The Usual Chaos

In the fourth grade, I owned an Alvin and the Chipmunks album. You know, the record kind that you listen to on an actual player. Just like mine, radio dial and all! I knew all the songs, word for word, note by note, and I spent my free moments singing them in the front entry way of our home, bumpy dark tile below my feet and adoring fans inside my imagination. Despite having never seen Arthur  or Chariots of Fire  or Rocky  then, I could certainly belt out the themes from the first two and "Eye of the Tiger" from the last. And, when auditions opened for the play Annie  at our high school, I just knew - I knew  - that I was brave enough to try and perfect enough to be an orphan.  One teeny tiny problem - when a young girl of freckles and mousey brown hair learns to sing with Alvin, she is sadly not in the same range as Annie! Thus, my version of "Tomorrow" did not make the cut. My friend Sara was Annie. My friend Holly was Molly (the part I really wa...

My childhood home was always littered with posters screaming this phrase in vibrant colors, still leaning in a corner after the most recent bond election. Dad was a superintendent, and his philosophy was always, always "Kids First!" In planning, he put kids first. In finances, he put kids first. In teaching and coaching and mentoring, Dad put kids first.  Because it is the right thing to do. Now that Dad is retired and spends his sunny days putting fishing first, I take up the mantra myself and hope to live it daily and share it as he did. Yes, it took me a while to come to this conclusion. I always thought I was doing it, actually, but early on I needed to feel in control. I was young. I was scared. I knew classroom management gone awry could be the death of any actual learning. So I chose control. This meant that I scripted every moment of class and drove the bus forward no matter my riders. I structured my days down to the minute and sent students home with pounds of ...

My son Ian and I traveled to College Station on Friday. Back to Aggieland. Just the two of us. Sadly, we journeyed for my cousin Rusty's funeral. He was the truest Aggie I've ever known, and Ian volunteered to accompany me to be my "human Kleenex" as he phrased it. I put him to good use! On the way, it dawned on me how unique conversations with my ten year old are. We went via Waco, and as soon as he saw the signs, Ian said, "My friend James is gonna freak when he finds out I drove past Baylor! He's a huge fan!" Later, as we listened to some March Madness on the radio, he added, "I bet Mrs. Litchfield is excited right now!" as her Stephen F Austin Lumberjacks racked up the points. Once in Aggieland and at the funeral home, Ian asked, "What's my Aggie class year?" and proudly signed his name and '28 (!!!!) on a memorial for Rusty. Ian knows about college. And if you ask him, he'll say, "After high school comes coll...

I finished The Impossible Knife of Memory  this week. I was home alone for a brief moment, tearing through the final pages, hand over mouth, holding back tears. After closing the cover, I broke. Laurie Halse Anderson's novel focuses on Haley, a high school senior who is fighting as much trauma as her father who has returned from war with PTSD. Haley spent her childhood with her mother (momentarily), her grandmother, her kind-of step mom, and now her father. She's driven the countryside, fleeing from one situation to the next new adventure repeatedly. Finally, she is in a real high school with real "zombie" students and a real schedule... and it's too real. Over time, she adjusts with the help of a friend and a dashing, witty math tutor/hot boy. But don't read that and think this is a fluffy, sappy, drippy romance (and so what if it was?)! Haley is tough and strong and scared. She is responsible and adult - in contrast to her father. She is vulnerable a...

What will you do if they make it? Cry. What will do you do if they medal? Cry. What will you do if they break the record? Cry. They did it. They studied and memorized and quizzed. They met and worked and practiced. They rehearsed      ... to walls, in cars, for peers, on time. Together. We traveled to places near. We negotiated about eating. We ate and ate and ate. We LAUGHED. We sang in voices high and loud and We danced awkward dances. We ate gummy bears. Their words... A little light Abhorrent Cacophony Dank Shawshank And then I came into the picture! A band. Ultimate party song. Angels. They did it. I told them I was proud. I told them how amazing and witty and fun they are. I told them they are warriors. But I didn't cry. Now, I cry. Exhausted, fulfilled, overwhelmed, I sink into my couch and my emotions and the tears stream.  They did it. They really did.

I often wonder why horrific things happen to genuinely kind people. I wonder how I will cope when my parents are no longer alive. I wonder what my own children will one day become. I wonder.  Last week, I wondered with my students. I explained my wonders and "what ifs" and then let them write. Bravely, they each took a deep breathe and began scribbling in their notebooks. Some were short. Others filled every minute. Next, students wrote their biggest wonder on a notecard and anonymously turned them in. I read them aloud.  "What if I don't make it in college? "Why does everyone have such high expectations that we will ALL go to college?" "How do I make good friends?" "Death" "What's really in outer space?" "I worry that we will run out of money to pay medical expenses." They were deep. End-of-the-pool-with-the-high-dive kind of deep. And then, they talked.  We ran our usual Fishbowl Friday, exc...

You wouldn't expect a healthy looking eighteen year old to have major, invasive surgery. But I did. I have scoliosis. It evidently runs in the family. It spreads from girl to girl, generation to generation like chicken pox in a pre-vaccine kindergarten class. And I was fortunate enough to catch it like the others. It made my hips uneven so that jeans fit funny and those groovy 90's wide belts were always crooked on me. I knew a little about scoliosis. My cousins who are eight and four years older than I am had surgery a decade before me. They spent weeks in the hospital. They wore body casts and then body braces. They did school from home for the better part of a year. So when I learned that I had it too, I was petrified. Luckily, medical technology is rather amazing! A mere ten years later meant that I spent under a week in the hospital with no cast or brace at all. Then, my therapy was to walk, increasing daily, until I could walk the campus on my first days of colle...