Structured Potential

I’m trying to write a book. It’s on my bucket list - to really do it - properly.  I had lots of ideas and one grew and grew. It changed and branched. Characters grew into people who wandered through and worried at my dreams. Writing out some of the bits to get them from here to there was frustrating. The story dragged and languished. My friends were tired of me talking about it. I gave up in despair for a while, tired of wrestling with the behemoth. 

Then a friend encouraged me to take a screenwriting class. Now the story is alive again. It is amazing, like waving a magic wand.  Rewriting the story in a different form with strict limitations has swallowed up so many problems.  Like poetry, the form makes me choose.  The class is short so I just choose an option for now, perfection is some unspecified place down the road and I don’t need to worry about it today. I drown when there is just potential and nothing else.  Limitations are lifesavers.

True Love: Three Mundane Examples

1. I come home from work on Friday. Three of our four children are ill. House is  a disaster area. I begin to restore a bit of order. I set the table, light some candles and wonder what to make for dinner. Husband and healthy son come in the door with dinner in hand. Surprise!
2. Socks have been washed but not sorted for a week. That’s six people, so let’s see...12 socks a day, 8 or so days plus all the socks that could not find their mates from last week...mixed piles of socks blanket the living room floor. Four children watch a music video on the internet where socks are animated as fish. Suddenly the adult socks and the children’s socks begin swimming to different island pillows on the floor.  The teen socks swim up the stairs to the girls room.  The boys finish the game by loading their sock island into a blanket spaceship and blasting off to explore the closet planet in their room.
3. 3 a. m. Healthy son is barfing all over the rug as he runs to the bathroom down the hall. I clean him up and fix up a bed in our room. Poor kiddo. As I go down to the kitchen to make him some ice chips I hear my sweet husband cleaning the carpet with the wet-vac.

I am so blessed.

Who am I, how did I get here and what do I do?

I am a teacher at an independent school where the students pick a topic they are passionate about to study in depth.  I teach math and Latin but mostly I take students on field trips related to the topics they choose to study.

One of the most exciting times of the year is when we field trip teachers get the lists of the topics the students have chosen. It’s like Christmas! The lists have been coming in during the last few days. I’m working on many of the topics that relate to anthropology and one of the students I get to work with wants to know how we got here. He’s not asking about the origin of humans, but once there were humans how did they spread out over the planet.

I started my search for the perfect person to help him with his questions.  I started reading about anthropologists who use genetic markers - small mutations that occurred at various points in human history and were then passed on - to build up a map of early human migration.  

The weight of human history haunted the rest of my day - as I listened to news from Syria, as my husband told a family story at the dinner table, as I glanced at family photos from 1900 on the wall going up the stairs, as I read my children a bedtime story about Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. And I thought - when my ancestors were on the verge of extinction and each day was an infinitesimally epic quest to survive, all I do and know was far and away, in a future where each minute is filled with unimaginable, unbelievable wonders. 

Refining Snow

It snowed a few weeks ago on the way to work and I wanted to write about it but have not had time till now.  Thank goodness the daily slice is back!! 

It was snowing, just sputtering flurries as I left home. By the time I was well tucked into the highway crawl, it fluttered down in buckets.  Clouds scooted so low I could have reached out my window and scooped in handfuls of ragged fluff. We crept along and then stopped completely.  Not to worry. I could see the exit to my super secret shortcut just a few yards ahead.

The shortcut wound its way along service roads. Huge tanker trucks eased their way gingerly onto the white road. Up ahead  was the turn that would bump me over the tracks and through the oil refinery, a bit smelly, but quicker than sitting in traffic. 

I made the turn and entered a wonderland.  Tall silver towers, each encased in a lattice of ladders loomed and vanished in the clouds. Every tower was lined in fairy lights. Snow flakes swirled. A hawk grew out of the mist, glided just past my windshield, and disappeared into the strange forest.

WW II was how long ago !?!

In terms of the dimension of time, says physicist Brian Cox, we are traveling at the speed of light.  I recently had a moment where time suddenly shifted for me, from present to far past.  Over the holidays we saw three movies that were set in the time of WWII: Dr. Who’s Christmas special, The King’s Speech and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  After watching the King’s Speech the kids and I went to the internet and listened to a recording of England’s King George giving the real speech that told the British people they were at war with Hitler.  Then, of course we listened to Churchill’s speech “...we will fight them on the beaches...” and a few more as they popped up on the YouTube list.  

Besides my wonder at the technology that gives my family instant access to history  I was struck by how different my children’s experiences of these speeches and stories were from mine. My experience is tied up with my parent’s stories. My dad told of leaving school and learning to fly, and how he hated the war and military life.  My mom told of waving good-bye to my grandfather as he boarded a train wearing a uniform.  She, her cousin and mother moved in with my great and great-great grandmothers in Oakland CA for the duration.  My children looked through photos of their grandmother as a child, wearing hand knit sweaters and caps, collecting scrap metal for the war effort.  No plastic was in the wagon.  The women canned everything they grew in the garden.  Organic was normal and all the apples had spots.  I still remember my great-grandmother’s wood cook stove in the kitchen and the coo-coo clock that had to be wound each night before bedtime.  No YouTube or iPods.  In my childhood WWII was an ever-present backdrop to the good life we were living “now”.  But to my children it has moved into the realm of a fairy tale.  Long, long ago and far, far away there was good and evil.  It was close, but good eventually won, and the fathers came home.  Their most visceral experience of the time is when Winston Churchill and Hitler appear in episodes of Dr. Who.  The backdrop in our house is the Vietnam War and Woodstock.  Now the Beatles hover just on the edge of reality, drifting away from humanity and into myth as they too are pulled each day into the relative time of fairyland.

Day Four - Winter Break

By the fourth day of vacation the novelty has worn off.  It snows heavily in the morning so things start out well:

“As soon as your room is picked up, you’ve brought your laundry down, you’ve emptied your bit of the dishwasher, dressed and eaten, THEN you may go out and play in the snow.”

Fresh snow is a great motivator.  Young children can be persuaded to accomplish a lot in short order for the treat of making the first marks in a new and uncharted wonderland.  One would think they were making the first footprints on the moon.

It lasts about ten minutes. Then that novelty is gone.  I have banned all electronic media till sundown.  My husband, after a traumatic early morning dental appointment, hides under covers till 4pm when the media restriction is lifted.  My oldest has barricaded herself in her room to finish college applications.  Second oldest has taken up knitting and threatens anyone who approaches her with knitting needles and a replica of Dr. Who’s sonic screwdriver.  The two younger boys are literally bouncing off the walls and reciting their favorite bits of profane standup comedy routines over and over at top volume.  

Having eaten a nutritious lunch of carmel nut clusters and fruit jellies I pile the boys into the car and go to the  rec-center.  I take a class that leaves me feeling half dead but virtuous while the boys play air hockey.  Then we all go swimming.  Playing in water, splashing each other, racing down the water slide - the stress is literally washed away. Before we go I run them around the indoor track until I can tag them from behind, just for good measure.  This takes about a quarter mile to accomplish.

We return home to the smell of vegetable soup, and I silently bless the name of the inventor of the crockpot.  Fairy lights have taken over the living room.  We light candles, the kids work a puzzle.  We eat soup and after dinner we gather round the computer to watch clips of our favorite stand up comedians on youtube.  As I tuck in the boys I hear them reciting their favorite bits and that will be funny until about 10am tomorrow.

Patterns in the Air

It's the patterns in the air.

The jugglers at the Boulder juggling club are world-class, better than I can ever hope to be, but playfully focused and welcoming. Every Sunday night our family goes to juggle. Then I catch myself at some point, standing with my back to the mirror, entranced by the activity in the room.  Patterns of balls arc up into the air and float down, caught in a waterfall.  Rings buoy up and hang just at the top, bubbles caught up in a foam. Clubs twirl and sparkle in the midst of a circle of friends.

Last week, a friend, my husband and I kept eleven clubs in the air for brief bits of time.  I reveled in the euphoria of success, the clam of deep focus and a sense of wonder. The beautiful pattern appears in the air between our hands.  White clubs, wrapped in glittering gilt, twirl and spin in a smooth dance of arcs in the space that separates us.  The pattern pops into existence for a few moments, then falls apart, like everything that ever was alive.