It is dark, I cannot see.
—Wait a bit, there will be
light.
I don’t see You, but I’ll trust.
—I made your eyes, they will adjust;
I gave you sight.
So much I see, that should not be.
—Be still and leave this all to Me;
it will be right.
I fear most to see inside of me.
—Fear not. Even there I’ll be
to drive away your night.
—No darkness is too great for Me.
This I know. It sets me free.
Toward Your light my soul
takes flight.
I watch them each afternoon, bringing odds and ends out of their bookbags.
They’re a pretty orderly group, these third, fourth, and fifth grade students seated in the auditorium for carpool dismissal, so I don’t tell them to put the stuff away. Instead, I take note of what they have in their hands.
Some of them are holding books and reading—a delight to my heart.
Some are doing homework—I don’t blame them for getting a head start.
Some are drawing—and I’m astounded by their artistic ability.
Some are writing, occasionally beckoning me to come over and listen as they read it aloud or to ask me a question, and I sigh: All’s right with the world.
Many are playing with slime.
They learned how to make it in science a couple of months back. The kids took the recipe home, altered it, and have taken slime to dazzling new heights. They bring their latest concoctions to school in Ziploc bags, plastic containers, even small glass jars.
First someone came with glow-in-the-dark slime, which, I concurred, is extremely cool.
This progressed to the creation of fluorescent slime. Then glitter slime; one sparkling turquoise batch reminded me of the ocean. Then a shimmery magenta glitter slime containing iridescent beads, which, I am not kidding, was beautiful; it was as supple and stretchy as any other slime. Fascinating.
But perhaps the oddest thing of all was non-slime: Some kind of ball being shaken by a girl. I could see green glitter swirling inside and something else floating . . .
I went over for a better look: “Is that . . . an eyeball in there?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the girl, giggling. She handed it to me.
I shook it, because, clearly, that is what one should do with a clear rubber ball filled with fluid, green glitter, and a garish bloodshot eyeball.
“Wild,” I laughed, handing it back.
And the girl said, “No, you can keep it.”
“Ummmm, but, it’s your, er, glittery eyeball . . . thing. Thanks but I would, ah, hate to take it from you.”
She grinned. “It’s okay. I have a whole bunch of them at home.”
I opened my mouth to ask WHY just as her number came up and she left me standing there holding this . . . object. The eyeball floated benignly in the fluid as glitter settled to the bottom. The bright blue iris stared right at me. So odd.
—Oddball.
What possible purpose could there be for having ‘a whole bunch’ of these things at home? I wondered. Then, instantaneously: Yeah, there’s a story in that, for sure.
Furthermore, I have learned that when the universe gives you a gift—or when a fifth-grader gives you a glittery eyeball toy—you should just accept it.
And so this gift graces my desk at school, awaiting the moment of its destiny, when an eyeball floating in a sea of green glitter is exactly what is needed.
All my life, I wanted to live in the country.
I was the child of streets, sidewalks, bridges, overpasses, a city that set its watch by military bases and the shipyard.
I am now the sound of roosters crowing before daybreak, geese honking and flying in their “V” against an egg-colored sky, glassy ponds with their rising morning mist, cotton fields, tobacco barns, donkeys, goats, horses, and the occasional peacock.
To be precise: I live on a tiny neighborhood cul-de-sac, not a farm, although fields and rural life surround me.
Just beyond the woods in front of my home is a pasture, and in that pasture live two mules.
The first time I drove down that road and saw them, I nearly wept.
I halfway expected my grandfather as a young man to walk out of the weathered, tin-roofed barn and hitch them to a plow.
See, I am also the child of stories about the old days and the old ways. In the summers I left the bustling city behind for a few weeks to stay with my grandparents in their rural community, where generations of my ancestors lived and died. Every word that Granddaddy and Grandma spoke, every memory they relived in response to my thousand questions, still lives in my soul.
Because of the stories I sometimes recognize a thing as familiar when I haven’t it seen before.
So it was that my first sight of these mules took me to a time long before my own. For just a minute, I felt like I was there.
And, in a way, I was.
In 1937.
*******
He was up with the dawn, at the back of the field plowing with those mules. I stood on the porch and waved my apron at him, but he wasn’t looking.
I was alone in the house—a two-story house painted white, we didn’t own it, we were tenant farmers—because his mama had gotten mad with us and moved out. My sisters and my own mama thought there’d be plenty of time before the baby came. I guess I thought so, too.
I shivered in the chilly morning, the beginning of October, but the days still got pretty warm. Such a beautiful time of year, everything so crisp and bright, the sky so blue. We’d only been married for ten months. I had a lot to learn, being just twenty-one, but I was proud of what we had and I kept everything looking so nice. I didn’t think of what we didn’t have because no one had much of anything . . . .
All I could think about in that moment on that morning is that I suddenly needed help and no one knew.
“Lump!” I yelled, as hard as I could, to get his attention.
He was fighting those mules—I don’t know how he always managed to find the orneriest mules on Earth!—and he couldn’t hear me.
Right about then is when my water broke. The warm fluid ran down my legs, past the hem of my dress, into my shoes. I’ve never been so frightened; I sat down on the porch steps and started to pray:
Help me, God. I don’t know what to do! Please send help, somehow.
That’s when Belle, our little bluetick hound, came out from under the porch and sat beside me. She started licking the fluid off my legs like she knew what was happening and I am sure she did. Animals know things. I put my arms around her and cried and cried.
“Bless you, old Belle, for trying to help me,” I told her.
“Bless you.”
******
Of course my grandfather looked up from the mules to see her there. He went for the doctor, who arrived in plenty of time.
That is how my father came into the world.
Grandma said Granddaddy was so, so proud of his boy: “Never saw his face shine quite like that before, when the doctor called him in from the front room and put his son in his arms. Your newborn Daddy looked exactly like him.”
Made up for those ornery mules, I suppose. I don’t know of any other part they played in this story, but it is enough. For me, mules are forever icons of my young grandfather and his farmer-sharecropper life.
Standing like silent sentinels in the background as one generation passes to another.
Oh yes, I’ve loved the country all my life, and maybe even before.
Living here means that long ago is never far away.
*******
Note: Everyone “down home” called my grandfather by his nickname, Lump, short for Columbus. When my father saw me for the first time, he said, with more than a little concern: “My land—she looks just like Daddy.”
After a recent outpatient procedure, as I secretly celebrated waking up from anesthesia and not dying, my husband drove me home down the back country roads. Through the passenger window I idly watched winter-brown grass, trees, and old gray outbuildings zipping by, noted a small clearing with a tiny pond nestled in wood-strewn ground, an eagle sitting by the wayside—
—wait—
We said it simultaneously, my husband and I: “THAT’S AN EAGLE!”
Just a quick impression, sitting majestically, facing us, huge, white head gleaming atop the dark body, not ten feet away . . . .
We were past it as soon as the sight registered on our brains.
“Go back! Go back!” I pleaded, grabbing my phone, opening the camera.
A sssskkkkrrrrttt! of a turn-around at a dirt driveway, and we were back in a flash.
It watched us, unmoving, as we neared, but when we slowed, the eagle grew suspicious. It took off. Within a millisecond, into the bare, gnarled oaks.
“No! Wait! Wait!” I cried, snapping as fast as I could.
We rolled a little farther, but the only good shot I got was of its back, soaring away.
Gone. I missed the moment. Failed to capture my encounter with the wondrous. I have never been that close to an eagle in the wild. I’ve hardly seen any free ones at all, in fact. I’ve heard them calling in their high, haunting, piercing voices, have seen one perched on top of a streetlamp, but never anything like this.
I grieved my loss: It would have made such a great blog post, too.
I got home, got into bed.
Couldn’t rest.
The image of the eagle wouldn’t leave my thoughts. It stayed, motionless, watching me. Cocked its head, affixed me with its eye, its penetrating gaze.
—Why wouldn’t you stay so still just a little while ago?
It ruffled its feathers. Kept right on staring at me.
So I looked it up.
There are few things I love better than symbolism, and few are better-known than the eagle: The national bird, on the Great Seal of the United States. Revered icon of ancient times, civilizations, people. Mascot to numerous sports teams—even that of the school where I work.
But this is what got me about the eagle:
It is a symbol of healing.
It is a symbol of transition, some element of life or creative endeavor, about to take flight.
—Dare I see it as a sign that all shall be well, that some new venture, personal or professional, lies just ahead?
It was just an eagle sitting by the wayside, as eagles surely do, somewhere, every day.
Only this time I happened to see it. In the blinking of an eye.
It blinked.
I blinked back at it.
So, I told it, you wouldn’t stay put for a real picture, but now you linger as a mental one. If you’re going to hang around portending something, then let it be my creativity and insight taking flight. Let it be about thing I love to do most—let my writing be courageous and free, with clarity of vision. Let it fly, let it fly, on and on, higher and higher.
Only then did the image fade; only then did I rest.
I fell asleep.
And woke in the morning, renewed, resolute.
No more missed moments. There aren’t moments to lose.
—I’m ready for whatever lies ahead. Lead on, eagle.
My best shot
My new “place” in the school is a loft above the media center that used to be the computer lab. Whenever I am at my desk checking email or jotting notes, I can hear the media specialist working with classes downstairs.
Last week, while typing away on my laptop, I was dimly aware of a lesson on Cinderella Around the World with second grade, until . . .
“Any questions?—Yes?” asks the media specialist. I can tell by the tone that a hand is in the air.
“Are you a Hufflepuff?”
—Giggles. My own. There’s a whole subculture of Harry Potter mania at our school in which I may have played a small, a very, very small, part . . . .
“Ugghhh, no!” retorts Ms. S., the media specialist. “Ahem, I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with Hufflepuffs . . . .”
—This dialogue!
Another small voice: “What are you, then?”
Clearly the question of Hogwarts house identity is of vital importance. Cinderella must wait until it’s answered.
Which it is, magnanimously.
“I’m a Ravenclaw,” announces Ms. S. “And so is . . . . ” She proceeds to name several of our teaching colleagues. I get a fleeting sense of actually being at Hogwarts, where everyone belongs to a house. “But Mrs. K. is a Hufflepuff.”
And Mrs. Haley is a Gryffindor, I mentally add, still typing up in my loft, surrounded by Potter memorabilia that kids across grade levels love to peruse.
“What’s Mrs. L.?” one of the kids asks.
“A Slytherin,” says Ms. S.
A collective GASP! from the class.
“Well, there are lots of good Slytherins, you know,” says Ms. S.
I stop typing.
Social psychology with Harry Potter. Breaking stereotypes. That could be a whole unit in itself . . . imagine . . . .
Poor Cinderella. No one seems to mind that her world tour is utterly derailed, at least for the moment.
—I am just waiting for the kids to ask what house SHE’D be in.
Last summer, a pair of finches made a nest on the wreath on my front door. I watched their family develop, day by day: Four eggs, four baby birds, four fledglings taught how to fly by their parents, and then they were gone.
I suffered empty nest syndrome. Literally.
I took wreath down for the winter and saved the little nest, because I didn’t have the heart to destroy a thing so beautifully made by tiny creatures that don’t have hands.
A Christmas wreath hung on the door until I finally got around to removing it in late January (well, it was festive; it brightened the winter-bleak days).
And I re-hung the “finch wreath,” which is clearly for springtime, but . . . I confess . . . I was hoping . . . .
And along mid-February—might it have been Valentine’s Day? Really?—I heard them.
The tell-tale cheerful chirps, the sweetest bird music, right outside my door.
My heart sang, too: You’re back, you’re back! Welcome home!
They built a new nest and then . . . nothing.
For weeks, nothing.
I began to worry, which makes no sense, because these tiny birds are much more adept at survival than I am. My worry was mostly selfish, I realized. I wanted the birds here, didn’t want them to change their minds, find another place. I wanted to hear their happy voices every morning, wanted the joy they unknowingly impart, wanted to see new life happen again.
Every day, I checked. The perfect little nest was barren. No finches in sight or within hearing.
The temperatures dropped below freezing again. Just as I began to fear that some fate had befallen my finch friends, I wondered: Is it possible that they knew another freeze was coming? That they built the nest as planned, right on schedule, but that they can hold off laying eggs until the cold spell passes? Can that happen?
Then, early yesterday morning, a chorus of chirpy cheer outside my door!
I had to go see . . .
—I have an egg!
Today at the exact same time will be another egg, tomorrow, maybe another, and soon I’ll know how big my little finch family will be.
But for now I just reflect, with reverential awe, on how the first egg came with the first bit of welcome warmth on the first day of the week.
My birds are back home, safe in their sanctuary, on Sunday morning.
And I sing for joy.
It is the place
where ideas are born
some as ghosts
some fully formed
It is the place
where voices echo, echo
real or imagined
they ebb and they flow
It is a place of seeing
yet layered in veils
lift them one by one
as mystery entails
It is a place of sensing
both self and Other
alive within, without
—feel the shiver, the shudder
It was striving to be
long before we had words
for we are knitted of story
given voice, to be heard
So nurture it well
let it breathe, let it grow
keep the magic alive, for
you’re meant to write it,
you know.
Henry maintains his own category, “Henry Writes,” on Lit Bits and Pieces.
Dear, dear Readers (if you are still out there, and haven’t abandoned Me, yet),
I write today out of great offense, so great that I can no longer keep silent.
Never did I see such a thing coming.
Never could I imagine a thing so, so—demeaning, so insulting.
I am, in fact, still in a state of utter disbelief.
I am not even sure I can bring Myself to voice it. My toenail trembles so against the keys as I type this that I continually have to backspace to correct My errors (if only My forepaws had the span and flexibility of People’s! What I could accomplish if I could use more than one toe at a time!).
I have been told [—shudder!—] that I am . . . I am . . .
—overweight.
[Heavy sigh].
So said the veterinarian immediately upon entering the exam room at my last check-up. The very first words out of her mouth: “How much are you feeding him? He’s going to have to drop some pounds.”
She didn’t even pet Me first, and I have such gloriously silky fur.
My dignity is not merely in shreds. It is entirely evaporated. Gone. Nonexistent.
Poof.
It didn’t really matter what was done to Me after that, as I couldn’t care, so deep was My hurt. I figured My People would surely console Me with a TREAT when we got home, as I work hard to bring out their generous nature and their sympathy. If I am especially winsome, I can usually finagle two TREATS out of them.
But a most egregious fate awaited Me.
My breakfast and dinner were DRASTICALLY REDUCED and I got no TREATS for days! Then, at last, when I saw I was about to receive a TREAT, I momentarily lost My cool (quite striking) head and threw Myself into near-convulsions of ecstasy . . .
Abject disappointment.
Readers, it was the size of a gnat. No, a flea.
This couldn’t possibly be a treat, this barely-existent bit of almost-air.
“Here you go, Boy,” said My She, “it’s just five calories! You can even have another!”
If you aren’t aware, Readers, two times nothing is still nothing.
I am, after all, a strapping, stunning creature in the absolute prime of My life; I give away all the joy and love My being can muster; I do not deserve this treatment.
All because a veterinarian questioned My weight.
I question the validity of that framed diploma in her office.
I will leave it to you, My dear, dear Readers—is this not the most appalling picture of injustice you’ve ever seen?
I remember what you wrote but I came to find the book anyway, to read the inscription again.
I hold it in my hands and think about you for a long, long time.
You were the baby who was always smiling, the cheeriest toddler, until I had to launder your blanket. Then you leaned your head against the washer and cried.
You were the little boy in preschool who sat beside classmates on the playground when others overlooked them, excluded them. From the start you noticed the outcast, offered comfort, pulled for the underdog.
You were:
The winner of the Principal’s Leadership Award at the end of your senior year.
The college student who started teaching the men’s Sunday School class at church.
The young man who returned to high school, where your Leadership Award still hangs in the front office, to teach Social Studies. Remember how, when you were setting up your classroom, you cleaned out a cabinet and found your old history exams in that stack of papers?
The teacher who taught your students to dance the Charleston—and who taught your own brother in AP U.S. History (your Dad and I weren’t kidding when we said, “Don’t even THINK about calling us in for parent-teacher conferences”).
The soccer coach who built the program and took the team to the State playoffs for the first and only time.
An inspiration to so many kids. Their parents still tell your father and me.
I remember it all.
Teachers don’t make a lot of money; you took an extra job at night.
I remember the call. You’d been taken to the hospital. You’d been assaulted. Emergency surgery, jaw wired shut, liquid diet for six weeks. Having to carry wire cutters if you should vomit, or you’d suffocate.
How you chose to visit that young man in prison, forgave him, became his friend.
How you adopted a rescue dog, reached a crossroads in your life, came back home, quit teaching, enrolled in seminary.
Almost immediately followed by your meeting the loveliest young woman and her little girl.
I think about all these things as setting sunlight spills through the blinds onto this book in my hands, illuminating the words you wrote to me that Christmas, years ago:
It is the first book I read that made me want to change the world.
You may not think so, but you’ve been changing the world since the day you first entered it, baby boy. One word, one breath, one heartbeat at time.
I’m quite sure you always will.
Maybe we should have named you Atticus.
No matter, for things have a way of working out as they’re meant to. I watch you with your new loved ones. I marvel at the gift of it all, the sheer poetry of life writing itself a day at a time, in the most curious of rhythms—like how pages of a book that stirred your heart long ago should come to us, living and breathing, a young mom who loves the same book, and in a little girl named Scout, crawling into your lap for a story.
Our greatest national resource is the minds of our children.
—Walt Disney
When they are hungry
who would give them rocks
When they cry for a spark
who would spew water
When they strive to see
who would deploy smoke and mirrors
When they would fly
who would clip their wings
When they desire to go further up, further in
who would confine, constrain
When they crave autonomy
who would demand automatons
When their differences resemble a separate peace
who would distill a disparate piece
When the lengths they must travel are not equidistant
who would mistake equality for equity
When they carry fragile fragments of hope within
who would build a diehard dystopia without
When they begin to perceive diversity as a gift
who would wrap it in sameness
When they aren’t the same
who would construct uniform boxes
When they would breathe
who would affix a lid
When the scraping of the adze and the hammering cease
who will hear the sound of fingernails
from inside
the casket of our dichotomies?
Note: If you read “they” as children, try reading with “they” as teachers.
*******
Literary allusions: Matthew 7:9-10 and Luke 11:11-12; The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis; A Separate Peace, John Knowles; Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell; The Giver, Lois Lowry; To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee; As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner.
lit bits and pieces 