scaling these cliff walls
feels easier than your words
of guilt and judgment
yet, rivers sparkle;
ancients thrived here, not survived
(just like you and me)
too much to take in–
the beauty of history,
of sights still unseen,
of children’s faces
as youth clings as fleetingly
as the setting sun
we are captive here
in these soft moments of light
(help me preserve them)
on a perfect day
with music following us
on every corner
i sometimes get trapped
in thoughts of poverty, loss
(also on corners)
my girls all grinning
taking pics and buying gifts–
the perfect white life
yet anger jumps out
from car windows and bar doors,
a cruel reminder:
we’re not all equal.
some of us can ride trolleys,
take month-long road trips.
others beg for change
with thin plastic drinking cups
that they’ll fill later
in all this joy: grief.
vacations are like heaven
mixed with sorrow
Just before we left the mountains after the long weekend, the girls were asking their father to borrow his pocket knife so that they could carve their names into a tree trunk.
“We need to leave our mark!”
“We’re getting in the car in five minutes. You had all weekend to do that. Not now.”
They had all weekend to explore. To see where the nonexistent paths might take them. They found bottles that drunk former campers had left behind and found pleasure shattering them against boulders. They climbed over fallen tree trunks in an attempt to get to the next outlook or outhouse. They discovered several carcasses and took pieces in their hands to pretend to roast, brush the teeth of, or assign names to. They built and destroyed campfires, each claiming a stick and making rainbow sparklers dance across the sky. They set up their own tent and fought over who had the best pad, the warmest sleeping bag, the most comfortable spot. They made charcoal paint from ashen logs and drew on paper plates, clothes… themselves. They picked up giant pieces of bark and an abandoned rope, making an old-fashioned telephone “show” as they handed the “receiver” back and forth for hours on end, chatting about extended metaphors and checking current schedules for fire-fixing availability. They disappeared for hours on end, hiking several miles, discovering miniature ponds in large boulders, old cables that worked as trampolines, views of distant peeks… and … themselves.
They couldn’t carve their names into the trunks of trees because they were already leaving a piece of themselves behind. In a world surrounded by screens and studying and neat city blocks with perfect yards and friendly neighbors, they released themselves into nature as all children should. They giggled with their friends and had free reign over their weekend kingdom.
As we made our way down the dusty dirt road onto the smooth pavement that curved its snakelike yellow line out of the canyon, I was thinking about the pieces of all of us that are scattered behind us wherever we go. In their own way, my girls left their imprint on that mountain, with eighteen sets of shoe prints, a forgotten wisp of paper towel, a broken branch. But more importantly, the mountain left a piece of itself in us. The panicked drive up with nauseous travelers and no sites in sight. The scratches and ripped pants from too many falls and rough rocks. The charcoaled face paint. The layers of dirt and pine needles and campfire stench unwashable by the best of the best machines.
The memory of a weekend free of chores, free of homework, free of nagging, free of screens, free of strict diets, free…
Free.
In the end, Daddy didn’t give them the knife. Instead they piled in the Pilot, all seven of them, taking their new “telephone” to carry on their stories for the drive home. They pointed to peeks they’d topped on their independently-led hikes. They commented on how strangely smooth the pavement felt once we finally arrived to it. They napped near the end, fully exhausted from running a kingdom all weekend.
Even without a pocketknife, they left their names on that mountain. They carved them into the curve of the road that wrapped itself around our site. Into the bits of clouds that only barely covered the sun. Into the memory of every mountain, of every happy childhood that begins and ends with a bit of royalty, a bit of owning all your choices if even for a day.
A bit of freedom. It’s the best way to run a kingdom.
some write, some listen
some read, some dance, and some talk
(yet they’re all learning)
a perfect mix of
our differentiation:
(managed/mismanaged)
i’ve learned to let go
thirteen years into teaching
and let them lead me
They come into two classes to tell them the (what I think will be simple) news: they will have a new English teacher next semester, and it won’t be me. The AP describes it in her usual convoluted fashion: “We are growing as a school, and we need your teacher’s skills to teach another class, and you’re going to have a different teacher.”
Z shouts out (as always–no one scares him)–“Wait. So we have the teacher with the best skills and you’re going to give us the teacher with the least?”
She begrudgingly looks at me: “Is that what I just said?”
But I know what he means. I speak his outspoken language.
Another student: “But I like this small class. It’s safe.”
Another: Tears. No words.
Another (different class): “I ain’t doin’ it. I’m still coming here fourth period. Try and stop me.”
AP (to me): “Isn’t it great to be loved?”
And I think, these are the same kids I threw under the bus the other day for not showing up on the “NOT” snow day. These are the kids I was jumping up and down about saying goodbye to because I want to teach immigrants, kids who really care, who are fully invested in wanting to be in my classroom every day. On time. Ready to learn.
And I feel a mix of joy and hatred all in the same moment.
And I think about these things, these fourteen-year-old faces running across my mind as I begin my Thanksgiving break. As I drive the carpool kids home and drop my girls off at piano and put frozen pizza (my Friday cop-out meal) in the oven and cross stitch and listen to my Spanish book and wait until the optimal moment before venturing out into the snow back into my old neighborhood.
I am saying goodbye to these green walls and these three girls and all the kids who have come in and out of my classroom for fifteen years to drive into richville and pretend like I’m someone else.
It is just what I thought and nothing like I thought. One block away from where I grew up, a 1940s war home that (amazingly) hasn’t been torn down… just doubled in size on the backside, granite counters and a peak-through kitchen from the living to dining to family room to breakfast nook. The hostess is a jubilant extroverted redhead with children who are driving up with their father to ski training for a week. She proudly shows us the brownies and fudge they made, the doggie bandanna (“bark scarves”) business her children have developed (web site and all), describes the destruction and reconstruction of her “starter-turned-family” home.
And I make the mistake of telling all the blond and blue-eyed businesswomen-doctor-lawyer-private-school-till-now moms that I teach. At the local high school.
And they want the good. The bad. The ugly.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on it for years.”
“I even hosted a German exchange student a couple years ago to see how it was (and I wasn’t impressed).”
“I heard the principal is leaving.”
“I heard that there’s no accountability.”
“I heard they have a great football team.”
And there I stand. In the middle. I’m not going to lie. And I’m not really going to satisfy their curiosity either. And I’m not going to go home to a mansion. And send my kids to a ski team training. Or use Uber because “it’s better than driving.” I’m not going to be a “CEO recruiter” and tear down half a house because the one I bought wasn’t good enough. I’m not going to find some German kid to “test out the local high school” for me.
And I’m not going to lie.
“It’s apathetic.”
“The administration is mediocre at best.”
“The kids don’t do their homework.”
Everything they want to know. And don’t want to know.
Because I’m in the middle. I am a teacher and a mother. And I constantly ask myself: What is best for my kids? (MY kids.) And: What is best for my kids (THEIR kids). And the answers almost never match up.
Because that kid who cried in my class today told me his story about his mom beating the shit out of him. About social services ripping him away from her broken-bottle alcoholic rants. About the safe haven with grandparents in New Mexico. About how fucking scared he is every time he steps out of his Denver home because his mom lives SOMEWHERE IN THIS STATE.
And he doesn’t want to tell it again.
Because that kid who said he likes the small class can’t quite do work when “he’s going through some emotional tough shit, Miss,” and I let him have extra time.
Because that kid who said, “I ain’t gonna do it” has lingered into lunch on five occasions, emptying my wallet for a few bucks to have a meal.
Because I can’t lie. And I can’t tell the truth. And I can’t be a CEO recruiter who could never understand why a day filled with luncheons and a flexible schedule will never be my day. I can’t fit in with the blond-and-blue-eyed bitches just as well as I can’t fit my kids in with kids who won’t do their fucking homework (and yet I love them anyway).
There is no middle ground. There is no balance to what I face every day (tears and joy, tears and joy) and what I want my kids to see (apathy mixed with perseverance???).
And there is no way in hell a single one of these women would understand where I’m coming from anyway.
So why am I here? Why am I asking these questions?
I put my coat on and the hostess begins a story about running out of gas at the top of a pass on the way to a camping trip and coasting down the mountain into the only gas station in town.
I tell my story of driving 5000 miles in a Prius and running out gas in a no-cell-phone range and putting on my bike helmet and riding my bike down I-70 for six miles at 21:30 and my husband guarding the three kids in the back seat.
“I like your story better,” she admits as she walks me to the door. “I think I might steal it and call it my own.”
She’d be just like those other teachers who Z thinks “don’t have the skills” to teach him. Just like my kids who I can’t quite fit in to this frenzied life of private schools and ski team training.
Just like me. Stuck in the middle, good story in hand, just not quite the right place to publish it.
met in a drugstore
seventy years of marriage
through three kids, three wars
still earth’s travelers
color-coded pins mark map
slept, lived, camped, drove, flew
she swims every day
he mows the yard and pulls weeds
they tease each other
best of all? they grin
take tragedy, joy in turns
till death do them part
(this is why i drive
take my kids along the road
live long by travel)
standing room only
crowd hushed for collegiate speech
from a sixth grader
bright academics
the spotlight shines on this school
rainbow of world
social injustice
swept under a brave chorus
strict rules understood
forgotten pencil
equals hour detention?
path drawn to success
unified voices
remedy doubtful choices
good god let them sing
Doubt and stress have plagued me for months. You may think I am different from you, a standout among your citizens. But I am just like every other American, fighting my way to the top, working, working, working till there’s nothing left to work for.
There is a difference, though. I am working for a different top, a different experience, one that cannot be achieved by sitting on my back patio and complacently watching my children push each other on the tire swing.
The blood, sweat, and tears I’ve put into my version of the top are not much different, though, than any MBA-proud corporate employee climbing his way up the ladder to the corner office, the brightly lit view of downtown, the paycheck that buys his family all they’ll ever need or want… His presence not included.
I want a top where we’re all there, watching the moon rise in the still-light-at-8-o-clock twilight, our tired eyes too overwhelmed to accept the shift that has moved us from one continent of thought to another.
It may look the same. There are maples and evergreens, dry plains and rose bushes, mountains starving for moisture. Just like home. There’s a Burger King, McDonald’s, Starbucks. They’re right there, along the same boulevard that leads to the king and queen’s palace, the plaza mayor, the Roman built museums and churches. Even along the highway, you might think you’re driving in Kansas, as one wind farm after another pepper the landscape, propellors spinning languidly in the heat that has followed us across an ocean.
Let’s try some fast food, shall we? It’s inside this tiny restaurant with tables on the sidewalk. Tortilla de patatas, sardinas con aceitunes, cafe con leche, langosta pequeña, tastes that pop in our mouths, that burst with whole ingredients our American stomachs can’t quite identify. We will sit for hours, Spaniards sharing their stories, asking about ours, lingering over a meal with so many small courses that we fear it may never end. Each time another platito comes out, we hear, “Muy tipico de España.” I want to say, “Us? We’re very typical of Americans.” But I know it wouldn’t be true.
I didn’t even need to leave the airport to shed, after a walk down marble steps into a heat-filled baggage claim, my typical American view of stress, doubt, fear, loss. We’d been traveling for twenty hours, loaded down with three girls, eight bags, and all our dreams. To move from one gate to another in the Toronto airport, we had to stand in line, fill out declaration forms and get our passports stamped (I thought we were buds with Canada?).
But in Madrid? Six empty windows with sharply-dressed, handsome Spanish police officers stood waiting for our arrival. I swallowed, ready to answer twenty questions, ready to declare all that they could ask of me, ready to complete an array of paperwork with my broken linguistic abilities. Instead? One officer took our five passports, opened them up to the page with the visas, stamped them, handed them back, said, “Bienvenidos a España,” as simply and suddenly as he’d taken them in his hands. Not a question, not a form, not a single complication.
I’m still fighting my way to the top. It may look a little different, linger a little longer on the realm of success as seen by others. But my version of the top began in that moment, the moment I realized that things don’t have to be as complicated as we make them out to be. We could, for a year at least, immerse ourselves in the relaxed Spanish view of the world. Will I be able to reach my dream, to reach for the top? Perhaps, perhaps not. But whenever I feel myself falling off my ladder of success, I will open my passport, look at that stamp, and remember what it is that I came here for.
my pies are filled with
fresh cranberries
Colorado apples
King Arthur flour
pastry cream
fresh chilled butter
sinful sugar
decadent chocolate
and perfect recipes.
i wish i could fill these pies with the
muscles i took to pound them
time it took to bake them
dishes piled up in the sink
farmers’ market filled with apples
bog where they harvested cranberries
with the
ache that fits in between the
layers of fruit and cream
the ache that won’t escape
from the lattice-topped steam.
forty-three miles
and we have left behind the skyline
(cash register, stadium, buildings so new
i cannot recognize their sunken Saturday lights)
that i saw first at seven, then nine,
then permanently at eleven
we are surrounded by pines
and the famous aspens,
the cabin built from the ground up
with logs pasted together,
stone fireplace, wood stove,
eclectic collection of furniture
(home away from home)
we follow the girls along
the not-so-traveled path,
pine emanating its Rocky Mountain
odor into our altitude-chilled skin,
and I remember
(oh how I remember)
why Colorado is
home, home, home.
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