To lead a happily boring existence—
What is that?
A hawk circles a mountain meadow
day after day, keeling through wide circles
on air that lifts his wings
over delicate dots of mountain flowers
as his eyes search,
search,
for movement,
for what sustains him.
Is he living a happily boring existence
or does his body strain
with anticipation of
finding life?

Teachable moments

These days I am again a teacher of a teacher. I am working with a bright and thoughtful young woman who would like to teach high school English. Each time I do this I feel like I am learning more than I am teaching. It's a wonderful opportunity to observe the craft of teaching and to reconsider the thousands of choices I make on a weekly basis.

Do you send out Drew because he is disrupting the class or do you try to talk him back into the class? Why isn't Alfred writing his paper? Will a pep talk help or embarass him in front of his sophomore peers whose bodies are surging beyond their control? Even if you talk out in the hall?

We have this class of sophomores right now that are dominated by bright, fun boys who totally undercut themselves because they cannot see beyond what is funny at the moment. Poor Katherine was totally deflated at the end of the day. "They hate me," she lamented. She had assigned them to write an in-class essay (the only kind you can be sure they will complete and turn in) and they complained bitterly. Two girls and a boy refused to do it. The boy has repeatedly refused to do work during the year. She sent him to an administrator. The girls sat there for a few minutes and then, seeing that they couldn't get tread, wrote the essay--with obvious contempt, but they wrote it.

As a longer-term teacher, I saw success. They were quiet, focused and did the work they were supposed to do. Katherine, who had had them excitedly whispering in her ear collaborating on an assignment the day before, thought she had again lost them. I knew they would forget over the weekend.

But it got me to thinking about this dance that teachers and students do. I am firmly in the camp that I as a teacher should help students find value in the work we do. Katherine does as well. We try hard to help them see the value of understanding how advertising and modern media manipulate them for profit and power, to understand how through language they can reassert power in their lives. There are these lucid moments of clarity where 19 students and I are one, working toward a common purpose. I'm convinced they are beginning to engage. Then, the next day I have to practically bludgeon them to write a paragraph. So, you second guess whether you have intrigued them at all. Are you giving anything of value to them?

Then, three years later, one of them will nominate you for teacher of the year or come back and thank you for teaching them how to write--tell you how what they learned in your class made college and their careers easier. I promised Katherine one day that would come. In the meantime, she will have to trust herself.

Serendipity or fate?

When I was young, with all the hubris youth entails, I believed that I was in charge of my destiny. If gods or God existed, he or she was not interested in one little human. I avoided people who thought they knew what God wanted. How could they? Talk about presumptuous.

As I grow older, however, I have become increasingly convinced that there is a fate (whether dictated by the gods, I am not qualified to say). This is not at odds with my original idea, but rather a recognition that our lives take us in ways we would not divine for ourselves, but that can grow out of choices we have made along the way. Being open to the possibilities of what our decisions and those of others have wrought and appreciating them for what they present us is what I would call a state of grace. There are people who spend their lives fighting their fate, railing against the gods for the path upon which they feel they were unfairly placed. Then, there are those who see each twist in the road as an adventure, a new opportunity, and make the most out of it, who take advantage of the opportunities presented. In so doing, they recognize that they cannot control everything, but they can choose how to live their lives along the path--and to keep an eye out for interesting new routes along the way. These are the people I admire and aspire to emulate.

I was reminded of this today when a friend, who I had told about this new page, tried to find it and, due to an error on my part, found a blog with a similar address. I took the opportunity to check it out and found it filled with words that spoke to me, of being open to what life brings you, of appreciating what comes your way and not barring the door to new opportunities and people. It spoke more eloquently than I am here about what I believe to be good and true in life. All I did was make a mistake in a url and I learned something.

Be open to the possibilities. Opportunities and gifts are all around us.

Another day on the prairie

Women my age are called the sandwich generation, so I am told--taking care of both children and parents. My mother is 90 years old, a role model to me all of my life of both what I wanted to be and what I wanted to avoid being. She could be, simultaneously, arrogant and nurturing. She always thought she knew what was right and she loved us ferociously. My younger brother and I came to her late in her childbearing years, many years after my older brother had moved into the solitary existence of male adolesence.

These days my mother suffers from short and long-term dementia. I spent the afternoon with her today and our conversation largely consisted of discussing the length I would cut her hair and her swollen ankles. This is a woman who was lobbying Senator Fulbright against the Vietnam war in 1963, when most Americans didn't even know where Vietnam was, much less that we had troops acting as "advisers" there. I walked picket lines for fair housing with her in Kensington, Maryland, in 1964. Now, she can barely walk me to the elevator of her senior complex.

I try to take care of her and remember the woman that she has been, but it seems a cruel turn of fate that someone so vital should now have so little left to her. Yet, that is not fully accurate. The activities leaders at her residence say she is always participating and willing to engage in any activity, whether it is singing, playing dice or bingo, crafts or current events discussions. It's just that I can't talk to her the way I used to. I miss her, even her adamancy, her certainty that she is right.

Even so, if I can live half of the life that she has, I would feel that I have earned my time on earth. The tables have turned. Now, as she ruefully notes now and then, it is my turn to be the parent. I hope I am as good of a one to her as she has been to me.

ciao

After months of goading, today I am beginning my own blog diary for my daughters' entertainment. I decided that it may be as close as I get to writing until I quit teaching four years from now, when I hope to indulge a lifelong desire to actually live and work in a foreign country that may feel more like home than the states have ever felt to me.

That country, I hope, will be Italy. Hence the title of my blog. I fell in love with Italy four years ago during a visit with my oldest daughter who was living there at the time. The hills, the people, the food. Truly the good life.

For now, I will have to sustain myself with the pictures, my language discs, an Italian cookbook and a good bottle of chianti classico.

Arrivederci.