and behold, 5 minutes after we arrived, the one woman caught a nice rainbow (fitting, isn't it?) trout.



There's something about the mountains that feeds my soul (and this time, fed my soles).

Our next adventure was a little more reserved as we stayed at a cabin (which was really a house) on a lake in Kitsap County (my old stomping grounds) with our good friends, Jeanne and Lisa. We had a relaxing time eating, swimming, kayaking, cycling, eating, playing games, and reading. Oh, and eating. It was a perfect way to send me back to work, though it was hard this morning getting up knowing my time is no longer my own.

Still, I'll hold this image in my mind for as long as I can...well, at least until my students arrive! I call it, "Enjoying the fog, before the fog rolls in."

Dressed up for war

The front page of the Old Navy advertisement section was a picture of three multiculturally diverse children about 9 years old. Frozen by the camera in cheery dance moves, all three anxious back-to-schoolers wore camoflauge. Hands on their hips, smiles on their faces, their pants were festooned with either blue, green, or yes, pink camoflauge and one student, the girl in pink, even waved an American flag in one hand. Their new backpacks were camoflauge and their shoes, normal in color, eerily resembled army boots.


Two days ago an angry American Muslim shot 5 people (all women) and killed another at a Jewish fundraising center in downtown Seattle. We happened to be on our way through the city to another destination, but had to reroute our trip because the cars were backed up for miles along 4th avenue after the police closed off 2nd and 3rd avenues. We made it to our event and then, on the way home about 3 hours later, we drove back through town, down 2nd avenue, but we only got so far before we saw the flashing lights of a road blockade. A block before the road closed, we turned to take an alternate road home, past a trendy bar/nightclub where hundreds of 20-somethings stood outside the bar sipping their cocktails, laughing, flirting, and playfully nudging each other.


Yesterday, the US "urged" Israel to agree to a bombing halt for 48 hours after an Israeli missle "accidentally" killed over 50 Lebanonese civilians, most of them childen.

I wonder if they were out buying camoflauge back-to-school clothes?

I am angry, too. As angry perhaps, as the man who shot those women though I would never hurt or shoot anyone, let alone own a gun. My anger is more internal though when we drove passed the drunken nightclubbers a block from the shooting, I wanted to scream from my car what idiots they were, how staying perpetually drunk was exactly what this administration was hoping for from the American constituency -- unclear, foggy-minded, and therefore loyal by apathy.

But I didn't say anything. Instead, I just boiled, slowly, with anger.

When Ann showed me the cover of the Old Navy ad she said, tongue in cheek, "Do you think war has affected us?"

Not enough, apparently. Not enough.

I Do

When Ann and I got married in Portland (when it was still a legal possibility), we stood, hands joined in the night club the Basic Rights folks of Oregon had set up for the rush of wedding ceremonies. We could choose from a variety of religious and non-religious officials, so we walked through the nightclub searching for just the right person.

We didn't choose the Buddhist nun with her incense and flowing skirts or the Catholic priestess (or so she said) with her stiff white color and her clutched leather bible. We didn't choose the young man dressed in gothic attire, his eyes and clothes equally black. We didn't choose the Methodist minister, bland and milky.

But we did choose a tall red-head who sat quietly at her station reading a book of Mary Oliver poems. That was the clincher for me. If I could have lunch with anyone in the world, I'd choose Mary Oliver...as well as Lily Tomlin, Desmond Tutu, Terry Tempest Williams, and Emma Thompson.

Shay was the woman's name and she asked us questions about the kind of ceremony we'd like to have. Simple, without mention of God, about commitment and patience, we said. I chose a Mary Oliver poem for her to read out loud and Ann and I held our vows in our sweaty hands and exchanged rings while Shay said words I can't even remember.

I was the first to say "I do" and then Shay repeated the phrases again and turned to Ann for her "I do"...but it never came. I looked at Ann who was looking at me with a smile exuding from her body, our friends who served as witnesses stared at Ann, their mouths a bit ajar, and the air filled with a suspensful tension. I leaned over to Ann and cleared my throat until she said, "Oh, yeah, I do!"

We all laughed and I let out a sigh of relief. From there we took ourselves out to dinner, gathering together with two other friends who'd married earlier in the week.

Yesterday, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act making it difficult if not impossible for Washington State to legalize gay marriages.

I am both disappointed and resigned. I know Ann and I are married, committed, and life partners and that we don't need sanction from the state to validate our partnership.

Still.

I also know that I never thought I'd be so close to gay marriage as a possibility in my life time. 20 years ago, 10 year ago it never even crossed my mind. And now, the debate is raging, the battle continuing. That's more than I ever thought would happen.

Still.

I'm not angry, though I do find myself using words like ignorant and narrow-minded when I talk about the decision.

Still.

I am happy, though, that Ann and I have the funny "I do" moment in the nightclub filled with light and spiritual diversity. Someday, I hope, someday it will be a possibility. I never dreamed that that would be a hope of mine for the future.

And then, the other night, we had dinner with our dear neighbor, Dely, who invited two young people to the party -- Joseph and Kirby, both theology majors at Seattle University. Joseph, a beautiful Samoan gay man and his roommate, Kirby, and equally beautiful bi-racial young woman shared their visions of the future, their definition of "faith" and it's inclusiveness, and their view of the current political struggles. I had hope after listening to them. They were articulate, compassionate, and questioning. They were clearly forging a path for themselves that was anything but ignorant and narrow-minded.

I asked Joseph, late into the evening, if he believed gay marriage would be realized in his lifetime. His response seemed only fitting and one I recalled yesterday after reading the Supreme Court disappointment in the newspaper..."I do," he said with the greatest of confidence.

And I believed him.

Scorcher

I'm not sure how many days in a row it's been above 90, but it's been too many days in a row. I'm sweating 24/7, like a pig (as they say), like a waterfall, like a downpour. My back is in a constant state of moisture, the back of my head dark with wetness.

I'm not going to say I hate heat, but I am close to it after this week (it must be a week at least of this temperature breaking weather). The heat has literally made me ill. I can't sleep or when I sleep, it's fitful and sweaty and when I wake, I'm nauseated and a bit dizzy and head to toe sticky. It's not a big deal, just uncomfortable and not very motivating.

Still, through it all we've continued to work on the old part of the house. The living room is done, just a few more pieces of furniture and rug to purchase and we can call it good. Since I'm not sleeping, we get up early (I force Ann to wake with a homemade latte) and continue to paint the spare bedroom/soon-to-be TV room. It's the last room, Ann keeps claiming, but there's still the old bathroom that will eventually need to get redone (Winter break, Ann tells me, let's not tackle it until December) and the new fence to stain, all 100 feet of it...both sides.

I think the paint fumes in this heat are worse, too. Part of my nausea, I think.

But I'm only going to paint the fence when it's cooler. It's too hot to do much of anything except read, lie by the fan and solve Sudoku puzzles, or eat chilled watermelon and drink icy lemonade...only because of my queasiness, none of the eating part sounds very good...so it's cold water for me...but even that feels a bit ill-making.

Okay, truth be told, I'm a whiner when it comes to heat. To think we traveled back to Iowa every summer when I was a kid and lived in this kind of heat. And there were mosquitoes too. Was I miserable then? I'll have to ask my parents. What I remember is that we went to the city pool and spent the day there, swimming, eating candy, and drinking root beer. I remember being hot at night and itchy from all the bug bites, but now, as I steam in this current scorcher, I don't remember being this miserable when I was 6 or 7.

I probably was, though. I never adapted. Hence, I am a Pacific Northwesterner in my heart of hearts (though I was born in Iowa). Ann grew up in Wisconsin and her solution to the heat is to lie in the tub filled with cold bath water. She says people in the Midwest do it all the time. That and change their clothes a lot. And they move slowly. I often tease her because she has a tendency to talk without really moving her mouth much. She says that's because she grew up where it was so cold in the winter, you didn't want to expose too much moisture to the elements or you could end up frozen in mid-sentence. I thought, with this heat, her mouth should be performing gymnastics, but still she mumbles a bit and moves her lips very little. When I confronted her about this contradiction, she said that moving one's lips takes energy and makes you sweat, therefore she continues to conserve energy lest she fall over from heat exhaustion in the summer and frozen lip syndrome in the winter.

She says that the heat out here is nothing like the heat out there because of the humidity factor, but I'm not out there, I'm out here and it seems pretty darn hot and significantly humid to me.

She also says, "No bug bites here, quit whining." Okay, I agree with that, but still, it's too damn hot...it's even made my blogging limp...and soggy.

My mother's shadow

It happens slowly, at first, like a leaf changing from green to the burn of yellow, the taste of autumn on an exposed memory. Out of the corner of my eye, my hands transformed years ago, veiny and slender. The shadow of my mother holding a stone white mixing bowl cradled in her grip like Atlas balancing the world. I've practiced for years, mastering the bowl in one hand, the spatula in the other
scraping the doughy corners of my life into one flat pan, a heated oven waiting to give rise. I've accepted this transformation, this trick of dark mirrors against
a skin of light.

But now, in the dust of summer's early sun, I look down, coffee pot in one hand, a dishtowel in the other, and I see the hint of her body once again in my own. My ankles, tapered and knobby, the blue slippers, supportive and masculine, the veins rivered and raised...legs strong and thin. Barbara Stanwyck in the kitchen.

My lover sees it too. We laugh, the morning news dark against the windowpane. We eat our breakfast on the porch and count the crows in the cherry tree. My hands fiddle with the corners of my toast and I tap my slender foot gently against the side of my shadow life.

Faith

I have never been a religious person. Since most of the religious folk I've run into (with some wonderful exceptions) find my orientation abhorent and sinful, I've avoided contact as much as possible. This, I suppose, has made me ignorant of the faithful, those who believe in something unexplainable like a God or even a Son of God for that matter.

But these past three weeks, as I've sat in my class on Life Sciences (a fancy term for biology), I've come to realize I am more faithful than I give myself credit. And in these unintentional lessons on faith, I have been reminded why I did not become a scientist or a science teacher.

I love nature. I love being outdoors. I love hiking in the mountains, swimming in the lake, and camping by a river. I love sweating in hot desert air, feeling the sun on my forehead while paddling a kayak along the inlets of Puget Sound, and tasting the winter of a snowy trail while skiing. Nature is, for me, a wonder and a mystery. In terms of beauty, nothing compares. No human artwork or creation is as marvelous as the broad leaf of a tree, the scent of wet moss, or the majesty of a mountain against a blue sky.

The animal world is as mysterious and beautiful to me as well and I've almost driven my car into a bush or a tree craning my neck to see a hawk or an eagle, a cougar cutting across the road or an elk munching along a wilderness path.

For the past three weeks, our class has unraveled some of these mysteries. We've sat in a hot classroom dissecting plants, harvesting and then torturing fruit flies, and visiting with scientists who are working on their PhD's in plant DNA, attempting to crack the code so more corn can grow with less effort.

I've felt odd in this class not just because I am a history teacher whose interest in science is amateurish, but also because the need to understand the mysteries of the natural world are an insult to my faith in nature.

There, I've said it. I have faith. Just like those God-fearing Christians, I have faith in something I don't completely understand nor feel the need to fully grasp. I have faith that the sun will rise, that rain will come, that plants will grow, that the earth will spin. I have faith that, despite our human limitations and stupidity, the earth will be here long after we attempt to destroy it. I have faith that we are not the ultimate species, that dolphins and whales, gorillas and cockroaches have more savvy and wisdom than all my university education.

So, when we sat in class and listened to the PhD candidate talk about his research in chloroplast DNA, the question that came to mind was, "So what?" Not afraid to make a fool of myself, I asked him that very question. He smiled and went into a lengthy discussion about all the ramifications of his research. In the end, he could do any number of things if he cracked the code of chloroplast DNA from producing more corn to curing deadly viruses.

And then it struck me that not only had he lost his faith in nature, but he was trying to outwit it by creating MORE food for our already overpopulated earth to eat and kill more viruses so we could LIVE longer and therefore eat more food and reproduce more. He did not trust that corn was corn, coded with its very own and incredibly unique set of mysteries that were just wonderful all on their own.

Sure, I know people are dying of starvation and disease. I know I have it good. I know I am in good health and have plenty to eat because I was born in the US to middle class parents who paid for my education and expected me to make something of my life and not go off and fight a war or have to work to feed the family. Not that other parents don't have similar expectations, but I was born with resources, with cultural capital and I know this has afforded me some privileges that most in the world do not have.

Still...aren't there too many of us? Isn't that one of the BIGGEST problems in the world? 6 billion and counting? Not only are there too many of us, we seem to have exempted ourselves from the very laws of nature we're trying to understand. If corn only grows so fast, what does that tell us? That we can only eat so much corn? If we get sick and die from a virus, what does that tell us? Population control? Perhaps the virus is nature's way of trying to equal things out a bit?

I sat in this class and remembered all those other science classes I had to take in high school and college. Dissecting the frog to see how it worked inside only to find out and then throw the poor thing away. The astronomy class where the professor told us about all the theories around black holes and white dwarf stars and how astronomer's "think" it might be this way, but it could be a whole other way and if they were wrong, oops, that threw off everything they believed, but by god they are still going to believe it because they have to understand EVERYTHING.

It's not that I don't think science isn't interesting. I found it fascinating to look at everything with my jeweler's loop, to talk about the great flood that transformed Eastern Washington, to smash open rocks and find leaf fossils, to paddle the canoe out in the middle of the lake and watch the beavers build their dams. But I didn't feel like I had to understand it all, to collect the butterflies in the herb garden and stab them into a little box, or slice open the stem of an exotic plant to I could press it into my lab book.

I just wanted to observe, to watch the flow of the natural world around me, to look closely and say, "Wow, isn't that cool?" and have faith that it was exactly as it should be.

And if it wasn't...I suppose that is where I begin to chase my tail because most of what isn't the way it should be is either an act of nature or an act of humans -- the former I can accept, the latter makes me ill and frustrated because then, to make it "all better" we mess around with it more, bending the laws of nature back against the way we originally bent them to see if we can fix the problems we created and in the end, we just mess it up even more.

Which leads me to question, does WILDERNESS still exist? Is any thing or any where still truly wild? If not, what does mean for my faith in all things natural?

I suppose that is the true test of my faith...to believe that nature will right herself without my having to worry about it all.

Still, I think about this all the time, what am I willing to give up to save her?

Now there's a thought to sleep on...

Oh to be Lucky!

Lucky, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (long name for such a small dog) has met some of our other canine friends. This is Lucky with our dear doggie pal, Ben, an enormous and beautiful long-haired German Shepard who was the sweetest gentleman to the nervous spaniel.

Lucky has made herself quite at home, lounging in the sun and sleeping on one of Chester's old dog beds, a flea on a cloud.



While it's nice to have a dog in the house, we know we are still in grief over our beloved Chester. No one can replace him and until we are over feeling like no other dog can compare, we will spend our time dog sitting just to get our canine fixes -- soft kisses, doggie dreams (woof woof), and the sound of doggie paws on the new wood floors (don't worry, no scratches!).

Time. The medicine of the sad.

But Lucky is great fun and watching her with Ben (and then with the neighbor's dog, Lulu...pictures soon) has made us laugh and remember Mr. Pajama Pants with great fondness (aka, Chester).

An Education

This is one of my esteemed professors for my summer course in biology. This picture looks a bit unfriendly, but at the end of her lengthy explanation on tree coring, a smile cracked across her face, followed by a pithy comment that I can't quite remember today. We spent 14 hours together yesterday, all 20 of us packed into cars and vans for a long and circuitous romp through the Cascades and into the beyonds of Eastern Washington.

Our first stop was for tree coring, stream surveying, and lichen data collecting. While each of my three professors is knowledgeable and interesting, Ola here is perhaps the most entertaining. She is very much like Professor Trelawny from Harry Potter, the mysterious and oddball divination professor (as played by Emma Thompson in the movie version). By the end of the trip, I was entertaining my van with my Ola imitations, though I have yet to master the blend of New Zealand and British accent she's cultivated over the years.

We visited many sites, including the "stonehenge" of the state...(that's Ola way up in the lead...)



...to the desert catcus just outside Vantage...



The best part of the long journey was the swim in the Columbia River, though I have no photo as I was stroking my way to the cool spots of the river before most of the others had emerged from their vehicles...Ola at my side. She's no spring chicken, nor does she talk about her age much, but we all figured she was in her mid-70's and more energetic than a flea on a hot skillet.

Meanwhile, Ann and I continue to paint the windows and the trim. Today's task is to paint the third, yes third and final, coat on everything. Then we can begin the less strenuous job of painting the walls. Painting the trim and windows requires so much more bending over and cranking of the neck, or, as the next picture illustrates, reaching high up to the window 14 feet above us.



To add to our circus, we've taken on the job of dog sitting Lucky, a King Charles Spaniel just shy of two years old. Luckily (pun slightly intended), with the heat of this day, Lucky has found her place on a cushion on top of the couch, perched in slumber in the middle of our painting mess...can you find her?



Ah, there she is...



What a life, eh? From Ola to Lucky, it's been quite an education in the last 48 hours.

Now, back to painting...two windows to go!

Works of Fire and Other Rainbows

I've never been one to celebrate the fourth. I don't like loud noises much and I don't like fire waved around on the end of small sticks of dynamite (also known as fire crackers).

But it's been fairly quiet at our house for a change. The first day of independence we spent in this house was four years ago when Ann and I first got together. We sat at her bedroom window and watched the biggest display of illegal fireworks I'd ever seen. Since then, we've made it a point to be out of the 'hood on the fourth, for Chester's sake.

Yes, Chester's sake...One year ago this evening, Chester had his first seizure. We were heading back from our marathon drive to Michigan, staying at our friends' cabin on the Wenatchee River. We were sleeping in the loft out in the "Taj-ma Shed" and Chester was in his bed below us. It's an awful memory, so I'm not going to fully recall it though tonight, the missing him is strong.



But the recent drug activity in our neighborhood, the drive by shooting two weeks ago have made the police a strong presence on our block. Sure, there are still fireworks, but this year they aren't right in front of our house, precariously aimed at our roof.

Every time we hear a BOOM or a fizzling crackle, we're thankful Chester is in a quieter place. He hated fireworks, more than I do. He'd crawl on top of us in bed or on the couch and shake, a worried look in his eyes, his heart racing like a kite on a windy day.

We've decided, though, that Chester is still here. We woke to rain this morning, a welcome relief from the hot, dusty days of late. Then the lightning and thunder started, magnetic spears across the sky. Chester hated thunder as much as he hated fireworks, but when the rainbow broke across the eastern sky, we knew he was sending us a message, that he'd gotten all of his doggy pals together (Sasha and the other Sasha and Shelby and Dakota and many more...) to whack their tails together as they romped across the sky.

Meanwhile, we caulked and sanded the windows and then spent the rest of the day priming the trim and windows. We finished the living room, which is no small feat and tomorrow, Ann will prime all the rest of the trim and the three remaining windows.



Here's Ann caulking a tight corner of the study (she's now a caulking expert) and here's me painting the primer on one of the four LARGE living room windows...



You can't see my face, but I am not in a good mood. I knew menopause was going to be interesting, but I guess I never put two and two together...no more blood, but I get EVERYTHING else...the moodiness, the cramps, the back ache, the bloated belly and sore and swollen breasts.

Frankly, I'd rather have the blood.

But Ann was patient with me today, and just let me stew in my own menopausal fluids (or lack thereof), and once I saw the rainbow reminding me of Chester, I was in a much better mood.

The living room is now all primed and ready for its first coat of trim paint.

Tomorrow I go back to my science class. Yesterday's class was a bit more interesting as we set things on fire, boiled leaves, and tested for starch.







It's hard to believe tomorrow will only be Wednesday, but I'm thankful summer is moving at a slow pace...so far.

The BOOM BOOM BOOMs and SNAPs and POPs and BANG BANG BANGs are all building to a frenzy. I miss Chester horribly, but I'm so glad he is not here to experience the warfare of the 'hood.

Tomorrow will be quieter. I'm thankful I took a quiet hour this afternoon for a nap. I doubt I'll be sleeping much tonight, though I'm certain, when I do nod off to sleep, my dreams will be filled with rainbows and other works of fire.

Bullshit and Testosterone

So last night we went to a Mariner's baseball game. This is not something we'd normally do, but our artist friend up the street gave us 4 tickets for free. She doesn't normally go to the games either, but her husband, a big, burly firefighter buys season tickets every year and sits second row up, just past third base. Very close. Very, very close. Everyone around us had baseball mits to catch the foul balls that came whipping down the third base line like the space shuttle after and errant lift off.

Anyway, we went with our friends, Jeanne and Lisa, and the four of us sat and ate peanuts and drank our $4 bottles of water and kept our eyes on the batter so we knew when the space shuttle baseballs were headed our direction. Behind us sat testosterone and his bullshitting friends. Like any manly baseball fan, their vocabulary was limited:

Testosterone: Dude, I know, ain't worth crap on the team.

Bullshit One: Shit, I know, totally stupid.

Turns out, they all didn't really know each other. So they finally got around to this question.

Testosterone: Man, in Philly the crowd would like be screaming their asses off to get this team moving (the M's were losing).

Bullshit One: You not from around here?

T: No, man, I'm from Philly.

Bullshit Two: Cool, dude, what brings you out here?

T: Work mostly. My girlfriend is from here though we broke up and she's back in Philly.

BS 1: Now, I'm confused.

At this point, the beer man comes around and they each get a round, though testosterone gets a lemonade...go figure.

BS 2: What kinda work ya do?

T: I'm a writer. I own a publishing company.

BS 1 and 2: Cool dude.

T: What about ya'll?

BS 1: ...(I didn't really hear this one because a ball was hit our direction and a guy in the section over reached out to get it and fell into the field.)

T: What about you, man?

BS 2: I'm a psychologist and a musician.

T: Cool, dude, what kind of music?

BS 2: Blues mostly. Been doing it for 30 years.

At this point I decide to fake stretch and look around at the writer with a limited vocabulary and the psychologist blues man.

So, I can believe the one guy is possibly a publisher, though I doubt a writer with his way with words, but the other guy...a psychologist? I'm not sure if my doubts about his profession came from his horrible toupee, the thick gold chain dangling on his semi-hairy chest exposed by the plunging neckline of his polyester shirt or the yellow cotton shorts he had on that looked like the same shorts the boys in my old junior high used to wear for gym class or the obnoxiously large diamond-encrusted ring on his hand that I assume spelled out the initials of his name. He looked to be in his late 50's, as if he'd lived his life in the dark recesses of a bar (playing the blues, no doubt), and as if beer were his beverage of choice.

I was trying to picture his client pool. Characters from the Sopranos kept popping into my head. Not the powerful mafia guys, but the wanna-bes.

Does he play the blues because he's a psychologist, I wondered? How much of what he was claiming was truth, WAS TRUTH?

The Mariners lost, in the end, much to the dismay of Philly and the Shrink. We most likely won't go to another M's game for a number of years if ever again. Doesn't matter, we got enough bullshit and testosterone to last us a lifetime...dude.

Scientists, slime, and the reasons I teach history...

Scientists are an interesting lot. After spending 3 days with them (and 12 more to go) I have yet to put my finger on exactly why I'm uncomfortable.

No, it's not the slugs we needed to "caress" today in order to get them to produce slime so we could run an experiment (which is stickier, slug slime or glue from a glue stick?)



No, it's not the fact that we went to the herb garden and collected bugs irregardless of the impact it might have on insect biodiversity...



And no, it's not the obnoxious man who sits across from me and always interrupts the professors to tell his "interesting" story about his days as a wheat farmer, or about the Japanese man who ate crickets, or how his son, now a fisheries biologist, gave him a book on scientific Greek roots that the class might find helpful (sorry, no picture of said obnoxious guy).

Jeanne said it was their analytical nature, which is close, but more it's their "dry" view of the world. It's all about data and observation and collecting things and asking questions. I find myself, halfway through the day, asking again and again, "Now what do you want us to do with...?"...and you can fill in the blank with all sorts of topics...like today: "What do you want us to do with the crickets we just captured and smooshed under a petri dish?" Or "What do you want me to do with this large grasshopper lying dead and smelly on the paper towel in front of me?"

And they really have no answer. They just keep plopping larvae and pupa and crayfish in front of us and then wonder around the room saying, "Isn't science fun?"

At one point, one of the professors walked by where I started to draw the dead grasshopper in my notebook out of boredom and she said, "Oh, drawing them, that's a good idea?"

Ya think?

The class is interesting in that, as primarily a teacher who focuses on the humanities, it's nice to be exposed to bugs and slugs and the world of science, but on the other hand, I find myself far more interested in the names of the herbs we walked through at the Univeristy herb garden and the history behind those names than the actually capturing of bugs that will die, get skewered with a pin, and sit in a pretty box the professors have provided for us so we can have a insect box in our classrooms.

And another odd thing about science teachers is that they don't really talk...well, except for the obnoxious guy across from me who won't shut up. Actually, they talk, but it didn't seem to go beyond the deeper meanings of observation or edification.

Professor: A good friend of mine goes down to the rainforests in the Amazon and collects bugs.

Student: How does he collect them?

Professor: Oh, it's fascinating work. He spreads out huge mesh nets along the bottom of this enormous tree, sprays the tree with DDT and the bugs fall into his net by the thousands. And most of them have never been catalogued.

Class: Ohhhh, ahhhh, wow.

Me (thinking quietly to myself): DDT? What else falls out of the tree? What if that was the last colony of a particular bug that no one's every seen before? What about the birds?

Me (not so quietly to my neighbor): Why do we need to catalogue them all?

Neighbor: Oh, it's so important...we make such amazing medical discoveries. A cure for cancer might be in those trees.

Me (quietly to myself): Why is it all about us? What if we, humanity, are the key to finding a cure for the end of destruction for all rare and exotic bugs? What if the cure for eliminating invasive species is eliminating the worst invasive species on the planet, us?

And to think...there's a big old picture of Rachel Carson stapled to the wall of the classroom.

So, on our mini-field trip to the herb garden, I snapped photos of the herbs,didn't write down a single name of the plants, captured three insects and then released them when class got out.



Oh, and in case you were wondering, slug slime, in our clinical trials, was stronger than glue stick glue.

Thank god nature won that contest!

Lily of the Pad Part II

Okay, the image finally loaded solving the minor mystery...twas the website that struggled with the photos.




These photos are, of course, lily pads found in the Arboretum on Lake Washington. Our task as inquisitive scientists was to scrape the underside of the pad for "life" of which we found plenty. My favorite micro-organism was the "voxvol" ... a round transluscent sphere with four green dots (much like a beach ball). The sphere is made up of thousands of individual cells with tiny flaggelates for swimmers. They all work together to make the sphere literally roll along like a beach ball rolling on the ground. Of course, they aren't on the ground, they are in the water.

Also interesting are the teachers with whom I am taking the class. The course is billed as "science for non-science teachers" but after introductions, I realized I am the only non-science teacher in the classroom. Having attended most workshops with humanities types, it's strange to be in a room of science teachers. There is far less talking going on and the conversations are about science kits, the dreaded state test (called the WASL), and lack of funding. At one point, I had to leave the lunch conversation because the complaining was reaching a frenzy.

Not that I don't think public school teachers don't have anything to complain about, but I'd rather be a student looking at lily pads and beaver dams (see below) than a teacher who has to teach to a test.

Lily of the Pad

Despite the hot weather, I've been sitting in a 92 degree classroom learning about LIFE SCIENCES (yes, in capital letters!). We've planted lentils, created experiments, built plankton nets, and this morning, we actually got out of the classroom to paddle the lake in canoes (using our newly constructed plankton nets).

Since I get just "get out" and take photos like Fossilguy, I took my camera today to shoot some random pictures from the canoe...unfortunately, they aren't loading and I can't figure out if it's my pictures, the website, or some other cosmic screwy thing.

Anyway, I got some nice shots of lily pads, of all things, though I wish now I'd taken a picture of my face when I realized that the critter I had on my finger (before putting it into the speciman bag) was a leech. Eeewwww. I never realized we had leeches in Lake Washington. Makes swimming in it all the more interesting.

Too bad the lilly pad can't support MY weight...of course, that IS where I found the leech, on the underbelly of the lilly pad.

I'll keep working on the Lilly of the Pad shots...any suggestions, FG?

Pride Love

We were going to pass on the Pride Parade this year...too many people, too much waiting, too many dykes with cranky babies, gay churches, and not enough protest. We were going to spend a quiet day at our house working on one project or another...

...until we learned that our dear friend, Ms. Love was going to be one of the two Grand Marshalls of the parade...then we just had to go...

We got up this morning, had our coffee/cocoa and breakfast, then jumped on our bikes (to avoid the parking hassles and the crowds) and rode "gayly" down Jackson to 4th, then up 4th through the parade folks standing in the 85 degree heat waiting for the parade to start. It was a perfect way to really see the parade, but the diamond of the whole event was Ms. Love in her tiara as she sat perched on the back of a silver Mazada Miata waving proudly at the onlookers...



...we're so proud of our Ms. Love. She truly does good work as a health educator for the schools...setting up gay-straight alliances throughout the high schools and providing kids with access to important "queer" information. Everyone knows her in town...we really can't go anywhere without Ms. Love being spotted and hugged and squeezed.

But today, high atop her festive car, she was in her element...We're proud to call you our friend, Ms. Love (and Jeanne, her partner, too!)



Of course, once we snapped these pictures, we hopped back on our bikes and went the long route home in the hot, hot sun. Perfect way to do the pride parade.

House of Edibles

When I was in college, I collected the names of all the different places in town that started with "House of..." I don't know what happened to that list, but some of my favorites were "House of Hair" and the "House of Microwaves." I always pictured these houses filled with hair or radiating with waves so small that you had to wear special glasses to see them.

Now, as we continue on the finishing work of our house, we've created our own "House Of..." As we select colors to paint our accent walls, we've noticed a pattern.

First, we painted the kitchen accent wall CHAI. Then we selected the color for the bedroom accent wall, which is CAFE LATTE. Here I am painting said wall after Ann trimmed the 11 foot ceilings on our new ladder...



The other colors we've selected are TEMPURA, CUMIN, and we lovingly refer to the color our contractor sprayed every wall as MILKSHAKE or VANILLA. He, in fact, is referred to as Mr. Vanilla. So now our house is the HOUSE OF EDIBLES and despite the fact that we've chosen two other colors (Brownstone and Melodic), I feel compelled to keep choosing colors that have exotic edible names.



The last corners of CAFE LATTE...thank god for roller extensions! When did my hair get so gray?

The organics of gift giving

At the end of every school year, Ann and I compare our "thank you" gifts from our students. When I taught public school the comparison looked like this:

Ann
REI Dome Tent
$250 Pottery Barn gift certificate
$100 Bookstore gift certificate
New Overhead projector
$150 gift certificate to Wild Ginger

Gretchen
Scented candle
"Best Teacher" coffee mug
Hershey's Chocolate Bar
Hershey's Chocolate with almonds
Scented Candle set

While Ann teaches at a public school, she teaches in the gifted program, which caters to the wealthiest families despite the school's attempts to attract a more diverse population.

Now that I teach in a private school the comparison on my side has changed a bit. This year I received $100 gift certificate to REI, a fountain pen with my initials on it, a basketball (we play every recess, so it was a great gift), a $25 gift certificate to Starbuck's, and 3 scented candles, though they were purchased not at the local drugstore, but at Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel.

The best gift, though, was 6 summer orders of organic fruit delivered right to my door every 2 weeks. We received the first delivery yesterday afternoon. A fruit box filled with plums, necatrines, peaches, a mango, strawberries, and bananas sat on the front step when we arrived home. We made a fruit salad for dinner that I ate again for breakfast. If we want, we can go online and change the order to fruits and vegetables, or just vegetables. The delivery comes with recipe ideas and information on how to live more organically...driving your car less, composting, and ways to recycle.



The family who gave me the gift also gave me a huge package of environmentally friendly toilet paper and tissues as well as a roll of duct tape.

Practical. Useful. Perfect.

Of course, after eating all that fruit, I know what the TP is for...

Still, I find the act of gift-giving at the end of the year an interesting case study in the sociology of schools and the psychology of my students and their families.

For instance, there are students who I know have very little money (especially after the whopping tuition costs, scholarship or not) and give these amazing gifts...gift certificates mostly, but still they are for sizeable amounts of money...money I know the families don't have.

Then, there are students who don't give any gifts...not even a card. That's fine with me. I don't count the days to the end of the school year because I know gifts will arrive, but I do find it curious WHICH students don't give anything, even a kind word.

One such student is a girl we weren't certain would stay at our school. After insisting that the girl be tested for a learning disability, the results came to us at the end of the year. Where I assumed something like asperger's, the results diagnosed a new "processing challenge" that I can't even remember the name of...which actually sounded a lot like asperger's. The result is that the student struggles (mightly) with any abstract thinking, preferring linear, patterned work like worksheets, memorization, or single-answer questions. While we do some work with memorizing, we rarely handout worksheets or short-answer, chapter driven assignments. Needless to stay, the student struggled throughout the year. Despite our multiple offers to help her after school during Homework Center, she rarely asked for help, rarely stayed after school, and never used a tutor to help her with her assignments.

The mother was hostile, angry, and distant from the beginning of the year and with our request for testing, never really did warm up to us until the very end of the year when we insisted on a meeting to discuss whether or not our school was the best school for her daughter.

It was not a surprise that a gift or a card never arrived.

But then there's the other student whose family makes tons of money, who we spent more than our fair share of time with counseling her academically, behaviorally, and socially, and never once was there a thank you let alone gave a card or gift.

Organic values...whole foods, whole child. There are fundamental values some families practice and other families don't. I have yet to figure out the pattern of which families are thoughtful and which families are too overwhelmed or self-involved to actually acknowledge others around them. There's no pattern in terms of money, there's no pattern in terms of race or religion or even sexual orientation. It's just this randomness; the chaos theory of socio-economics.

Next year, I think I'll make a predictions half-way through the year as to who will give a gift and who won't; who will give the big-ticket items and who will give me one more candle or mug or cheap chocolate bar.

For now I shall enjoy my delivery of fresh fruit, play some basketball, and go to the Starbuck's up the street...(I've already used the REI money for a new pair of shoes and lightweight jacket!)...and write my thank you cards to those families.

I'm okay Mom and Dad...really...

Having not slept well since school let out for vacation last Friday, I took one of those generic PM pills (like Tylenol PM or Excedrin PM) because I could feel myself getting grumpy and lazy and laconic and one should not be any of those things on vacation...well, except maybe lazy, but by choice, not as a reaction to insomnia.

And I slept. Hard. My dreams were amazingly complicated. I woke up at one point and thought to myself, "You should remember this dream" because it was comical and colorful and satisfying. I didn't remember it, of course, partly because of the heavy sleep, but partly because we were rattled from our beds by the sound of 4 loud and fast gunshots at 3:30.

(Don't worry Mom and Dad, we're fine...)

I jumped out of bed, ran to the phone and called 911 before Ann even understood what was happening. The shots were close, like right at the end of the block close and since we've been on Neighborhood Watch with the dodgy characters who live in the tan house at the end of the block that we can see from our new kitchen window, I knew close was just one house away.

When the police dispatch officer asked for my address, I realized then I was shaking, not so much out of fear, more due to the fact that I was in such a deep sleep the gunshots were more like ice cold water on my belly than frightening. Ann and I watched out our bedroom window as the police arrived (rather quickly) and then proceeded to investigate a car that (I learned this morning) had been shot at, the stray bullets landing on our other neighbor's porch who live next door to the tan house of thugs.

Everyone is fine, no one was hurt...that we know of...but it made it hard to fall back asleep as we listened to police radios and car engines and camera shutters document the report.

We appear to be in the middle of a turf war between rival drug gangs...the usual crips and bloods, but also another group like the Dominion or the Lords or the Diciples (I can never remember their names)...are fighting over the Central District. There are a lot of blue shirts huddled at the park and then red shirts by the small neighborhood grocery, and now white shirts hanging out at the tan house down the street.

Everything feels a bit desperate. As the gentrification of the neighborhood continues with the most recent influx of "urban pioneers" the gangs are increasing their visibility and more acts of violence have followed. More and more drug houses are being shut down, torn down in fact, and townhomes are being built lickty-split in their place. It's as if the gangs are making one last stand on who will control the neighborhood, but they just keep shooting at each other (at this point), which seems a bit misguided and short-sighted.

I doubt, though, that any of them are planning their 40th birthday parties or dreaming about kids and a nice house.

Despite the activity last night (actually early this morning) I did fall back to sleep and once again dove into dreamworld only this time I remember my dream...

I was hiking with a bunch of students and staff from school. I had on a backpack heavy with my school computer, my digital camera containing all sorts of school pictures, and mountains of papers I needed to grade. I was hiking along a narrow trail, bushes up to my armpits so that I had to carry my arms above my head so I didn't get scraped. I was stressed, walking a fast pace not because I wanted to, but because I had to. People were behind me and as I forged through the underbrush I heard someone yell, "Watch out!" I looked down just as I stepped off a ledge and plunged into a muddy, cold lake backpack and all.

And I kept falling down, neverending, weighted down with my life's work strapped onto my back. At that moment, I realized I was in a dream. "This doesn't happen in real life," I told myself. "Lakes have bottoms and I'm a good swimmer. This is a dream." Every anxiety I felt in that dream vanished. I was no longer in a panic that I would drown, that I would never hit the bottom so that I could push myself back up. I was no longer burdened by the responsibility of all the people following me, of all the work to do and still undone in my pack. "This is a dream," I kept saying to myself and then I tried to breathe. Cool air filled my lungs. "Of course I can breathe underwater...I can do anything in a dream."

And that's when it hit me..."Let go of the backpack!" I wriggled out of it and heard myself laugh as I watched it float down into the darkness of the bottomless lake. "This is it," I told myself. "No more dreams about school. I'm letting it all go."

When the alarm went off, I hit snooze 3 times before Ann said, "I still have to go to school today, I better get up."

So we got up, drank our hot beverages, ate some cereal, checked out the damage to the shot out car and then I drove Ann into work for her last day of school. Despite our early morning 911 emergency, I feel better today -- more rested, more relaxed, and less driven to get "things done" that I feel should be done right away.

I don't know what to make of it all -- the gunshots, the dreams and even the crow that slammed into Ann's head while she was taking out the garbage this morning (protecting her nest, I think, but hard to say) -- but today is distinctly better than yesterday and for now, that's all that matters...

The woman from work

I pass by your
apartment
every
day
I've been in that
apartment
A studio
12 feet long
6 feet wide
with
a little kitchen off
to the
side
I can't imagine
living there
You got a deal
you say
You say
because the building
plumbing comes
through your apartment
your rent is
reduced
You are a martyr
I see it
every
day
A victim
Even now
during
summer vacation
you are at school
doing
work
though there is
no work to do
Your classroom
is
bigger
than your apartment
so in some ways
I don't blame you
I could not
live like a monk
or a nun
or a prisoner
I could not
live like you
You have chosen
this
I know
You went to Harvard
You were studying
to be
a doctor
It was expected
Your sisters
are all
sucessful
you are just
a teacher
who lives in an
apartment
with only a small
bed
on the floor
one chair
and six silk
pillows
one small
window
facing the busy street
where I walk by
You were engaged to
be married
A nice man
Handsome
Successful
Just like you
were going to be
And then
he killed himself
a week before
the wedding
and now you live alone
and dress in men's
clothes one day
then a tight
skinny black
dress with high
heels the next
At night
You eat take out
or walk down
the street
to Chinatown
to eat at your
favorite Korean
restaurant
Kim chee
and barequed pork
and fermented
soybean paste
a bowl
of rice
You are not happy
you told me
every
day
in one way
or another
but then one day
you told me you
were taking
anti-depressants
you hugged me then
you never
hug
anyone
and I smelled
the cigarettes you
secretly smoke
and the Lysol
you spray yourself
with to hide
that you
are sad
and smoking
and living
in an apartment
like a monk,
or a nun,
or a prisoner
When I walk
by
I wonder
are you in there?
Are you looking out
right now through
your one small window
hugging one of your
six silk pillows
smoking? Listening to
the rattle of the pipes
from the man
who lives above
you in his
two bedroom apartment
with a view
of the city
and the water
just beyond?
Are you?

I pass by
your apartment
every day
And I cannot
help but think
of your
tiny space
your medication
scattered on the
kitchen counter
next to your
cigarettes
and Lysol can
and your keys to
school
I see you
lying on the
bed resting
on the carpeted
floor
I see you
sinking
shriveling
under the
weight of
your choices
your black dress
lying on top
of your suit and tie
like lovers
and I walk by
just then
and wonder

A Bowl of Cherries

We went to the store today to stock our cupboards and cherries were on sale for $6.99 a pound. I love cherries. I used to sit in my babysitter's cherry tree and eat them until my belly ached. Ann saw me eyeing them and said, "We have a cherry tree at home, love." So I passed on the cherries.

When we got home, I prepared Oaxaca Tacos from Cafe Flora's cookbook (thanks mom!) and lost all track of the cherries. Ann was outside working in the yard (though we don't really have one, but still, she's good at putzing when it comes to yardwork). Just as I was assembling the tacos, Ann walked in with this bowl...



This is so like her. There are times when I swear the girl never hears what I'm saying and then other times when I feel like she's taking detailed notes. This was such a time.

She balances me. I can get my knickers in a wad, as I did today, feeling overwhelmed by all there is to do. I think I'm still in teacher mode because when I woke up today I felt rushed, always watching the clock to see how much time had passed, how much I'd gotten done in the hour. At one point Ann said, "Hey, aren't you on vacation?" Only then did I sneak upstairs for a 20 minute nap.

Still, it's hard to unwind from the year, to get into the rhythm of unscheduled days, of not paying attention to the time, of letting go the responsibility of 22 little lives.

Case in point, I'm still having school dreams. Not dreams about school, per se, but dreams where I know I have to go to work and can't get my body out of bed, or can't find my underwear, or can't find any clothes. Dreams where I walk so slowly I know I'll be hours late for work, worried out of my mind that the kids will be alone, that they'll tear the classroom apart. And when I finally get there, it's almost the end of the day and I'm naked and angry and paralyzed.

Last night I dreamt awful things about my students. They were hurt and I couldn't rescue them. They were kidnapped when I was responsible for them. They were poisoned by cookies I'd fed them.

These are dreams I usually have at the beginning of the year when the anxiety of getting back into the teaching groove sends electric impulses throughout my veins. I've never had dreams like this at the end of the year.

"Aren't you on vacation?"

Today, it appeared that I was not.

Then, at the end of the day, when I felt like I hadn't made a dent in my list of chores and was busily cleaning the toilets, mopping the floors, and sweeping under the furniture Ann says, "We really got a lot done today!"

I'm thinking, "We did?" But that's the balance part -- I look at what's left on the list; she looks at what gets crossed off.

I put away my dust rag and mop and marveled at all we'd accomplished.

Today, life is a bowl of cherries (I'll try not to think about all the ones that are still on the tree!).

Perhaps the worry dreams will take a vacation, too!

Crow Ballet

We fell asleep the other night to a chorus of crows bouncing on the branches of our cherry tree. They bobbed and jumped and spat their threats from the top to the tree to the bottom of that tree. Not one single crow was eating any of the now exquisitely rippened cherries. Instead, they were all posturing -- flapping wings, hopping sideways, angrily dipping their heads and narrowing their eyes. We thought sunset would silence them, but the light dimmed and their cacaphony intensified. We tried to sleep, but the black noise was deafening at times, we sat up in bed and watched the silhouetted flutter of madness.

I thought of those crows again yesterday afternoon when I went to the ballet to watch one of my students perform. It was a whole different world. The audience was filled with family members dressed to the nines all carrying flowers -- roses, carnations, tigerlilies. Camera's flashed, skinny children posed with proud fathers and grandparents, and mothers fussed with bows and ribbons, rouge and eyeliner.

Once the performance started, hundreds of children from ages 3-18 flooded the stage dressed in tights and leotards. Every girl had her hair pulled tight in a perfect bun; every boy walked a little taller their family jewels suspended vulnerably.

And they danced. Wave after wave of fluttering child swept across the stage, arms extended, heads held high, plastic smiles on their faces.

As the afternoon progressed, the dancers improved -- each new level of "class" raised the bar of poise and expectation.

My student, A., danced in two numbers. First with her level (3 A) and then in the final number, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" where the highest level of students performed. They were magnificent. They leapt higher, their backs straighter, their hands held with just the right angle of suspension. A. was magnificent as well. At 11, she was one of the youngest dancers in the final performance, leading the bugs across the stage around the Bug King.

But through it all, I was so sad and uncomfortable. It began with the first chubby girl in tights and deepened when the next chubby girl fell flat in the middle of the stage.

Ballet is cruel, I thought. What evils of our society have worked their way in me that I feel pity for such children, just knowing they are the brunt of secret criticism, silent judgment; gossip delivered through the nod of a head, the narrowing of the eyes. The fat crows.

What psychological damage was done to the chubby girl who fell in front of an audience of 3000 adoring family and friends? At what point will the teachers not advance her to the next level, cancelling her out not because of her abilities, but because she hasn't grown lean and bony; because she now has breasts large, round, and heavy? She is womanly and beautiful, but not a dancer -- doll-like and slender.

There were chubby boys, too, but throughout the performance, the boys received the loudest applause, the wildest cheers even though, just like the crows of the night before, they merely hopped and marched and scurried from one side of the stage to the other. Except for the one boy, the Bug King, the featured dancer of the final performance. He could leap. He could flutter his feet beneath him with every spring. He could spin and stretch and fly like no one else.

All the rest were crows defending their positions, establishing themeselves as the ones to watch, hoping to be like the Bug King -- able to eat his cherries effortlessly.

Survival of the fittest. Darwin's ballet. The black noise of madness.

The realities of moving in

The kitchen is beautiful. The master bathroom is wonderful. The master bedroom is spacious and light. The floors throughout the house are glorious. The 6 foot bathtub exactly what my 5'9" frame needs. All the new windows that give us light, light and more light are spectacular.

But then there are the realities of moving in.

Our old bedroom has become the "second" bedroom that we plan to use as a guest room...soon...like next weekend when friends from Port Townsend come over for the Gay Pride Parade and then in July when Ann's sister and kids come to visit and then in August when Jeanne and Lisa come to stay with us for awhile during their own remodeling vagabond days.

But this is what the room looks like now. It is a dumping ground for all that we are working on, all that we need to work on, and all the left over detritus of our lives that has yet to find a home.

I'm not complaining. In fact, I'm ready to shovel through it this weekend NOW THAT I'M OFFICIALLY ON VACATION! That and paint the master bedroom and perhaps the other accent wall in the kitchen. Then, in a week, I begin a 3-week course in Life Sciences for non-science teachers. It's free. It gives me 7 credits (which I need to keep my teaching certification). And it sounds interesting. I'm trying not to think about the fact that during my vacation I'll be in class learning about Cane Toads and participating in squid dissections. Though we do take numerous field trips, so I'm not trapped indoors the whole time.

Ann will be off at the end of next week and she's all excited about caulking windows and spackling nail holes and sanding and painting and dumping 8 yards of topsoil on the backyard. You go, girl, I say. I plan to do all the painting after class and help buy plants and dig the holes and go shopping for things we need like a dining room table (no need for one in our previous 6 x 6 foot kitchen) and bookshelves and window treatments and rugs and blah, blah, blah.

It's a good thing the course I'm taking is free since all of our money is now going elsewhere...well, back into the house.

We should watch that movie, The Money Pit, again. HA!

And then we'll get away when we can, to the mountains of course, perhaps the ocean, if we have time, or maybe just to the backyard if we get it planted before the end of summer and we have to go back to work. The advantage of public school (where Ann teaches) is that she doesn't have to head back into her classroom until the end of August. In my private school gig, I'm back at in August 7. Doesn't give me a lot of time to breathe and relax, but I'm going to give it my best shot.

But first...the sorting and throwing away and organizing of the room of our lives...flotsam and jetsam are us!

Green, Gray, and Cherry

The cherries were finally still tonight, despite the strong wind that blew most of today. I rode my bike to Mary's, who cuts my hair, and the swirling wind provided a headwind coming and going.


Right now, the breeze is fairly gentle, but the gray clouds are still holding their water for awhile. The cherries, meanwhile, are growing in their red juiciness and we can't reach a one. Alas.

I finished the kid part of the school year yesterday with our last excursion to the beach and then a potluck/picnic on Alki's sandy shores. I still have to report for duty the rest of the week and I can tell you, no one is happy about it. We have "assignments" once we finish our report cards, which include things like clearing our floors so the janitor can polish and wax them, load up the school ibrary for its move to another building, and yes, even scrub the toilets. After yet another break-in, it appears we've fired our janitor because he was supposedly "linked" to the robberies. Sans janitor, we must fill in though why we are moving everything off the floor for a waxing without a janitor is beyond me.

I certainly hope they don't ask me to wax the floors!

Yes, this is why they pay us the big bucks!

And we even do windows!

So everyone, including me, was in a grumpy mood today. My teaching partner and I bumped heads at the end of the day and I'm trying hard not to feel too bad about it. No one wants to be there and no one wants to be there to do the work of someone else.

Part of our list of "to dos" contains the item that just burns me -- we are to help two other teachers who are moving classrooms pack up and move! Wait a minute...no one EVER helped me move in 20 years of teaching!

Not to sound bitter, but it's rather irritating to be called in to schlep boxes when we're SUPPOSED TO BE ON VACATION!

I shall try not to be so grumpy tomorrow. I shall try to meditate on the cherries for awhile. I shall try to be helpful and positive (my mantra), I shall try to be helpful and positive, I shall try.