the rest

it is important to start by saying we arrived on time. this is important because by the end you won't think it was possible. but it was. at least, as far as i can tell. we left early tuesday morning. the road was clear and the pennsylvania part of the trip and most of the ohio part flew by, just tunnels and bridges blurring into one another. kittatinny. tuscarora. allegheny. muskingum. mountains shrouded in fog. rest stops with tall trees. and then we got to dayton. dayton is an ohio town maybe 25 or so miles from the border with indiana. dayton evidently has no police force, no support from highway patrol, no foul weather plan and no sense at all, collectively speaking. dayton also has ice. or at least on 23rd december there was ice to be had all over the dayton sections of highway 70. our trip through dayton took about three hours. here's what we think may have happened.

a. a semi spun out of control on the treacherous ice, flipped over, skidded across all three lanes, burst into flames and also spilled its entire contents (probably lima beans or kale) all over the highway.

b. traffic was slowed by a flock of crossing ducks. the unmoving tires slowly froze to the accumulating ice on the highway. everyone ended up frozen in place.

c. every semi ever made was on the road attempting to deliver whatever wherever before the holiday. tired drivers simply pulled over on the side of the road to sleep. the process of pulling a vehicle that large to the side of the road and parking can seriously delay traffic. multiply the single truck by hundreds and you have a two lane parking lot stretching about a hundred miles.

in the end, we're pretty sure it was c.

we continued unimpeded until we hit the the western outskirts of indianapolis where the rain/sleet/ice began to get serious. it started gentle and stayed gentle, but ice is ice and even a tiny little whisper of it can send a whole bunch of people spinning and skidding through the late afternoon, so think drama. think off in a ditch the day before christmas eve. i get nervous in this sort of weather, which means i abandon my navigating duties for the great responsibility of pointing out in the most unhelpful way any small motion i think might cause us harm. it turns out i am wrong about most of them but the sweetie takes them all as seriously as he can, considering he's already driving very slowly among very large vehicles on a smooth sheet of ice.

only a few minutes into the drama of the western indiana ice debacle, just south of plainfield, i panic about a giant milk tanker in our lane, two cars ahead of us. it is swerving. no, it is trying to get from the left to the middle of three lanes. the cab does exactly what the driver wants. traffic crawls along at about fifteen and the driver edges over into a space just larger than his truck. but the tanker part keeps going. it swings out like a pendulum into the miraculously empty right lane and as quickly as it does this, it swings neatly back into place behind the cab in the middle lane. it is so impressive i have to stop worrying and work on being awed. we now know exactly how slick the roads are, but i am not thinking about this. i am thinking about the driver of the milk truck and how it must have felt to see that tanker slip neatly into place in his rearview mirror.

several hours later we are about four or five miles from the site of the milk truck show and it is dark. i know i exaggerate from time to time, but this time i'm not. we left indianapolis around five and at nine, we were about twenty five miles down the road near a tiny place called joppa. the ice continued. trucks began pulling over. people got out of cars and stood on the icy road. others shut off engines and lights, conserving fuel. at around 12:30 or one, we managed to creep up to the cloverdale exit and highway 231. we convince ourselves there must be an accident of some sort and if we could just take a local road around it, we could get as far as terre haute. this is a small town nowhere near our st. louis destination, but large enough to have a hotel or two. so we drove slowly up the few miles of icy local road to the intersection with 40, a road that parallels the highway for quite some time. we stopped at the gas station where the sweetie bought a moldy breakfast burrito and we found out our beloved only hope was closed. shut down. iced up. so we drove back down to the cloverleaf and headed toward the cluster of hotels and motels on the other side. we couldn't get up to two of them because semis were parked in the entrance several deep, blocking everything. logjam. we decided to stop at mcdonald's for coffee and it took us some time to realize that mcdonald's was closed. all the cars and trucks in the lot were full of people sleeping, blanketless, shivering. we drove to the other hotels. there was a woman in a santa hat outside one hotel waving people on. no room at the inn. she cheerfully promised that terre haute, only 40 miles away, would be brimming with sleeping opportunities.

back to the cloverleaf and then toward the highway and this is when we saw them. the trucks. parked all along the on and off ramps, all along both sides of the westbound highway. sleeping. stopped. none of this looked very safe, especially those on the slick and curving ramps, and my worrying kicked in. they were mostly trucks, but people in cars, too, sat perched on the edges of embankments. we kept driving. we couldn't have pulled over if we'd wanted. there wasn't any room so we drove down a corridor of darkened hulks. fedex. midwest express. j.b. hunt. england. knight. but as we continued west the traffic thinned. all trucks seemed to be off the road. the ice turned to something slushy and the sweetie pushed the car up to 30mph, then 40. we'd set ourselves on the road sometime around 5am and as we saw our first signs for terre haute, i looked at the clock. nearing 2am.

we pulled into terre haute just before three and found a hotel in the parking lot of the local mall. that's right. my first sight later that morning as i drew back the curtain was sears, then toys r us. i sat in the car with the dogs while the sweetie negotiated with the night clerk. only a few rooms left. smoking. fine. we hauled shivering dogs and a bag or two through cold rainish stuff up to a room that was not just inhabited by a smoker, but a chainsmoker with cheap taste in cigarettes and a shaky hand. there was something black splashed in the sink and smeared, fingerprinty, on the white bathroom door. there were burn holes in everything. the blankets were the texture of old shower curtains. still, we slept. from three to just about dawn, which is in the neighborhood of seven am. we did not shower because there were no towels and because we didn't want to be barefoot anywhere in the room. the dogs weren't allowed off the bed. on the way out i recognized the black goo in the sink. hair dye. curious. unsettling. mysterious. the room of a criminal.

but we were back out on the road with the sun which we promptly lost in a very aggressive fog. because ice by itself isn't enough. as we continued west through illinois shapes materialized in the mist. broken cars scattered all along the roadside and median. a truck or two folded in, hordes of tiny cars with huge trailers, one or the other upturned but never both. soggy clothes and torn luggage whizzed past us on the ground. people's holidays smeared all over the half-frozen filth on the roadside. the further we went, the more there were of all these. farm after farm passed us. barns and silos and blond fields behind barbed wire.

the fog softened enough that we could see the top of the arch long before st. louis rolled into view. we crossed the biggest river in the whole country and followed a highway that snaked past old brick factories and stout brick houses, out into the hills of missouri. christmas eve. nearly lunchtime. billboards promising fireworks, adult books, the wrath of god.

storm

word problem: if a northbound subaru leaves bensonhurst, brooklyn at 12:30pm driving 20 mph and an eastbound snowstorm leaves pennsylvania at 8am at an undetermined speed, where will the inhabitants of the subaru spend the night?

a. snuggled up by the fire with the small dogs in their very own home in arkville.
b. eating burger king food that was accidentally doused with an entire coke in a motel six just off the highway in new paltz, ny.
c. sitting backward along the side of the snowy road with a few dozen other folks who don't understand that antilock brakes don't make a person impervious to ice.

the answer is b.

we headed up to be sure the pipes weren't frozen (they weren't) and to pick up a christmas gift for someone we'd had shipped to our p.o. box. the nearly five hours it took us to get 88 miles, max cried even more loudly than usual. the only thing he hates more than a car speeding down the highway is a car inching down the highway. you can imagine what his piercing wail added to the icy roads, blinding snow and drivers who seemed unaware of the limits of their precious vehicles. the further north we got, the more we saw folks off in the ditches, stranded on medians, spun around. we never saw it happen once, but the conditions of the cars and of the occupants inside suggested that the slowness of the traffic and deepness of the snow around the highways made for a very bumper car like experience, a soft, slow spinning so that the car would come to rest with a slight tap against snow. we saw nobody slammed into trees or guardrails. just nestled into the piles of snow their cars plowed up as they ran off.

we stopped when it got dark, which on the next to shortest day of the year is some time after four and some time before five. turns out new paltz is hosting some sort of college graduation and there's not much room at the inn. the sweetie managed to snag the last nonsmoking room in the place. for those of you who don't know, nonsmoking in a chain hotel means nobody has smoked there this week except mabye the staff. in addition to nonsmoking, the room turned out to be nondog. fortunately, other patrons, stranded folks like ourselves or the happy parents of graduating college students, found our two small beasts charming.

we hit the road again early saturday morning, expecting it to be clear. expecting often brings disappointment. the 40 mile trip from the highway to the house is a scenic "highway" of two lanes that skirts the northern edge of the ashokan reservoir and then meanders through a valley carved by the esopus creek and then, near big indian, the highway follows birch creek northish through places like giggle hollow and cathedral glen. it climbs up over a mountain and then catches the trail of emory brook and bush kill. you only have to follow it as far as where dry brook, binnekill and the east branch delaware all snarl around together and carve out a little spot for the tiny towns of arkville and margaretville. and this is all a very pretty trip when the roads are clear, but on saturday morning after a friday afternoon snow hurricane, the roads look just like the surrounding countryside. silent. lovely. impassible. we did stop briefly at the beginning of this leg of the trip to get gas and fluid for the wipers. in the just before light part of the morning two guys in a truck pulled up next to us. they had hunter-type stickers affixed to the vehicle and when the driver, a man in his late fifties, got out, some sort of vampire keyboard opera seeped out behind him. i could see the other guy inside, poring over images on his laptop, rocking out to this stuff. the driver began to pump gas but opened the door again to talk to laptop guy. this time we were hit with strains of innagaddadavida. but live and not by iron butterfly. this, i think, is how deerslayers get themselves ready for the contest, at least up here. we get our gas and head back to the road.

we are encouraged by the snow plow we see in front of us and we trudge on. turns out we saw maybe fifty or so snow plows on 28 during our 40 miles, but only in the last ten or so of those miles did we see any of them plowing. the others tooled along cheerfully enough. some seemed to be spilling cinders or sand or salt, whatever folks use up here. but the plows seemed purely ornamental. this had us worried. we have a fairly long driveway with a bit of an uphill slope and everyone was imagining different versions of us getting stuck at the foot of the driveway, the hatchback end of the car jutting out into traffic, visible but unavoidable in this sort of weather. but as we neared the house we could see the driveway was the clearest part of our trip. sometime before our own arrival at 7am, someone had plowed it for us. and we drove right up to the garage uneventfully.

our time here yesterday and today has consisted mostly of lying around, reading, knitting, drinking hot chocolate and being snuggled by dogs. so you can only begin to imagine our horror when we woke up this morning to even more snow. that's right. trapped. not trapped in the house. every vehicle larger than ours has a plow on the front of it and town is accessible. town being the mile of highway 28 that holds two pizza places, an antiques place, a grocery store, three liquor stores, two laundromats and a fitness center. so we've got all that. but we're cut off from the larger world. blowing snow. drifting snow. travel advisories.

what to do? we'll try leaving monday. but today i am making myself a new hat with ear flaps. the sweetie is reading and napping with max. guthrie spends much of his time on the hearth, right in front of the fire, gently licking the logs waiting to go in. we will have hot chocolate in many forms. sometimes there will be cinnamon. sometimes there will be peeps floating on top. maybe there will even be a little bourbon in the chocolate. there are hot foods of all sorts in the pantry. soups. chili. oatmeal. twenty opportunities for tea. coffee in decaf and not. we stopped by to see the parrot in the auto parts store and didn't even mind that they didn't have our windshield wipers. i have sent off lesson plans for my classes tomorrow. nobody will use them, but as long as i send them, nobody will yell at me, either. we will listen to johnny cash. the sweetie will work on some top secret project that involves tools i never use. the snow will snow some more tomorrow but it will be clear in brookln and we will head back to where snow is gray and brown and has sharp things in it. i will wear my new hat. the roads will be clear. but for now we are in the middle of a snowstorm and there are few things more satisfying than being warm and dry and near to good food and company when the weather outside is warning-worthy.

hard boiled egg

the first time i had a real bagel was in new orleans. i was 23 or so and my housemate at the time ordered them from h&h bagels in nyc because, well, bagels in new orleans in 1992 were sort of questionable and she was a bagel snob. i learned, over time, to be snobby about a few things myself. beer. chocolate. wool. bagels. there's no point in eating bagels that taste like paste or look like english muffins. so i am fortunate that right now here in brooklyn, in bensonhurst, under the rumbling elevated d train, there is a tiny bagel place barely large enough for a line of four people where the folks there not only make spectacular bagels, but also remember my sporadic visits well enough to know what i order. cinnamon raisin bagel with honey walnut cream cheese. and these folks do not have a light hand with the cream cheese. it is the sort of place where if you ask them to scoop out the inside of the bagel (people i work with do things like this. grow up!) you would be greeted with a snort and would take home a mangled bagel. what? i eat them once a month at most, so don't you worry about it. a good bagel is insulted if you don't put a fat slab of cream cheese on it. who am i to insult a good bagel?

it's one of those places where in the winter the windows are all steamed up because they actually make the bagels right there and when i go in my glasses fog up to match. it is lit with reds and has plenty of hand written signs promising things like "home made soup for lunch" and "yes, we have flagels" (they're flat bagels, if you'e wondering). but today, a friday in the middle of december, when i arrived at 7am to give myself this little gift i find for the first time in five years that i'm the only person in the store. the guy remembered my order and while he made my tea i looked at the counter in front of me. it's a small space, just barely wider than my own shoulders. when i face it, to my left is the cash register and to the right, the bakery case full of muffins and little tiny baby bagels. but today there was something new on the counter. a stainless steel bowl, just like the largest of a nested set i have at home, sat snuggled up next to the cash register. in it were eggs. hard boiled eggs, according to the sign. more than a dozen hard boiled eggs for sale. at 7am.

now generally that many hard boiled eggs go right to deviled eggs or egg salad. i've never seen a bowl of them, shells on and intact, sitting around. they seemed somehow magical. i wanted to buy one or two but the guy had already totaled my order and put the bagel on top of the tea in the little brown bag. i took the bag in my mittened hand and looked one more time at the eggs. there has to be a reason. some holiday secret like black eyed peas that someone neglected to tell me. i know there are hard boiled eggs all over hanukkah celebrations but they've always seemed to be part of something else, an ingredient. they're not candy bars sitting on a coutner for a last minute impulse buy. a bowl of plain, naked hard boiled eggs in a bagel shop doesn't seem like part of that. not like gelt. not like latkes. but they are beautiful sitting there and although i don't really care much for them, i find myself thinking about how one would taste right now.

sleeping dogs and jim

sometimes the world gets ridiculous. knife wielding children, murderous garbage trucks, drug dealing maniacs, students without homework, blustery weather. dog candy won't fix any of that, but look at it anyway.








max stands guard while jim naps. max has a loose interpretation of "stand".













extreme napping after a long day asleep in the car













max dreams of flying.














max and guthrie fall asleep while watching tv.











plaid, stripes, more stripes, cat, dog. harmony.














max snores with his eyes open.


















dogpile with cat

precious baby

during second period the classroom phone rang. the dean's office had one of my precious babies and planned to keep him for a two day suspension. could i send down some work the phone voice asks. now, earlier, yesterday, i saw kids peering out a window in the stairwell, muttering about an arrest and as i tried to get past them i yelled, "let that poor man get arrested in peace!" a few hours later a teacher pulled me aside to let me know the arrested man was actually one of my precious babies, a past one, one i dearly love, one who has been all but lost for a very, very long time. according to what i could decipher, my old precious baby was in the process of handing one of my new precious babies something. a sharp thing, pointy. not likely to be confused with any other things. not easily confused with gum or money or even a cheeseburger. so my old baby is, as far as i know, locked up somewhere and the new one stews in the dean's office.

when my second class shows up with the two other adults who attempt to wrangle them with me, i gather up a notebook, pen and all my snarling anger and head to the dean's office. it is just after 10 am on friday. one of the deans is standing in the doorway. a girl is sitting at a desk. my own precious baby looks tiny in his desk sitting centered at the back of the room. i am tired. i want to adopt him, take him home, feed him food that isn't primarily dorito-based. i want to yell at him until he cries and says he'll never do anything this stupid again, but i know i don't even know where to start. what i do know is he has a parole officer and that holding this sharp, shiny object for someone is stupid because it violates his parole. it is stupid because he knows this.

i ask why he is sitting in the dean's room and he tells his version of the story, a version that ends with the phrase "i didn't do nothing wrong." i surprise both of us by saying a very long string of words he's never heard me say, ending with "that is absolute bullshit!" he is mad. maybe he is hurt. but he knows i am right. "i don't want to talk about it!" he yells at me, pulling his hood over his head and slamming himself face down onto the desk. turtle in a shell. all pulled in. i want to shake him. i want to scream. what i do instead is reach up to the top of his head and pull his hood back as gently as i can. i tell him to quit being so ridiculous but i can feel my eyes getting liquid and i think he must be able to hear it in my voice because he looks up, wary but curious. he is a child who had done grown up things, cruel and stupid and selfish things. destructive things. but when he looks up he is trying to keep his angry face together and the fact that he's trying so hard makes him look even more like a small, small child.

i ask what he was thinking. he says he didn't know. i spend at least five minutes making fun of this because i don't know what else to do. i tell him i need to hear him say he knew what he was doing, knew that it was stupid. because if he didn't, i worry he'll do it again. he does not want to say that he knew what he was doing. "i'm retarded!" he says, instead, by way of explanation. he says it without all the letters- "retaaaaatad". i realize he's never read the word, only heard adults say it and this is why so many of the kids in my school can't spell. they're spelling words that only exist in their own homes. i insist that he's not retarded, try to explain retardation, but he persists. it's better to be stupid than guilty. i tell him i'll prove it. i go to the office and get his file. i read to him what teachers say. he's bright but angry. he's really good at math. he smiles. he knows he's good at math. this is why i am here. this child who had this sharp, pointy object that he brought right here into my school is really the little boy i know he is. he's proud of the fact that he's good at math. i keep reading because he asks me to. he wants to know. he's not retarded.

i make him get out two sheets of paper. at the top of one he writes "i am not retarded because..." we start making a list. he is good at math. he does all his work in my class. he has excellent social skills. and so on. the second sheet is where i ask him to write something for me. something that will help me not worry about this precious little baby of mine getting stabbed or shot or otherwise demolished. i do not know what he will write, but i will read it monday. i tell him as i get ready to leave that if this page is good it will make up for everything he'll miss the two days he's out. he nods. i tell him if he gets stabbed or shot, he gets no credit. he smiles. i mean it, i tell him. you think i will feel bad and will give you the credit if something happens to you and although it is true that i will feel bad and i will cry, i won't give you anything. he knows this is true just like i know this isn't the last fight we'll have over sharp things and criminal behavior.

travel

yesterday i was walking down bay parkway the way i usually go, along the cemetery toward the f train. you have heard about this walk before, how this stretch along the cemetery is lined with impounded vehicles and resting long-haul trucks, how i see the truck drivers too often using the sidewalk as a toilet, how there are old buses sitting there too long to be impounds. one of these buses is an old charter, the kind with seats that look like the carpet in cheap atlantic city casinos, a blue that exists only in polyester and is flecked with reds and yellows and purples. a pattern probably listed as "skyburst" in a catalog in 1983. i have walked past it plenty of times, just like i've walked past an odd truck offering palm readings sitting in front of it.

but i wasn't paying any special sort of attention to the bus as i walked home. i was far more focused on the sky, storm-colored and low and the air, warm and rain smelling the way spring sometimes lets the air smell. not winter at all. not even fall. i was taking off my hat, unwrapping my scarf. 51 degrees. i noticed it without really registering it. there are things we take into our heads all the time without stopping to hold them up and look at them and only when something irritates our brain like sand in an oyster do we actually use our whole selves to look. and something was sand in my brain. sharp. jagged. one, two, three, four roundish holes in the windshield denting in the glass and the spiderwebs spreading around each hole ran into one another, overlapping rings, sharp ripples. gunshots. i do not know enough about gunshots to say for sure what sort of bullets were here earlier in the day, but i do know enough about glass to think that a bb gun or something only slightly more angry had been involved. the sort of guns my students insist they could use today are not as plentiful as they think and certainly weren't used to mutilate this poor bus. or put it out of its misery.

as i came abreast of the bus, i could see the passenger entry door had been shot up, too. the windows along the side were in various stages of destruction. the glass, clear every other day i've walked by it, was the color of a robin's egg. this color change happens to the sort of glass that crumbles when broken only, not to the kind that makes angry shards. two windows had been shot up and then, maybe, kicked in. the rubber seals around the windows were hanging partly off the metal and sticking to clumps of glass which had cracked like ice and scattered that pretty blue and concentrated it all at the same time. soft blue.

some days are like that, full of quiet all day and then a pile of bulletholes just sneaks right up on you. this morning, not much past 6:30 i walked to the train station and there was the guy who sells papers. this station is not my regular one so maybe he's the regular guy and maybe he isn't. what's important is that he had this huge case. like a suitcase sort of but rounded and squarish, a yellow that promised it came from 1972. you could put something larger than a french horn in there if you needed to but he had the thing filled with candy bars. the little bite size ones. it was sitting on a rack of some sort or maybe a chair, like luggage on one of those stands in hotel rooms. he raked his hands over the candy bars, smoothing out the shiny surface, like moving is hands through rubies or sapphires.

just a bit later i was waiting for the q train. the promise of rain was keeping the sky dark, still night, keeping platform lights on. the train rolled up and the doors opened. everything inside bright and orangy and warm and dry. orange seats. metal poles. bright, bright. and there in one of the short corner seats sat a tiny person. i'm going to say she was a woman because of her size and because of the sheet. a cream colored sheet, soft flannel with clusters of roses scattered over it. rosebuds mostly, but a few open blooms. the sheet was draped over her, over all of her. it was a sheet like one i remember from childhood. it was tucked in all around her, at her sides, under her feet, behind her head. like a gift, a package with a surprise in it, human, live. the assumption here is that this tiny woman was alive, asleep, had covered her own self up. nobody would cover the dead like that, tucked in tightly all around.

a kid on the train yelled, "who is learning chinese in a spanish class?" people got on the train. people got off. there were conversations and phone calls. people read books. i took out my knitting. yarn the color of rosebuds.

pork chop

union square park is a small but active park in the middle of the lower part of manhattan. it sits on top of a collection of most of the trains in the city and is surrounded by tall buildings from a variety of eras and architectural passions. within the park, abraham lincoln stands near the northern end near a restaurant of confusing hours and focus. gandhi with his walking stick strides through the southern end of the park, often draped with flowers. the southern end of this park, near gandhi, facing whole foods market and filene's basement and dsw is where demonstrations and protests of all kinds flower. in warm weather folks sit along wide steps and drum circles appear out of nowhere. union square park is the home, north of lincoln and the restaurant, of a vast (for manhattan) paved expanse where the farm market lives. under the feet of market patrons someone has painted two huge vines, separate from one another, curling in large snailing circles. they are for running around, according to the instructions. i don't really know.

but right now the vines are ruptured and the farm market scooted toward the side of the park while construction is going on. nobody seems to know what on earth might be happening on a stretch of flat, paved ground the size of a small parking lot, but the fences are up and large machines are living inside. it will probably take all winter to find out. the farm market doesn't seem to mind being squeezed over. the strawberry vendors and flower vendors and tomato folks are all gone back to their farms anyway leaving only honey people and wine people and cheese people and the guys selling fir trees and wreaths.

the sweetie and i were in the park last week, wandering aimlessly through the holiday market, a seasonal open air market made up of aisles of red and white striped tents full of arts and crafts and other mysterious necessities. you can find handmade soaps, candles and bags. there are stalls where any item in the world can be plastered with the empire state building or the brooklyn bridge. lots of folks sell handmade jewelry and there are hats and scarves of every imaginable shape and kind. unusual toys are sprinkled in there- chirping frogs. marionettes. boxing nuns. it is a bit like going to a mall for hippies. hippies with trust funds. but the things are pretty and unusual so we try to stop by once a year and smile at the vendors and ask questions about items made entirely from recycled soda bottles or bamboo.

the sweetie and i finally staggered from the brightly lit circus into the dingy streetlight at evening grayness of the rest of the park. out of the shadows stepped a man in a hooded jacket with one outstretched hand waving toward passers-by. he was not begging or mugging or any of the other things folks leaping out of the darkness with waving arms are generally planning. he was offering samples. he stood near a sign promising some mighty fine bacon and his bare hand was draped with a white paper towel. sitting on top of the paper towel were small squares completely indecipherable in the dark. "pork chop?" he said as he held out his hand. nobody took any. my own belly was feeling a little off so i declined as well. later, though, i regretted it. because it is a good idea to collect stories like that. when else will i get the chance to say "some stranger in a park gave me a piece of pork chop he was carrying around in his hand and i ate it. it was good"? that sort of thing only comes along every so often. i will have to go back this week and see if i can find him. a good pork chop in new york city is a rare sort of gift.

shelley

today is my sister shelley's birthday. much of her life has been a blur to me. in fact, much of my own life has been a blur. there are things i don't remember about my childhood, about her childhood, that i probably should just as there are things about last week my brain has already confused with other things. but i remember the first time i held her. she was tiny and i wasn't all that much bigger, just two and a half more years on the planet. when our parents brought her home they said she was mine. my very own. i had been hoping for a dog but she was easier to carry so i sat in a big chair and held her. mine mine mine. later, when i still wanted a dog, i convinced her to crawl around after me and bark. i was the princess. it was a very good life.

i remember our mom dressing us in matching garanimals outfits. i have no idea why but it lasted an entire summer- striped tank tops with solid shorts, the kind with vertical seams down the front. we certainly weren't twins but had matching blue dresses and matching raggedy ann jumpers. we shared a room for a while and had bunk beds. i know we listened to a 45 of chantilly lace on a portable turntable over and over while arguing about lite brite pegs. for reasons i can't explain, i'm sure the back side of the 45 was purple people eater. this was when i tried to convince her that the devil lived in our closet. i learned later he lives in a pine barren in jersey but at the time our closet seemed more likely.

we played with lincoln logs, ring-a-ma-jigs, toads, shovels, caterpillars, poker chips, turtles, animal bones, magnifying glasses. we rode bikes everywhere and participated in a variety of shoddy clubhouse building ventures. we spent a good deal of time on a construction site in our neighborhood one year, a house with a floorplan identical to ours but without bothersome things like doors and windows to keep us out. we spent summers at the pool alternately baking and pruning ourselves and trudged home with red-rimmed eyes and chlorine-scented hair when we had to, when we remembered we had a family and there might be dinner for us.

but my sister had a love that made all those other things seem pale and ugly. she loved hot wheels. because we lived on a dead end street, our parents let her play in the gravel road in front of our house where she could spend hours paving roads for her beloved cars. only three houses existed past our own and when dinnertime would roll around, shelley would start to get wary. she'd look for dads coming home and more than once she'd fling herself down in the road, spread little child arms and legs as far to every edge as she could make her small self go, and bellow, "GO AROUND!" to the few grown men coming home who needed to pass. like some sort of bridge troll gone mad, she's stay there staring them down and they'd do what she said. they'd drive off the road a little, into the grass on the side, and maneuver around her oblivious cars on their own important adventures.

i do not know where she learned her fierceness, although spending the first few years of her life as a dog might have contributed. i do know that i learned very early on to do what the men in our neighborhood did. i do as i'm told when shelley is the teller. after that early and brief reign as the princess, i have settled into my life as the dog. it is a very good life, one i would not trade for any other.

stink bomb

it all started yesterday when my metrocard expired and i tried to get the machine to renew it. after six or seven tries i finally gave up and asked the attendant in the train station to make me a new card. she did, tossing it out, letting me know it's not generally her job to do things. then some guy on the bus was freaking out so i got out and walked a while. i walked under the f train and thought about what i always thought about. one of these days something will fly off that stupid train and crack open my skull. and to my surprise, something actually did fly off the stupid train and it slapped me right on the face, leaving a faint scratch on my cheek. certainly not a cracked skull, but as unexpected as something can be when you're expecting it to happen.

when i finally got to school the day went pretty well, but on the way home i realized the metro card i'd spent $25 on early in the morning had somehow escaped. no metrocard. perhaps the trains are conspiring to get me. stupid trains.

but then this morning i was feeling good. my first class was mellow and focused. good kids. my second class appears to have been possessed by a clump of incredibly lazy demons lacking in creativity. two hours of one child sleeping, one child hooting (no, really, i mean actual hooting like an owl would do if an owl wanted to fail my class), one child interrupting (every sentence. every single sentence), thirty two children talking when they should have been listening so that they had to ask a million questions when they should have been working. one child had to be removed by the dean. another had to leave and come back twice. and then there was the stink bomb. some goofball sent a sulfurous smell into the hallway outside our classroom. vile. toxic. eggy. the children whined. i considered reminding them they've all created stinks far worse than what we were suffering, but i know memory isn't reliable. they would never believe me. finally, i went back to my desk, grabbed a bag of yarn (what? you don't have a random bag of yarn at your desk?) and began to shove skeins into the crack under the door to block the stink. it was about this time our principal opened the door, stepping over the scattered yarn with a curious look on his face as one of the precious angels was being escorted toward the door. "what's going on?" he asked. i have no idea. none at all. madness, probably.

but that's not the best part. i was standing in the doorway on the second floor, waiting for those diabolical tenth graders to show up. one came running up yelling, "ms. white, there's a stink bomb!" and a cluster of kids parted to show a tiny, brightly colored pillow of mylar swirling about on the floor. now, there are things i know and things i don't. i know that when i was in high school, several boys stuffed a dead opossum behind a radiator over the winter holiday and the school took quite some time to recover. but i don't know stink bombs. so i asked a child nearby to hand it to me. he picked it up with a look on his face i can't even begin to explain but i'll try anyway. he looked like he knew he was going to get to see someone die. hmmmm. one of my own kids yelled, "no!" and i took it into the classroom, explaining (wrongly, i might add) that the little puff was clearly pressure sensitive, something that would explode when stepped on. the kids were freaking out. screaming. howling. "throw it out the window! please!!!!! it's gonna explode!!!!" i walked toward the window, starting to think i should take them seriously. their faces were more serious than anything i'd ever seen. i held my hand out the window and just before i was able to let go, i felt the concussion from the explosion. it was incredible. no, i mean that. it was fascinating to have something explode in my hand without removing the hand right off my body. i pulled my hand in as the stink began to waft back in. someone closed the window. this was the third or fourth stink bomb today. most days don't have any.

on my way back up to the fourth floor for my last class, i could smell the stink of yet another bomb suffocating the stairwell so when i finally got to four, i walked to the window at the end of the hall. these hallway and stairwell windows have grates over them, steel lattice to keep the kids in i guess or keep them from throwing things or maybe each other out. this particular window works just like storm windows in my house with little sliding levers a person can operate with a thumb. or two. so i slipped my thumbs under the grate and slid the levers to the side. and it turns out this window is somehow springloaded because without any force at all of my own the window flew up behind the grate and my thumbs went up with it. unfortunately, they were still attached to me and i was on the other side of the immovable steel grate. it took what seemed like a very long time for my brain to realize it would have to tell my body to pull both hands down and drag my trapped thumbs out from between the window and the grate, from a space much smaller than the fatness of my thumbs. finally, though, my brain did this and my body did as it was told and my thumbs scraped themselves down the grate and out into freedom. as i type they are bruised and throbbing. two mangled thumbs is rare and awful.

and then i began to hear the stories. they were magnificent. there were versions of my stink bomb explosion that had me mangled, deformed, a veritable phantom of the opera (or school). i am thinking about getting a cape. wearing a mask. sporting a cane. and possibly thumb casts or slings. but really, truly, what i want is to learn to make stink bombs. because i know i could do a better job than a high school kid. and wouldn't that sort of knowledge come in handy next time someone is asleep in my class?

flying accessories for small supernaturals

special thanks to the models- pumpkin head and star wars drone lamp.

the new supernatural nephew called me up the other day. "boy, that snow sure is cold!" he gushed. thinking about the snow we'd been enjoying up in the catskills, i agreed. but the child lives in missouri and they've been having sixty degree days lately. i'm pretty sure he's not seen snow unless it was in the first weeks of his life, a time even he won't remember. but he continued chirping on about the snow, how cold it was, how his fingers got red from touching it. but i was having none of it. the original supernatural nephew had been much easier. this one is to all outward appearances a happy, cooing angel, but to those of us dealing with his "specialness" he's becoming quite the little imp. he will solemnly promise that he won't summon dragons from the center of the earth and then five minutes later there are dragons pouring out of every mole hole in the yard. so i knew he was up to something.

"where did you see snow?" i asked as levelly as i could. he stammered around a bit, tossed out the names of a few local towns, none of which were covered in snow, then fell silent. "i knew it!" i yelled into the phone. "you're not supposed to be flying by yourself!" i don't know why i say these things. it's not like he doesn't know. he could break his neck. he's not yet a year old and he has no finesse to his flying. he flies the way thirteen year olds drive. "where?" i demand again. he talks breathlessly about a trip to antarctica. "antaractica? what? you couldn't find colorado?" giggles on the other end. this child really is impossible. his words are apologetic but it is pretty clear that he is now in love with penguins. emperor penguins. those i know. but also something called adelie penguins. "they can do anything!" he whispers. i have lost this battle before it started. i can't really compete with penguins. he raves about the ocean. icebergs. snow. snow. snow. his only lament is how cold his little ears and fingers get when he flies.

this is why he called. he wants me to help him. he's discovering new skills every day and i suggest he try to get fire to come out of his ears. that would keep them warm. he giggles. everything is funny to this child. he already has a solution. he wants a hat and mittens. but not just any kind. fancy ones. fine i say. whatever. i'm in way over my head. he is learning from his older cousin about persistence. "they might be the difference between life and death!" he tries. dramatic. i suggest staying home in his crib like a good baby instead of flying off to antarctica with half-developed flying skills might also be the difference. more giggles.

he begins describing. the hat should be soft and light. it can't fall down over his eyes but should keep his ears warm. he wants some mechanism to keep the thing from falling off while he flies. "if it falls off in the ocean," he says, "it's gone for good. sharkfood." i try to ignore the image of sharkfood and listen about the hat. something to let the penguins know he's freindly. a tassel or pompom on top would be good. i am pretty sure i can do this. "and the mittens," he continues. "the mittens need to be entirely for flying. aerodynamic. no thumbs. i laugh to myself because thumbless mittens are what people get for babies. i don't tell him. he likes to think he's not a baby. "they need to be long like the gloves knights wore." and again with the loss issue. "a cord with some sort of fastener." i think to myself about the cords on mittens for babies, the kind that attach to a mitten, run through the sleeves of a coat and then attach to the other mitten. i don't mention this. no problem, i say. "but i don't want to look strange," he says. "can you make snap on thumbs i can put on when i land so i'll look normal and blend in? i don't want people knowing they're flying mittens." i think about it. his thumbs are pretty small. i could probably attach a button to a bit of i-cord. i tell him i'll try.

i figure he'll want something to match some ridiculous costume he's working up so i ask. some bright hideous color combination that will blind me as i knit. his name stitched across the front. "oh, no!" he says, "nothing like that. can you make it look like the ocean and the sky? i want to blend in a bit." i am pretty sure i know a yarn that will work and i say so. i'm expecting one of those amelie penguins to be waiting for me under the christmas tree. it better be cute and it better be compatible with dachshunds.

heavy metals (and a gas)

for proof i'm not making this up, visit:
www.vanderkrogt.net/elements/origin_index.html
webelements.com

okay, first of all, this is probably news to exactly nobody but me. i am showing my own ignorance. whatever.

when i was in seventh grade or maybe eighth my science teacher, mr. fred a. pitts, expected us to memorize the periodic table of elements. or at the very least he expected us to be acquainted enough with the table to be able to balance a chemical equation. i loved this stuff. little puzzles that, when properly solved, created the world out of single elements. it was very helpful to know that Na, when added properly to Cl, would produce the salt sitting in salt shakers all over the world, while the Cl in gas form was used as a weapon in the first world war. descriptions of the gas include the word "suffocating". ah, science. i liked being in on the secret that hydrogen, that terrible gas keeping the sun hot and bright, when slammed together with the surprisingly flammable oxygen in the right proportions, would make fresh water every time. all these elements hung out in predictable groups, little clusters of friends. my friends. i knew right where they were.

so you can imagine my surprise when i saw a large, brightly colored periodic table of elements in a science classroom in my school recently. i went over to visit a bit with the elements. unchanging, in neat, pretty rows. good old hydrogen and helium, up at the edges alone, staring at each other across a great chasm. and that miracle lithium, the element i rely on for my own continued existence, so named because it was first found in a rock. i'm not kidding. the creativity of our greatest minds is never spent naming. actinoids set apart, named for fermi and einstein and nobel. weren't they called actinides before? then iron and cobalt. tin and xenon. and lead, Pb. i have always wondered why Pb. turns out lead used to be plumbium. oh. but under lead, i noticed something awful. something new. elements 112 to 118. all beginning with Uu. what? where did those come from? no, seriously. i'd never seen them before. new elements? when did this happen? it's been quite some time since seventh or eighth grade. it was the late seventies. i suppose anything could have happened. and here's what did.

ununbium- Uub was discovered february 9, 1996. it seems it was created by fusing zinc and lead. by fusing, i mean nuclear fusing. let's revise "discovered". let's call it "accidentally created during a nuclear experiment".

ununtrium- Uut was created in february of 2004. this one is iffy. not yet isolated. only four atoms ever made. can we really afford to use a whole tile on the periodic table for four atoms?

ununquadium- Uuq is evidence scientists are losing it when it comes to naming new elements. informal reports of this adorable heavy metal showed up as early as january of 1999. the site says "currently, the identification of element 114 (that's ununquadium to you and me) is yet to be confirmed". the same guys who brought you all four atoms of ununtrium have managed to cobble together three of ununquadium. nice job, kids.

ununpentium- Uup, just like its sibling ununquadium, has yet to be "discovered", although folks seem to have started talking seriously about it as of february 2004.

ununhexium- Uuh claims to have burst on the scene december 6, 2000. it is a very heavy metal. atomic number 116. un un hex. at this point, naming it caitlynn dylan would have been more original.

ununseptium- Uus has not yet been discovered. oddly enough, we can presume that it is a solid at 298 k and that it is probably dark in appearance. this is even more funny when you consider that on the perodic table of elements, it's the only element tile with no color at all. blank. white.

ununoctium- Uuo was first produced as a single molecule in 2002. in 2005, two more were made. this is probably a good thing as it is very, very heavy. atomic weight 294. yeah.

they are all heavy metals. well, excpt ununoctium. it's a noble gas. still, heavy enough. they are all related, come from the same lab. we could probably put all we have of all instances of all these metals on the head of a pin without disturbing any of the angels dancing there. dance, you heavy elements.

one of the websites mentioned above has periodic tables for sale. generally, i like the standard ones with their color coded groups all neat and tidy. it makes my eyes feel good to look at all those elements right there where they should be. but this fancy one caught my eye. it is a little unsettling to look at at first. the boxes are still outlined in the familiar colors, but inside the boxes are beautiful color photos of the elements against a black background. cobalt is a ghostly bubbling rock. iodine is magnificent. the actinoids are black and white images of the men they're named after. gasses like xenon and neon are glowing tubes shaped for their symbols. the whole thing taken together looks like a printer's tray full of jewels, a glittering menagerie. but the new boxes are empty. there is nothing in them but darkness. night. we do not know what they look like but we have given them names and places in this most basic representation of our world. the blank spaces are beautiful. they are waiting. and now, i am also waiting.

side note. i clicked on a link somewhere and ended up here: www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/
i don't know who this guy is but he built a wooden periodic table table and under each element, there's a little cubby with a sample of the element inside. the guy says it was inspired by something oliver sacks wrote and oliver sacks came to see the table once, along with theodore gray. there are lovely photos of the two men poring over elements at his website. go see them. go see the table. pretty pretty pretty.

open letter to my neighbor

hello. although we've been living next door to one another for just over a year now, we haven't really met. this wasn't what i had planned, but we take what opportunities we see, i suppose. i feel at least partly to blame for the fact that we don't really know each other. i live in two different places, so i'm not really next door to you all the time. i've seen you out in the yard plenty of times and intended to say hello, but each time you're out there you're screaming. at the dog. at your kids. at the neighbors behind you. at some guy who might have been anyone- boyfriend, delivery guy, lawn service. i learned long ago never interrupt a screaming woman, especially one i don't know, so i've always just gone back into the house, left you to your screaming.

but i've talked to your dog. a girl, i think, older. golden retriever. she seems sweet and i've said hi a few times when she was out in the yard alone. and then a few weeks ago when i was raking leaves i noticed you were putting together a dog kennel. concrete slab, chain link fence, wooden dog house. wait. now that i look, the dog house is on the outside. there's no place in that pen for a dog to get warm. you chose a nice spot, though, right next to the bedraggled swingset and the scattered yard junk- milk crates, broken grill, etc. it seemed odd you'd put such an old dog, an indoor dog, into a kennel like that. maybe you got a new job that requires you to be out longer and your dog can't stay in the house so long. but then i saw the puppy. you seem to like him. i haven't heard you yell at him at all. he certainly is cute and very playful. did you build the kennel for him? i'm not sure why you would. he seems like a house dog, too.

it's not that i don't like kennels. i know some hunting dogs and they live in kennels because they are working dogs. but working dogs are very expensive and are generally checked on and kept healthy. they have dog houses inside the pen, you know, so they can get inside them and keep warm. you don't treat your dogs like they're expensive. little pets don't fare so well in impromptu kennels in catskill winters. bare concrete. frozen water dish. do you know how cold the concrete feels on their feet when the air is 22 degrees?

that's what brings me to the writing of this letter. i hadn't seen the dogs in the kennel and i figured maybe it was something you wanted to get set up now but wouldn't use until spring. and then i took our own little dogs outside. they're not fans of the cold and are able to pee and be back inside in mere seconds when the thermometer dips. it was hovering around 22, so i thought they'd be extremely fast but guthrie went right toward the fence, barking. i figured maybe he saw a squirrel or some sort of yeti (it's very cold today) so i let him lead me toward the fence, toward your yard. when we came round the fence i saw what he was barking at. your dogs. standing on the concrete slab, huddled together. they didn't even bark. they just looked over at us. it was 22 degrees and that was the warm spot of the day. guthrie kept barking. i took my own dogs back inside and tried to think. i wondered if maybe i might go over and knock on your door, let you know your dogs were freezing. i thought maybe you forgot them. i'm not making fun of you. when i was in fourth grade, my dad sent me to my room as punishment for something i did and then went off to play a golf game. he forgot me completely. mom let me come out when she realized what happened, but when we heard dad drive up, i went back to my room and we pretended i'd stayed in there all day. he felt pretty bad. i didn't want you to feel bad. i just wanted your dogs to be warm.

i looked out the window and saw you come out. i guess guthrie's barking maybe reminded you that your own dogs were outside. you brought them back in and i didn't come over to talk to you. there didn't seem to be any point. but i want to tell you something. i come from a fairly long line of dog liberators. next time i see your dogs outside, i will come to let you know. if you're not there, i'll bring them to my house and warm them up. i'll keep them safe and when you come to get them, we'll talk. i'm sure we'll be able to come to some sort of understanding. but if it happens a second time don't come to my house looking for your dogs. they won't be yours anymore.

panties

when i first started teaching, boys did not wear their pants down low. or maybe my boys, a cluster of strange, disturbed, angry little fifth and sixth graders simply hadn't grown up enough for that. but over the years i've spent more time than i care to contemplate saying, "i don't want to look at your panties!" to a generation of preteen and teenage boys.

here's what i know. boys do not refer to their undergarments as "panties". i do because it amuses me and it tends to elicit all sorts of defense of boy panty exhibition, which also amuses me. boys who wear their pants down low wear boxers. generally, they're pretty boxers, fashionably matched up to sneakers, jackets, belts, t-shirts or bandannas. boys spend a lot of time trying to look fierce, the way girls spend time trying to look pretty, only more so. i have had boys tell me they can't get out a sheet of paper until they finish brushing their timberlands. i'm not making this up. boys have pretty little brushes like shoeshine guys have and they spend copious time brushing their boots. boots intended to go hiking, logging, onto construction sites. rugged boots. brushed and brushed and brushed. soft. pretty.

but we should get back to the boy panties. we don't have all day and i'm not writing a book here. when i started working with the high school children the low hanging pants were certainly the way to go in harlem. more than anything they just look silly. boys staggering around unable to walk with a normal gait because the crotch of their pants sits just below the knee. a big puddle of denim slouches over those pretty boots and shoes, all but obscuring them. side note. being all but obscured does not in any way diminish the amount of time and money spent on the foot gear. boys who wear their pants like this, especially the skinny ones, look like pulled teeth lurching around. those tiny root legs don't seem sturdy enough to carry around the wedge of bulk sitting on top of them.

it has always been more a source of bafflement than annoyance. i wonder why people would look in the mirror wearing their pants halfway down and actually decide to leave the house the same way i wonder how anyone can talk seriously about the music of, say, michael bolton or the jonas brothers. but it's not just a harmless fashion faux pas. there are dangers. very real dangers. a few years ago i was sitting at my desk between classes. a very exuberant child came leaping into the class and stood in front of me, raving passionately about something. his skinny legs and generally buttless self riccocheted like a pinball. and as he spoke and leapt around his pants rebelled and i found myself staring smack into the face of mickey mouse, as represented on a pair of long, shiny boxers. the child's pants had fallen clear off. without missing a beat he grabbed them by the belt, which was circling his very finely brushed boots, and whipped them back up to a level somewhere between hips and knees. it was immediately evident this sort of thing happened to him often enough for him to be good at swooping his pants back up.

and over the last ten or fifteen years i've managed to learn to live with the constant, oppressive inundation of boy panties. they fit snugly up at the waistline and because they're boxers, the legs tend to cover all the things i don't want to see on children i'm trying to teach. as long as they don't fall off. but today i saw something that changed everything. i hopped off the train and was walking the twelve or so blocks to home. a teenage boy walked in front of me, chatting on a cell phone. he looked like my own little babies, decked out in a cotton hoodie that couldn't possibly be keeping him warm. but it was purple and black striped. and purple is what the boys are wearing these days. who knew? the hood was up and partially covered a gray and black striped knit cap. the child's jeans were low, held to his body by a deep purple belt and hope, i suspect. his sneakers were three colors of purple, matched neatly to the belt, the hoodie and... his boy panties. but here's the thing. here's the problem. this dear child didn't get the memo about how boy panties for lowrider jeans have to be boxers. or even boxer briefs. this boy was trying to rock the whole low pants scene with tighty whities. except in purple. beautifully matched to the shoes, hoodie, etc. but in no way capable of covering everything that might hang out when the pants hang low.

as a result, each time the child (maybe 17, maybe 18 years old) took a step, the leg stepping forward flashed a slice of skin, and not at all a small slice. i should mention here that today i walked home in 36 degree weather. as did purple panty boy. which means he had to know his lower butt/ upper leg was flashing each time he walked. this, of course, means one of two things. thing one: he didn't know how to fix his pants/panty debacle in public and hoped nobody would walk behind him and mock him. if this is the case, i didn't mock him out loud at the time, at least. then there's thing two: he genuinely thinks his lower butt/upper leg region is so fantastically desirable that he needs to bare it in 36 degree weather when outside and completely alone. i cannot imagine that this is the case. having walked behind these flashing parts of him for five blocks i can say that although i found the whole thing pretty amusing, it certainly wasn't pretty. in fact, i'm pretty confident that even teenage girls would giggle if they saw him. but he strutted on, chatting overly noisily on his phone, his pants slipping lower with each step. he'll be pretty cold when they finally fall off.

elms of fury

for those of you who don't know, our little yard upstate has five tall, sassy spruce trees and an ancient but prolific apple tree and all along the back fence and then one side of the yard are nine hundred seventy three horrible rock elms. i suspect that at one time they were scattered all around the yard and the larger trees drove them back to the edges of the yard and banished them there, crowding each other, an ugly line of mangy dogs.

they are horrible trees. that's not something you're likely to hear me say often. it's difficult for a tree to be horrible or ugly. their very nature is all sorts of life affirming and reaching toward the sun and all that. but not rock elms. their horrible lower branches droop over as if they're trying to claw their way back into the earth. if a long line of them stand together, it is difficult to tell when a branch falls off or when a tree is dead. they are garbage trees. these were likely planted as a fencerow by someone who didn't realize or didn't care that they'd grow well beyond forty feet up while their lower branches would reach outward and downward, slapping at each other like sullen children.

they shed these lower branches like baby teeth so we are never surprised when we drive up on a friday night to find the yard littered with two and three foot long sections of tree filth. but we'd been gone two weeks, gallivanting around delaware and then brooklyn, so we missed what must have been a very large storm that slammed into our little yard. the majestic spruces stood their ground, swayed and likely dropped a few needles and cones, but didn't budge. the gnarled little apple tree gave up all but three or four apples, shed every single leaf, but kept its arthritic limbs right where they belong. but those horrible rock elms lost their minds. and quite a bit else.

we arrived friday night around ten pm. dark. rainy. ridiculously warm at 58 degrees. the headlights rested on three fairly substantial treetops lying in the driveway. i got out of the car and dragged the carcasses up onto the yard so the sweetie could pull up to the house. as the sweetie turned the car toward the garage, the lights lit up the back yard, home to even more of the stupid elms. we got out and, aided by a flashlight, gazed on a scene of tree carnage. secretly, i was pleased that the storm had done what we didn't have the heart to do- wiped out several of the more horrible trees. it is not in our nature, the sweetie's or mine, to deliberately destroy a healthy tree that's doing nothing wrong other than being ugly. but it is beginning to look like it might be the nature of these trees to fall down onto things- in this case, my precious apple tree and also one of the spruces that was already assaulted over summer by another of the awful beasts as it fell to its death.

they are now on the list. right next to crabgrass and squirrels and cedar-apple rust. and earwigs. it is not like they're doing their job, anyway. they don't exactly provide shade with their scraggly canopies and i have no idea how anyone ever thought they'd screen off the sight of that abandoned factory sitting up next to the back yard. but rock elms are some of the best firewood you can get. and the sweetie has been begging nearly a year for a chainsaw. and christmas most certainly is coming. the rapture of the rock elms is close at hand. i'm pretty sure of it.

bulletin board queen vs. the stomach tornado

all week the ninth graders have been sick. when ninth graders have swirly insides their parents send them to school. STOP DOING THAT!!! sick is sick. they lie on desks, moaning, faces pinched, creating a smell it takes days to recover from. they are too sick to do work yet they refuse to go to the nurse because their parents are at work and will not come get them. so on wednesday when i became violently ill at school, i shouldn't have been thinking food poisoning. it came on so fast and was so violent that food poisoning seemed likely, though. thursday i still felt wobbly and awful but figured that's just what happens when a person recovers from attack and near death by food. i silently swore a the corn chowder i'd eaten wednesday for lunch. i considered the cruelty of the chocolate bar with hazelnuts that had promised me happiness for dessert. lies, all of it. and even last night when the couch began to swirl and it felt like dinner was trying to escape, i figured it was the medication i take every day that quite often causes nausea if i don't shove a big pile of food down on top of it to shut it up. i got up, got a cup of lemon yogurt, and waited for peace. i'm still waiting.

you know how early mornings when you wake up you always feel more awful than you know you will feel later? so i trudged to the train with a body inhabited by hundreds of tiny tornados. everything was spinning. shaking. scrunching up. i don't know why i thought the bus would be better, but that second leg of the journey was endless. i had no idea how many potholes lurk on bay parkway. by the time i got to school i was pretty confident whatever had possessed my internal organs was fully in control and i was in some sort of awful trouble. a brief conversation with fellow teachers convinced me i wasn't fit to be in school. everybody's got it, they gasped, hands covering mouths, protecting themselves from my filth tornado germs. i did what they told me. i made plans to go back home.

this is where the control freak steps up. i can't help it. subs were lined up for the two classes i don't share with someone and i lurched up to the fourth floor to set up class for the day. kids filed in and started reading. i let them know i'd be going soon and all the usual questions followed. who would be watching them? why was i leaving? they offered kindnesses and suggested i stay home several days. this is because, even after all we've been through together, they still expect days off if i'm home. not a chance. a big slice of chart paper proclaimed the three part plan for the two hour class. i went over it with them twice, shaking as i pointed to books and charts to fill out. the sub waited patiently for me to shut up and go. one of my little angels asked why i kept telling them, not the sub, what they were to do. smile. because your grade will crash and burn if you don't do this. he already finished ninth grade. oh. ohhhh.

there are a hundred things i need to say and do before i go. my 6th period class, a class that doesn't meet fridays, is expecting to pick up a take home test from me. i show it to every person i see. the sub. the kids in my first period class. two kids from 6th period who stop by to ask about the test. i know, in spite of all this preparation, those two kids are the only ones who will leave school with the test. i show the kids one of handmade boxes for the bulletin board and explain how their poems will go in. i am blathering at this point, feverish, sick, unable to believe this world will continue if i walk out the door. one of my guys asks how to make the box. i tell him i'll show them monday. i am raving about butcher paper and how to tear it for their poems. i toss the black construction paper box on the table by the door. "i'll leave it here if you want to look at it. you can figure it out." they look at me like i'm out of my mind. they see me sweating and watch my shaking hands and assume it is sickness making me howl on as if they are capable. it does not occur to me until the cab i've taken home turns onto my very own street that they might not understand how to make two dimensions into three. but on monday, fever gone and sanity restored, i will still forget to consider this. i will pick up the paper, make a box and expect the first child who figures it out to show the others. and that will happen. children are heartbreakingly beautiful when they are teaching something. their faces change. their words come from somewhere else. on monday they will write and assemble and teach. and the control freak will sit down and shut up.

bulletin board

today i walked home in the dark. well, not really the dark dark. here's what happened. i am bad. i know i am bad because i got a letter in my mailbox today (the teacher mailbox i have at school) saying i'd neglected to put up my monthly bulletin board. now, i hadn't neglected it at all. i had no intention of putting it up. i work in a high school and the idea of being forced to put student work up on the walls and act all excited about it nauseates me. bulletin boards at my school are shared between two teachers and a schedule is set down for the teachers to follow, alternating monthly so each teacher puts up a new display every two months. i know what you're thinking, but even if you only got your period six times a year, you'd still resent the cramps and bloating. you would.

every year i drag my heels and pretend to be doing work and i scrape by generally with one bulletin board. it's usually a good one and it's usually in the spring. then i go back to doing nothing. but this year the bulletin board police have nabbed me and although the teacher i share the space with was more than happy to put up work she'd been wanting to display, the space was left blank for me to stare at. the problem here is that by some miracle of complete idiocy my bulletin board is nowhere near my class. i live on the fourth floor at the back of the building. my board is on the second floor, near the front where i am able to ingore it with dignity and grace.

until today. it always works like this. i've bragged about how i'm not about to do the stupid bulletin board (yes, this is how i spend my time), how it will sit there empty like an old parking lot. barren. ugly. a menace inviting grafitti and shame. this is where the ninth graders came in. today we're working on memoirs and every year there's a lesson on writing a memory chain that i hate and the kids hate and as a result it's always a big, fat failure. this year i chucked it and made them write poems. they hate poems. let me rephrase that. they HATE poems. whatever. they always say that and they're always confused about what "poem" means. because to ninth graders poem means a pile of syrupy rhyming words about love written by a dead guy.

but we do this assignment where they have to write about a place from their childhoods (we're working on setting). they do not have places. they do not have memories. i tell them about my own memories, show them a poem i wrote and tell them it's easy. i will never understand why this works. it is not easy at all to write a good poem but i act like it is and force them to make these image lists, which they hold up for scrutiny. then they are encouraged to "flesh things out" and make the images into sentences. the transformation that happens is fantastic.

one boy brings me his poem couplet by couplet to admire. it is about a trip to six flags. another writes about playing ball with his siblings at evening, catching good food smells coming out the open back door of the house. one mentions the slight breeze in late afternoon. he actually uses the word "slight". these are suddenly children who notice things. i want everyone to see these poems. i want them hanging on the wall outside my door so i can look at them and be proud of them and protect them from idiot vandals. i am resentful of my second floor bulletin board but i want it to be perfect, so perfect other kids will be sad they don't have poems to put up there. in a matter of seconds i have become a monster, drooling, obsessing over black bulletin board border.

which brings us back to the beginning. i am leaving school late (3:45- not that late) and wandering through a world the color of slate, being pelted by a nasty, sharp rain. i walk along bay parkway hoping to find a paper store that's open, that has black bulletin board border. there is no such place. as i walk toward the f train and the cemetery, the sky lowers and darkens. not quite night but not something you can see in. this part of my walk is never pleasant as it is some sort of long haul trucker parking and also where the sheriff brings towed vehicles. i don't know why. but as often as not i'm able to see, if i'm so inclined, one of the truck drivers having a bathroom break on the sidewalk. today is my lucky day. evidently i startle the grown man peeing on a city sidewalk at 4:30 on a weekday and he swings around, nearly peeing on a passing car as he stumbles out into traffic. i want to think that things like this happen to everyone but nobody else seems to see guys like this one.

i am only mildly aware of anything that is not black bulletin board border and want to tell him, let him know i wasn't paying attention to him, but it is getting very dark and having a conversation on a dark sidewalk by a cemetery in the rain with a man whose pants are unfastened seems like poor judgment and i trudge on. there is no black border to be had. none. i will not be defeated. i have black tissue paper in the classroom. we will fashion our own border. we will create boxes fastened with buttons and when a brave soul walks up to the bulletin board and opens one of these boxes he or she will be rewarded with the gift of one of these wonderful poems.

even if the only people opening the boxes are the authors, that's just fine. i want my kids to see how beautiful their words are. i want them to see total strangers standing in front of their work, reading it, nodding, smiling. they should feel that. and if i have to put up a stupid bulletin board to get what i want, i'll do it.

vote

yesterday i voted. i have voted before and generally feel pretty good about the whole event. i work in a community where most people don't vote the way i do and are also, evidently, incredibly susceptible to mind control and brainwashing. i have been listening the last few months to some of the most ridiculous claims made by my coworkers about my president. things the daily news wouldn't print. and they print just about anything. i have heard in my school that our new president is the antichrist. now, for those of you who don't remember, my seventh grade year was consumed with the fear that ronald wilson reagan was the antichrist. it was a serious concern. as serious as it gets for a seventh grader. and we had all the proof we needed in the man's name. ronald (6 letters) wilson (6 letters) reagan (6 letters) was a sure sign. my friends and i were pretty deep into the bible then, deep into the revelation of st. john the divine and the absolute wildness it promised. we were ready. but i'm not in seventh grade anymore and i'm not so much looking to see if folks are the antichrist. although a boy in college told me he was the real deal. he wasn't. how do people spend time on this?

so at 5:30 yesterday morning when the alarm went off the dogs and i hit the floor, possible antichrist or no. "it's time to vote!" i yelled toward the sleeping sweetie who was burrowing himself further under the covers. he is no different at christmas, so you shouldn't be too hard on him. we were ready and out the door a few minutes past six. we walked the few blocks down to the middle school where we vote, a new location replacing the elementary school two blocks away. we passed another polling place, a preschool, as it was opening. a woman was yelling instructions and folks were cheering. cheering the instructions. we got to the middle school and the line was long but moved quickly. once inside the line turned sharply right and into a gym. there were two doors leading from this hallway into and out of the gym but only one was being used. let me explain. the line to go in snaked from the hallway where i was standing through a single door and into the floor of the gym where a few folks at a table looked up addresses and sent us to the right booth lines. as voters finished, they squeezed past this initial line, through the same single door, then had to leap through the waiting line to get out the doors onto the sidewalk. poorly planned? sure. but the sweetie and i knew our addresses and then went to our line. there were hundreds of people in the gym. as a mildly claustrophobic person i tend to notice things like this, but i was focused on the task at hand and once i noticed all the possible exits, i set my mind on my task. voting.

i started to think about the conversation in the teachers' room yesterday. if he gets elected, they'll come out of the woodwork! who? they will. all of them. who? who? i didn't get it at all until they started talking about farrakhan being on the supreme court. and oprah. so at first i thought they were joking but the tone was scary. and scared. i am ashamed that people who say these things teach children. the white folks i work with are afraid black folks are going to take over. not all of the white folks, but enough that i have to say it out loud. most of them. but the unstated fear they have is that black folks will make them feel the way they've been making black folks feel for a very long time. they carry that guilt and it makes them awfully afraid. they'll come out of the woodwork... i suppose then that my vote is like some sort of big fat welcome mat. come on out!

there were two booths for our district and only one was open. the other had a big sheet of white paper with something completely illegible written on it. turns out that when you're at the actual booth you can tell it says m-z. but a nice woman yelled at us to get in two lines. a-f and m-z. i don't know where the g-l folks go. nowhere. the sweetie and i get in separate lines. we have separate names. one man has trouble understanding the alphabet and goes completely through both lines. a woman asks my name. it is easy, a color, but still she has trouble with it. i worry she'll never get my first name. she spells it wrong on the card but i just want to stop spelling with her so i let it go.

an older man holds the booth flap open for me and smiles. i realize at this point i have been grinning like an idiot. i check to be sure i don't have tears running down my face and walk in. this is a small booth among many in a crowded gym. there is no empty space on the floor. my entire community is out there and we are all together but i can hear nothing but my breathing. i push the big lever to the right and touch the small lever next to the name of the man i hope will be president. i turn the lever and watch the X appear next to his name. i stare at it for a long time. breathe in. breathe out. i put the rest of the Xs where they should be, read a paragraph on the side about veterans, which i also X where i think i should.

so today i walked into the school with a jubilant heart. i honestly believe that we have, as a country, finally taken a step or two toward being not so ugly. i think there was a time when we were beautiful as a people, all of us, all the different clumps of us, and maybe we can inch back that way a little, live our lives moving toward something rather than away, rather than being motivated by fear. and so with my jubilant heart i pranced into the building and wished the three security guards at the front desk a happy new president day. they laughed and wished me the same. all three guards are black. normally, this wouldn't matter, but today it does. because when i went into the office and offered the same greeting to white coworkers, i was met with, "great. another obama supporter." yeah. jubilant. i went to the teachers' room and ate my breakfast next to a teacher who leaned back and loudly proclaimed to nobody in particular, "yeah, i better get me a copy of the communist manifesto." i ignored him so he attempted an explanation of his joke, "because, you know, obama is a communist. he's gonna turn the whole country communist." if you have to explain a joke that simple, you just shouldn't tell it. most days it's difficult to believe this man is an adult, but today he's beyond. he continues to rant about a variety of ways the new president will turn us all communist. i had no idea there were so many ways. i begin to think we must all already be communists. i listen as long as i can. he'll take all our money and give it to people on welfare. he'll socialize medicine. he'll let dogs and cats live together. finally, i say to him quietly, "you sure do believe some crazy shit, you know that?" "well," he says. well. the day continues with comments on the obama family's choice of republican red clothing. it's disrespectful, they say. only republicans can wear red. the sweetie says i should remind them it's a favorite color with the communists, too.

during the morning announcements the kids find out (some didn't know) that we have a new president. they begin stomping their feet and clapping their hands and attempting "we will rock you" which i think is cute and i tell them so. but there's still a split along race lines. one white boy announces gleefully that the new president will be assassinated soon enough. where does he hear this? a white girl asks the president's middle name. "hussein," i tell her. "my middle name is diane and i didn't choose it just like he didn't choose his." i am surprised that this is enough to make her happy. children parrot what they hear at home. they say the same hate, but with less force. they don't mean it quite as much and it's easier to talk to them logically than it is adults. they can actually recognize when they're saying something that doesn't make sense. the black children in class are quieter than usual, quieter than i expect. overwhelmed. happy in a warm milk sort of way, i think. like they have looked at the face of god and don't know how to tell people what they see. one child brings in the post's 32 page bio on obama and when i allow him to read it during reading time (we are working on biography, autobiography and memoir) he smiles quietly and falls into the pages. at the end of class, he waits until everyone else is gone and offers me the paper to use in my next class. i thank him and he says he'll come by at the end of the day to pick it up. this newspaper is priceless to him. i buy an extra in case his gets messed up.

but this is not what i was expecting. i knew the adults would be miserable and ugly but i was surprised to see it in the children, even a little. they are people i love, so i did the only thing i knew to do. i did the thing we're not supposed to do in a classroom. when the kids asked who i voted for i told them. i voted for the president. they knew this but they wanted to hear it, i think. some words are so strong when you say them out loud. more real. when they asked why i said what i think is true. because i think he is a good man with a good heart who can listen more than he speaks. i think all that time he spent organizing will help him go out into the world and bring us all a little closer together. i want to tell them how it felt to vote for someone i really and truly believe isn't lying to me. i want them to know there are people out there who do what they do simply to make the way smoother for those who come after. some leaders are real leaders, i want to say. but i can feel the stupid tears scratching in my throat and in my eyes and i don't say anything. but the children nod, most of them, so i think maybe they know.

and i will try to tell them what it felt like to be a part of what happened today.