words, words, words

For the past three weeks, I have been counting down days, partly assuring myself I could make it that long until break (which is silly since it was right after a week off at Thanksgiving) and partly in a panic that I wouldn't get everything done at school in that amount of time.  This Monday, I was still grading rhetorical analysis essays.

I wasn't really in a panic about my on-level classes, but we are pertually behind where I want them to be in AP.  There are just more of them than me, and I can't get all I want done in a day and answer questions and scaffold for slower students at the same time.    I started out the year short twenty books of every single book we use and it took almost month and a half to get them in . . . So that was a month and a half of no homework, no outside reading.    Though there was much pulling, wheedling, cajoling, nagging, and downright forcing on my part and much angst on their part, we are officially caught up writing wise and only a bit behind  in what we should be reading.  I am excited that over break, they are to read the first chunk of The Poisonwood Bible.  When I first read it back in 01, I knew I wanted to teach it someday and the time has come.  

One of my big mental fights this semester has been this great hole in my students' vocabulary and general knowledge of history.  I have always pushed the idea that great literature is often a reaction to something a writer experiences or something going on in society, but that means one needs a bit of history.  My kids constantly say that they don't know what words mean when they skim answer choices in multiple choice or when we analyze a passage.  They are stymied that I don't need a dictionary. I am stymied because I am pretty sure I knew what those words meant when I was their age.  I am pretty st sure that my nine year old's vocabulary is as good as my juniors and seniors in AP.  And how, oh how, do they have so much blank space where knowledge of world history should be?  How did I know when I was their age?  I took the same classes they do.  And certainly they are encouraged to read more than my generation was thanks to Accelerated Reader programs.  But maybe, just maybe, that encourages quantity over quality. 

I did have a really good history teacher in highschool . . . though my English teachers were ineffectual at best.  More importantly, I read.  I came from a family who read.  We talked about what what we were reading.  We talked about current events.  Through my dad's job, he knew many people from other countries and we learned about those places when he brought them home to dinner.  My father doesn't have a prestigious job - he is an oil field chemist and we lived in Velma that was so urban and progressive that my class had 26 people in it. My mother who was a special Ed teacher before she became a home school mom read the Wall Street Journal every day.  For every book of fiction, she also devoured a book of essays, a biography, a history . . . 

As the semester wound down and parents saw that their child who has never had less than an A might be getting a B, the emails came flooding into my inbox. Invariably, they all boiled down to "what can I do to help my child be a faster reader, be a more sophisticated writer, and have a better vocabulary?"  And my answer is obviously to actually take note of all those suggestions I leave on the essays, but more importantly, read well written books.  And then we hit a wall because they often don't know what they should be reading, what constitutes well written. 

"What do you read, my lord" "Words, words, words."  

And so, I am making a list of those books that shaped me, shaped my my conscience, my world view, my essence.  They were fiction, but they piqued my interest enough that I then read non-fiction to further explore those ideas, places, and people.  To be sure, it will be an evolving list that includes authors and titles from now but also, more importantly, ones I discovered when I was sixteen and seventeen.  It is a wide and disparate list of genres and names, but perhaps it is a starting place.  Perhaps a student will fall in love with Bojalian or Kingsolver or Uris.  Perhaps the words will be seared into their minds and souls and leave a more important mark than just a bigger vocabulary.

If you have suggestions for this Rucker Reads list, be it classics or contemporary, please share.

Finding my voice, getting in the groove

I haven't written in months, in ages.  I would love to say it is that I have been busy, but that doesn't fly because we all lead such busy, busy lives. I could tell you that I have been depressed, but that isn't really it either, at least not the sorts of depression I have lived in the past.

I have simply been in a funk that has stretched on far too long.  I wasn't unhappy.  I wasn't sad.  I wasn't discontent per say.  I was just in a mental funk.  For months. Probably, a  lot of factors  each fed this negative spirit, but I need to be done with it and feel that I am ready to set it aside, ready to reach back in and find myself again.

This shift away from me didn't happen suddenly and I doubt it ends suddenly either.  I don't even know when it began, though I am sure some of it started when I couldn't garden or clean or exercise like I wanted because of my shoulder most of the summer.  Just now, is it getting better, though the bursitis/tendonitis problems are still not gone. When you give up aerobics, you gain weight. Then your clothes don't fit. Then you realize you don't have a stockpile of jars of garden produce because the garden was a bust.  Then you . . . Then . . .and of course now that I am doing physical therapy for it, I am not getting home until supper time and still have no time to exercise or cook the way I want.

At work, things are good.  Bell is having a better year that she has in several years.  But.  There is always a but.  At home, Jack and I have been out of sync. Not fighting, not mad, just out of step.  Bell and I have been out of sync.  Maybe it is the stress that comes with being caretakers.  Maybe it is Jack 's uncertain job (the oilfield is all about uncertainty).  Maybe, just maybe, I am the one who has been out sync.

A few weeks ago, Jack and I left a very unwilling and unhappy child with my parents and went to Shiloh Morning Inn near Dickson. I think it was a good reset button for us.  Just us, no one else.  We only manage this once a year.  We never, never get away even just to go see a movie.  It seems we are closer to being in step since we came home, though we have had a few bad days since then.  Not truly bad, not the sort where there is door slamming and shouting - just that inability to communicate that ends with someone annoyed, but most days found us back to reaching out to touch each other as we passed through a room.  They found me falling asleep on Jack's shoulder, tucked into his side.  This makes me sigh with relief as those gentle gestures seem to let all the stress escape like air hissing out of a punctured balloon.

   We didn't manage to get that elusive picture this fall - the one that tells the world that we are still a happy family, that all is right within our household.  Either it rained or blew or we had a sick kid almost every time Jack was home for the last month.  I find myself not even wanting to send out cards this year.  Maybe we will manage an in front of the tree picture, maybe we won't. Perhaps I don't really need to do cards.  I am okay with that now though I was frustrated to tears about it just days ago. It will just be what it will be but it is not worth stress.


I needed this week off.  We spent a day with Jack's family and a day with mine.  I spent a day with Jack's mom in town stocking up at SAM's and Aldis.  Really, something was going on every day until yesterday and today.  The world is frozen, sheeted and slick with crystals.  A branch the size of Bell's bedroom came down right outside her window.  But it didn't hit the car a few feet away.  It didn't damage the house.  Jack is not on a drilling site or sliding into a ditch on a northern highway.   We are home, warm with hot tea, a sparkling Christmas tree, an Elf watchful from an upper bookcase, snuggly blankets cocooning us.

I find myself wanting to sing out my thankfulness for this life I have been given.  I know that we are supposed to be thankful during the holiday season as we remember our Lord's sacrifices and care for us, our families who hold us dear, but it is more than that.  It is that deeper satisfaction in what we have, that deeper knowledge that we are given what we need and are to use it, to be joyful in it.  And  I am thankful for so many things big and small  - for the gift of speech my daughter was granted that allowed her to confidently to give a speech this year, the jobs that provide for us, the warmth of my house today, my family who forgives and is patient with me.  I am thankful for you my friends who are still there reading a post from a blog that seemed to have died months ago.

The Clock is Ticking While I Savor This Second Cup.

It is Saturday.  I should be asleep on this post rainy day morning.  There should be a chilly room with soft sheets and silence. I should be sleeping in.  I so wanted to sleep in on my last Saturday. 

The reality is that Bella slept with me last night and started flopping about like a fish out of water just before 6.  The other reality is that we live in an old house with window units which are confused and thought the outside temp was the inside temp and offered me not a chilly room, but a warmish room and a place for the outside cats to perch and howl for their breakfast.  I did not manage to sleep past 6 until July.  I haven't managed sleeping past 6:30 until the past two weeks.  Thus, I should not be surprised that my last true Saturday of summer break found me flipping through Pinterest ideas for school at 6:30 A.M. while I sipped a second cup of coffee, a luxury only allowed on Saturdays.   I am not overly pleased, though I do relish the alone time so am letting the flopping fish sleep in. 

The weather is beguilingly fall-like, the air damp and cool, beckoning me to outside projects, to take a jog, to work in the garden. A wee bit cooler and I would drizzle some Irish whiskey into this coffee.   If Jack were home, I would con him into taking us to the mountains for a hike.  He isn't and really none of those outside things will likely happen.  A walk perhaps, but nothing more.  Inside tasks will be limited as well - I need to scrub the bathtub, to roast and put up peppers, to mop the kitchen.  In reality, I will wash the sheets, do only the musts in the kitchen and wipe out my Netflix backlog today.  I believe I promised the kid some board game time and we ABOSLUTELY MUST FOR SURE deal with her room.  In the last week it seems to have exploded.  

Back in the winter, my shoulder started aching off and on when I spent a lot time chopping veggies or doing serious scrubbing.  Then opening my class door and driving began to sometimes ache.  I thought two weeks of vacation might help, but by June, I was hurting most of the time and something as simple as washing dishes was really painful.  I made an appointment with the doc but wasn't able to get in until mid July.  An x-Ray didn't reveal much except that things just weren't quite right.  It took fourteen business days to have an MRI approved and another four to actually have it done.  Turns out I only have tendonitis and bursitis. (Three cheers for nothing major!) I started oral steroids yesterday - if that doesn't work, maybe some steroid injections and who knows what else - shouldn't be anything big.  In the meantime, I am supposed to be babying the shoulder. It hurt enough that I didn't go pick blackberries last week even though I knew where some were. I never pass up blackberries.  No weed eating.  No weed pulling.  Really shouldn't mess with those peppers.  No scrubbing bathtubs. 

 If you know me well, you know that I am not good at sitting still - I always have a project and I get really antsy right before school.  It is a bit like that flurry of activity women have right before babies are born.  I feel the need to get every big house chore done because I know I won't again have the time, energy, or inclination all at once  until next summer. I feel the pressing need to do one last fun thing with Jack and Bell.  I feel this clock ticking down the seconds to school starting.  Impending doom.  Stress.  Jumping the hurdles of state dept requirements. Dealing with parents.  Motivating those who don't wish to be motivated.  Grading essays.  Improving our test scores.  I return officially to work on Thursday and I am just not ready. 

Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, this uncharacteristically cool first August Saturday morning finds me perusing Pinterst for first day activities, ways to improve rhetorical analysis lessons, things to improve my teaching, and things to cook for Jack Dear and grow in my garden (you know, more of those non-shoulder babying activities).  After Pinterest, I looked at fall break camping plans and then a place for a Jack and I only weekend.  I know, school hasn't started and I am already plotting my escapes.  Happy Saturday.  Happy Second Cuppa Day. 

Hypocritically and Snobishly Wielding a Wooden Spoon

I fully admit to being a snob is soooo many ways.  I am snobbish about grammar and spelling.  I typically hide Facebook posts from people who are educated yet type exclusively in text speak and with bad grammar.  I own up to sometimes missing something - I type horribly on an iPad and phone, but typos and occasional misspellings do not bug me while phrases like " I done"  and "we wasn't"  and "I seen" make me twitchy.

Perhaps worse than language, I am a snob about cooking.  I grew up in a house with a mom who worked and still had time for homemade bread almost every week.  I am not even sure I knew you could buy pie crust in the freezer sections of grocery stores until I was grown. Let me say that I am not mother.  I have never made cheese or yogurt after milking a cow.  I have never butchered a chicken.  I don't make sourdough. I don't make pickles or any of the thousand other things mom does so well.  However, I do cook and if possible, I cook from scratch.  If I run across a recipe that calls for a cake, pancake, or bread mix it is automatically discarded just because I don't keep those things in the house.

I have always enjoyed cooking, but several years ago, I abandoned shortcuts like canned cream soups and mixes.  On one hand, I find making a cream soup starting with a roux to be magic; satisfaction swells in me as I transform something as simple as butter and flour and cream into rich, smooth, thick, bubbly sauces.  I have a love affair with my stand mixer, food processor and blender, but I am happiest when my tools are an old fashioned wire whisk and wooden spoon.  The simplicity of tools while making something divine appeals to me.   It is amplified when I am using ingredients from our land and garden to make something for my family, but that is a different post.  For now, just know that even though that wild plum jam was a mess Saturday, I loved the doing of it. An added bonus is that Bella is taking some interest in the kitchen happenings.  For now, she doesn't have to learn how to make jelly or pie crust right now; it is enough that she knows these things can be made instead of just purchased.

On the other hand, over the past few years, we have been conscious of how much processed food we eat - the more I cook from basic ingredients, the less processed food we eat.  Look at what is in my mixing bowl on bread day.  Look at the label on a loaf of store bread - they are not the same.  Salad dressing, salsa, cornbread dressing, pimento cheese salad . . . The list is never ending and has the same results.  These foods are full of extra junk that I am convinced our bodies just don't need.  I really do avoid products that have more than five ingredients and I buy organic when I can, though where we live, it often isn't even an option.

While I love to cook and love to make sure we eat clean, I also recognize that my family doesn't buy into this as much as I do.  I also know sometimes, we just have to break the rules.  I still buy Bella ice cream because she doesn't care for homemade (but I am choosy and a careful label reader).  We buy mustard and mayo and sandwhich bread and so many other things.  I buy chips and cheese and pasta,  and sometimes, I even buy a pizza because while I love to cook and care about what we eat, I also work and exercise and have a kid and a husband and a garden.  I have a life beyond the kitchen and garden.

Yes, the pancakes Bella has been consuming daily are from basic ingredients found in my cabinet and fridge and not from a box.  Yes, when I made shortbread and peaches and whipped cream last night, the whipped cream started out as a carton of heavy cream in my mixing bowl.  Yes, I am puzzled by what other people put in their shopping carts (at least until we are in a trip and I am buying some of those same premade packages of food, hoping no one looks in my cart or until I am neck deep in papers and handing my kid a frozen pizza for supper).

Yes, I am a hypocrit - I sometimes fall off the wagon of clean eating and whole foods, not processed
foods while at the same time wondering why my grandmother even owns pancake mix.  But I am also
snobbishly pleased when good food, real food finds its way from my stove to my family mouths.

Forty Panic

I stood in front of the mirror this morning doing a bit of serious lamenting.  Fine lines are beginning to etch the corners of my eyes.  There are some splotches on my cheekbones, the kind that come from sun and age.  There are five more pounds than there were this time last year and I just can't seem to shake them.  My shoulder and knee joints hurt more than they don't.  But this morning's lament was not sparked by those things.  Instead, for the second time in one week, I found a silvery hair.  The second time.  In one week.  My stylist told me a year ago that she saw a bit of silver, but I had never spotted it until this week.  It came as a bit of a blow.

I fully realize that in a few months I will be forty.  I know I cannot complain because if I am headed to forty, then Dear Jack is headed to fifty, but I am starting to panic a bit at this whole aging thing.  Some of it is panic that we aren't doing what we want relationship wise  or career wise, mostly because we are stretched too thin time wise. What if by the time we can get the farm and orchard going, we are too old?  What if by the time we aren't responsible for Isabella and  Rubilee and Harold twenty four seven, we don't have what it takes for crazy, passionate sex? What if we aren't able to travel and see the world?  As it is, I see some serious lags in the amount of energy we have compared to even fiver years ago.

At the same time I was lamenting this whole aging problem, I was also satisfied, even pleased, with what I saw in the mirror this morning.   Right before school was out, one of my students made the "Wow!  You are older than my mom!" comment and then asked if I missed being young.  You know, despite the silver hair and the lines and aches, I really do not miss being young.  Most of highschool was stressful and miserable.  I had a few close friends but I mostly was on the fringes of highschool society.  Often, I was on the receiving end of the cattiness that is so ore lane taming highschool girls. I don't think all that bothered me, but what did bother me was my own lack of confidence or feeling of self worth.  I don't think I ever walked into a room confident about ALL of me until I was in my late twenties.

I am not sure when I began looking in the mirror and seeing something I liked, but at some point I did.   I know that my body is not the same as before I had a child - perkiness is a foreign idea but stretch marks certainly  aren't.   My body is not as trim as it was even three years ago, despite my frequent workouts and mostly good choices in eating.  So, yes, there are flaws, but at some point I began seeing myself as attractive too.  Sure, doubt still assails me at times, but mostly, I am good with what I see, with how my body moves, with the way my clothes fit.


It doesn't hurt to be married to a man who freely pats my backside when he walks through the kitchen while I cook, whose eyes enjoy the me has, who touches me even while he sleeps.  However, a lot of this comes from generally figuring out who I am as opposed to who I tried to be to fill the role I thought was expected of me.  It is not a  realistic  job to fit the image of beautiful   women portrayed in media when your workout time is often sacrificed to take care of a family or grade papers.  I am not great at being as good of a cook as my mom and as good of a teacher as Amy and a sometimes caretaker and . . . I am just not Wonder Woman, but I am okay with being me.  I am okay with my political thoughts and opinions and likes and dislikes and even my body.  It is certainly more fun to enjoy all of me than to fret about what I am or am not. It is okay that I don't fit into the images expected of me.  I will take this me, silver hairs and all.

The Books That Make Us

I spent some time in the plum patch this week, just me and my thoughts working our way down the line of trees with our five gallon bucket. I mostly thought about why I am who I am.

For sure, my parents and upbringing shape me, as do my faith and education experiences, but there is another force just as important.  Books.  I have always been a reader - if my mother had ever really wanted to punish me, she would have grounded me from reading. I remember devouring everything from all of Beverly Cleary's books to Laura Ingalls Wilder, Lousia May Alcott, LM Montgomery.  As I grew, my mother made sure I was exposed to all the classics.  I remember reading everything from historic fiction to Mary Higgins Clark mysteries.  I am still this way, though somewhat pickier - I have little time to read so if I find myself fifty pages in  and bored, I have no compunction about tossing it aside and picking up something new. 

These books I grew up were often fluff, but they also often were meat.  I think the first book that I was conscious of being shaped by was Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.  Later, I know some fiction and non-fiction about the Jewish Holocaust left its Mark, but as a young teen, I think To Kill A Mockingbird was the most important book I read.  Since then, I have no idea how many times I have read it . . . but enough that I can quote passages.  Every time I read it, I love it a little more than before, I find new depths, new poetry, new truths about life.

Sunday, Jack spent the day with his dad at the hospital and I am sure was tired, but while getting his dad prescriptions filled at the CVs, he saw this month's copy of Life with Gregory Peck reading Mockingbird, and despite being tired, he bought it for me.  I made it to the second page before I was crying.  Of all books I have always wanted to teach, mockingbird is at the top of the list, yet I really have not had the chance.  At Comanche, it was a sophomore book while I taught freshmen, and at Elgin it is a freshman book while I teach sophomores - (thankfully, I always get my dose of Gatsby with my Juniors). From a literary standpoint, the book is just so teachable, but really, I wanted to make someone fall just as in love with Lee's words as I was.  This book.  It is just so full of hard truths and beautiful truths, of innocence and love, all tempered by the evils of the world as seen through the eyes of a my favorite narrator of all time. I am always right there with Scout and Jem and  Dill as they sneak into the Radley's porch, while they sit with the reverend in the balcony as Atticus tries to do the impossible, with Scout as she walks with her hand tucked in Arthur's arm.  I  still haven't made it all the way through the magazine - I have to read every caption, examine every photo, put the lines down for awhile when tears blur the words, ponder over Lee's passages again. I am savoring.

To be sure, it affects the way I see classrooms with the inevitable Burris Ewells and the Walter Cunninghams and occasionally, even a Scout Finch.  I have not actually seen first hand much discrimination of race, but I have certainly seen it concerning socio-economic status and sex and Although the problems with race still abound, they have been subtle around me.  It affects the way I see the world and people around me, for all those characters are indeed in our world, the many Miss Stephanies and a few Miss  Maudies, the rare Atticus.  They are all here if we look - we even see Dill under the collards.  There are rabid dogs and monsters to fight, though they may not be monsters in the flesh.  The narrowness of lives and minds still abounds.

Mockingbird does not stand alone.   Before I left highschool, I had discovered Michener and more importantly, Leon Uris with his books of Ireland and then Exodus, perhaps the most influential book of my highschool life.   Later, I found Thoreau and Emerson and Houseman and Yeats and even Kingsolver and Quindlen and Moyes and so many, many others.  So many wonderful, hard books.  Even just a few years ago we were blessed with The Help.   But I often wonder if that novel and so many other modern books would have been what they are without Harper Lee's words that dared to make people question, that dared to step on toes.


Thank you to all those authors who so bravely committed their immortal words to paper.

Sync

When Jack came home last week, we started off the week out of sync.  Partly my fault, partly his.  Neither of us gave what the other needed.  He needed peace and I needed back up in dealing with Bell.  We ended up meeting in the middle later on, but not until the tone was set and it seemed impossible to unset it. 

I hate that.  I hate the way five bad minutes can color the next six days.  Don't misunderstand me, A lot of good happened in the week and a lot of stress happened in the week, particularly stress for Jack. 

On the plus side, with Jack's help, I got the last of the apricots down, processed and put in the freezer.  I got a five gallon bucket of plums processed (frozen for now, but will be jam eventually).  We got some work done on the blackberry patch.  And as Bell said, it was the week of household upgrades.  The microwave died which led to going to the the store and fitting not only a microwave, but also four bags of mulch, six window blinds, and a new grill into the subaru.  Later in the week, new towels were also on the list as well as a blender that actually blends.  Jack got the debri from the flood cleaned up around the lake and hauled off three trailers of junk and trash.  I reorganized and threw away a fourth of the hall closet's contents.  Jack got to go swim with Bell.  He tinkered with the air conditioner and it is cooling better. 

On the bad side, there were more ER trips and doctor visits for Jack's parents. There was stress over poor communication with each and between his parents and amongst all of us.  There were plans that were changed and changed and changed again.  There were conversations about work schedules that were not exactly positive.   We didn't fight or argue - we just were off. 

Normally, when Jack leaves for a week, I am not thrilled, but I stay busy and the week is gone fairly quickly.  Today, I just feel melancholy.  Bell and I did very well as a pair - she worked out with me, we had pancakes with blueberries and blackberries I picked this morning.  We just generally have gotten along better today than I can remember in a long time, so I shouldn't feel melancholy at all.  And part of me is not - part of me is thrilled and has reveled in the perfect connection with Bell.  But the rest of me would gladly return the new appliances and towels just for a week of meshing with Jack.   Six days and I can try again.