Winter Solstice

Slow down,

so a cat can jump in your lap.

So you can remember it’s November. 

Look up and see the tiny birds leap from branch to branch, two squirrels chasing one another, spiraling a redwood trunk, leaving their scratchy tracks up and down the tree. 

Sit down,

so you can touch the soles of your feet. They have long deep cracks and are slightly painful but you don’t really notice this on your feet all day. You remember to give them a little massage and you put on some furry socks. This feels so nice and delightful.

Slurp up, 

the scrambled eggs, maple bacon, halved, sectioned and sugared grapefruit your sweet man has carried to you on a plate, outside in the chilled air. The maple sugar smell clings onto lazy air particles giving me a sample of his lovely creation. I take a break from sweeping up the leaves and go inside to our table where he placed next to my plate a charcoal clay teacup from a set given to us for our wedding, steam rising from it. I take a sip and the bergamot oil shoots me back to Roosevelt street, standing in the frigid brown-shingle Berkeley kitchen, him pouring hot water from his grandmother’s kettle painted with orange flowers. The flowery scent filling up the space in his bedroom. There he unwraps an aluminum foil she mailed to him with a cake layered with wafers, chocolates, creams, and jams. We tried so hard to take modest slices but each hour of studying physics and chemistry led us back to the kitchen to uncover another aluminum section of the pischinger and another cup of Earl Grey.

Sip,

another cup of coffee. Watch the cats stroll up and down the block. Less consumed with all of the things that have to be and rather indulging in a few choices that are mine to make. Sitting with that. Letting those moments be what they are. Not trying to stuff anything more into this sliver of time. 

Sink, 

into this folding chair. Let the fog bite my nose and fingers. Listen to the day laborers blowing, sawing, shoveling the morning into day. Letting my coffee go cold as I tap into my phone on the front porch. 

Feedback

The house we have built seems solid, its foundation, boundaries, topics. Its content. So much content fills this house, top to bottom. What is it that this house teaches? Does it teach a person how to stretch? How to take a risk? How to pause and contemplate? Does it protect them from insults and critiques that seep deep into the framework? Is there weathering that cannot withstand time…?

What are all of these little stones for, if not for the merry task of skipping into the river? We watch and count the skips. Celebrating the smooth sailing ones that touch the water the most, yet fly the farthest. Why are we not more interested in why the rock failed to skip this time? What is it in that throw that’s different? Did someone try to throw it from a different angle? A different force? A different rock? Why are we summing up an entire person’s worth by the length and repetition of this trajectory? The circuitous path tells a story of the connections the child brain makes, to make sense of the world. 

Teachers, we try so hard to give feedback using tests on paper, on the computer, but we are sending such conflicting signals to these developing minds. We have good intentions in pointing out the things they do not know, the details that should be more carefully examined. But what about all of the complexity the child has uncovered by their challenge with our questions? Why are we not sitting with that and churning it over? Letting the child throw the rocks, make the pathways. Let them grow bored and find the next interesting thing to pursue. Let them slip and grapple, then find a new hold that allows them to reach higher ground. 

Our role? 

Teachers…At our best… what we can give is a bit of light on the things that are special. We can put a little light on all of that. In a world losing the tangible. Putting phenomena in front, but letting them drive through it. Feedback. So important - should stem from questions from both mentor and student. Why? Which? Where? What for? What is the usefulness in spending time analyzing this more deeply? Does this rock have something in it we need to know? Or was it just pleasant and interesting to throw it and watch it putter on its first touch of water? They will throw many more and may never know the answer, and that is just fine. 

All the furry creatures

 

All the furry creatures we have loved,

have loved us back in such a generous way, sure we feed them and put a roof over their heads but they give us so much more than all that. 

They check on us every single day, they greet us, they don’t ever avoid us or pretend not to see us, they hang out with us whether we’re smelly or not, they share their warmth with us, they protect us, they remind us to get up and keep going every day, they give us head butts whenever we go in for one, they wag their tails at us, they dust off our keyboards, they help us limit our butter intake with their toast licks, they check for vermin up in the trees and under the deck, they do their perimeter checks, they do yoga maneuvers underneath us when we attempt to plank, they plop into our laps when we sit cross-legged on the floor, they zoom around us, they embellish our furniture with their shreddings, they don’t mind our music or messes, they mingle in the space we share, giving and receiving affection is what they model to us humans who have a harder time remembering how to do that. 

Sunday morning

Oh, the morning is just perfect,

the renewed energy, the sunlight, the coffee, the cats.

It would be nice to feel this way all day,

awake, alive, aware,

calmness, stillness,

sitting outside,

Only to watch and listen to the little stirrings that slowly come and go,

the week has ended,

everyone takes their sweet old time to dig out from their mountainous blankets,

Not me,I can’t wait to smell it and feel the crisp air, it’s fleeting stillness, I want to sit and absorb all I can.