Light

I have been taking yoga classes for the past two years with Bob Whittinghill, an amazing Iyengar teacher in Chicago.  I admit to only really feeling like I have been “studying” yoga for the last year or so.  The first year I spent just trying to stay upright or supine or whatever the asana required.  It took me over a year to easily get into shoulder stand (sarvangasana).  I tried to not be distracted by how much my muscles were shaking or how intense the muscle extension was.

The Yoga Tree studio is in the community building of a beautiful old church.  The room has a movable wall in dark, multi-paneled wood.  There are glass “windows” in the ceiling, and it is clear that the old light fixtures have been replaced with standard fluorescent fixtures. The windows to the alley and courtyard are old, lovely casement windows, with arched glass and real divided lights.  I like the room, and we all try to get to class early enough to get a spot by the real wall, as many of the asanas get the support of the wall.  I remember some of those first classes, lying in supta padangusthasana (reclining big toe pose) and looking at the barrel ceiling of the room.  When I should have been focusing on my leg muscles, I was wondering what the light in the room looked like before the church replaced the old fixtures.  What kind of light had they shed on the room and its occupants?

New Class

I have conquered my fear of shoulder stand, and I recently switched to Bob’s continuing yoga class.  I now have a new fear, headstand (shirshasana) and the class is in the evening instead of the morning.  This means that by the time the class is over, the evening light has waned and it is all but dark outside.  The first time I attended a continuing class, it was the last of the four week cycle and focused on restorative poses. Much was new, but nothing that was totally unfamiliar.  I had had a terrible day at school, so this was exactly what was needed.

Counterpoint

The next class began with us all in a seated pose, eyes closed.  Across the hall a choir was practicing the Haydn Creation.  This was merely intriguing until Bob began to chant an invocation – Aum, it began.  I knew that part – but the rest was a complex melodic call and response that was completely unfamiliar.  Not knowing the meaning of what I was chanting, I participated by replying with the notes and not the sounds.  The complex Sanskrit call and response in counterpoint to the German of the Haydn was very interesting.  The next few classes all began the same way, with the chanted invocation, although we have not had the Haydn as part of the experience again.

Stay with me – I’m going someplace with this

So this past Wednesday was as restorative class.  Bob left the lights off, preferring to have class with the natural light coming through the windows and having it slowly darken as the evening deepened. We did not begin the class with the invocation, and I thought to myself – well, maybe restorative classes don’t need it.  We spent almost 90 minutes in serious work (restorative is a relative term) and after savasana the room was quite dark.  We finished class in a supported seated pose, and Bob explained that we would end the class with the invocation.  As we closed our eyes, he reminded us to look inward toward our sternum, the place that is the seat of the soul.  Bob led the invocation.

Point of Light

As the last aum faded I opened my eyes. I looked down, getting ready to stand, and there on my torso, focused right on my sternum, was a spot of light about the size of a dollar coin, irregular in shape, but distinct.  I looked to the window – no street light shining in.  I waved my hand in front of the light – and it moved, so it was coming from outside, but I couldn’t see the source.  Okay – no one is going to believe this, I thought.  I looked at the light again, and as everyone else around me was putting away their props and mats, I got up.  But I keep thinking about that light.

At the right place

I love the Sufi mystics, though I am skeptical of the mystical in my own life,  but I have a healthy respect for being at the right place at the right time.  I guess that I was. I’m still thinking about what that light might mean for me, though I don’t want to overstate its importance.  But it was a wonderful convergence of place, time, and effort.  If it is nothing else, it is that.

So I will end with my own wish -

Aum, shanti, shanti, shanti, aum.

Photo by flickr member peregrine blue.

Four types of tears

(I started this on the last day of school for teachers)

In the past 48 hours I have cried. A lot it seems.  And I have discovered that there are really many kinds of tears.

First – abject sadness

I wept at my desk on Wednesday, exhausted from the stress of delivering the yearbook, having every niggling error pointed out to me by multiple people, not being able to find all the books that I was sure were in the building, and the fact that my lunch was a banana.  Our server was having sync problems, and I was trying to get an issue of the school paper to the printer so that we would have a “So long, and thanks for all the fish” issue.  I  knew that the next day would begin at 7:00 with wrestling with Adobe Acrobat Pro, 7:30 when 500 balloons needed to be inflated by the juniors, 10:30 the juniors needed to move down to the field for Morning Ex, 11:30 the picnic celebration for the seniors begins and had to be cleaned up by the juniors.  As Junior grade-head I was one of two teachers overseeing all this.

I was in the student publications office trying to figure out 1) why we couldn’t print the issue to our networked printer and 2) why the files were not syncing on the server when a senior found me to complain that his ad for his girlfriend didn’t get printed in the yearbook. “But I paid for it.”

Sorry.  We made a mistake.  We’re human.

By that time I was over-tired, hungry, hot from running all over the building in search of yearbooks – and done.  I sat down at my desk, put my head on my arms, and wept.  Not quiet little tears.  Weeping.

Sobbing.

It took my commuting partner, Steve, to get  me out of the building. He said, “I’ll drive.” Good plan.

I actually didn’t make it out of the building before completely decompensating again when the senior grade-head asked, “Are you okay?” Nope.  Not okay.

Second – deeply moved

At the Morning Exercise (not actual exercise, but like Reading Exercise) on Thursday, the senior editors present the yearbook and its dedication to the school.  My sweet advisee who almost never speaks in class presented the dedication of the yearbook to a most deserving colleague.  I was so proud of her.  Her voice shook, but those little prickly tears started – like she was my own child.

And then the Editor-in-Chief presented the theme – Legend – and after explaining why we picked the theme, spent what seemed like forever thanking ME, in front of the whole school, for all the work, support, & care over their years at school (I taught them when they were in 7th grade) – and I don’t know what she said as the blood roared in my ears and I started to cry again.  And of course everyone is taking pictures of crying Kate because I had moved to the center of the field so I could see their faces when they spoke. All you had to do was hug me or look me in the eye that morning to get it to start again.

But then there was trash and recycling to manage, so back to business.

Third – /Hug

Two of my D & D boys graduated.  I’m going to miss these two a lot.  One used my room as his locker, and that’s okay because then I got to see him every day and check in on homework, sleep, nutrition. That day, after trash patrol for the picnic I went back to my room.  Almost everyone had left the building – prom was later that night – and on my whiteboard was this:

/Hug

and his name.

I cried again.

Fourth – I’m not going to Spain or Antarctica, really…

At the upper school faculty meeting on Friday the head of the US said “goodbye” to the teachers who are leaving – and I guess, that although I am only crossing the courtyard, I am leaving.  He said such lovely things about me – and again those prickly tears at the backs of my eyes arrived.

My disconnect is this.  How is it that I can be so “beloved” on Thursday and Friday and have felt so abjectly sad and small on Wednesday? Too many teardrops.  I still can’t sort all of this out.

Photo Goodbye Stop by flickr member Peter Kaminski

But this is the real deal.

Misfit Toys

Earlier this year one of my colleagues told me that my advisory was the Island of Misfit Toys, and that I was the Lion.

I suspect that I wear that badge with equal parts pride and sadness.  Because it’s mostly true.  One of my fears moving back to the middle school is that the Charlie in the Box or the Train with Square Wheels wouldn’t find a new home.  It has finally all come together.

The last of my advisees has found a home with an adviser who is a great fit.  Both senior advisees are happily accepted into excellent colleges that they feel good about.  And I heard on Friday that an advisee of mine who withdrew at semester for a host of personal, cognitive, and academic reasons has found a home at a school that is a much better fit for her.  I am so happy for them all.  Spring is a time for hope.  We bring to it all our best effort… and hope.

Image from flickr member Pink Sherbet Photography

Poets and Peas

We’ve been looking at American poets in class this week and I always like these days.  Each student brings in a poet and we look at their life and an amuse-bouche of their work.  This week we had Robert Creeley (and his poem Zero), Paul Laurence Dunbar (and his Caged Bird and some of his dialect poems) and Countee Cullen (no look complete without Incident).  It’s been lovely in Chicago this week, so I felt the need to read to the class Late Spring by Robert Hass, from his collection Human Wishes.  Go buy this book.  It’s amazing.

Late Spring

And then in mid-May the first morning of steady heat,

the morning, Lief says, when you wake up, put on shorts, and that’s it for the day,

when you pour coffee and walk outside, blinking in the sun.

Strawberries have appeared in the markets, and peaches will soon;

squid is so cheap in the fishstores you begin to consult Japanese and Italian cookbooks for the various and ingenious ways of preparing ika and calamari;

and because the light will enlarge your days, your dreams at night will be as strange as the jars of octopus you saw once in a fisherman’s boat under the summer moon;

after swimming, white wine; and the sharing of stories before dinner is prolonged because the relations of the children in the neighborhood acquire village intensity and the stories take longer telling;

and there are the nights when the fog rolls in that nobody likes –hey, fog — the Miwok sang, who lived here first, you better go home, pelican is beating your wife–

and after dark in the first cool hour, your children sleep so heavily in their beds exhausted from play, it is a pleasure to watch them,

Leif does not move a muscle as he lies there; no, wait; it is Luke who lies there in his eight year-old-body,

Lief is taller than you are and he isn’t home; when he is, his feet will extend past the end of the mattress, and Kristen is at the corner in the dark, talking to the neighborhood boys;

things change; there is not need for this dream-compelled narration; the rhythm will keep me awake, changing.

The photos are of my garden – the peas, the garlic (and bindweed), the two kinds of apple trees, the compost pile and beyond it the area that we will add two new beds into.  And Hannah’s foot is in the pictures somewhere, too.  Something else that we are growing.

Bracketology

It’s all about the final four – While we were in the midst of March Madness we captured these literature brackets from my students.

Characters The Bracket Maker Would Like to Marry – out of a varied field of potential mates, four emerge in the finals – Odysseus (the ultimate hero), Rorschach, Jay Gatsby, and Edward Cullen.  In the end, dreamy sparkly, romantic Edward beats the older, stronger hero.  (ed. note – The whole Willoughby/Col. Brandon conundrum again.)

Most Insane Character – Interesting field of characters boils down to the final four of Stanley Kowalski (ed note -someone I think of as sane -crazy like a fox?), Beloved, Alice, and the Cheshire Cat.  Alice wins in the final round because she is so gullible and “always believes everything the characters tell her to do.”  I suppose this would be a regular day, if you were mad.

Best Asset to a Football Team – Ishmael Beah (Long Way Gone) beats out a strong field and emerges from a final four of The Comedian, Leopard Man (from the Island of Dr. Moreau) and Tom Joad.  It’s his strengths in strategy and cooperation that make him a team asset.

Battle Royale – Strong field of participants, none of which I would like to meet on a dark night, but the final four are Admiral Ackbar (Star Wars), Beloved, Light Yagami (from Death Note) and Rorschach.  Ackbar takes it all – by realizing it’s a trap.

My BFF – Quite a wide variety of characters made the sweet 16, but the final four were a loyal and true bunch: Romeo, Door, Huck Finn and Richard Mayhew.  She chose Huck because she thinks that she “will always have fun together.  Huck and I would always go on wild adventures and manage to find mischief.”

Characters That The Bracket Maker Would Like to Be Friends With – Some wacky choices in his sweet 16, but his final four features Gandalf, Dr. Dredd, Ender Wiggins, and Jay Gatsby.  In the end, the winner is Gandalf because Ender may go berserk and destroy everything; the worst that Gandalf can do is teleport away. (ed note – and do cool stuff with smoke and fire)

Most Shocking or Least Expected Ending. Her Sweet 16 includes titles like A Thousand Splendid Suns and the Kite Runner, but her final four boiled down to Watchmen, Beloved, Ender’s Game and The Great Gatsby.  Watchmen defeats Ender in the final round.  She calls this the “toughest call ever made.  The winner has to be Watchmen because you would never have guessed that Ozymandias was killing superheroes, creating an alien, or blowing up half of the New York in order to restore the peace that was lost ion the world.”

I’d Rather Be-  Legolas!   He beats out a strong field with an amazing final four of Harry Potter, The Comedian, and Holden Caulfield.  In the end, Legolas would live forever and is more badass, an epic combination.

Strongest Leading Lady -  And amazing field of 16 contestants, anchored by the final four of Marjane Satrapi, Door, Lady Macbeth, Hester Prynne.  Hester takes the title – no whining!

Most Awesome Character – excellent final four of Gandalf, Rorschach, Doctor Manhattan & Odysseus.  In the final game 2000 years of awesome Odysseus beats Gandalf.

The Book with the Weirdest (Stuff) In It – She assembled a sweet sixteen full of the oddest, strangest, psychosis inducing texts that she could find and ended up with a final four of Harry Potter, Watchmen, Alice in Wonderland, and Neverwhere.   In a crazy battle of madness, Alice beats Watchmen because although Rorschach’s journals are the product of a madman’s mind, “Alice’s drug fueled plot schools all.”

Best College Roommate.  Yeah, we know he’s the POTUS, but my student also thinks he will be a great roommate.  Out of a strong field of potential housemates that included Jay Gatsby (nice parties, agreed) and Harry Potter, the final four came down to Dr. Manhattan, Henry and his dog Mudge, Holden Coulfield, and the POTUS.  Obama takes the crown because “he’s the smartest man in the world and he’s lived in Chicago making him the best roommate.”

Most Depressing Yet Hopeful Story – She assembled a bittersweet sixteen that included The Diary of Anne Frank and Macbeth.   Her final four features A Million Little Pieces, Wasted, The Kite Runner, and the Things They Carried with James Frey’s novel of addiction taking the championship due in part to “the account of getting a root canal with no anesthesia beats Kite Runner any day.  Most depressing but hopeful because of his recovery and loss of addiction.”

Heroism Per Pound – and the winner is BILBO Baggins!  Although the final field of four included legendary heavyweight heroes Odysseus and Night Owl, the light-in-weight Bilbo had tough competition in Ender Wiggins.  It all came down to the epic heroes of Bilbo and Odysseus, but per pound the hobbit takes it.

Characters Whom The Bracketeer Would Like to Date – an interesting final four with Dr. Manhattan, Rorschach, Jay Gatsby & Barack Obama.  Obama wins because he is POTUS and my student thinks she “would get tired of dating someone who isn’t really a person” or doesn’t have real feelings (Dr. Manhattan).

One on One Street Baller – no rules – great final four or Dr. Manhattan, M’ling (Island of Dr. Moreau), Willy Wonka & The Comedian.  M’ling pulls out a last second victory against the Comedian as he “unleashes his inner beast as he wins the Championship on a last second shot.  The Comedian does not have luck on his side and is not quite as strong as M’ling.”

Best Woman Character – My student assembled a collection of female characters that I’d love to hang out with.  Her sweet sixteen included Lois Lane and Hermione Granger.  The final four came down to Hester Prynne, the goddess Calypso, Weena, and Anne Frank, with Hester winning it all.  She prevailed over Anne Frank because although “both of these characters are persecuted, Hester has to raise her daughter Pearl” and witness the death of her lover.

So, what would be your bracket?  Who would be in it and why?  Mine was an amazing dinner party assembled, and the person that I most would like to have dinner with came down to a final word fest between Atticus Finch and Elizabeth Bennett.  And although I would love to be BFFs with Miss Bennett (or Mrs. Darcy) I think dinner with Atticus would have to be amazing.

Photo by flickr member chanchan222

A Piece I Am Piecing

I’ve been wrestling with finding time to write.  Here is part of a larger reflection that I am working on.

The Quilt

When I began my career at this school there was a tradition of having new teachers speak at an all school gathering to introduce themselves to the school community.  I am not sure why we do not continue to do this.  I know that we have grown in size as a faculty, that we have larger numbers of teachers each year who are new, that we now have a new teachers’ committee, and that some people thought this practice was new teacher hazing.  Hazing?  Not to me: I loved these presentations.  I enjoyed seeing a new science teacher explain, in English heavily accented with his Chinese pronunciations, that all motion was relative by having two Barbie dolls approach each other from opposite directions in their fabulous convertibles and that CPB did not stand for Chemistry, Physics, Biology but Come Play with Barbie.  I still remember that our technology facilitator loves the music of John Denver.  These were moments that helped me to know these teachers in ways they wanted to be known.

My turn to speak came when I was a new teacher for the second time.  As a mid-season replacement for a legendary teacher on long-term disability, I began at school in January.  In the fall, when I continued to teach in the upper school, I was asked to be a part of the new teacher presentation and to choose an object that might help the community understand me, who I was as a person as well as a teacher.  One of my prized possessions is a quilt, in what I always think of a strawberry pattern, that was made by three of my grandmothers.  My mother’s paternal grandmother and great-grandmother pieced the quilt top. My maternal grandmother unpacked and quilted it along with two other quilt tops.  

Shared effort

This asynchronous collaboration has always struck me as meaningful.  The three women created something beautiful and practical that was then given to me.  To me it represented the kinds of threads that bind us together as people.  There is the warp and weft of the fabric, the shape of the individual pieces connected by a running thread, the three layers of fabric, and the quilting – the pattern that overlays the individual pieces and connects the top, the batting, and the back.  All of these individual pieces come together to create the whole, and the three women whose efforts created this quilt worked together but not simultaneously.  It was their cumulative effort that created the quilt.  While I never met my great-grandmothers, I know them through the work of their hands and their hearts.  It is like teaching; we never know what shape our students will take, and we collaborate with all the other teachers that have ever or will ever be a part of our students’ lives.  

That day at in front of the school I talked about the amazing women who have been the quilters of my life, the grandmothers and mother who have been helped shape the teacher I have become.  I’ve thought more about those women and I only really have stories about my grandmother and my mother.  Both women were teachers; Grandma taught in a one-room school and later second grade, and Mom was an English teacher who wore many hats before landing in the High School library.  I grew up with their stories about colleagues and students, lived for a snow day at home, and knew that my life could take whatever shape I wanted it to.  Teaching always seemed to me to be the only professional job available to the women of my mother and grandmother’s generations.  Grandma left “sister” school in Minneapolis to return home and get a job teaching when finances began to crumble in South Dakota in the 1920s.  Mom went back to work as a teacher in Montana when my father was struggling with work, and when he eventually made his spontaneous and permanent exit from our lives, she returned to work as a teacher in South Dakota.

Me?  A Teacher? No Way!

As a child who came of age in the 1970s, in the zeitgeist of the Equal Rights Amendment, Roe v Wade, and Ms. Magazine, I could never have foreseen my eventual love of teaching.  Teaching?  That was what my mother did!  I could never imagine that I would want to teach.  Although my grandmother urged me to take a typing class, promising that it would come in handy, I was sure that if I knew how to type, somehow I would end up typing.  Typing?  I had skills!  I was a thinker!  I was off to college and the world was at my feet.  So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that at all my jobs I had ended up teaching people something.  It did finally occur to me that if I was a teacher that wasn’t teaching, I should just accept reality and get that degree.

My Quilt

The pieces of my personal quilt began to come together.  The form and shape of my personal quilt I take from my maternal lineage, but it was not until a few years ago that I realized that it was my father’s family that provides much of the color and character within the pieces of my personal quilt.  My father’s mother’s family gathers for a five-day reunion every other summer.  I was at one of these biennial family reunions and it occurred to some of us that it was rather like a teacher convention.  Here we were at a camp in southern Minnesota with teachers from all over the country, and we were all related.  Well, what an amazing coincidence, we all thought.  Isn’t it funny how we all became teachers or married teachers or both?

Part 2 to Come – All those teachers

Quilt pic by Flickr member misocrazy

Pinks

My oldest daughter is in a teen circus ensemble at The Actors Gymnasium.  She’s in this bridge line.  I know which one she is.  But her pink spandex costume needs alteration; it’s just a bit wide.  Today I am elected to alter the spandex.  I have some sewing skills, yes, but my sewing machine is circa 1956.  So, I’m a bit outside my zone of proximal sewing.  Can’t. Mess. Up.  The pressure is on.

Old skill set and tools meet new challenge.  Is this a life metaphor?

Alice and Jesse

Blog stats are interesting things.  I noticed that a search today was for the lyrics to Alice and Jesse, a song on my “these always make Kate cry” list.  So as a public service, and because I can find them no other place – I have transcribed the lyrics.  Of course,  in the process,the song made me cry.  Gosh, but I am a human marshmallow.  So, here they are as performed by Jennifer Armstrong on The Leaves Entwine (an album my darling Sam recorded).  When I find the CD I will add the name of the songwriter.

They lived at the start of a new century
When New York was horses and carriage
Alice and Jessie were driven to school
In a white four-in-hand by a coachman.

Summers they went to the country
To play in the fields and the flowers
The stories they heard around the campfire
Told of princesses locked up in towers

Alice loved Indians dancing
And Jesse would kiss her step-mother
Alice went the way of the girls in her circle
And Jesse the way of the other

Alice was married in Baltimore
In a long dress of satin and pearls
Jesse she ran with a dark gypsy man
And he carried her over the world

Alice raised children in Galesburg, St. Paul,
White Bear Lake and Winnetka
She called upon F. Scott and Zelda and danced
To a tune of a waltz in the evening

While Jesse’s hair it grew down to her waist
And kept right on growing all over the place
And she danced to the clapping of hands and of bells
And a guitar that played “Angelina”

Alice was married in Baltimore
In a long dress of satin and pearls
Jesse she ran with a dark gypsy man
And he carried her over the world

Alice’s children, the youngest my mother,
Grew up with wide dreams and professions
Of quiet reform and carrying on
Reaching for art and perfection

Well Jesse she flew by the stars in the night
Her bright black-eyed husband her heart’s own delight
He was a king with a sky for a tent and a bed
That they shared underneath the red wagon.

Alice was married in Baltimore
In a long dress of satin and pearls
Jesse she ran with a dark gypsy man
And he carried her over the world

The letter said Jesse was camped for the spring
Singing and stealing in east Tennessee
She spoke of child-bed, of heart’s blood, of pain
And could her own sister come see her again.

Alice left in the morning on a train heading south,
Left the children in the care of aunt Reba.
She stepped off at Lovelace and took the north track
To Sullivan Garden to meet her

The streets were all silent; the dogs were all still
A wagon was moving too slow up the hill
She stepped in behind, beside the dark man
Who saw her and called for the horses to stand.

“You’re Alice,” he said, and she spoke with her eyes.
“You’re Alice,” he said and he touched her.
“She wanted you here, she spoke of two girls
Who ran in the park wearing ribbons and curls.”

“Yes, I’m Alice,” she said as the tears filled her eyes.
“I wanted to see her your beauty, your bride.
I loved her, I loved her, I loved her. I wept
That night that you took Jesse from me.

I’m Alice; I married in Baltimore
In a long dress of satin and pearls
But Jesse she ran with my heart in her hand
And she it carried her over the world.”

I wasn’t given Jesse’s guitar
I stole it from out Grampa’s closet
How else do you pass on a gypsy guitar
With hand whittled pegs and tin saddle?

Alice was married in Baltimore
In a long dress of satin and pearls
Jesse she ran with a dark gypsy man
And he carried her over the world

Composite photo of the night sky by flickr member Adan Garcia

A poem for today (for me, just because)

54

by E. E. Cummings, from XAIPE

maybe god

is a child
‘s hand)very carefully
bring
-ing
to you and to
me(and quite with
out crushing)the

papery weightless diminutive

world
with a hole in
it out
of which demons with wings would be streaming if
something had(maybe they couldn’t
agree)not happened(and floating-
ly int

o

—————

With three daughters it is easy for me to understand the poet’s supposition – that a child’s hand is a thing of creation, offering to us a world that could, just maybe, be a papery, weightless wonder.  And imagine, what it might be like if something had not happened to stop the demons…

Image from flickr member lrargerich

An Abundance of Abundance

Last night’s gathering at our home and a comment about fireflies from Michael Doyle over at Science Teacher put some pieces together for me this morning.

Hosting

Last evening we hosted a welcome potluck for the students from Japan that are visiting  my daughter’s school and their host families.  We had twenty families and their Japanese “children” here for a crowded night of meeting, eating, laughing, planning, and problem solving.

The meeting, laughing, and planning parts come pretty naturally.  Jam enough bodies in the room, and you have to talk to people.  The eating part came up against the problem solving part.  I was expecting 89 people, and we had that – more or less – and so I had been hunting and gathering, bringing home pieces of chicken that numbered over 100.  Now, few homes can cook that much food at once, but being an old restaurant hand, the oven that I have in our kitchen can fit four full sheet pans.  The oven, as you might expect, was full.

But the oven, in true Bartleby the scrivener fashion, preferred not to.  Heat to the necessary 350-400° that is.  This was a problem.  Lots of hungry people and a lot of, literally*, half baked chicken.

So, Sam springs into grill mode and finishes cooking 100+ pieces of chicken on the grill.  We serve everyone the chicken, plus all the lovely side dishes that arrived – salads, baked Mac and Cheese, fruit, bread, olives, desserts.

The house is jammed, you can’t get to the buffet table because everyone is talking to each other, and everyone is having a great time.   There is an abundance of good will, flashing cameras, friendship across continents and across the city, and patience with delays, language barriers, and new faces.

The house

Our house has always called to me.  Even when I didn’t live it and only visited it, I felt welcome here as in no other home I have lived in, even my childhood homes.  Our house at 709 and our grandmother’s house in Madison, SD almost had the deep call that this building and yard has for me.  I can’t say why; I only know it is there.   Last night it worked its magic on other people.  And Michael’s comment about fireflies reminded me of another night.

June, 1999

My niece Sissy had just celebrated her marriage with all the family gathered, and my cousins were in from San Francisco.  It was a beautiful evening, and the adults were in the dining room, enjoying that post-dinner glass of wine and talking around the table.  The evening was finally getting dark, and all the children were in the yard, running, swinging,  and laughing.  As the sky turned that blue (the blue that only exists in the moment that the sun has gone completely past the horizon but you can still see well) the fireflies came out.  First one or two, and then so many you couldn’t count.

A shriek of delight from Griffin, child of San Francisco, who had never seen a firefly.  Fireflies are so thoughtful.  They hang in the air, pulsing green, waiting for you to hold out your hand – Griff gathered them in a jar, watched them for a long time, and then shook them back out onto the lawn.

Wendy, his mother, over the dining room table, told us that – that was it – they weren’t leaving.  What we had here was an abundance of abundance.

And as I plant again today, and remember the laughter of last night, I have to agree.

* thank you, Steve.

photo by flickr member jdl_deleon