Advent reflections

Advent is drawing to close. The shortness of this year's season has me wishing for more time - that last long purple candle will maybe be lit once. We're actually reusing last year's candles this year, so all of our candles have been lit, but if they weren't, I might make an effort to light it at lunchtime just to see the taper burn!

Although I titled this post "Advent Reflections," I don't have any wise words about the Scriptures. I have have struggled to pay attention in Mass, and I haven't picked up a book with any spiritual content in weeks. My preparations for the season have been very different this year. I usually do try to read an Advent book; this year I have been reading student work.  We usually have some sort of Advent calendar or at least start our Jesse tree countdown. This year, I've been counting down the days left of school, and the days left till our kids come home. We've put up the basic decorations - lights around the trees outside and around the front door. Thanks to our Boy Scout friend's fundraiser, we have a beautiful garland and swag on the front porch. And we do have a lovely tree, especially compared to last year's, which may have been the second worst tree we've ever had. Nothing can top the homeliness of the Menard's tree we had that was so dead it was spray painted green. Most of the needles were gone by New Year's. 

And we have our nativities up. These are some of my favorite decorations.  Our high schooler wanted us to keep the decor minimal. She does not like my clutter or lack of a theme. She is right that most of our decorations look tired, much like how I feel. But the nativities are up, and I've ordered a couple new figures for the Fontanini set since our youngest doesn't remember adding any new ones. I wish I had thought to order them for St. Nicholas day, which was pretty minimal this year for the two at home, although I managed to back some spritz cookies to add to popcorn and hot chocolate at school. 

Teaching this semester has been exhausting and humbling. I took on too much by continuing to tutor for the writing center of the college near our house and to teach the online military education course, and some of my fears about not spending enough time with our daughters have been realized. In other ways, since I am on the same campus with them, I see them throughout the day, and I am more in touch with what is going on in their daily lives at school. My feelings about teaching are complex, and I've been trying to sort them out, but I'll save that for another post. 

Instead, I wanted to reflect on what has been a blessing here, now that it is nearly Christmas. I haven't documented the last six weeks of our lives, and much has happened. Our second oldest son is engaged! He has been dating his fiancee for almost four years, so we've been anticipating this news for awhile, but we are thrilled it is official! He proposed the weekend before Thanksgiving, so we all were able to toast to their engagement Thanksgiving weekend, which we spent in Maine. We rented an AirBNB about an hour from Boston on the Maine coast.  This place was hidden gem in a beautiful little neighborhood with rocky cliffs for a front yard. It was so pretty and comparatively affordable that I thought it might be a scam listing. But gladly it wasn't! The whole family was able to come, along with my husband's brother's family, who also live in Boston now. And on Friday, our future daughter-in-law's family also joined us to celebrate the happy couple. The weekend was as near perfect as it could be - no big arguments, everyone slept well, the weather was perfect - the first stormy evening was dramatic followed by mild sunny days, the kids - I should say, young adults - all were happy and engaged with each other. It was truly a dream vacation.

The entire week of Thanksgiving was a blessing - we started the week with a few days at my parents' house. Not all of the kids could join us there, but our oldest daughter came out since she works from home and was able to work at my parents' even with their weak wifi service Monday and Tuesday. It was a quiet visit, although my brother and sister and their kids came out. My sister has bought a little river house, so we had a sister's kayaking trip from her front yard. A topic of the weekend that was bit gloomy was elder care as my parents are facing some health issues. The need is not imminent, but many of my parents' friends have begun to downsize and discuss future plans. To highlight the tenuousness of life, a friend of ours had a mini-stroke and so did our college son's roommate. Both guys are fine, but these events are certainly a call to embrace each day. 

While Thanksgiving week was the highlight of November, we also fit in a couple mother-daughter college visits, one of my favorite bonding experiences. Our senior daughter has had mixed emotions about running in college, and she is not particularly fervent about any school. This makes the college search process both easier and harder.  I have had to struggle with my own ambitions in this case. A work in progress. 

Our other big event recently was hosting a Christmas party for my husband's work. I actually missed a couple of parties that I had been invited to last week in order to finish some schoolwork and prep for this event. Strategically placing the minimal decor and cleaning were top priorities. Menu planning, shopping, etc, were also a bit more stressful since I barely knew anyone who was coming, and I was eager to please this crowd. Happily, they were easier to please than I imagined. People don't really care about houses and menus - they just like to get together to socialize. This event was a reminder of how appreciated hospitality is. My husband received several meaningful thank you notes to this effect. His office hasn't had a Christmas party in years, and never at a home. This was our exercise in Christmas season hospitality.  Trying to follow the example of the innkeeper by offering a humble space, although it's pretentious to compare our house to a stable. 

On the other hand, my heart is not the warm and welcome place it should be. It's crusty with selfishness and pride that need to be excavated. I'm thankful for the cyclical nature of the liturgy for these seasonal reminders to examine my conscience and scrape out those dark spaces, so there is more room for the light of hope, joy, faith, love. I am easily weighed down by a to do list that becomes a chore rather than a pleasure of serving those I love. Sometimes I wonder why I take the time to return to this blog, but this little moment of reflection here has stirred again those coals of covered up by the dark and reminded me how much I have to be grateful for. Although the shopping is not done, the decorations for the tree are still in a box, and I haven't had time to read a soul enriching book, taking this moment here to recall these blessings is a reminder of why the church year includes periods for rest and reflection. 

If I don't post again before Christmas, I send many wishes for a Merry Christmas full of many moments to pause and give thanks and of new memories to be grateful the next time you have occasion to pause. 

       

 

 

  

   

December brought autumn color to Austin

Farewell, October!

 Somehow this month disappeared before I was ready. In a few minutes, it will be All Saints Day.  Pray for us, all you Holy Men and Women! 

I have started a few posts, but today I have no great ideas. I just wanted to post something before October faded into history.  School has been keeping me busy. I've also been tutoring, helping my daughter fine-tune her college applications, planning holiday travel, and trying to hold things together at home. It's been a challenge. I have bitten off more than I can chew for the moment. Remember that game "Fluffy Bunny" where you shove marshmellows in your mouth until you can not longer say "Fluffy Bunny"? That's sort of the way I feel.

Who is the patron saint for unorganized, overbooked people? I need that saint's prayers! 

While waiting for those graces, I'll share some photos.  Who knows - maybe tomorrow is the day I catch up! 

The senior's CC team won the state championship for 5A private schools!

We traveled to Corpus Christi to watch the annular eclipse in totality.

Happy Halloween!

Senior night

We attempt rock climbing

Date night! A Texas casual wedding reception... 

On poets and poetry

 This morning I sunk into reading Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin edited by Philip Cushway and Michael Warr. I picked up this collection of poems about Black life by Black writers because it has a poem in it by Camille Dungy, and I'm working on a paper that refers to her work. (The paper is not going well. I struggle with writing academically, which is somewhat ironic since I'm a composition teacher and work in a writing center giving feedback to undergrads and graduates on their academic work.) I could not pull myself out of it until I had consumed the whole volume.

The book was published in 2016. While these are poems of protest, they are also poems that celebrate life and art. Each poem is preceded by a black and white portrait of the poet and a short essay about why they write poetry. It's a beautiful book, and the poems and the reflections about the love of language, the possibility of connection, the power of words reignite a longing to consume the pages, the ideas, the people, out of desire, love, a hunger to contain it all.  There it is in print - what gives us meaning and puts us in relation with one another and transforms pain into poetry and protest. How does poetry contain it all? How can we contain all that poetry? 

Some selections from the essays: 

"I relish the alterable space of a sentence along with words' inherent satellite meanings, shaped and hammered to rhythms in my head. Their force and propulsion feel like lifelines shared with friends. Many poets show the way and what we pray for is a passage into the living: song, prayer, coverted conversations."  - Major Jackson, p 96

"I write because I accept my responsibility as a witness, and because I believe in the trasnformational power of art." - Francis X. Walker p 196

"I write because I cannot stand by and say nothing, because I strive to make sense of the world I've been given, because the soul sings for justice and the song is poetry" - Natasha Tretheway p 189

"When you realize you are in the world to create, to be in love with Truth and Beauty, then only death becomes the thing that stops you."  - Lamont B. Steptoe p 185

"Amid the sorrow and upheaval of saying goodbye to a parent, I realized that poetry was helping me process and artculate my sense of loss and grief - indeed, that poetry was what would help me navigate and comprehend my life." - Tracy K Smith p 180

"Carlos Fuentes wrote: 'We only hurt others when we're incapable of imagining them.' Cruelty is caused by a failure of the imagination. The inability to assign the same feelings and values to another peson that you harbor in yourself. So I help people to imagine, me, Black women, men, and children, in all of our beautiful and terrible selves." - Sonia Sanchez 162

"I grew up seeing the world as filled with hyperbole, irony, metaphor, simile - and slightly 'off center.' ... The words keep dancing inside my head, the sounds an dvoices keep coming, and so I keep writing. ... There are moments when language still gives me a thrill, makes the hair on my arms stand up, takes my breath away. As long as I still fieel that, I'll still be in love with poetry. " - Reginald Harris p 85

What a gift words are. 

On friendship

 I am so grateful for friendship. 

Tonight an old friend and I lingered over an extended dinner in the corner of a little Italian restaurant downtown and left longing for more hours. My friend is here on a work trip and leaves tomorrow, but I am so thankful we were able to carve out time to meet tonight. I left behind work and responsibility for a few hours, but what a blessing to share a really deep conversation about challenging topics and feel lifted up by the freedom to be open and understood. I don't see my friend often anymore - and honestly, we never lived close, so we've always only visited on occasion, but those occasions are causes for celebration.  I have a handful of friends that satisfy that deep longing for connection when we reunite, however briefly, however rarely. What is the root of that cor ad loquitur cor? Whatever it is, I am grateful. 

New school year

       I had a goal at the beginning of the year to try to post weekly again, but poor August received one measly post. This is because I began my new job as a middle school teacher three weeks ago.

Here is a paragraph I started to write back at the end of July when my new job was three weeks in the future (I edited that second sentence):  "I'm still questioning my sanity at saying yes. I have a hard time telling people that this is what I'm doing, and when I look in the mirror, I think how did I get here.  It's a baffling to me. I always said middle school was the grade I'd like to teach least. Where was my mind when I said yes?"

Dare I admit I actually am having fun? I laughed out loud when I was reading some of the kids' letters to themselves. I cried inside when I read others. I already like these kids.

And I like the other 7th and 8th grade teachers. They are kind, thoughtful people who care about these students, also. I enjoy seeing them each day. I want to talk in the hallway and during dismissal, too! Of the 7 7th and 8th grade teachers, five of us are new. One of the veterans is a Dominican sister who is loving and gentle and thoughtful.  Her presence is immediately calming.  She is beloved but a little feared by the kids, even though she rarely raises her voice. She doesn't put up with nonsense.

What I don't like is all of the bureaucracy. On Friday we were handed a few more duties. We already have meetings clogging up prep time and home room time. And I just spent almost 8 hours grading today, and I'm STILL not done. Granted, I'm slow and writing each kid a personal note because this is their first writing assignment, but still. This may be part of the reason 5 of the 7 teachers left last year. They were overworked and underpaid. 

The other thing I miss is the freedom to travel on Fridays. I do get 10 paid days off, but I feel I need to plan them. We had an invitation to go away next weekend, but I feel tied down by prep, grading, and not wanting to use a PTO day. 

So the verdict is still out whether this will be a career or something I did to help out. Sometimes I think of it as a mini-purgatory I can offer up for my lack of gratitude for the jobs I had at the community college and the other college and subbing at the high school, as well as the lack of judgement we showed in purchasing this large, overpriced house whose value keeps falling in a place that hasn't seen temps under 101 for WEEKS. IT IS HOT HERE.  I mourn the passing of a plant each day. The grass is crispy. At least the last few days the heat index is down, and the mornings are cooler. Welcome, September!

Happily, I look forward to "going to work" each morning still. My fourth grader loves, loves, loves that we are at school together. She tells me almost daily. I worry I'm not keeping up with the senior enough, but she is always socializing or studying herself. I am prepared for February will be hard. But I'll let that arrive when it does. In the meantime, I've got some paragraphs to read about "something that symbolizes me."

On the Road Again

The first week of August I spent in Des Moines, Iowa, with my daughter who competed in the Junior Olympic track meet.  

Des Moines was never really on my bucket list, but I ended up really enjoying it. We stayed in an rental apartment in the East Village part of downtown Des Moines. When we first drove up, late on a Sunday night, I was a little disconcerted by the drunk people outside of the apartment building. A party was going on, a loud party, in the building's restaurant/lounge, and some guy was outside cussing into his phone as we pulled up. This was not the a cute little complex I was expecting. After finding parking, lugging our bags upstairs, and looking for ice in the hallway machine, the party seemed to be winding down, but I didn't want to stay at a place with a bunch drunk people around. I spent the next couple of hours looking at other options for accomodations in the city before crashing into bed. 

The bed was comfy, and in the morning light after a good night's rest, I realized the neighborhood wasn't as sketchy as I initially feared. We were less than a mile from the capitol building, blocks from the river and a nice bike path, and a few minutes' walk to coffee shops, restaurants, and cute boutiques. Across the river were more restaurants, a sculpture garden, and more hotels and highrises linked by an elevated pedestrian walkway. Since we had to rush off early to the track meet before I could find a place with a vacancy in my price range or find out if we even could cancel, I decided I'd give it one more night before moving on. Fortunately, the lounge was closed the remainder of our stay, and I ended up loving our little urban getaway. 

Des Moines, although the capitol of Iowa, is not a big city, although it has personality. We were in the trendy urban neighborhood, but a mile's jog along the bike path led to an older community with beautiful old homes. I drove a couple miles the other direction one morning to jog around a lake in a park near downtown. The track meet was at Drake University, which is not a bad looking campus, with lots of native plantings and big trees to give it a botanical garden feel. The surrounding neighborhood where we parked was hit or miss - definitely some houses looked like students lived there. I also admired the neighborhood around the art museum, which I visited in a lull between events during the meet, which also was filled with gorgeous, old brick homes and big, tailored gardens.  The art museum was designed in three stages by Eliel Saarinen, I. M. Pei, and Richard Meier.  Works were exhibited sparely, but to their benefit. I was interested to see the docents leading several groups of adults with sight impairments around the museum and allowing them to touch the sculptures, including a Rodin and a beautiful black water woman by Wangechi Mutu, based on a character from East African folklore.

Because the rental apartment was booked for the weekend, we had to move to a hotel for the last two nights. I also wanted to be able to cancel the reservations for the weekend because I wasn't sure my daughter would qualify for finals in the last relay. This hotel was in a more suburban area, and again I found a trail along a creek that was absolutely beautiful, so pretty that I ran seven miles without noticing until the very end - when I cursed myself for going so far.

Des Moines has surprised me.  I brought a huge bag of books and had a number of projects to work on during the down time between races (She had 5 races on 5 different days), but I was distracted by things to see and do around Des Moines, including watching some exciting races.  A highlight was the art museum, but we also toured the capitol building, which has a law library famous for its ornamental stacks.  With time to spare and half a dozen salons in the area, I treated myself to a hair cut - something I hate doing because I hate paying a lot for bad haircuts. Happily, I liked my cut, and it didn't cost a fortune. I tried four different coffee shops and two bookstores and enjoyed walking around the campus of Drake.  And I did get quite a bit of reading done, too - mostly young people books: The Girl Who Drank the Moon, The Outsiders, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Watsons Go to Birmingham... trying to decide what books to teach. 

My daughter also had a successful meet - she PR'd and medalled in the 800m and her relay teams both medalled also (4th in the 4x800 and 7th in the 4x400 - top 8 medal.) She had to run on 4 different days because each event had qualifying heats and finals, and none were on the same day.  They really want you to stick around.  She now is heading into senior year with a faster time and more options for running in college. She isn't elite level yet, but if she wants to compete in college, she would be a contributor on a lot of teams.

Now in the third week of August, vacation is a dim memory, and I'm getting the school schedule down after a week of classes. More on that to come. 

A sculpture at the airport that reminded me of one our son made from papier mache and plastic bags - same subject

I ran at Drake Relays in college - does this include me? 

Fun murals

The view from our window 

Trying to capture the full moon. Always fail to do it justice.

A Japanese friendship garden along the Des Moines river

The Capitol of Iowa

First lady dolls. a little creepy.

The law library

Oldest books

 

View of the city from Capitol.

More fun murals

Pedestrian bridge honoring women of Des Moines

Fun sculpture

Touching the Rodin

A Henry Tanner

Lawn mowing system

Meanwhile, back at the ranch - The Lion King!