12/27/09 - I Remember #1

I remember opening. 

I am opening. 

Shhhhhh.

 What's out there? 

Waiting without any intention...

just waiting, 

right there. 

You can reveal yourself to me. 

I will be still. 

I want to be awake, forever, 

for you. 

Show me how. 

Reveal your perfect truth... 

or truths?

 Make me ready. 

Quiet my head. 

Open my heart...

so wide I lose my self inside it. 

SHOW ME. 

PLEASE.

 AS MUCH AS WE ARE READY FOR. 

I know I remember you. 

I know I can find the details in my dna...

in the dna of daisies 

and bluejays 

and squirrels. 

I see you there and I remember. 

I remember you in tiny footprints 

and in every kind of laughter, 

in sun rises 

and sets.

 I remember you when you blow the hair away from my face 

and touch my cheeks softly with every gentle summer breeze. 

I remember you in music 

and on that hill on 91st street when I'm riding Sissy. 

I remember you in caramel coffee 

and in Tee-Stee's stories. 

I know you from those thank you cards my students write 

and from an afternoon with Maggie. 

Sometimes I see you in the way my husband looks at me, 

and I see and hear and feel and love you in and around and all over my sister Jenny. 

I remember you guiding and nudging me toward my first mission trip. 

I felt you in my cells that week. 

I feel you in my cells sometimes 

and I wish I could always feel you there. 

I wish I could remember who I am...

with you...

always. 

Be here now.

December 23, 2009 - Stuff that Makes Me Happy

      

Last night at dinner with Bob, over a shared prime rib, I fell deeper, yet, in love with my husband. He is working so hard to get that kitchen remodeled the way he wants, but without spending too much (which is really not too much, but he worries). I calm him with reminders of how blessed we are, and how pulling from our savings to invest in our house is why we started saving more aggressively to begin with...and even if we go broke (which we won't) we would do it together and be in a great position to make more $$ on the house and go live in a condo. It all sounds okay to me, as long as we get to hang out. He agrees. We both feel safe in our love and respect for each other.

I am in love with my job right now, too. Delight in everything increases as you SHIFT. (The job is also more delightful, to be realz, because winter break started about an hour ago.) Before leaving school, I got to spend time with a student's mom. She's beautiful. We talked and talked and she reaffirmed for me that people just want to be good. We want to be good and find what makes us happy.

Stuff that makes me happy:

traveling
not being sweaty
mixed berry cobblers with vanilla ice cream
writing
being proud of and happy for my loved ones
music & walking
crossing stuff off to-do lists
time with sisters and sister-friends
Saturday Morning
reading great (albeit not always scholarly) literature
hot showers
having space
being nice to people
breezes in my hair and on my body
paying attention to my love
teaching
understanding

leaves on the water

scooter riding

creating beautiful stuff

mentoring great student teachers

sitting still & quiet

birds on a wire

thunderstorms

curls & squiggles

great coffee

dancing in kitchens

gathering with family

___________________________________________
What makes you happy? Are you doing enough of it?

November 7, 2009 - Maggie Day!

We walked, Maggie and I, with our iPods, and found God everywhere. Maggie saw clues to secret treasures in the sidewalk stamps. She is God's joy in motion. Constant motion. We breakfasted at Panera. We colored.  I read to her, and she read to me. We went to Target and to the park where she found friends exactly her size that called to her, "hey, little girl..." We wrote in our journals. I slept on the futon to be close to her and good thing, too. It was not long before she was pushing me off it as she snuggled in and kicked her way to 80% takeover. There are not many things worth a good night's sleep. Maggie is one of them.

July 1, 2009 - Understanding, by Design?

Day 1 of UbD workshop. UbD (Understanding by Design) is the latest acronym to solve the invented woes of our education system. I volunteered to help rewrite curriculum to reflect the UbD concept. Undertaking this futile endeavor (as we never stay with a reform idea for more than 3 years) would entail enduring 4 days of this "training." Trying to stay open and positive, I go to the workshop with a happy heart and a mind ready to learn and grow.

Ugh!! That was effing frustrating! I got so crabby because that condescending presenter kept contradicting herself as she managed to create more confusion around EVERY question anyone asked. She could not seem to explain anything so that it made any sense. Now my pain body is hovering around again because I allowed myself to become so agitated with the presenter's lack of facilitation skills and unnerving directness as she told everyone how wrong they were. A dark part of me wants to punch her face.

I have to weigh the unprofessional choice to give up on this commitment with the likelihood of my unprofessional behavior in response to that woman if I stuck it out another 3 days. I choose to not attend days 2 through 4. I am afraid of my negativity making a tough situation worse for others.

And, yes, it occurs to me that my annoyance with this woman's lack of skills may be a reflection of a similar deficit in myself as teacher. Oh, how I hate to look at my own ugly. Many times, when I am not as prepared and intentional as I could be, my lessons come out sloppy and unclear. My students are not shy about telling me this, and instead of taking it personal (as I usually do), I can be learning how to facilitate in a way that allows for lower levels of frustration and higher understanding. I can see, now, how I might be making learners uncomfortable. I will focus more on my own presentation style. That's awful to sit through, and I hate to think I torture my students that way.

That is my Understanding...by Design? Oh, you clever universe.

Student changed the title. I kind of agree. Except he did not use a comma between the two adjectives.

June 22, 2009 - Intentional Consciousness

I sit in the children's area of the radiology waiting room while mom gets her upper fistula cleared. Two young boys argue on the floor while their pig-tailed sister dances around them desperately. Oldest brother is in charge and he sits with head in hand trying to make it all go away with a magazine. Another, with a jet-black pixie and almond eyes, finally becomes content, slumps on her mother's lap, and succombs to the magic in her bottle. In the back ground, for added amusement, a cheesily acted soap opera plays out with no one caring, and behind that (and 3x's as loud) an alarm bell begs and whines for attention for at least 15 minutes. My lower self tries to become annoyed, to become a victim of this circumstance. I choose, instead, to employ an iPod remedy, to observe with curious joy, and I make friends with it all in this little notebook.

June 13, 2009 - Impromptu Trip to Florida

95+ degrees

Laura and I flew to Florida in June to be with a typically powerhouse-of-a-friend who was overwhelmed and suffering. On day two, after hours of girlfriend talking and listening and laughing and crying and venting, the heat and a personal nagging to be still drove me into my hotel room for many hours:

It's evening, and I can finally stand to be outside after hiding in our hotel room for the past 5 hours. I'm learning about myself.  During this quest to bring peace to our Linda who is suffering, I am struggling to keep peace in my own (whose??) emerging newness. So I left my sweet, beauty-filled girls in order to ground myself in my own central goodness...or whatever that core is. I am embracing my selfishness, as I for sure have come to terms with the truth that it is more selfish and unhealthy to ignore your self for anyone else's sake...especially when you begin to feel the need to be still. I am grateful I am beginning to recognize when the need to be still is real, and that I am able to listen to it more often.

 In my stillness, I notice that some judgmental and unhealthy rightousness continues to lurk around in my energy. As much as I want to be free of that fake superiority, it shows up and disguises itself as good samaritan or even saintly hero. Yuck. Who am I? Alone. All puffy with my over-sized EAGLE-EGO, and then?... I am empty, but not exactly, because if I could just empty myself of my "self," then that good center, that absolute and gentle understanding, will always be there. Always. Always, And always.

April 12, 2009 - Renaissance Fair

Young poets with pride 

speaking unpopular 

points of view

alive with the souls of 3 

or 4 

or 24 

generations

each poem its own explanation

all in front of and behind 

this music

horning 

and percussing 

old and new

alive with the souls of 3 

or 4 

or 24 

generations

each solo its own explanation

all in front of and behind 

this art

emerging 

and expressing

red and blue

alive with the souls of 3 

or 4 

or 24 

generations

each piece its own explanation

and I 

I sit 

quietly

breathing it in 

with my breathing 

and not breathing

eyes spilling

bursting

with the wonder of it all.

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This post is dedicated to my dear friend Mary-Tina Vrehas, 

and in remembrance of her beloved student Destin Hernandez 

April 25, 2009 - Scooter Liberation Day

Yesterday was the invention and celebration of our first official Scooter Liberation Day. It was a day of cruising the hood on Sissy and the Colonel and picnicking in the park. Next year we must also do a fan-club-drive-by, and possibly I will make an SLD flag to fly as I ride. It would be designed to match Sissy, of course.
_______________________
A week later:
Today, after school, I ride with music in my ears and lilacs in my cup holder. The glorious fragrance connecting me to my mother like a beam of warm light as I scoot. I AM SO IN LOVE WITH THIS MOMENT! If I die while riding my Sissy, please know I was so very, very happy all over, and don't feel one bit bad about it. And don't go telling happy-scooter-riders how dangerous they are because you know someone who died on one. Promise me now.

April 22, 2009 - Free Pie Wednesday

The sun is out again. I am @ Baker's Square on Free Pie Wednesday waiting for mom, Steve, and the boys. There is happiness in me now. It was an easy day at school. I also just heard from Dana that we each won $500 for being a great student teacher/mentor pair. That was too easy. I have no work to do tonight, not even grocery shopping. I am about to spend time with my family, and yet I still get these few minutes to gather up my blessings in this notebook that also gives me joy. Zack shaved his starfruit hair (see pic in last entry) today. That gave me a tiny pang of sadness with a bigger sigh of relief. My body is asking me to be more conscious of what goes in it and wants to move more and rest with greater purpose. I want to filter every thing I see and hear and think and feel through my heart. I want to learn to be more compassionate and less judgmental. I want to eliminate "you need to's" and "you should or shouldent's" from my vocabulary and from my thoughts completely. I want to be so small and so happy. I want to "need to be" less. I want the universe to help me with all of this...whenever.

Here are my peeps.

April 11 & 12, 2009 - i am never alone.

Early morning, sitting on an adirondak chair on the deck of the off-season-empty lodge, drizzlie, chilly, delicioiusly mine. Something tinier than a bird and bigger than a bug with a terrifyingly wicked buzz keeps darting by me. It startles then delights me every time. A robin is running straight toward me in the mulch on my right. She stops to check me out, head tilting this way, then that, between ground pecks. I think I'm sitting where the producers of those meditation tracks got their background nature sounds. Ittie-bittie squirrel just jumped up on the porch to say hello. I've never seen one so tiny and sweet faced.

I am never alone.

In the stream behind the cottage, I practice sending my thoughts to float away on brown leaves as I try to clear my mind. I look up and notice two deer across the water, and three on my side, frighteningly close to me. They are serious and steady and they belong to this spot. They allow me to stay. I thank them, reflecting their reverence. I am never alone.

Easter Sunday Morning: It rained on the roof all night. Every time I woke up, the sound of it tapping on the tin of this FDR cabin put me right back to sleep. I am never alone.

The rest of this day is filled with family joy. We color and play cards for candy. We eat weird things, chase ducks in the rain, and face the dramas that come with crazy-close quarters. I stay grounded and full of peace in the gratitude that comes from the knowledge that I will never be alone.