What are the two sweetest words in the English language? I vote for "Friday payday" every month when that day rolls around. The promise of getting my monthly allowance is so exciting....until I sit down and parcel it all out to my bills. That kind of wrecks the wonderful feeling. Then there is another standby: "half price." Ah, yes, there's the money factor again. The idea that I could get two of whatever for the price of one is intriguing. Too bad it's almost always something I will never, ever need. Sometimes, I buy it anyway.
But right now, the two sweetest words for me are "summer vacation." It is so for every student and teacher in the state, as well. Especially now, when we're just on the cusp of all those days stretching out before us, it's so happy to contemplate. I do sometimes wonder what everyone else's mind goes to for summer vacation.
Is it staying up all night reading books or watching movies, or is that just me?
Is it running barefoot through the grass until exhaustion overtakes you, as it is for so many little ones?
Is it finding the coldest creek or the deepest lake and spending the whole day on it or in it, getting lobster-red and loud with your friends?
Is it hitting the road with mountains before you and relentless heat behind you, or exciting sights in unfamiliar cities, or setting up camp on a beach for a week and never thinking of any worries at all?
Is it taking an extra job to ease the money worries and frustrations of the school year?
Is it family activities and excursions on weekends, zoos and parks and movies, testing everyone's nerves but bonding over the activities?
Is it a continuation of daily life, only with a higher electric bill for the air conditioning?
Is it a respite in the yearly grind of 60-hour work weeks, an oasis in the desert of exhaustion?
"Summer Vacation" will always mean a little of each of these for me. They are only different stages in the vacationing process. That doesn't mean they don't overlap or repeat. For example, I would happily run barefoot in the yard (especially if there were a sprinkler involved) any summer day, if I didn't live under the threat of losing a foot. I don't do as many family excursions as I used to, but I still have my nieces a couple of days over the summer to run around and have fun with. The last vacation trip I took was in 1995, for a few days in Nashville, but tomorrow I head out for a cruise that has me so excited that I don't know if I'll sleep tonight at all!
Whenever there's talk of year-round school and that summer breaks are really outdated, I panic just a little. I'm not ready to give up any of those definitions of summer vacation; it's not just that it's so enjoyable, but that it's so necessary. Rewind, recharge, restore---those are the real definitions of my two sweetest words for today: Summer Vacation!
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Happy Memory Day
Here's a confession: I didn't know until I was in my 30s that Memorial Day was started as a remembrance for those who died in service to our country. To me, it had always been Decoration Day; many family members would travel the state to decorate the graves of and memorialize our late relatives. We put out flowers for Welkers in Pawnee, Skedee, and Adair, and for Browns, Yateses, and McCoys in Pryor. It remains an annual pilgrimage with whoever can make the rounds. Tomorrow, my mother and sister and I will do the honors for the eastern part of our clan.
I've noticed a trend in the last couple of years in the media: public service announcements reminding people that this holiday weekend is not just a time for picnics and camping. Instead, or in addition, we should remember those who have served and died. I could not agree more. There is no way I'd ever have been functional in the military, but I have the utmost respect for them. They have provided me with freedoms that I will never even realize, that we all take for granted on a regular basis, and that we can never repay to them or their descendants.
But I think this holiday down-time can be used on the opposite end of that equation just as successfully, and much more effectively than using the time only to think somberly of those who have gone before. I learned this from my family, too: that time spent together to travel the state on Decoration Day weekend is a precious time for us. We laugh together, have longer talks without cattle and chores to distract us, and we catch up on our lives. I see so many families that almost never interact with each other because everyone has a cell phone, computer, mini-tablet, or DVD in front of them, no matter whether they are at home, in a car, or even in a restaurant. In other words, we're checking out of our relationships without ever having them. Why wait to memorialize our people when we are too busy to have one in the first place? Let's just lay the flowers out now and get back to our devices.
Of course, this is a ridiculous argument to present, but I stand by it. Mainly, that's because I got a little wake-up about that just a bit ago when my guy and I were leaving a friend's house where eight of us enjoyed a little cookout and outdoor dinner. The setting was lovely and comfortable and the evening was absolutely perfect, warm enough to call summer without a drop of sweat brought forth. We all enjoyed the cool evening air as we talked. As we drove away, Galen, who normally works second shift six to seven nights a week, commented on the lovely night and said, "I hate to think of how many times I've worked through evenings like this." I knew right away what he meant. Although he's grateful to have a job where he can work overtime if he wants or needs to, no one should give up all the beautiful times in life. What is more beautiful than loving our people now, while they are here waiting for our time, instead of honoring them after they are gone?
Nothing, nothing can come close to that beauty. Yes, we should spend time memorializing those we have lost and honoring the fallen. But the time we spend on, yes, picnics or camping or whatever we do to make memories, is perhaps even more valuable. I want to honor the living at least as much as I honor the lost.
I've noticed a trend in the last couple of years in the media: public service announcements reminding people that this holiday weekend is not just a time for picnics and camping. Instead, or in addition, we should remember those who have served and died. I could not agree more. There is no way I'd ever have been functional in the military, but I have the utmost respect for them. They have provided me with freedoms that I will never even realize, that we all take for granted on a regular basis, and that we can never repay to them or their descendants.
But I think this holiday down-time can be used on the opposite end of that equation just as successfully, and much more effectively than using the time only to think somberly of those who have gone before. I learned this from my family, too: that time spent together to travel the state on Decoration Day weekend is a precious time for us. We laugh together, have longer talks without cattle and chores to distract us, and we catch up on our lives. I see so many families that almost never interact with each other because everyone has a cell phone, computer, mini-tablet, or DVD in front of them, no matter whether they are at home, in a car, or even in a restaurant. In other words, we're checking out of our relationships without ever having them. Why wait to memorialize our people when we are too busy to have one in the first place? Let's just lay the flowers out now and get back to our devices.
Of course, this is a ridiculous argument to present, but I stand by it. Mainly, that's because I got a little wake-up about that just a bit ago when my guy and I were leaving a friend's house where eight of us enjoyed a little cookout and outdoor dinner. The setting was lovely and comfortable and the evening was absolutely perfect, warm enough to call summer without a drop of sweat brought forth. We all enjoyed the cool evening air as we talked. As we drove away, Galen, who normally works second shift six to seven nights a week, commented on the lovely night and said, "I hate to think of how many times I've worked through evenings like this." I knew right away what he meant. Although he's grateful to have a job where he can work overtime if he wants or needs to, no one should give up all the beautiful times in life. What is more beautiful than loving our people now, while they are here waiting for our time, instead of honoring them after they are gone?
Nothing, nothing can come close to that beauty. Yes, we should spend time memorializing those we have lost and honoring the fallen. But the time we spend on, yes, picnics or camping or whatever we do to make memories, is perhaps even more valuable. I want to honor the living at least as much as I honor the lost.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
On a Spring Wind
I walked out of the Quik Trip at 61st and 145th last night around 9:30, sugar-free frozen drink in hand. The strong spring breeze, cool and damp but full of the promise of summer, greeted me. A short, middle-aged woman in a florescent green t-shirt that read "Tuff Enuff" ambled toward the door as I started across the parking lot. It was a perfect confluence of sensory experiences that conspired in a single instant to send me back more years than I care to think about. I felt almost as though I had run into a wall called 1986:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcXT1clXc04&noredirect=1
The evening, the wind, the Styrofoam cup, the t-shirt's proclamation, even its color---all shouted something so very close to "YOUTH!" that I nearly stopped to listen. I didn't have to. As I walked on to my car at the gas pumps, I thought of how many things call us back to younger days. The taste of orange Kool-Aid, the smell of Play-Dough, the paper cover on crayons surely make us all think of childhood. I can't hear K.C. and the Sunshine Band without imagining the soft green walls and blue and green flowered bedspread of my bedroom in my early teens. And I can't think of Styrofoam (Sonic) cups, day-glo clothing, a spring wind full of expectation, and a good dance song without remembering one thousand wonderful days when I lived and worked with dozens of other college students---many of whom I still consider good friends, though I seldom see them---while I completed my master's. It was the kind of wistful but happy memory one might have about a long-ago love that was not meant to last but was poignantly and fondly remembered.
And then I thought of how frustrated I've been lately with my students. Immature. Whiny. Lazy. Irresponsible. Rude. I've thought all these things of them lately---or for a while, in some cases. What I do for them they won't understand for a long while. For them, their lives are full of making the same memories I had last night. True, I remember the classes I was taking at that time, and the classes I was teaching as a grad assistant, but I was older than my students are now. Surely, though, I was no less cavalier in my attitude toward life than they are.
Tonight I stood in the lobby at our gym and watched them come in for their prom, beautifully done up, excited with the promise of the fresh spring breeze, ready for good dance songs, and even dressed in the same colors as 1986, and I heard youth calling again. Their youth called out, and I smiled and told them how lovely they looked, and I thought how much they would experience before one day they saw youth staring back at them in a young person's face. I signed them out as they left, climbed in my car, and drove the 40 miles back west, singing along with their songs, glad to have the years both behind me and ahead of me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcXT1clXc04&noredirect=1
The evening, the wind, the Styrofoam cup, the t-shirt's proclamation, even its color---all shouted something so very close to "YOUTH!" that I nearly stopped to listen. I didn't have to. As I walked on to my car at the gas pumps, I thought of how many things call us back to younger days. The taste of orange Kool-Aid, the smell of Play-Dough, the paper cover on crayons surely make us all think of childhood. I can't hear K.C. and the Sunshine Band without imagining the soft green walls and blue and green flowered bedspread of my bedroom in my early teens. And I can't think of Styrofoam (Sonic) cups, day-glo clothing, a spring wind full of expectation, and a good dance song without remembering one thousand wonderful days when I lived and worked with dozens of other college students---many of whom I still consider good friends, though I seldom see them---while I completed my master's. It was the kind of wistful but happy memory one might have about a long-ago love that was not meant to last but was poignantly and fondly remembered.
And then I thought of how frustrated I've been lately with my students. Immature. Whiny. Lazy. Irresponsible. Rude. I've thought all these things of them lately---or for a while, in some cases. What I do for them they won't understand for a long while. For them, their lives are full of making the same memories I had last night. True, I remember the classes I was taking at that time, and the classes I was teaching as a grad assistant, but I was older than my students are now. Surely, though, I was no less cavalier in my attitude toward life than they are.
Tonight I stood in the lobby at our gym and watched them come in for their prom, beautifully done up, excited with the promise of the fresh spring breeze, ready for good dance songs, and even dressed in the same colors as 1986, and I heard youth calling again. Their youth called out, and I smiled and told them how lovely they looked, and I thought how much they would experience before one day they saw youth staring back at them in a young person's face. I signed them out as they left, climbed in my car, and drove the 40 miles back west, singing along with their songs, glad to have the years both behind me and ahead of me.
Saturday, May 10, 2014
The Darkness
I used to tell my students, both secondary students and the college English majors who were preparing to teach, that it doesn't do one bit of good to correct people's grammar, especially if you weren't in a classroom setting. No one will welcome it, and a fair number will resent the living daylights out of you. Some would even take it as a personal insult, as though they were being looked down on.
In the classroom, things were sometimes different. First, one would assume that people who are in class expect and hope to learn something. This was the most rewarding part of my experiences teaching for Northeastern in Tahlequah, Tulsa, and Broken Arrow. My students wanted to improve, accepted that they needed to brush up some skills, and knew that I could help them. Second, they knew there was no judgement involved; we were working together to better their understanding of the language. I loved that moment of recognition on a student's face, when he/she finally understood something that had perplexed him or her forever---for example, when to use "me" and when to use "myself"---that was really simple, but no one had explained in quite the right way before. I was really good at that, putting grammar into little bites of knowledge that were understandable and useful, that could improve that student's skills both in writing and in personal speaking, such as job interviews, that could drastically improve that person's situation.
Well, let's flash forward to present day, since I haven't taught any college classes in the last ten years. I recently had a conversation with a person who was struggling with a family relationship; the two have different faith and values, though they have an unbreakable bond and love each other fiercely. After thinking things over for a bit, the best advice I could think of was something like this: It's a lovely thing to bring someone who is lost, hopeless, and floundering in the darkness into the light, into a place of reconciliation and acceptance. It's quite another thing---impossible, really---to try to pull someone into the light when they don't even realize they're paralyzed by darkness.
I am most certainly not the first person to think of this, but it became a personal epiphany for me as well. Almost as soon as I had the thought, I flashed to my profession as it is now. Today's students are not ones that I can do much for. I war with myself internally about it almost daily. They simply see very little need of improving their language skills, or themselves, for that matter. Too many of them have been told all their lives that they are perfect and anyone who tells them different is wrong and that they should never listen to anyone who says such a thing. Too many students have come to believe that there is no need for improvement in their lives; they are just exactly where they need to be. Too many think it's a ridiculous concept that I could have any insight into their lives or the world at large. I'm too old or too uppity about technology or simply just a stick in the mud. In other words, they're so deep in the darkness that they can't even see it.
I can't pull them kicking and screaming into the light; I must do what I can for whoever is yearning to come out into the sunshine and fresh air of a life improved as much as possible. I must push back the darkness as far as I can with whatever skills and tricks I have at my disposal. I must not beat myself emotionally for those who choose not to accept what I want to give them. Most importantly, I must remember that I can only do so much; God or life or fate or whatever we want to call it will do the rest.
That is the one bit of comfort I can take right now. I hope there is more to come.
In the classroom, things were sometimes different. First, one would assume that people who are in class expect and hope to learn something. This was the most rewarding part of my experiences teaching for Northeastern in Tahlequah, Tulsa, and Broken Arrow. My students wanted to improve, accepted that they needed to brush up some skills, and knew that I could help them. Second, they knew there was no judgement involved; we were working together to better their understanding of the language. I loved that moment of recognition on a student's face, when he/she finally understood something that had perplexed him or her forever---for example, when to use "me" and when to use "myself"---that was really simple, but no one had explained in quite the right way before. I was really good at that, putting grammar into little bites of knowledge that were understandable and useful, that could improve that student's skills both in writing and in personal speaking, such as job interviews, that could drastically improve that person's situation.
Well, let's flash forward to present day, since I haven't taught any college classes in the last ten years. I recently had a conversation with a person who was struggling with a family relationship; the two have different faith and values, though they have an unbreakable bond and love each other fiercely. After thinking things over for a bit, the best advice I could think of was something like this: It's a lovely thing to bring someone who is lost, hopeless, and floundering in the darkness into the light, into a place of reconciliation and acceptance. It's quite another thing---impossible, really---to try to pull someone into the light when they don't even realize they're paralyzed by darkness.
I am most certainly not the first person to think of this, but it became a personal epiphany for me as well. Almost as soon as I had the thought, I flashed to my profession as it is now. Today's students are not ones that I can do much for. I war with myself internally about it almost daily. They simply see very little need of improving their language skills, or themselves, for that matter. Too many of them have been told all their lives that they are perfect and anyone who tells them different is wrong and that they should never listen to anyone who says such a thing. Too many students have come to believe that there is no need for improvement in their lives; they are just exactly where they need to be. Too many think it's a ridiculous concept that I could have any insight into their lives or the world at large. I'm too old or too uppity about technology or simply just a stick in the mud. In other words, they're so deep in the darkness that they can't even see it.
I can't pull them kicking and screaming into the light; I must do what I can for whoever is yearning to come out into the sunshine and fresh air of a life improved as much as possible. I must push back the darkness as far as I can with whatever skills and tricks I have at my disposal. I must not beat myself emotionally for those who choose not to accept what I want to give them. Most importantly, I must remember that I can only do so much; God or life or fate or whatever we want to call it will do the rest.
That is the one bit of comfort I can take right now. I hope there is more to come.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Busy-Busy-Busy
Buzz, buzz, buzz go all the new insects, frenetic with energy after thinking they might never get born from the long gray winter.
Buzz, buzz, buzz goes my brain, frenetic with things to be done, now that we finally (maybe) have broken away from the long gray winter.
Flip, flutter, flash go the fresh spring leaves, showing off their crisp green tops and their silvery bellies.
Flip, flutter, flash go the fashion trends, showing off fake tans with too-short shorts, high-low skirts, and just too much of everyone's bellies.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh go the Oklahoma winds, driving out the cold, bringing in the warm, firing up the tornadoes.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh go the shoppers, buying grad gifts, fitting prom gowns, firing up the warm weather party season.
Run, run, run go the bunnies, enlivened by the tender new grass and my tasty delicious rosebushes.
Run, run, run go the teachers, enlivened by the thought of summer just a few precious weeks away.
Sing, sing, sing go the birds in the fresh spring leaves, swaying in the Oklahoma wind, eating all the new insects, screeching at the bunnies.
Zing, zing, zing go my synapses, fried by another school year, close---only close, not arrived---to the glorious end of May.
Buzz, buzz, buzz goes my brain, frenetic with things to be done, now that we finally (maybe) have broken away from the long gray winter.
Flip, flutter, flash go the fresh spring leaves, showing off their crisp green tops and their silvery bellies.
Flip, flutter, flash go the fashion trends, showing off fake tans with too-short shorts, high-low skirts, and just too much of everyone's bellies.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh go the Oklahoma winds, driving out the cold, bringing in the warm, firing up the tornadoes.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh go the shoppers, buying grad gifts, fitting prom gowns, firing up the warm weather party season.
Run, run, run go the bunnies, enlivened by the tender new grass and my tasty delicious rosebushes.
Run, run, run go the teachers, enlivened by the thought of summer just a few precious weeks away.
Sing, sing, sing go the birds in the fresh spring leaves, swaying in the Oklahoma wind, eating all the new insects, screeching at the bunnies.
Zing, zing, zing go my synapses, fried by another school year, close---only close, not arrived---to the glorious end of May.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)