Walked in fog so thick that it was like walking in a tunnel. Cool and moist with a dash of mystery. The next day dawned bright and clear with record breaking highs for March. Both were wonderful experiences—I am grateful to have beach walks as an after work option.
Monday afternoonTuesday afternoon
Engaged in lively conversations with 18 families about their child’s progress as first graders. Many laughs and stories—first graders are such interesting (and often funny) human beings.
Had my eyes dilated and had that long solitary wait in the exam room before the doctor arrived to examine my eyes. Left with the lingering headache and sensitive eyes, but both are temporary. (Thankfully!)
Continued to read Margaret Atwood’s memoir (of sorts), Book of Lives. It’s long (600 pages), lively, and odd. And I keep reading it. Will I finish it before the library loan is up in 8 days? That’s yet to be determined.
Flip flopped dramatically between healthy eating (my husband made a Chilean vegetable stew last night with butternut squash) and a quick dinner the night before at In and Out with the best french fries! Will I ever stick to strictly healthy eating? Probably not.
I should have known–my student meteorologist this morning posted foggy and cool (while the sun was shining) in spite of the protests of his classmates. With a heat advisory posted on the weather app, everyone was expecting hot and sunny with record March temperatures, not a thick marine layer. But sure enough, by about 11:30 this morning, that pesky blanket of gray was wafting onto the playground. By the time I left school after 3, the coast was pretty much socked in the fog.
But the tides are low this week during my walking time, and walking on the beach is always better than walking around the neighborhood, so I pulled on my sweatshirt and headed into those very low clouds.
Dense fog is a lot like walking into a tunnel. Peripheral vision is limited, you can only see what is immediately before you. I found myself trusting the muscle memory of my feet and legs rather than depending on landmarks to find my way. In some ways it made distance fade away as I was forced to stay in the present rather than anticipate what lay ahead. Before I knew it miles passed.
Along the way back I noticed pelicans. Often they fly overhead, dipping and diving, surfing the waves. But today they were hanging out near the shore…just floating in the shallows. Sometimes lifting into flight just as I pulled my phone from my pocket to take a photo. Were they also experiencing the tunnel effect? Seeing the ocean differently through the thick gray damp of fog?
I enjoyed my tunnel view this afternoon, staying present and available to the shrouded beauty right in front of me. I soaked in the cool damp air, breathing in the sea and exhaling the worries about the world as my feet were treated to nature’s spa treatment–a cool salt water rinse. A perfect way to end my work day.
Sometimes I feel like I can only see the world through smudged glasses, details obscured or invented to serve someone’s agenda rather than the greater good. Like walking in dense fog, you can only see what is immediately in front of you rather than any insights the big picture offers.
The classroom can be like that too. Vision blurred by the marine layer created by the chemistry in the room. It’s too easy to lose focus and only see the largest obstacles rather than picking out the beauty in the diversity of details that appear when you are able to shine light on them.
It’s report card time in my school district, a time that forces me to see past the marine layer as I consider the strengths and growth of each child in the room. It’s a reminder to look and listen carefully, to find the spaces and places where the sun turns the sky from gray and colorless to vibrant and so blue that possibilities are endless.
Today we decided to drive north to walk a beach we love, but don’t get to too often. We braved some crazy traffic (a parade was taking place a block off the main road, causing gridlock) as we hoped the heavy fog would burn off by the time we arrived at the beach.
It was noon when we arrived, later than we planned for. The sky was blue and bright with sun at the parking area. As we walked toward the beach, we walked into the fog. It was warmish (high 60s) and the tide was low. As we walked south along the shore, we explored the tide pools exposed by the low tide. Sea anemones were abundant. I watched hermit crabs in their adopted shells skitter in the shallows. We could feel the damp on our faces as we walked, and the beach ahead of us disappeared. Landmarks that tell us how far we’ve gone and how much farther we have to go disappear, changing the landscape, making the familiar unfamiliar.
Near the end of the stretch of beach we walked, the sun prevailed and we stopped to watch surfers, seemingly too close to the cliffs, ride waves and duck into the brilliant translucent tubes of water. We headed back, finding the fog again…a little less dense this time. At one point I noticed the beach split between the fog and sun.
Can I read the sky like others read the palms of hands or the remains of tea leaves? Does this mean that clarity is right in front of me? Or does it mean that I need to keep wading through the fog, wiping away those smudges, shining light into dark spaces until it becomes second nature and I know clarity when I see it?
There’s something contagious about play that brings up belly laughs–even in serious adults!
It was hot today–in the high 80s at our local Safari Park. We headed out to attend a preview of the new Elephant Valley–the enclosure where the eight elephants live. Elephants are special–smart, social, and full of personality. And I have to admit, I have gotten to know a lot more about them since my niece became an elephant keeper.
This new enclosure is special. It gives the elephants lots of space…and makes it easy to watch elephants. This preview meant the crowds were large–and that is never my favorite. We were lucky enough the find a place to sit in the shade (many thanks to the couple who shared their table with us)–right in front of the little pond and a mud hole.
The elephant keepers were doing some enrichment/training with the elephants, creating spectacular moments for visitors. And afterwards, the elephants clearly needed to cool off. As we sat we watched one of the teenaged elephants head over to the mud hole and start rolling and splashing the mud all over. Watching these huge animals nimbly get down to the ground and play in the mud is a delight! We could hear the echoes of laughter as visitors enjoyed the spectacle. Then another elephant moves toward the mud–a hole clearly big enough for one, but for two? We watch the elephants nudge and push until they fall into a full-on wrestling match, playful and muddy, trunks swinging, mud flying. At some points butt to butt, fully enjoying the cool mud and each other as they played together in the not-quite-big-enough-for two mud hole.
I am reminded again and again of the importance of play–not just for children and not just for elephants…but for all of us. It is so easy to get serious, to spend our time worrying about the world, worrying about our families, taking care of business, getting through the daily stuff of living and forget to take time to play, to laugh, to delight, to find a place in the mud to cool off and let off some steam.
A poem a day for 30 days, which also means I have read poem upon poem upon poem for 30 days. I’ve read poems to my students, poems written by my students, poems offered as invitations, poems written by others in this poem writing community. I’ve struggled with words, celebrated with words, thrown words at my notebook to see which stuck, deleted words from my digital pages (again and again and again), fallen in love with words, admired the words written by others, and amassed quite a number of words written. I’ve chuckled and giggled, gasped and wondered…and shed a few tears too. I feel like I know poets I have never met, connected with poets from other time zones and places, and learned to recognized poets by their style, their posting time, their poetic voice and the way they respond to my poems. My poet heart feels both empty and full at the same time, grateful for all the words and already missing the demand for still more words. Will I write tomorrow? I’m sure I will. Will it be a poem? Probably not. But then again, who knows? My email box offered up Georgia Heard’s May Poetry Calendar today along with explicit permission to write small. Who can resist that?
I’ve written scar stories, I’ve had my students write their own scar stories, but when Bryan’s scar prompt came up this morning at Verselove, I just kept thinking about my good fortune in this life.
Instead of my own scars, my mind immediately went to a student that I didn’t get to help this year. Time with me was too brief, attendance too sporadic, and eventually fear won and my student was gone. I can only imagine the resulting scars for this child and this family.
Both Molly at Nix the Comfort Zone and Margaret at Reflections on the Teche posted poems using a form they called a shadorma: a six-line poem that follows a 3/5/3/3/7/5 syllable count. To keep myself focused and constrained, I used this structure for today’s poem.
On this 31st day of writing and posting, I’ve found a rhythm. Somehow, even when it seems that an idea for writing will elude me, something shows up. There is something about writing every day that brings forth writing every day.
On my most stuck days I do a couple of things.
Take a walk through my camera roll to find an image that sparks something: a memory, a metaphor, a story, a connection…
Read other people’s blog posts–either from fellow slicers at Two Writing Teachers or those I follow from other sources. Reading the writing of others might offer a structure I can adapt (13 ways, things worth sharing). I might remember a way to offer myself a lifeline when feeling overwhelmed and under-timed (6-word stories). Or I might more generally find a topic I relate to and allows at least a trickle of ideas to flow.
But what I love best about writing every day during the month of March is writing in community. The Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Challenge brings together writers who are challenging themselves to write, even when writing feels hard. And, they are taking the time to read and respond to the writing of others. There is a spirit of generosity in this space that pushes writing forward–at least for me. These generous writers, most of whom I do not know, take the time to read and comment on the posts I publish. In a short period of time, they feel like friends. And these friends keep me accountable to myself, helping me trace a path through my brain in search of ideas that will set my writing loose.
Last night when I went to bed, I told myself I would get up and walk in the morning while my husband was at the gym. I wanted to get my daily walk done and out of my way on this first “real” day of spring break so the rest of the day could unfold without attention to a need for exercise. When I awoke this morning, everything was wet.
What? Rain in a place where it seldom rains? I consulted my weather app (as though the wet ground were not evidence enough), sure enough, precipitation expected for the next couple of hours. Hmmm–should I walk or not? I checked outside–drizzle seemed a good word to describe this event.
The raincoat with the hood up was a good idea. The damp began to layer and droplets started to trace a path off the edge of my hood, making its way onto the toes of my shoes, and into the recesses of my brain. Everywhere I looked pathways opened. I could see sap rising and feeding the greening trees. Closed flower buds waited, ready for the sun’s light to highlight a path for the bees to follow. But it was the snails that spoke to me.
I knelt low, camera in hand, noticing the paths traced on the wet sidewalk. Tiny snails smaller than the nail on my pinkie finger, others the size of my thumb slimed their way across the walking path. Where are they going? Where did they come from? If I didn’t know better, I would think they drop from the sky in the raindrops! Their zigzagging paths unloosed a path in my writing brain, as I traced the wonder, struggle, and yes, delight in the act of writing and posting every day. Will my ideas go back into some kind of hibernation (wherever snails go when the weather is dry) if I don’t keep up my writing practice?
Lucky for me, tomorrow marks the beginning of National Poetry Month and I have gotten in the habit over the last few years of writing and posting a poem each day in April. Many in the Two Writing Teachers community also find themselves posting to Verselove at Ethical ELA. Maybe I will see you there.
I did a bit of an archeological dig today. I found out that I started this blog a little less than eleven years ago (in July of 2013). When i started, I gave myself a 30-day challenge to try to establish a writing and posting habit. But I ended up writing and posting everyday for over a year (I missed one day that year when I was sick). I was afraid to stop, thinking I might never start again.
I’ve been writing and posting for 60 consecutive days each March and April since 2018 as I participate in both the Slice of Life Challenge (thanks Two Writing Teachers) and then National Poetry Month where I have written and posted a poem everyday, most recently with the help of #verselove over at Ethical ELA.
And I write and post periodically at other times throughout the year, frequently about teaching and learning activities in my classroom.
But does any of this provide insight into why I write?
I consider myself to be a teacher-writer. Someone who writes what I ask my students to write, who composes in front of them to demonstrate both the challenges and the successes. And for similar reasons I blog and post to make my teaching processes visible, again sharing both challenges and successes. I could just write in a journal, writing for myself. But for me, it is the process of going “public”–even if no one reads my posts–that nudges me to clarify, for myself and others, why I do what I do. It also keeps me from complaining (which I am want to do in private writing) and forces me to find some kind of conclusion or resolution to each writing piece I do.
I love that writing gives me opportunity for reflection. When I am writing I find myself considering how I might do something in its next iteration. What should be done differently, what should remain essentially the same? I think about how I feel as a teacher–what is working, what makes my work hard, what makes my students’ learning easier and more fun. And I consider what brings joy…to me, to my students, to my family, maybe even my readers. (I actually wrote my teaching goal this year about joy–which my principal agreed was a great goal!)
I also write because I have community in these online spaces. I learn from the writing choices my online colleagues make, mentors in ways they likely don’t know. I appreciate each tap of the like button and every comment of encouragement that keeps me accountable and on track, even on those days that coming up with a topic feels impossible. The Two Writing Teachers/Slice of Life community is incredible–offering inspiration and support, encouragement and comfort, always seeming to know what I need and when I need it.
I write to understand myself and to understand the inner workings experienced as a writer. I’ve learned that writing is never easy and always worth it.
Hope to see you all in these online spaces even without a monthly challenge and maybe on some Tuesdays for the weekly SOL challenges. Until next year…
I love to take photos–and I take and post photos daily and have more more than 12 years. Some days and weeks I find myself in the doldrums where it seems like I have taken that same photo again and again. Sometimes the photo I see with my eyes just doesn’t come out of my camera no matter how hard I try.
What I love about photography is that it forces me to slow down and pay attention to the moment. I find myself paying attention to shadows, textures, colors, the interplay of light and dark…and then I notice sounds and smells and find myself wanting to run my fingers over a surface that looks bumpy or smooth or somehow different that I expect.
I came across this Mary Oliver poem the other day while scrolling my Instagram…and kept returning to it until finally I just took a screen shot so I could reread it over and over and over again.
Screenshot
In some ways this poem expresses how I feel about taking photos. Through my camera my aim is to be that rich lens of attention that allows me to take in the world, learning along the way. Breathing in and breathing out, slowing down, taking time, and looking with all my senses as I capture an aspect of my experience with a click of the shutter.
Thinking Through My Lens 