Better late than never

I'm so sorry this was missing among the archives at the old skinnytree.
Without further ado...


Visitation

she asks if there is anything she can
bring
I think first of the tree under her nest:
of the tiny maple,
the dwarf lemon
but most tenderly
the tall olive tree
(a mere branch leaning down across the soil
when she brought it home bowing, like a blessing
to her lover)

bring a branch from the olive tree, my dove:
my heart has been afloat too long now.
When you arrive, carry in your mouth the proof,
tell me
there are trees again
bursting from the horizon.
Tell me silently that the earth reaches out her arborized hands, and leafy fingers,
hoping to hold you up, proudly (loving your tiny toes curving around her fingers)
where you perch and play
and perform your miracles.
If there is solid ground again, a place to make a home,
I know you will tell me and you will bring a bit of it
wordlessly, weightlessly
leave leaves with me, my peace, my piece of home.

Working it out

I knew the whole story. The pillow case in question had come from a home wherein resided 3 powerful women, one of them only just recently four years old. It had been placed on a pillow left in our classroom by a young hispanic boy who has since departed for a different school. A loving teacher placed it, the one and desirable pillow on the cot of a boy with the disposition of a 14 year old, the body  (read: tear ducts) of a four year old and emotional responsibilities that rival those of any decent 34 year old.
He told me in no uncertain terms that he was a boy and didn't want a pillow with flowers on it. I said it was given to him to use if he wanted it.
To which he turned away and added, as though he were instructing me to add a pinch of salt to the recipe: "Then you're a b*&^#."
I needed a moment to think this over.

This is not the first time I have been called this... nor is it the first time I have been called such by this person. Questions raced through my mind:
Am I mad? Am I a b*&^#? is this laughable? Should I scold him? What would be the point? Which male figure in his life who speaks this way? What kind of power does that man hold? What would the other teachers do? What do I want to do? What does it mean anyway? Is there some translation guide for pre-K swears or do I need to write that myself? Should I move it up toward the top of the to-do list?
Yes. I should.

I took his little hands in mine. We walked away from the group of 16 busy bees readying for a rest time and I set his muppet sized shoulders back so his little posture would be powerful and proud as I spoke to him. I said to him I would sit but he should stand when I tell him this and then I told him
I'm so sorry.

If it hurt your feelings when you saw that pillow, I am sorry. You don't ever have to use that pillow. It's just like when I give you green beans and you don't like them. You remember that?

He told me that he doesn't like the outsides but he likes the little ones inside the green parts and asked me if I remember the little pieces inside the shells.
Yes. I remember the seeds inside the greens.
But please remember, I said, Sometimes I make a mistake. You don't have to use the words you used. They were not kind words and I know you are a kind person. You can just say, Miss Abigail, I don't like that pillow.

And we practiced using kind words instead of swear words.

I really was sorry to have offended such a smart and wonderful person. It's not that I'm a b*$^#... or that I'm not. The point is that he was trying to tell me something really important about gender identity forming and personal preferences and roles and rights and privilege...
and I had to figure out how to listen in between the words and my bias toward the words he has at his disposal.

Plenty of folks would disagree with my style of reprimand.

Some would say I'm too liberal, that he'll probably do it again or that he will never learn he can't talk to a teacher that way. They may say I've let him get away with disrespect and bad behavior. I say we all get away with disrespect and bad behavior every day. I say there are words that hurt more than swear words and a teacher better learn to listen regardless of how her students speak to her. I say he probably will do it again, in fact, I hope he does because it will give me another chance to pull him aside and legitimate his frustration with the way the world works.

Only when we are honest about frustration can we honestly express it and really move through it.

Besides who am I to make pre-K anything less than a social laboratory? Why not let him try to work it all out over and over again until he learns that this is not a very helpful word around these parts, even if it does carry weight at home or abroad? If this were a math problem I'd give him multiple chances. It's a social emotional problem and he needs all the chances he can get.
Even if it does feel really good to let it fly, it can hurt those he loves. I want him to learn this while he is yet surrounded by love instead of in search of it.

Had I returned his disrespect for my position of power with a disdain for his familial vocabulary or disrespect for his expression it would have been more confusing than corrective even to his little brilliant mind. All this is confusing enough even before we start limiting his vocabulary.

In my classroom there are no such thing as bad words, but there are lots of unkind ways of expressing your opinions. It isn't the opinions that offend in and of themselves, it is the disrespectful and disdainful expression of those opinions that causes such strife in our community. I don't want to defend my opinion of swears or pillows as though it is the only opinion or the most truthful. I even try to apply this logic to arguments over abortion, marriage equality and child-rearing... which is why I'm still learning how and when to tell you what I really think. I'm learning from four year olds--they are great teachers. When you look around my classroom you see little faces of real people on the front lines of these battles: there are folks who use my students as proof that their mothers are in search of a welfare check, that their parents should be denied basic rights as a family unit or that a single mother will never be able to raise a child on her own.

If you are still learning how to offer opinions about topics such as this, you're in good company and welcome to my classroom any time. That is the real moral of this story anyway.
Pre-K is a grandiose and functional place to sort things out. And I don't ever want to lose sight of that... if it seems as though I might, dear readers, you have every right to remind me; and I say so knowing that you will use any words you have at your disposal.

signing on

Such a thing (imagine it, please, as spoken by an aging and shocked yiddish Bubela: "Sawchuh Theing!") as a contractual obligation does exist.

I was ushered into the realm of promise keeping by my father very early in life. Once he made me promise to never walk too close to the creek that ran behind my house. When I ditched one too many classes (that is, I found, the one way to get caught in the act) as a freshman in high school he addressed the issue with militant aplomb as we sat in the cab of his truck: "You're not going to do that again, are you?" To my shaking head he replied, "Well, then we don't have to talk about it again." It was a preliminary sketch of grace to be fleshed out by a steady hand over the life of the issuer.

Then, before I knew it I had signed student loan promissory notes, a marriage license and a mortgage. How does it all happen?! Terms and conditions apply to a promise. Take, for example, marriage vows: "For as long as we both shall live." But live what? Why, this life, this way--of course.

There is much consternation about folks walking away from properties--entire neighborhoods-- in foreclosure [now so far under water they are more like Atlantis than their owners ever hoped], marriages [now shadows of their former selves and partners of the same hue] or lucrative careers [now viewed from 6 months in to be more like missionary positions in the lands of remote deserted cubicle].

We keep signing on, signing up. The promises are made so that another (an other) person will know that I'm good for it, in it to win it, for the long haul. I know I'm trustworthy so it is easy for me to predict my own fidelity.

And yet... I am only looking for someone who will remain faithful to me...

But not because I need a house of my own, more money, or an ideal partner. No. I sign the dotted line because I like to make promises. I really like it, in fact.

The act of promising something is personal, basic and a means to establishing selfhood.

When I make a promise I do so knowing that I can't control anything or anyone but myself. Most promises are made in the midst of heated perceptions weaving and waving like the sight of a Death Valley highway in the noonday sun. The illusion of a solid road ahead is just enough and so I trust that I have eyes more assuredly than I trust that the road is real. I am promising to use my eyes even if the road turns out to be little more than rubble on the horizon. And in making that promise to you, I make a promise to myself, I commit to myself.

I have broken a lot of promises and reveled in the guilt of it, narcissistically so. It was much easier to focus on the guilt I conjured by speculating the other person's esteem for me had hit an all new low. The harder task was to deal with the pain of facing the reality that in doing so I was also breaking a promise to myself.

These days I sign on for gym membership, a year long certificate of deposit at a laughable financial institution or an annual contract to work at an impossible job and all these are not exactly the picture of interminable nor are they the type of commitment to keep me awake at night--whenever they do I know I'm living a life dangerously off balance anyway. I still do make the daily promises that make up life in a capitalist society and the daring commitments that determine a tradition or maybe a future but the promises that mean the most are those I can make first to myself, then to you: to be myself, to tell the truth, to be right and wrong and human and wild which means sometimes I must walk away when you wish I would stand my ground. It means sometimes I must sit still when you thought I would run to your side...
Because if I do I will also understand that you must sometimes also.
Sometimes, when the sky is clear and the restless Starlings quietly pruning, the Cricket busy with his midday chirrrrrupping, I miss the train, miss the phone call, spill the coffee and all the stuff of life's mess is close to my skin and then
I myself am,
the very someone I was looking for when I went in search of someone who will remain faithful to me.

Occupyeveryskinnytree

A Dwelling

--And in the central valley, 

people were dreaming of peaches.

Starlings at the scalloped edges off new blossoms.

In the night orchards,

the dreamer walked over hot coals with the poems

and made creation seem effortless--there!

What do you fear in a poem?

(I fear the moment of excess, as in March,

when oxalis comes out all in one day.)

What do you fear in the poem?

(I fear that moment of withholding--

especially inside what I thought was free;

and I feared the poem was just like her,

that it would abandon me--)

--So the poem is the story of the writing of itself.

In the white tent of the psyche

or out there in the normal fog:

the mockingbird all spring:

she looked just like a note herself, 

each bit of music slipping past her

till it stopped--

each time one note missing; 

it wasn't exactly a failure on her part,

she just needed something to do tomorrow.

Same thing with the poem. Perhaps

an idea came with it, an idea of fourness, the yellowness

of spring, a certain belief in the completion 

of a plan. Not so now. In your dream

of wholeness, death began.

So, put yourself in the way

of the poem. It needed your willing 

impediment to be written. Remember the lily, 

growing through the heart of the corpse?

You had to be willing to let it through the sunshine

error of your life, 

be willing not to finish it-- 

--Brenda Hillman, from Death Tractates

I just read this article

Poet Bashing Police 

Bob and Brenda have always cared for us this way. My own copy of Death Tractates bears a little inscription from Brenda on the title page: 

"For Abigail--

With many thanks 

for your sequence. 

Best wishes-Brenda 2-1-01" 

What a corny little poem! And in pencil even, in case I should wish to erase it (wince) and thus (gasp) increase the market value of the book...

She gave our class copies of her little collection of pieces about the untimely death of a mentor and then acknowledged that our classwork had helped to pull her out of a writer's block. "I feel like we should pour gatorade over our heads. We won! We won!," She exclaimed in her tiny and potent voice.

So as I read about my dearest Brenda being severely and bodily disrespected, how she told the officers they ought to be at home reading with their children, how Bob described his own bumbling attempts to rescue her... 

Well, the tears just started coming into my eyes and I tried to swallow them but they were just too many for the barricade of reasonable thoughts I tried to pit against them:

"It's not like she's your mother, for Christ's sake! Don't be so attached to the poets, the poems are still in tact..." 

"She has probably been treated worse for less... She probably knew what she was getting herself into. She used to smoke in the shower--only the best of us can manage stuff like that."

"The whole article is about how they both survived the blows and things are going to be just fine. They're up and going to the gym, so that is good."

But each insensitive thought in my mind just endeared the real, annoyingly sensitive me more and more to their sweet faces and genuine kindness, to their impulse to protect and their attempts to fight for the poetic justice they hold so dearly.

I realize I am just afraid to lose their physical presence in the world; I'm afraid I might have to occupy this planet without their bodies 

...and so, of course, I have once again comforted myself with their words.

If you are not in the habit of imbuing everything with ambiguity you may not have yet tried on the idea that Bob's article is quite cleverly titled. Sure, the cops used clubs but Bob and Brenda have called forth a more powerful force all this while: I can't tell you how many times Brenda urged me to "get my writing done." Those cops have another thing coming if they think they can beat Bob at his own game.

I'm taking my emotional response to the idea of beating poets as a sign that I have been trying too hard to dismiss the police brutality against the Occupy movement. I have been trying to keep it all in perspective because I am daily surrounded by terrible abuses of power and the victimization of the impoverished in my midst. I have been so immersed in bringing up the children in the way that they should go that I have not done my best to put myself in the shoes of the protestors, to put myself in the way... 

And all because I was afraid to add to my own already intense sense of powerlessness this new flavor of futility and frustration. What was I afraid my feelings would do?... Have I not yet learned that these frustrations fuel the fire of my best work? Did I forget how much kinetic energy is stored up in my anger?

Good grief.

Since the skinnytree is my way of reaching out and confessing I thought I should send up my little flare of awareness, hoping you will see it and locate yourself nearby... 

I am posting this little piece so as to be held accountable for asking myself again and again about my fears of poems and poets, of losing a mentor and having to put myself in the way when others can not. In the violent times I must not be afraid of my own voice; my pitiful silence may be the one thing I can overcome... and so here it is, tumbling out in lines and circles for everyone to see

I promise I will try my best to put myself in the way of the poem Occupy is writing

for Bob and Brenda and you and me.

It's a funny thing for me to try to understand the Occupy phenomenon.
For the sake of clarity, here is how I see it:
The people who have been ignored would like to take up space in a visible place so that they my hear and be heard as well as see and be seen. If that is indeed the case, then I say every time you remember those folks living in tents in public spaces, punched or pepper sprayed just for being visible, mention them kindly, think of them fondly or even just wonder about what it is they are up to, you have become somewhat preoccupied, if not altogether occupied by their cause.

It took me a little extra time to get on board but now that I am emotionally involved, I welcome your skepticism or praise (whatever you have on hand) and proudly link arms with those hairy wary crazies who are, as one occupykst member put it, "just occupyin' ever'where." 

The skinnytree is officially

Occupied as only it could be,

as the poet said,

"In the white tent of the psyche

or out there in the normal fog:"

I don't often write love songs... usually lamentations

Probably because I am officially and often in mourning when I realize that I have to get up to go to work in the morning whenever I am painfully aware that my birds are growing--they can't help it, even now, as they sleep through the night...

There is always

((a lurch of honesty and the stench)

ketchup in your smile.

You can't wait to tell me the news:

the front page is caught in the arms

of the trees and you are learning the word for branches 

as you learn the words for miracles like orange and autumn and leave.

I am teaching you to blow kisses, to ask for help, 

to refuse forcible apology 

with grace 

as frailties burst forth and limbs fly.

You teach me to 

walk (slowly) and speak (carefully) and to be (sure)

with myself and a song. 

Today

is for you this one page 

in one book is enough;

we will feel the paper of it under our fingers 

chew on the words and then press them out, sending them out 

blowing consonant bubbles into the stillness

seven times (perfectly)

you will finish what I've begun 

and then you will curl and snore a little, mildly, like a wildly exhausted housecat and promise to 

dance when you wake and

morning milk mustaches portend 

muscular strivings to bake a cake of the sand: with ingredients you had on hand

or pry the clothing off a baby doll

and I am ever in mourning that this will not last; 

we will be lost 

to it?

in it?)

tomorrow.

 

we the underpaid: priceless

She said he was a problem.
It's no wonder they call them knitted eyebrows because whenever I knit my eyebrows they tend to be close knit--we're talking an absolutely smartwool sort of knit--because they often hover and cover one pretty damn cold stare.
I didn't care who I was talking to or why; I only thought of the boy. (It was a lot like the day the 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit and I (the cali native) ran inside, past the other adults standing in the doorway for safety, thinking only of the napping 3 and 4 year olds in my care rather than worrying about best thing to do during a DC earthquake).
I ran straight into the crumbling structure of her bias; I was all set to grab this kid and pull him out of harm's way.
"He is not a problem."I said, as if telling her the simple facts. It sounded like I was assuring her he was not allergic to peanuts.
"Well, he has a problem." She was persistent; I'll give her that. She is supposed to be some kind of specialist, afterall.
"I'm sure there are problems. I don't see him as a problem, I don't even see that he has problems. I'm sure there is a problem but it isn't him." We were knee deep in it as though conjugating Spanish verbs.
"Oh, I didn't mean that, I just meant, he's got problems."
And then, thank gawd, some(tiny)one spilled milk or needed a second helping of cheerios and was kind enough to ask for help from me.
+++++
Most of my friends are looking for meaningful employment while they worry their skills are underutilized in service industry positions. I am no exception; I have three very practical master's degrees and the savvy that comes with the nine years I spent working on them them. Still, I am currently working as an assistant teacher due to DC's strict licensure requirements and so find myself among my peers thinking maybe I should have bought $120,000 in lottery tickets instead of degrees. And yet...

I can't help but think maybe, just maybe my cat-like reflexes (cat-like that is when it comes to early childhood advocacy) are not underutilized, not under-appreciated, nor under-rated... by those who need them most.

Maybe, just maybe, it takes a Graduate level certification issued by a California State University system to know the difference between the words "is", "has" and "deals with" when they precede the word "problems". Maybe it takes a Master's level certification in listening to really hear the difference and maybe a 4 year degree in Divinity (though it didn't get me any closer to the divine) has (in fact) prepared me to watch for the opportunity to offer grace in the face of violence, to refrain from hitting a child even when encouraged to do so, to refrain from berating, shaming, or excluding a child at all costs.

If it were easy everyone would be able to do it and if someone were able to put a price tag on it I'd probably be pretty well-paid. It's not easy, it's a rare thing of beauty to have such opportunities to help re-write the story of one little boy. I'm not well paid because the things I am able to do for my little birds are priceless... I've got to remember that. I've just got to. I've got to keep that kind of truth close. I'll go crazy if I don't because it doesn't make sense. (no effing sense). Sometimes the skinnytree is the best way to keep the truth close.

But the good news is this: Just as sure as there is no way these birds or their families will ever repay me for the things I work so hard to accomplish for and with them (thank gawd they won't have to), there is the fact that I reap the glorious and glowing harvest of their affection, trust and respect every day. In all our glory we are everyday pressed-down, shaken together and running over because we are not problems; we are loved. We're open from 7am to 6pm; we're effing here if you need us--especially at nap time.

Call it Pre-K, call it early childhood, call it what you will, but don't call it a problem when we struggle with executive brain functions like impulse control or higher level processing. There are problems we face but we face them together without blame or shame or violence.

And you probably do too. You just have to look very closely, search out the anti-blame, the anti-shame and the anti-violence in you. Follow it's trail the way you watched ants when you were small. When you find a tiny spot of gratitude crawling along your path or defying gravity as it scales the wall near your face (I swear, if you don't see these moments of your own worth you'll go absolutely nuts in this economy and that is a promise).

We the priceless underpaid--sure you're included, welcome aboard--we are not a problem;
we are learning to live
in the problems with patience and creativity. We use our words, not our fists; we apologize a lot and rely on our short-term memories, we drink lots of water and get a nap in if we can.
We are, well, learning to live
in a world riddled with problems all the while assuring each other you are not one of them, I am not a problem either.
We are learning to live
in love, and if you ask me that just means
We are learning to live.

like a bridge...

It was rumored that, at some point, the bridge had railings and so was at least 95% safer than it was looking yesterday. Turns out the railings may have given it the appearance of safety but they would have been misleading...

Months ago we decided we wanted to have some way to mark the transition from the Nursery/Preschool room to the Elementary Age classroom. In preliminary discussion someone brought up a certain concern and I said, "Let's cross that bridge when we get to it." (Jeezee chreezee, I say that a lot. There is a lot of water under my bridges but I expect to keep coming to bridges and crossing them.) She tabled her initial concern and turned the discussion toward a little bridge, a real bridge of wood and woodscrews, somewhere in the attic. "Let's get it down," she said. "Let's use it." The idea was to invite each child to walk across the stage, commencement style. We would add the bridge as an extra element, a simple symbol and have a little fun.

I will admit here and now that if I know one thing about Children's Ministry it is just this: the moment you think you're about to do something just for the fun of it, you've crossed over into dangerous territory. The fun thing usually turns out to be the thing that begins to shore us up with fresh energy with which we actually engage in the event and that is when miracles may be witnessed, amigos. When we look back it is more often than not the fun thing that rises like a flare and explodes with meaning, pointing us back to the moments we ought not neglect.

The bridge was laid of fencing slats, just wide enough for a 5 year old foot to balance upon with space between each slat big enough for such a tiny foot to slip right through. Moreover it was waist high to most of them at its crest. It rose up from the floor in front of the altar like a perfect half circle and they approached it the way they would offer fearful reverence to the ladder behind their new favorite slide. We practiced. They lined up and took turns while their parents rallied amid the pre-service hymnsing.

One bird took off her new orange flower flip flops and left them on the yellow decorative tulle flanking the baptismal font. Earlier that morning she had told her mother this was the most important day of her life. She looked in my face, smiled with her eyes and told me, "I want to do it by myself."
"I'll be here if you fall." I told her and stayed close.

A little boy approached, considered climbing up on all fours. He changed his mind, balanced carefully arms outstretched like the cross behind us and stopped at the top for just a moment. He was suddenly three feet taller and decided to take advantage of this grown up perspective on the sanctuary. When he was done looking around he jumped off, sticking the landing with a thud of sneakers on hardwood.

The next little one took my hand like the daughter of the king and looked down at her feet. She considered where to put each toe and whether it was safe to put her weight down. She stopped before the descent and considered the consequences, should her satin slipper slip. I offered, "I can help you down, my dear." And she accepted by nodding and smiling a smile full of five year old grace and dignity.

Even with the mild chaos that ensued when we invited all their friends, siblings, parents, and teachers up to share the stage they bravely ascended and crossed over to be greeted and welcomed by their elders in faith. I don't know if any of the congregants' blood pressure rose as they watched those little ones carefully, joyously and almost expertly crossing the bridge. I don't know if they were afraid the little ones would fall off and break an arm. I was, at first. But as I watched their little bodies rise on strong legs and strength of will I knew I would not be able to keep them from getting hurt, from falling or failure or anything else in the future.

It's commencement season. And whether you're crossing a stage or not, commencement season is a reminder that circumstances change, people change, life asks us to cross over from one place to the next. We will either go bravely or we won't. We will rush through it, take it all on at once, force ourselves, or we won't. Sometimes we can ignore the meaning in the moments, sometimes we can't. There is no wrong way, but there are choices to make and responsibility to take.
Soon enough I will put on my high heel lady shoes, climb the stairs toward the president, faculty and deans of my graduate school and, even though I told them, "I think I can do this," there is no telling what will happen. I may very well reach out to shake their hands one last time and feel a flood of relief that I didn't have to do it alone.

I've been shaking a lot of hands lately. It isn't easy. Sometimes I just want a familiar face or even just to keep to myself.
Sometimes, just when I am sure I couldn't possibly greet another new face with confidence and a firm grip, just when I think I should be able to be or do on my own, I have to reach out. In those moments I have been reminded that a handshake is a lot like a hand to hold. As soon as I want to shrink back from the forced greetings and scary meetings I have to wonder what good might come if I just reach out my hand. There is a way for the shaking hands to stop the shaking, quaking legs I am standing on... but I don't think I'll ever get to know that way of steady if I can always balance on my own.

Many times I've explained to the families of 5 year olds that it is okay to set expectations a little lower and to take it slow; there are lots of scary things coming up in the near future: torrents of emotion, a deluge of cultural expectations and the raging, rapid influx of adaptations to make or at least consider making... And though I could very well be describing a move across the country, I'm really just describing the first day of kindergarten. There will be lots of bridges and lots of troubled water to cross and lots of times it will be safer to have a friend nearby and take it slow.

My best plan today is to hold hands with friends, shake hands with enemies, and cross the bridges bravely... not all at once but bravely and only as I come to them.