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don't ever let anyone tell you roses aren't heavy. they certainly are. at least when it's before 6am and you're on the train, then bus and 48 long legged roses aren't the only things you're dragging along with you. and so the day begins, rain falling down in such fine mist it feels like cold sweat, the before 6am trains and buses running only every so often, me carrying things that didn't seem heavy when i left the house with them but now seem to be taking on weight with every step. and generally, during the real day, folks will smile at a person carrying 48 delicate peach long legged roses in the rain at the bus stop, but the before am folks will scowl at anything. they do not see pretty. they are rarely amused.

i guess maybe because i knew things they didn't know i just didn't care about their scowling. maybe the faint smell of roses redecorating the whole bus was enough to make me feel like i'd accomplished something for the day. i sat with my face close to the velvety petals and smiled the whole way to work. what i knew that all those miserable folks didn't was that my ninth graders would be reading their stories aloud to a real and live and public audience in a few hours, that i had tricked them into it, and was bringing roses, cheese made with lapsang souchon tea and handmade ginger ice cream to sweeten the deal.

we do it every year, the literary salon. i tell the kids they have to write these massive historical fiction pieces and they end up doing it, surprising lots of folks, but most often themselves. a few days ago a boy who has spent most of his ninth grade career telling me no was sitting at his computer, typing away. he would ask me from time to time for help. he needed encouragement more than help and i gave as much of that as i could scrounge up. he yelled for me across the room and said loudly, "i have three pages." "i know," i said, with as much nonchalance as my brain could muster considering my desire to do cartwheels after the kid got a sentence on the page. "why are you making such a big deal of it? it's what i expected you to do." now this really is true, but it's also true that a page would have been a big deal. at two pages, i'd had to walk away from his desk to hide the fact that my eyes had been misting up. i'd been practicing stoicism for his third page announcement. but just like i know these kids, they know me and he smiled and went back to his typing, knowing three pages was the biggest deal ever.

there were seven readers. one child invited her mother and although i'm pretty sure the mom felt a little uncomfortable being the only parent there, i hope she knows what a big deal it was for her to show up. when you have a fourteen year old daughter who invites you to see her read her own written work at school during the day, you've got something serious.

we get a microphone and amp for the thing. the kids i work with tend to be shy about things like reading their own work and their lunchroom-loud voices shrivel up when people are staring at them. it is never really about the stories, although often they are good, and sometimes even the readings of them are good. i like to see the kids in a different place, one where they've got literature and are powerful because of it. they read their own words like a drunk running down stairs but somehow folks catch a line here or there and eyebrows raise. smiles bloom.

they liked the sorbet- mango, lemon, coconut. more than one person asked where it came from. they liked the ice cream. ginger is not a flavor brooklyn teens seek out for ice cream. they slathered everything with nutella and after a few kids watched me toss raspberries into a champagne glass of perrier, watched the raspberries hiss and fizz, they began to float fruit across drinks. they liked the smoky gentleness of cheese made with lapsang souchon tea leaves.

when the guests left they cleaned up, then sat around variously working on the last bits of their stories, snacking on the remaining fruit and cheese or trying to outdo each other with the most delicious photos of muscle cars the internet could dredge up. i found myself in that latter group, trying to impress with my promise to spend the following day at the rhinebeck aerodrome with all sorts of ancient planes. there was drooling. a child flashed a screen full of truck, twelve cylinders. not a particularly attractive truck to my eyes, but i could almost smell twelve cylinders. the child promised me that if i'd get my license before he bought the truck, he'd let me drive it. i suspect he's been talking to the sweetie.

there was a bell and they went home. i locked up and headed downstairs. several grown folks said charming and generous things about the event. a woman whose russian accent trips me up from time to time was trying to tell me something. she likes what i do with the kids and likes this particular event every year. i strained to hear but it didn't help that she was across a noisy room and is generally rather quiet. another woman, nearer the first and considerably louder, said, "she says your class is like a family."