SOLSC '18 Day Twelve: Acrostic theme

Flying, and 
Looking up
Isn't as easy a theme as I thought it would be.  I need to
Gather more ideas,
Head outside, maybe, and
Turn my head to the sky once more.

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The first Monday of Spring Break.  Time change has made it pitch black at this hour when I've become accustomed to hints of dawn.  My home-from-college son sleeps on the sofa; why, I don't know, as his bed is perfectly available.  I'll have to tiptoe through my coffee routine, then return to the study to wonder about what I'll see when daylight arrives and I look up for inspiration.

SOLSC '18 Day Eleven: Saturday, around 530p

I am sitting on the porch, journal in my lap.
My husband is clattering about in our driveway while he changes the oil in my car.
The fire truck leaves.
There are voices of children playing around the corner, down the street.
A man stops on the sidewalk, his dog waiting on a leash while he checks his phone.
A woman waits in her driveway, with the ambulance still parked out front, doors closed, patient inside.
An unseen airplane roars quietly overhead.
The sun is setting, leaving gray, drawn-out clouds in its wake.
The woman still waits, leaning against her tan minivan.
A motorcycle rumbles past.
A large white pickup truck rounds the corner, slows as it passes the ambulance, but doesn't stop.
Why isn't the ambulance leaving?
What is the woman waiting for?
Our neighbor across the street takes out her trash.
Another airplane flies overhead.
The ambulance leaves, no lights, no sirens blaring.
The woman watches the ambulance go, then walks slowly over to a large pile of brush by her mailbox.
She bends slightly,inspects something, then turns and walks back into her house.
The white pickup truck from before passes our house.
The children are still playing down the street, quieter now.
My husband still clatters in the driveway.
I return to my journal writing, with more questions than answers.

SOLSC '18 Day Ten: Where is the wonder?

There is a blackboard just inside the entrance of the library, the kind you write on with neon markers.

The instructions at the top read "Wonder Wall: Ask a question that begins with Who-What-When-Where-Why-How".  The shelf below holds a bin with sticky notes and pencils.  An 8x10 photo taken by a student is posted, a study in bright orange with concentric circles that lead to a slightly darker point in the middle.  A dozen or so sticky notes surround the picture.

My assistant, getting the stop sign from the shelf for her afternoon crosswalk duty, reads several of the notes.  "Is it a .... Is it a ...." she repeats several times.  "Take those down," I say from the circulation desk, shaking my head.

**************************
I put up the Wonder Wall during my first year in the library, to spur questioning and critical thinking; it was a practice I had seen in classrooms at my former IB-PYP campus.  I quickly discovered that many students preferred to guess what the picture was, rather than ask questions about it.  I had to reiterate the instructions, taking the guesses down in front of them and throwing them away, yet it still happens.  

One of my teachers had everyone in her class do an independent study project, after most of them couldn't fill the blanks on an "I wonder about" poem.  Another teacher recently told me that when she gave a writing prompt of "describe a special day in your life", one of her students would only talk about school, homework, and chores.  

So many of our students think inside the multiple-choice boxes with one right answer, and that is what they strive for. I worry that they've lost their sense of wonder.  Somewhere, sometime, the imagination that takes flight in toddler years was told to land.  

SOLSC '18 Day Nine: Dreams of youth, Part Two

I'm going to fly back through time, to see what I was doing before I turned forty instead of the "wild things" my almost 22-year-old self planned for my future.

Here's the list again:

I was seven months into my first year of teaching special education when I wrote that list in March 1988.  I was probably feeling overwhelmed, wondering if I had indeed chosen the right career path.  Another college, after all, had offered a full scholarship in engineering.  But I was starting to date my current husband, so I stayed put. We were engaged the following March, and married the year after that.

I did talk to a National Guard recruiter about signing up, mostly because I missed the military life of my childhood.  My career military father and brother talked me out of joining; I remember my brother saying that it took me years to build my self-esteem, and he didn't want to see a drill instructor tear that away from me. 

I taught in the resource setting for six years.  I loved the students, but planning and teaching thirty different levels of reading, writing, and math wore me to the bone.  I left education when I got pregnant with our first child, sure that I could not be the mother I wanted to be and teach at the level I had been teaching.  

During the six years I was away from schools, I tutored, then worked as a unit clerk and desk assistant for the same NICU my daughter inhabited for two months.  My 22-year-old self certainly didn't see that coming.

I'm not sure when the idea of learning to scuba dive fizzled out.  I don't remember thinking about it after having babies.  

My husband did buy me a motorcycle before I turned forty, after I took a riding class to see why he liked it so much.  I injured my knee in the class and swore I wouldn't go back without practicing first, hence the bike purchase.  I practiced regularly for awhile, but riding eventually took a back seat to work and chauffeuring children and laundry.  My pretty Yamaha Virago is gathering dust in the garage.  Perhaps this first summer of empty nesting will tempt me to rev up that engine again.

I flew in a lot of passenger planes during the years between 22 and 40, but no military-style jets. I investigated getting a pilot's license.  I remember the cost was the main reason that dream was deferred; fuel and lessons were expensive!

I had false starts of returning to school before I had babies, entertaining ideas of getting a master's degree in special education and then another bachelor's in computer science; I was thinking of developing software for students with learning disabilities.  The graduate class in special education didn't help me be a better teacher, so I quit that path.  Learning Pascal programming (yes, it was that long ago) while teaching basic reading and math was just too much of a mind split, so that plan went away, too.

I ended up facilitating ARDs (IEP meetings) in our district's secondary DAEP (disciplinary setting) for eleven years.  That job didn't even exist in 1988.  I taught resource for three years after that while I worked on my library science degree.  I am enjoying my current job as a school librarian so much that I am thinking of getting a doctorate in the field, just for fun.  

My 52-year-old self is giggling a bit at the 22-year-old who wrote that "wild list"; what did she know?  Should I now write a list of wild things to do before I turn seventy, just to look forward to more giggles then?

SOLSC '18 Day Eight: Dreams of youth, Part One

I am desperately trying to stick to my theme of flight-flying-looking up for this year's Slice of Life Story Challenge, and after seven days I'm beginning to realize how difficult it may be to do so without seeming redundant.

I don't know what made me think of the list this early morning--though during this March writing challenge, I often pray at night for inspiration to strike upon waking, being one of the "pantster" writers as one of our fellow bloggers, Ramona, described on Day One.  I'm grateful for the Muse that had me digging through a crowded bookshelf behind my couch in semi-darkness, willing my fingers to wrap around a box I haven't touched in years.

The box holds a journal that was gifted to me in 1981.  It's beautiful, with watercolor roses on the cover and filled with cream-colored parchment paper. The entries are sporadic, sometimes years between writings, and the journal is over half-empty.  I didn't want to look at any entry but the remembered list, because I know the book holds some of my highest highs and lowest lows. Those memories are best revisited in broad daylight with a good cup of coffee and a fully awake perspective that only age and experience can bring.  

Without further ado, here's the list:

Notice the date; I wrote this just a week over thirty years ago.  So where am I now, relative to this to-do list?  Two years into my fifties, and

• I have yet to go scuba diving...and I'm not really sure I even want to anymore.
• I do have a motorcycle, and halfway learned to ride it, but haven't practiced in years.  Motorcycle manuals are still sitting on the floor by my bed.
• I married a guy who used to work on F-4 jets; does that count?
• I did talk to an Army National Guard recruiter thirty years ago, but my father and brother talked me out of joining. 
• I am thinking about getting my doctorate in Library Science, but I'm certainly past the artificial deadline I set for myself thirty years ago!

What happened during the past thirty years that not only deferred, but changed these dreams?  I'll ponder that question today and save the answer for tomorrow's Slice.

SOLSC '18 Day Seven: Sunrise, sunset

"Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset,
Swiftly flow the days...."

I zigzag my way to work each morning to avoid major roads and traffic.  Left out of the driveway, left past the swimming pool, straight ahead to wait at the light on the edge of my neighborhood.  I cut over the busy farm-to-market road, then right onto the road behind the train station.  Another left and another right, and I'm on the street to my school.

It's on the stretch behind the train station, and the road to my school, that I drive into the sunrise each morning.  Some days it's so glorious that I stop to take a picture with my phone, standing beside my car in the school parking lot.  It makes me happy to see the rays peeking out from behind the clouds, a sign of beautiful weather for the day.

Lately, I've been seeing the sunset on these same roads.  Staying at work late for various reasons, I take pictures of bright oranges and pinks from my steering wheel, stuck in traffic behind the train station.  Equally as beautiful as the sunrise,  but with opposite feelings of frustration over long work hours that have intruded on my personal time. My walks to and from the car are the only chance I get to enjoy that beautiful weather the morning promised.

What's that saying? "All work and no play make Jill a dull girl."  I am indeed feeling tired and dull; perhaps next week's Spring Break will set my schedule aright.

  

SOLSC '18 Day Six: Freefall

The Avowal

As swimmers dare

to lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain

freefall, and float

into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace. 

--Denise Levertov

I lose myself 

floating on the water

disappearing into the 

blue vastness above

becoming one with the circling hawk

relaxing into the watery embrace

I am enough, I have enough 

I am blessed

by the Creator of wind and water,

hawk and sky.

--Chris Margocs

My theme for this month's blogging challenge is flight, flying, looking up.  Levertov's poem not only incorporates those images, but speaks to me of the times of crisis when I learned to let go.  Flight really is freefall after a launch, when you think about it.