Whatever this space is to anyone else, it's a treasure trove to me. I return now and then either to discover or remember; in that sense, I'll never move on. I am writing elsewhere now though, as the change of scenery did me good. For various reasons I'm not making the connection from here to there public, but if you'd like the link, let me know.

Race Day Commentary

Random thoughts from the Go! St. Louis Half Marathon, a race I registered for months ago in the  Nike Women's afterglow and then, for reasons mostly medical and partly lackadaisical, didn't train for. 


1. What goes up must come down is not topographically true. Nothing like a foot race for realizing the streets I've been driving for 25 years are not even remotely flat: they're all uphill. Both ways!


2.  Mic Ultra may not be beer except under the strictest definition, but when it's ice cold, fresh out of the tap, free, and the first non-Gatorade beverage one has had in 13.1 miles, it's not bad at all. 


3.  Body Glide is a miracle substance: just don't miss a spot. 


4.  The guy with a KISS Army tattoo owes us all a story, don't you think?


5.  So do those women packing four water bottles that were still full at mile twelve. 


6.  Bagpipes are cool. 


7.  And so is running through the brewery compound, even if it's not really A-B any more, and even if I never buy their beer. It's just red brick St. Louis in a way that means I'm-not-sure-what to me. 


8.  In the category of High School Age Race Day Volunteers, San Francisco wins hands down over the Lou.  Yes, kids, there are "so many people," so pour the Gatorade already. And try to weasel out of the end of your shift after you hand me my medal. 


9.  A big thank you to those who are willing to cheer for anyone who passes your spectator spot, and not just your one friend/relative/significant other.  For those of you who won't, I bet it'd make your day a lot more fun if you did.  


10.  Same goes for 9/10 of the TNT staff. I know the power's in the purple shirt, but damn.  Didn't you see the Team in Training keyholder on my shoe? ; ) 


11.  Having my too sedentary girl say, unprompted, that she'd do a Half - "but just walk it" - sometime is a pretty cool prize, and a testament to the power of actions over words. I do this for me, but if she follows, maybe it's not selfish. 


12.  Having come late to the participant party, I love the start just about as much as the finish. Maybe more. 


13.1. Today felt like coming out of retirement. Hell yes, I'll do it again. 

invitation

"I was going to come up to school and invite u," she texts, and it might even be true.  I know I'd be welcome, even if it turns out I'm inviting myself: we go way back, this girl and I, and though the ties have loosened in the absence of day after school day, we are still connected across place and space and time. 

She doesn't blink, I can tell, when my, "This is Ms. P" message barges into her inbox, demanding to know whether the rumors of her impending marriage are true. I believe them-- she is, after all, nineteen-- but I'm not going to rely on the third-hand report when I have a number and a phone in my hand.  Instead I ask, and our first exchange in a year is a good natured interrogation. "Who's the boy?" and "Do your parents like him?" and "When?" and "Where?" As if I have the right, because I do.  

She answers all my questions in her same old girlish chatter, all my questions except the time and the place, since beyond, "next Saturday," she doesn't quite know. I can nearly see her shrug off the details in that familiar but foreign Latina way as she explains, "My friend is helping me set it up."  In other words, "it'll happen." In the meantime, no worries, no offense. 

I check in with her, days later, when the promised logistics don't appear-- turns out all the banquet halls are booked and wedded bliss may be delayed. I allow myself an, "Imagine that!" in reply but that's all I'm compelled to say.  She is, of course, too young, too barely educated, too minimally employed, but that may matter or that may not in the world she occupies. After all this time, I'll still looking through a window, and though I'm welcome, I'm not qualified to say. 

loss

In my mind's eye, I see his van in the driveway- is it silver or black or faded maroon?- and the question on her face as she pulls up to the house that I likely will never visit and would need a map to find.  I see her walking up steps that may or may not exist to the bedroom where he is but should not be.  I think of 911 and paramedics, rising panic and spreading alarm. 

I see her students, shocked silent in a classroom I haven't entered for years now.  I think about her kids. 


I haven't talked to her since last Fall when we spoke of students transferred from her to school mine and the money I was raising for LLS; money was tight she told me, but they'd already donated: "My husband has leukemia." 


It didn't kill him. 


But Wednesday night they went to bed, and Thursday morning she left early for a conference.   Thursday afternoon she decided to go home for lunch and discovered that she is a widow.  The universe is cold and cruel. Such a sudden loss wouldn't be any less sad of a story if the woman surviving it weren't someone I admire, a force for good who'd also been a help to me, but we all see the world through our own lenses, and I see a friendly face forever changed. 

blossom

We're three lines in to the conversation when I realize what she's saying. This is not, as it happens, a rarity, and not only because I'm slow on the uptake: spend enough time talking to the not-quite-proficient and you, too, will someday find yourself two nods and an "uh huh" in before it becomes clear that the Target bag stashed on top of the back book shelf is not full of supplies for her speech but instead a gift. 


"Is it for me?" I ask, certain, almost, of the answer. 


She nods twice, quickly, eyes dancing: "My brother and I made it last night." 


Our smiles reflect each other as I thank her sincerely and mouth, "I love it," because I do.  It is the best of all possible gifts; if it weren't mine, I'd envy the owner, but it is, and I am so pleased.  I love it because she made it, because she's excited to give it to me, and because it's beautiful. And I love what this winter branch adorned with dozens of red paper flowers represents. 


When the time comes, once lunch is past and we've learned both how to juggle and how to bathe a baby, I move my new bouquet to the table up front, and without bidding she approaches to make her first-ever presentation as an English-speaking student, a demonstration of the paper folding she learned as a girl in Vietnam. She is ready, having practiced, having followed all instructions, but I cannot overstate the resolve it took for her to ignore her palpitations and stand before her classmates and speak loud enough and clear, but today she did it. Today, she bloomed. 

the Half

"It's just the Half," I tell myself, alternately, after, "I'll just pick up my shirt," and, "It couldn't hurt to walk." 

Months upon a time ago, I registered for the Go! St. Louis race (exclamation in the trademark) almost as an afterthought. Cincinnati's Flying Pig was the goal, and maybe it still kind of could be, but friends who had been motivated by if-Allison-can-surely-I signed up to race, and riding a wave of sure-that'd-be-fun and I'll-need-a-long-run, I put down my money. 

"I'll run it all," I said, maybe weeks after running 26.2 (except for the parts that I walked). 

Well. 

That will not be happening. Instead of  miles upon miles upon ever increasing training miles, the last ten weeks have been filled by dates with the sports medicine doc and the physical therapist, the elliptical and lately, barely, the treadmill. I am in no way ready to run 13.1 on the pavement.  Thousands of conspicuously consumed insurance company dollars attest that my tibia has healed and there's nothing left but chronic medial tibial stress syndrome, which is just shin splints in dress clothes.  Just, that is, the kind of nagging issue that affects daily life not in the least but can derail the whole running thing, and now we're thirteen days from the race. 

I'm certain the doc would advise against, were I to ask him. 10% more distance a week is the standard rec, in which case I'd be ready in, oh, July. 

But it's only the Half. And I could walk, would have to, much as the thought of that pains me. Hundreds if not thousands will, on purpose, as a goal.  I suppose I could always wear my cast. I expect in my not quite-as-fit shape it will feel like plenty of challenge, and if it hurts, well, then we'll see. I know the difference between the bad pain and the deal-with-it, and I promise not to do anything excessively stupid.  Really. 

More than five months ago, a starting line was a major milestone, and I learned about satisfaction and effort. This is not that, not even close, though it might be about crossing the finish. 

scholarship

"You can't see me," I am occasionally tempted to remind, "but I can hear you."  The seat backs are tall and the rows aren't crowded and we're all Americans practiced in the art of creating space where there's not much: don't see me and I won't see you, we generally pretend. 

But I'm nosy, frankly, and with five hours to kill, if your conversation bleeds through the gaps between my seat and the one I've cluttered with jacket and Newsweek and the hope that no one claims it, I'm going to listen. I just am. Often the eavesdropping price is paid with I- can't-believe-you-said-that or silent entreaties to shut up; more often the snatches are puzzle pieces fit together as I switch between shuffle and podcast. So this time, when the train pulls up to the station and I see my rear neighbors for the first time, I nod at the letter jackets and corresponding purple sweats: that fits. I know the family is up in anticipation of a Tuesday meeting with a coach at Robert Morris. A teenage girl stands from behind and confirms that the voice talking to his parent was the brother, not the athlete, but I cannot place her sport until the mother unwittingly offers their imaginary narrator a better conclusion than expected: 

"Get your balls," she says, "go ahead." And the girl walks by my slowly dawning smile with an air of  here-goes-nothing as she coordinates her equipment: three bowling balls, at least. 

Oprah

They're working on homework: it's algebra (always algebra) and bio and geo and chem; histories of conquistadors and doughboys running concurrent and intersecting, as so appropriate, with graphic reports on STDs.  


It is, on a good day, a "How do I?" from one corner, "I don't get it," from the other and idle blank looks spotted from across the room.  It is multi-multi-get-them-on-tasking, but I am accustomed to leaping from equation to definition to question; it's high school: it's not that hard. 


But sometimes I am thrown.  Sometimes it's chemistry-- I've drawn the line--or a neuron misfired or just a blank in my less comprehensive-than-they-believe knowledge. But sometimes a question is so unexpected that I must pause and gather my wits. As in when a girl nine years removed from Mexico poses this particular query in the most American of accents: 


"Who's Oprah?" 


I falter. "What?" 


I am generally expert in explaining the most mundane of mundanities without a trace of detectable, "Really?"  


But near a decade in Oprah's world without the slightest notion? I'm not a fan, but I'm fascinated, and for the moment, stumped. 


"She's on TV. . .she's made movies. . .she has a magazine. She's really rich. . ." I trail off, consider. "She's Oprah," I want to say. 


For a few seconds more, I try to define through example and fact: Chicago, celebrities, crying middle-aged women. She looks at me like a foreigner. I turn the laptop to display a screenful of Google images; she blinks blankly. I don't bother to mention the weight.

She shrugs, incrementally informed about one more random American thing, and returns to whatever she was doing;  I scan the room for the slacking or perplexed as I exit a page full recognizable-to-most-but-not-all faces. Irrelevant? Not to me.  It's one more example of all the references surely missed in conversation and reading and lecture. No wonder, I think to myself in reminder. 


They're not as Americanized as we think.  

Excellent

politics

It's a stage-managed set-up, choreographed down to the hand-selected crowd of diverse-as-we-can-manage teenagers told to wear church clothes-- whatever that means-- to an assembly in an unnaturally empty high school they don't attend.

I don't care.

Because despite photo op, despite fund raiser (the true trip agenda), despite political push that just needs a live audience, the fact remains that the President is coming- the President!- and a Haitian boy four months out of a now-crumbled orphanage will be there.

"It's like a dream," he really said, and though I expect some teenage shade of he-just-talked-he-didn't-see-me-it-was-boring disappointment on Thursday, the fact remains that this brand new American is going to see his President, and he's excited. So am I.

I'm told that plenty of students were irked at not being chosen: the usual StuCo Honor Society suspects are too many in number-- and largely too pale in complexion- to be selected by default. Instead, the administrative viewfinder widened- by order, it appears- and through a little affirmative racial profiling action a few equally upstanding but lesser known kids appeared on the schoolwide radar. So be it: from the purely artificial something genuine has sprung.

curriculum

"You mean people make computer viruses?" he asks, his open expression unmistakably sincere.  He's been listening to some conversation about the perils of Limewire, and once again I'm reminded that common knowledge isn't always. A boy seemingly tech savvy somehow believes that a plague of the internet is generated by nature: it's a virus, after all. It's one part language learner, I think, and one part innocence of the ways of the world. Ignorance, by definition. 

My theory is that these kids lose, maybe never develop, the expectation that the world make sense. They spend such a chunk of their formative years surrounded by seems-to-them gibberish that instead of being inspired to analyze they accept everything and question nothing. Education should be the solution, and maybe it is, but meanwhile they believe that eating pork will transmit H1N1 and Saddam Hussein sent the jets to the Twin Towers. 


Perhaps they're more American than they know.

Meanwhile, I rig up lessons to fill-in the blanks. The textbook reading on Yellow Fever becomes a compare-contrast assignment with Swine Flu so I can stand at the front  of the room and say, "If you learn nothing else today, remember this. . . ."

the senior

It's just some Thursday in the dregs of February. A day after day after day.  But then she sits down and asks to talk, and it becomes something else. 

She starts in the middle of the discussion, right where we left off last time we plotted her strategy. She is inclined to believe that she is destined for a lifetime of taking orders for sweet and sour chicken, and she does have reason to think so.  The restaurant is the be all and end for her parents, and for good reason: it is their income, their hope, their come-to-America story. 

I am not going to call it a dream

As she launches into her doubts, any twinge of been-there, done-that evaporates in the suddenly serious atmosphere.  On another day in this same spot we'd pasted together a delicate framework of if-this, maybe-that intended to bridge the gap between her college hopes and her parents' expectations. If she went part-time, if just took English. . .we'd hoped the mutual benefit would be a toe-hold. 

Alas. 

Alas they are steadfast. They are intent. Whether out of belief or need they have offered up a steady stream of reasons why she could not, should not go to the community college she's mapped out.  They tell the girl who's breezing through pre-calc that she's not smart enough to try. They tell the best writer I have that her English is not sufficient. They tell her there's no point, no hope, that she cannot work, that she'd be taking a job from an American. They tell her-- and this is the crux-- that if she were to go it'd be doubly expensive because then they'd have to pay a worker. 

"I understand," I say a thousand times.  


And then I tell her what I know about her smarts and her potential. I tell her why I know she can do it, and despite all truths about Asians and eye contact she looks at me directly when I say, "I am not wrong. I believe in you."  


My heart breaks when she says I'm the only person who does. "You and me," I remind her. "That's two." 


As we sit huddled across the corner of the desk, we acknowledge all realities and my encouragement is tempered except for my urging to have faith. What she wants is possible, eventually, if she does not concede the dream. I make no promises to this girl I met in August except to be there for her long past her May graduation. I give her my phone numbers and addresses. She takes the card and cries.

news (despite supposed hiatus)

"I'll try to be a good father," he writes, slipped in to the end of an unrelated message. Facebook may be killing my blog, but at least it does keep me in touch.

I reply immediately, cautiously  are-you-telling-me-what-I-think-you're-telling-me excitement soon replaced by pleased, nearly aunt-like surprise and for a little while I reflect on this new milestone, this first of the next generation-- until I realize that's ludicrous on the face. For Pete's sake, there's a baby shower invitation on my desk, the honored guest one of my two current students who are currently expecting, and then of course that now two year-old who I held as a newborn as her mom did her homework. 


So this isn't the first time one of my students has become a parent, but it is different: this time, no teenagers are involved.  Sure, the mom-and-dad-to-be are young --he's barely 25--but they're adults and they're established, savers who own cars and a home; they've even been married more than a year.  I imagine las abuelas have been tapping their feet. In two countries I'm sure there's rejoicing. 


And while I cross my fingers and hope his new blessing doesn't replace his other dreams-- I believe in him, but I'm realistic--it feels good to congratulate without stifling a sigh.

Hiatus

I'm just putting a label on what's already obvious: I'm not writing much right now, and I haven't been for a while. I try, now and then: the drafts folder is full of not-quite-what-I-intended. I'll be back when I figure out how.

tax time

In my heart of hearts, I am generally content with the work-related choices I've made. I chose my degrees based on interest and such-as-it-is aptitude without really any consideration for money or perhaps even job security. I have done what I wanted to do. And I do believe that in our current system teachers are partly compensated in time: I work thirty-six weeks of the year, officially, and I value the time that I seem to have paid for with a proportionally smaller paycheck. When teachers bitch about money I tend to be a little dismissive: we all knew the deal, and so many work much harder for much less. It feels wrong to complain, but I lose a little perspective when I take a hard look at my W-2. Hoo boy. The state teacher retirement fund better remain solvent; that's all I have to say. This is no way to get ahead. 

father-daughter

"I've only got a minute," says my retired father from the cellphone he uses so rarely I don't recognize the number.

I wonder, briefly and in passing, what's wrong: it's nearly the reaction inspired by a phone that rings too early or too late: "Who's in the hospital?" or, "Who died?" In a moment I am stepping into my shoes and pulling my coat, but only to meet him, as instructed, in the driveway. He doesn't negotiate the steps easily, and, as he said, he only has a minute.

As I walk out, I look to the passenger seat to confirm: he's solo. And already standing at the back of the Escape; he moves better when he's motivated.

And there it is: a duplicate of the aerobic step he'd purchased at some great discount for my mother.  "I thought it could help build up your leg."  I smile at the gesture without even trying to anticipate how or when that kind of activity will fit into my stress fracture rehab protocol. Sooner or later or never: whatever.  I'm not even faking it as I begin to express my appreciation for this unsolicited gizmo. He stops me with a raise of his hand:

He points out with ex-machinist precision the dimensions and height options. I can almost see his metal ruler; I certainly recognize the pause that precedes his inevitable, concluding warnings about the dire fates that could befall me were I to get carried away and trip over his gift. But darkness is falling and it's too cold for an extended debate on the likelihood of an ER visit.  "Okay," I concede; it's not as if grace is in the gene pool.

Mission accomplished, he's backing out almost before I've got the front door closed. I love you, too, Dad.

Yesterday

And thus the four became three, before we even met.

Standing at a conference room table, the secretary and I sort out a pile of Mexican papers that represent a new family of students.

"This is what we'd call the last name," I point out, differentiating family name from the appended mother's maiden, explaining the tradition. We agree that we like the way their culture preserves both names for the future, and I give her mental credit for recognizing that foreign ways have value: that's the level we're operating on here.

What would be, in English, a five-minute filing job expands to accommodate my not-quite-proficient Spanish; I want to say, "See what it's like?" But instead I focus on getting the documents matched up and learning what I can of the kids: nineteen year-old sister, 17 year-old brother, 16 year-old brother, each with middling bachillerato and secundaria grades from 2008. I'm unsurprised at the gap but make a note to ask after 2009 when I realize, a beat later, what I'm reading in the last folder, the one for a younger sister.

I go out to the front desk to show what I've found:

"She just turned 14 in December." I'm answered with a half-nod of comprehension. "And this. . ."

"Primary school."

"Right. She finished sixth grade in 2008. She is not a high school kid." Even though she's been trying to register here for a week. They've kept the appointments, filled out the papers, gotten the shots, and now, finally, somebody's noticed.

Given the logistics of squeezing a quartet of newcomers into my schedule, identifying one as a middle schooler is a triumph, or it should feel like one: one fewer schedule, one fewer desk, one less everything. A 25 percent-off sale. But it's also sending this girl across town to a teacher with 10 days' experience, and it's explaining to this family why suddenly this is the wrong school. For a split-second, it feels easier to skip her ahead.

But instead I close the folder and leave the secretary to her phone calls. I'll be back in the morning, to enroll and explain and do whatever I do. I am the teacher, technically. And yet.

Four

"Is that a lot of work for you?"

Is my pause perceptible?  It's not as if everything I have to do and juggle and reconfigure to fit four new students into into my more-or-less program flashed before my eyes. Instead I'm stuck mid-cringe, wedged between, "You have no idea what I do," and, "I have no idea how I'm going to do it." 

It is typical to have a new kid or two in January, at the more-or-less beginning of the semester. I know better to assume my schedule is fixed. But four? FOUR? I don't even have the desks. Let alone an all-beginner class to slip them into (none of them speak English) for even one of their eight yet-to-be-filled schedule blocks.  Wait, times four? Thirty-two. Thirty-two classes to schedule, though twelve or sixteen of them will be with me. With me in a room six or eight or twelve other kids who are doing two or three other things: nobody else will be starting at Lesson One.  Here's where my I'll-think-about-it-later starts to kick in, and oh, how later will be full of fodder.

At least I have books now, at least I have some software, at least I have some help on alternate days. At least I started to file and organize in December-- really. At least I have a day off before the new normal makes its debut. It will not be impossible, probably. But yes, my dear colleague, it's gonna be work.

Home

He is my object lesson, my there by the grace of God goes he.  Up until a month ago, not even a blink ago in geologic time, his home was an orphanage atop a fault line. But then the paperwork finally emerged from the byzantine Haitian bureacracy and his world shifted on a scale not measured by Richter. He was there, and now he is here-- except, of course, for part of his heart. 

This evening he sits in a middle American suburb where earthquakes are thus far only novelty and watches scant pictures from his home. The phones are out, of course, and all that is known-- if it is known for certain-- is that the hospital in his old neighborhood has collapsed. The fate of everyone else he knows in the world is unknown. They are all there, and he is here.  

American Red Cross  


Doctors Without Borders

Green Bay 45, Arizona 51 (OT)

Hot Stove

If the embedded video isn't working, click here.

I am deeply in football mode now (Go Pack Go!) and my only reaction to the winter free agent ridiculousness that is at the corrupted heart of baseball is a dismissive shrug of my shoulders. But this? This speaks to the Cardinal fan that will always be a part of me. And, it's funny as hell.