I am not a morning person. My husband, or anyone  –stranger or colleague- who has tried to hold a conversation with me before 9am,  can attest to this. 

Given the option, I’m still in bed at 9am. 
 
So it has been a strange few days, waking up in the predawn dark to a quiet house. The kids are sound asleep. The husband, who is a  5:30am-wake-up-perky-and-brilliant sort of fellow, isn’t even up yet. I’m awake because I’m sick, because I couldn’t breath. Not breathing is a strong incentive to get out of bed. 

But that doesn’t change the magic of it. The velvety dark outside the window. The silence inside. The feeling that I am the only mortal in existence, creeping through a god’s house.

 It’s absurd, of course. As well as questionably authentic (remember the severely-not-a-morning-person part), but that doesn’t lessen the magic. I understand why my husband loves his mornings so. I understand this secret time, this beginning time. Night is nothing like it. Even were I to stay up all night until this same hour, it would be time stolen from night, not time  stolen from day. And that difference -this window before sun that is hooked to the coming of sun- is where the magic happens. 

Of course, I am so busy trying to analyze and describe the magic, I risk missing it. And with that thought, adieu.

I am reminded today of my great holiday deficit. 
 
Tomorrow looms. Valentines day. It’s not the husband who  minds. But as a mother of a 4 and 6 year old, I am living under some kind of  lacking-the-maternal-foresight rock, here. 

In case you’re my age, or within several decades, you may need to be reminded of the glossy cartoon cards and chalky word-candies that get passed around in schools. 

I had forgotten. 

Since last year, when I had also forgotten. 
 
And the year before, you ask? 
Same. 

I remember answering the front door one Halloween. It  took me several minutes to figure out why there was a ninja-princess-pumpkin pile on my doorstep. And when I told the darlings that I didn’t have any candy,  that I had forgotten it was Halloween, I could see them deciding what kind of  monster I was dressed up to be. 

But I can’t flip off the lights and sit very still to  avoid Valentines day. Not with class lists on pink paper. You’d think I’d notice the displays in the stores. But they arrive so early, I disregard them. 
 
On the other hand, the Valentines day cupcakes the kids baked and brought home from grandma’s should have been a hint. Or the glitter encrusted heart pin they asked me to put on when they got home. 
 
But no. Here it is. The night before valentines day, and not a scrap of candy in the house. 

And I’m asking myself questions, I never thought would cross my mind as a professional. 

Is it worse to throw a few loose raisins in the card, or leave it completely empty? Aged baking chocolate chips? Marbled with that  white hoarfrost really old chocolate gets?

 I search around the house. We have lots of legos. 
 Legos and cat hair. The trappings of an almost-40 mother
of two. 

Sadly, neither legos nor cat hair are appropriate for stuffing valentines day envelopes. 

Which reminds me, I don’t have any envelopes. 
 
Or cards. 

Just my two children. Their eyes sparkling with the excitement of a holiday where everyone gives and everyone gets. Or at least with the idea of candy. And cards. Sophia assures me, “I’ll get a card from everyone. Even you and daddy, mama.” 

So instead of heading to bed, here I am, putting on
mittens to brave the garage in January… no, make that – February(you see the problem?). If I’ve survived parenthood this long, surely I can rig a valentine out of pvc pipe, spider webs, and old pizza boxes. 


  

It's that time of year. Winter   break is behind me, the land is clasped in ice, two cups of tea are no longer   enough, and school competitions loom.
             
I once watched a movie about a company junket. There were gift bags.
Nightly parties. Hook-ups and intrigues. Crepes for breakfast. Tray upon tray of  fancy cheeses. It’s not a work scenario I can picture. 
              
I wonder, sometimes, what people on the outside see. When they think
teacher, what does their think look like? Do they see a frumpy sweater? A
chalkboard? Do they picture me  -- smartphone in my pocket, demonstrating tricky drafting tips on the smartboard to  a room full of smart youth? Or do they picture that Mrs. Jones they remember from fourth grade—a small-eyed lady in polyester pants who carried  stale cigarette smoke through the room like a grade-school perfume?
             
Do they see me at all? 
             
Do they see my students? 
       
Not just the one today, who stayed after to discuss project ideas. Not
just the class after lunch that got a little squirrelly near the bell.  But the battalions of them from over the years. The thousands of individuals that have been my students. 
              
Of course, the answer is no. I can’t even remember all their names. And
some of the names I do remember no longer match the faces my students have grown into. 

But I know I took each of them seriously. I treated them with respect and expected the same in return.  I taught each of them something they didn’t know just as I learned from them   something I didn’t yet know. Over and over again, minute by minute, I made a thousand differences. But I don’t think that’s visible on   the outside. 
             
So I wonder, from the outside, how much is blurred, lost behind the
screen of being outside. Like a limb distorts beneath the skin of water. Like
glass reflects as much as it lets pass. 
        
From the outside, one can’t see much of anything that relates
meaningfully to how things are on the inside. 
            
Education.  A word often dropped into a sentence like a burden. 
          
Public Education. Even heavier. 
             
It makes me angry. I am all about education, but education no longer
means what it once did. Not how it’s described in the media, in budget cuts and  newspaper clips about Adequate Yearly Progress. 
             
I’m not blaming anyone.   

I do the same looking in as anyone else. I see it as a parent of a first-grader. What I know of elementary school is two teachers and the fact that my son is happy. It’s not much. Anecdotal evidence isn’t scientifically useful. But one can only draw conclusions from what one sees. So I conclude that my son’s school is great. That the teachers there are outstanding. And I assume, without reason, that everyone who works at his school is equally wonderful. From the crossing guards to the principal and including all the people I haven’t met in between. Because the happiness of my only son is all the proof I need.

I know it's foolish. It would be equally foolish for  me to assume that because I work hard, and care about my students and do a good   job, that every teacher everywhere in the country is doing the same. I’ve  read the research. I know approximately 10% of the employees in any work force aren’t cut out for the job they’re doing.  But I also experience the other 90%. The teachers, like myself, who do extra and push harder and work long hours for a few kids who I might not remember. The believers.

I  don’t party every night. I’m not up on recent gossip. My school has never sent  me on a junket. And though I’m a sucker for imposing cheese trays, I wish our  society were better at finding meaning behind the names of things. Myself included. I wish I listened to words more often, instead of just hearing
them. I wish I had time for meaning, and maybe once that had time to sink in, for understanding-- a concept as elusive as public education.

My New Year’s gift to myself last year was to boycott Facebook. To step away from hours wasted browsing through pictures of people I don’t know anymore, or worse, pictures of complete strangers. To use my time on activities that either get something accomplished or leave me feeling relaxed, neither of which I found true for Facebook. So I stopped. Cold Turkey. No more home page. No more posts. No more browsing. And I contacted my friends for their blog info, hoping to find a more meaningful method of contact that twelve words can convey.

Only after I stopped, did I realize how much I loathe Facebook. Yes, it’s easy to use. Yes, it allows contact with people you haven’t talked to for years. Yes, it’s great for announcing events or life changes. Yes it’s instant and global.

And yet I hate it. What kind of “communication tool” cuts you off when you try to start a new paragraph? Or worse, when, in a single paragraph, you’ve exceeded your maximum word count? What kind of communication tool is purposefully formatted to obstruct meaningful dialogue? And if I’m using it to connect without connecting, what does that say about my friendships? It breeds suspicion.

Rule 3 of 3 in my son’s first grade classroom reads: “I will be everyone’s friend.” It’s an important rule for first grade, and I wholly support it.

In first grade.

Though even in first grade there are kids my son says “aren’t nice.” And I have no doubt that after lunchtime, when he shifts into his end-of-the-day-overwhelmed-manic-six-year-old-boy-who outweighs-his-classmates-by-20-lbs-mode, the other kids have learned (the smarter ones, anyway) to keep their distance. And rightfully so. Not everyone is meant to be friends. Some acquaintances distort you. Some build you up. Some challenge you to you grow. Some challenge you only to see what they can destroy. Part of growing up is learning to make choices about healthy living. Perhaps I will add that to my high school rule’s list.  Or to my own. Which might look something like this:

I will make good choices. I will be kind (to myself and others and growing things and inanimate objects). I will make a list of what not to do so I have time to make good choices and energy to be kind. I will be a friend to my friends. I will be a friend to myself.

And then I’ll steal one of my son’s other classroom rules. “I will tell the truth.” Which is part of my dislike of Facebook. There is something, not quite malicious, but potentially destructive in a Facebook interaction. Or so it feels to me. Something questionable. Like a peep-hole, or an eavesdropped conversation. Like a piece of information you have that you shouldn’t. And that you wish you didn’t. Someone else’s question caught in your teeth, that you’re not allowed to ask.  

And I know it’s true in reverse. Not everyone wants to be my friend. And having lived with myself for 37 years, I can appreciate why.

Ah, Summer. 
    I whittled away the morning until it shaped into afternoon. Now I’m picking wood shavings out of my slippers (that’s right; I haven’t put on shoes yet), and inhaling the heady aroma of sawdust.  Welcome to summer. 
    Non-teachers often justify low-paying teaching jobs with the handy phrase “oh but you get summers off.” As though I spend every summer morning whittling toward afternoon with a fresh cup of coffee, a cat in my lap, and a selection of poetry books and crap fiction on the coffee table.     
    LIES! 
    The first week I spend at work. Why? Like any stressed-out, overworked, mad-scientist type (remember I teach high school… no embroidered Holiday sweaters here… think crazy hair and attitude) the mess of unfinished experiments piles up- especially in that last month of toothy deadlines and dubious student gifts (I sneezed on your keyboard;  I made you sugar-infested-treats-to-crash-what-little-energy-and-sanity-you-have-left and now I stand by your desk expectantly waiting for you to try one; I show my gratefulness by requesting a seven-page-letter-of-recommendation-in-MLA-format-with-footnotes). 
    So weep all ye who imagine Mai-Tai’s on the beach as my first week of summer. I say Bah to you! And Pffft! I spit hairballs in your morning cereal! 
    No, the first week of summer I spend at work on organizational mapping (teacherspeak for cleaning my room). The second week of summer is spent on curriculum improvement (teacherspeak for how do I revamp that unit that went abysmally wrong? the one where poor Joey in the back row caught on fire…).  And in the afternoons “(but you’re done by 3pm!” the non-teachers scoff), I go on company tours and attend the workshops and meetings I didn’t have time to attend during the year. And on the rare summer day when I’m not at work by eight, (aka today) I spend on housework and chores and paperwork at home, and even then I wallow in a guilt-ridden midden heap of the –should-be-at-school-working-jitters. 
    But I can say I love my job. And summer. And after the first week of room cleaning, and the second week of curriculum, and the third week of curriculum I didn’t finish the previous week, and the fourth week of technical conferences, and the fifth week of lab setup and computer imaging, and the next two weeks of feeling depressed and lost and confused without the manic pressure of teaching, I will have a couple weeks that actually feel like summer before it’s time to starting setting up my books for the next year. And those couple weeks of sleek hair and late mornings (oh wait I have kids), I Will Have Earned. Because I work my butt off, summer and winter. And loving what I do doesn’t negate the effort I put in, or the 580 student brains I’ve Vulcan-mind-melded with over just the last five years.  
So there, Guilt! Sprawling on the rug; moping by the garden wall, passing your mournful eyes over my late breakfast (7am). So there. I deserve a break. And now I had one. So off to work I go. It’s June. The day  -a mixture of Spring breezes and floral scents (we have an amazing crop of flowering weeds this year)-  couldn’t be more inviting. But geometric dimensioning and tolerancing vocabulary lists await me, and, like any professional, there’s always more to do.

It's 2 weeks prior to finals. As a teacher, that means a lot of things have to come together in a very short period of time. Grades need to be handled, closure achieved, materials organized and stored. It's also the time when everything seems to come due, deadlines popping from the grass like startled field mice. 
    It's the time when I wish I had more time. 
    I haven't written in weeks, haven't graded in longer. And the days are bright and beckoning. The Saturdays are clear about their identities. They are lounge-around, pancake, picnic-in-the-park Saturdays. They refuse to be coerced. They distain my attempts to mold them into grading, dishes, sweep-the-kitchen Saturdays.  Although grateful for their obstinacy, I'm also getting a neck-kink from the increasing presence of thingsundone. 
    I constantly wish I had more time. But I wonder, if I had more time, would I just waste more time? Instead of progressing on my lists or hobbies or personal goals; instead of doing more with my kids and husband; instead of finishing chapter 4 of the new novel, would I just sit around more, take longer to wake up, fit even less of what's important into my life? I sometimes think so. 
    But I sometimes think not. I imagine that other life. Where garden all morning and write all afternoon. Where I have time to bake and plan meals around the seasonal growth. It's the cotton diaper me instead of the disposable diaper me. Every dawn I wake up energetic and focused. That's when I know I'm dreaming. 
    Be present in the moment? It's such a struggle to let go of the struggle. Most days I fail.  I prefer the imagined moment, the cotton, home-baked, garden-tomato version of myself, to the present moment. I make lists then transfer them to larger paper when they get too long. I envision someone not related to me reading my book. I remember drinking tea by an east window with not one but three books of poetry in my lap, grazing on words  like a spring calf in the first flush of clover. 
    I wouldn't go back to just tea by the window, mind you. I'm much too greedy for that. I'd want the current tupperware me AND the envisioned porch swing me to somehow coexist. Thus the lists. And the dreaming. The inability to just be present, wonderful as present sounds. Nothing gets done from a porch swing. My manuscripts won't send themselves out. My students' floor plans won't grade themselves. Opposing that, my children will grow up without me if I forget to look. I better write that down now. I'll start a new list. A one-item list (less likely that a unicorn in my world). "Look" it will say. Just "Look." 
    Only, how will I know when to cross it off?

This is my first blog. Ever. 
I've been a computer teacher for ten years, and a writer for twenty, but it's quite a leap to for this old-school, yellow-college-ruled-notepad-scribbling- gal to finally start a blog. There are several reasons for this.

Discomfort- It seems to me a blog is basically a journal. Aka diary. Except it's online. Anyone --everyone-- can read it. It's weird and a little awkward, this public diary phenomenon that has swept the world into stranger's inner lives. How much do you share? How much do you edit? How much do you omit? Do you lie?  And who is your intentional audience, if any? I'm a private person, an introvert. I can count on my digits the number of people with whom I'm willing to share my intimate thoughts. And then I begin to imagine the unintentional audience. The faceless mass of, well, everyone. My cursor hovers over the "cancel" button.

Hubris- Seriously?! Who would want to read my diary? Why should anyone? The thought that I will spew some un-edited text onto a website and the world will rush to their buttons and mice and 3D trackballs to learn about little ole me is ludicrous. I mean really. It's Spring. Crocuses are splitting the soil. The deer have sprouted velvet nubbins between their impressive ears. The world is tilted toward growth and ecstasy. The fragile yellow flowers on my tomato seedling don't care about headaches or congestion. They have no wish to read my unpublished novel and could care less if I go to work or not, if I write another poem. This is what overcomes the discomfort issue mentioned above. No one, I expect, will read this. Therefore, what is there really to be uncomfortable about? 

Logistically awkward- Not only timewise, but also regarding subject matter. I'm a teacher. A mother of a four and a five year old. I'm a writer. A gardener. A poet (yes, that's a delineation from writer- when one hears "writer" [in this country], one doesn't assume -or even consider- poetry). I'm a lego maniac. I have more projects on my list than potential years of life... and with my genetics, I'm likely to live to my mid-100's (I inherited Grandma Hilde's stubborn amoung other German stoicism traits).  My retirement list is on the computer so I can use small (but elegant)  font and save on paper. And retirement is nowhere in sight. There is no time in my mind or daily rituals for a blog.

So Why Bother? 
Maybe this is what we all need. An outlet. A crossing of paths. A scything through the jungle to make new connections. A method, however indirect and obscure, for formulating our inner landscape into something comprehensible. Not to nameless readers. But for ourselves.

So.... now that I've justified a blog, I'm pretty much out of time and focus for writing one. /sigh. There's a cat in my lap. The sun is inching over the patio. My head's throbbing like a redlined car. And I am exquisitely happy.
I blame the blog for that last one. Not for singlehandedly improving my life, but for it's nature as an act of writing. It's why we write. Why we have to.