Reading Between The Lines

One of the blogs I follow is titled "Beauty in the Ordinary."  Since completing the Denver Writing Project I've been challenging myself to look at the world through this lens.  I've been trying to see the world through a "writer's eyes," to see something special, unique or distinct in the mundane.  Some days where I look for beauty I just see the ordinary -- people shuffling around disconnected, plugged in and tuned out.  But today I saw something truly beautiful.  Something I would call extraordinary.  Something that made me smile.  Something that as hundreds of students fill backpacks, pack lunches, and board buses this week in preparation for a new school year, gives me hope.


While ordering an iced coffee at the Barnes and Noble cafe, somewhere between swiping my bank card and pushing a straw through the top of my drink, my gaze fell upon an unlikely text-immersed trio: a father sat with his two sons, tucked away at a corner table, settled in and content, completely engaged with the written word.  The father was taking turns between scanning the content of his magazine and marveling at his two sons who looked to be between the ages of eight and twelve.  The younger of the two, brow furrowed, concentrated on his e-reader, oblivious to everything around him.  The older one sat, stooped shoulders and eyes lit up behind the cover of the latest Alex Rider installment, silently mouthing the words and moving his finger line by line down the page, radiating sheer pleasure at getting one sentence deeper into his paperback adventure world.  As the barista completed my order, the father made eye contact.  He must have read my face, a mixture between surprise, awe and delight, because he smiled widely, matching my grin, and looked from me, back to his sons, then to me again, his eyes silently affirming, "Yes, on this Sunday afternoon my sons choose to read."  


As I walked away from the scene and into the shelves of beckoning titles, I couldn't decide if the  human tableau should leave me feeling satisfied or sad.  Seeing  a father choose to read alongside his sons on a Sunday afternoon left me hopeful about the future of the printed word and the power that teachers and parents have to support and safeguard the next generation of readers.  But the fact that this scene caught me by surprise made me sad.  Why can't I remember the last time I saw engaged readers in action (especially outside the walls of a classroom)?  And why did this scene feel extraordinary when really, shouldn't parents and children reading side-by-side be among the most simple, routine and ordinary events we encounter? 

Polishing & Pleasantries

It's a warm waiting room filled with obscure magazines, filtered water and a fake fireplace.  It's reclined, cushy seating and soft rock playing in the background.  It's the powerful taste of gritty cinnamon encasing each tooth and tickling your tongue.  It's rinsing, re-rinsing and suctioning through a tube.  It's flossing and scraping.  It's welcoming first-name-basis greetings from the friendly receptionist.  It's being punctually escorted into a sterile examining room that smells like Lysol and spearmint gum.  It's leaving 45 minutes later with a goody bag, an appointment for six months later, and a gentle scolding to use the Waterpik you invested in after the last visit.  


It's going to the dentist...and for me, it's one of life's little perks.  


Am I mad?  Masochistic?  Just plain eccentric?  I don't believe I'm any of those things.  True, I'm lucky --  I've never had a cavity, a root canal, or a painful experience in my dentist's chair.  True, I find dental hygienists to be among the most genuinely perky and pleasant people I know (especially considering they spend eight hours a day inside human mouths).  True, my dentist has salt and pepper hair, twinkly blue eyes, a charming sense of humor, and Listerine clean breath that when mixed with his cologne makes you feel a little heady without actually having to go under with nitrous oxide.  True, the photographs that line the walls of the waiting room and capture wide-mouthed smiles from exotic places - Ethiopia, Senegal, Nicaragua - a living scrapbook of third world pro bono dentistry work make the twinkly blue eyes even more compelling.  True, I get some sense of satisfaction out of having him tell me that I have impeccable oral hygiene and that he can tell I've been flossing, when truthfully I only floss once every six months (the night before my appointment) and just 48 hours before sitting in his chair for an examination I enjoyed two glasses of staining red wine, and six hours prior to the cleaning consumed two cups of coffee.  True, I go faithfully every six months for the cleaning, the conversation, and the delicious homemade banana bread they send customers home with in addition to a new toothbrush.  


Today I experienced high-quality customer service.  Today I took my mouth to the spa and left feeling clean, tingly and validated. Today, my insurance picked up the tab for "preventative care" that felt better than an out-of-pocket pedicure.  Today, I blushed as my canines and incisors received compliments.  I reclined, relaxed and unwound in my dentist's chair.  


Some girls need grand gestures - rare gems or beds of roses.  Not me.  Polishing and pleasantries from polite would-be strangers that have become bi-annual friends.  That's it.  And an invitation to sit in the chair every six months to be showered with courtesies and cinnamon paste.  


And in the meantime, in between visits, on the days when the skies are cloudy, I can't find a pair of matching socks, I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, feel fat in my favorite pair of jeans, or spy another stray, stubborn gray hair sprouting from my scalp, I will brush, floss and be thankful that my teeth haven't betrayed me.  

"Hurts So Good?"

As has been previously established, there are so many things I love about the 80's - things like big hair, bright colors, and John Mellencamp (with or sans the "Cougar" I think he's divine).  His songs are catchy and to this day get respectable radio play, can be heard at baseball games and firework shows, and represent all that's good and bad about American culture.  His song "Hurts So Good" has been stuck on repeat in my mental iPod all day.  And then it dawned on me...oh, this song is so much more than a catchy tune.  It's truth.


This morning I woke up with a headache and a tummy ache, both of which were foreshadowed last night when I overindulged in garlic-laden Italian food and wine at Pasquini's and other alcoholic beverages at Herman's Hideaway and Black Crown Piano Lounge.  I knew at the time that over-indulging in the present would mean future physically uncomfortable consequences, but I ate, drank and was a little too merry anyway.  Hurts so good.


I know I'm not alone.  When I woke up and browsed my news feed this morning I saw status update after status update of Facebook friends nursing hangovers, battling insomnia or grogginess from too little or too much sleep, and forming plans to do it all over again tonight, even though we know better.  Hurts so good.


Last night, one of my single friends that I'm itching to set up, remarked that she is, "So over dating dumb-dumbs."  She emphasized intelligence and politeness as two of her only non-negotiables.  As I reassured her that I'd IQ background check before giving out her digits, I couldn't help but ask, "So...you've dated a lot of 'dumb-dumbs'...why?  Were they hot?"  Her guilty smile, definitive nod and raised eyebrows were all the affirmation I needed.  I thought about my own dating track record in my 20's and how so many of the smart and beautiful women I knew knowingly date men they know won't satisfy any sort of long-term relationship standards for short-term fun.  Hurts so good.    


Why do we want and enjoy what's bad for us?     And worse, why does what's bad for us feel so darn good? 


I love to run.  I'm learning to love to sweat.  I love the feeling I get after a leisurely jog or an intense hour of kickboxing.  But make no mistake, I love ice cream more than exercising.  I love it even though I've figured out that dairy makes me ill.  I'll gladly concede the calories and the constipation for a double scoop of mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone.  If I had to choose between working out or eating ice cream, I'd pick ice cream every time.  Even though I know it will make me feel terrible later.  Even though I know it's not good for me.  Even though I know that the endorphins from the run are better for me (emotionally, physically and spiritually) than the 31 flavors of tubs stretched tauntingly before me at Baskin Robbins.  


Hurts so good.  

School "Daze"

True confession: I may have entered the field of education for two reasons -- 1) I love the "first day of school feeling" and I get satisfaction out of experiencing it again every year, and 2) I'm addicted to office supplies.  If this makes me a less-than-noble educator, or a full-blown nerd (or both)...so be it.  A+ for honesty.


First Day of School Feelings
You know what I'm talking about - tradition, ritual, routine.  A secular baptism.  A new backpack full of possibilities and hope. Jitters that keep you up the night before and cause nervous dreams where you show up to school without a schedule, without a pencil, or in the most severe cases, without a shirt (or skirt).  These dreams jolt you out of sleep and force you to check your alarm clock (again) because heaven forbid you are tardy on your first day.  


The first day of school is the rawest of first impressions for teacher and students alike.  It is crisp bulletin boards and clean desks.  It is genuine smiles, summer reunions, and sack lunches.  It is books and dreams and above all, it is the most beautiful of beginnings -- life's annual blank sheet of paper.


On Office Supplies
I believe it was a Tom Hank's line to Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail" (of course, all credit for the snappy dialogue goes to writer/director Nora Ephron) that captures it best.  The line, written in an email exchange between the two, was about presenting Ryan with a "bouquet of newly sharpened pencils" to celebrate fall, the initial stirrings of their online flirtation, and the "back-to-school" season in New York City.  That pretty much sums it up...some girls want roses, lilies or wildflowers, but I, much like Ryan's bookworm character, would rather receive newly sharpened pencils any day.      


I realize it sounds foolish, but there's something really satisfying about the smell of paper and the feeling you get walking and breathing in the rows of Office Max or Staples.  Maybe it's in my blood.  My paternal grandparents owned  a small, local chain of office supply stores ("Fawcett Office Supply") and as a child they carved out a space for me in the back of the shop where I could sit at an executive sized desk and doodle on legal pads, or twirl around and around in a computer chair, growing dizzy as the rows of paper clips, thumb tacks and Elmer's blurred with each rotation.  If I close my eyes, I can still hear my grandfather's fingers drumming away on a typewriter or adding machine, a photocopier and Mr. Coffee whirring in the background.  A symphony of order and comfort.  Home.


Today was my first day back at work - the start of a new school year (minus the students) for me.  Last night I packed a lunch, a new notebook, and a stash of newly sharpened pencils in my messenger bag.  I set the alarm, checked it twice, and even had a couple jittery first day dreams.  I carpooled to work with a friend, hugged and re-united with co-workers, swapped summer break stories, and wrote dates in a fresh calendar.  Today I had butterflies of excitement and possibility swirling in my stomach, and even though it's only late July, I began to smell the crisp, cool potential of the fall.  


What if we treated every day, like a "back-to-school" day?  

You Are Who You Meet?

We all know those people.  The couples that after so many years together begin to merge mannerisms and facial features, until they look more like siblings than husband and wife.   Pet owners who, in both obvious and more subtle ways, have animals that mirror their owner's habits of mind and expressions.  The pert, prissy woman walking a poodle in heels (no, that was not a grammatical oversight -- in this scenario likely both the woman and the poodle are wearing shoes) or the burly guy who makes eye contact that just feels a little too much like the gaze of his bulldog, man and canine lumbering side-by-side down the street in definitive strides.   

Unsettling and a bit creepy, yes, but an undeniable fact just the same -- it is nearly impossible not to become to some degree like the people (or animals) that surround us.  I'm sure this is where adages like, "Choose your friends wisely," originated.  I'm also sure this is why perfectly normal, plain-speaking Mid-westerners start saying things like "Y'all," after visiting relatives in Texas, or "Brilliant," upon returning from a holiday in Britain.  In our unwavering independent American quest to be "unique individuals" we wake up one day only to realize, we sound just like our mothers, fathers, friends, lovers, and yes, perhaps even our Labrador retriever.  

I had one such moment today.  After returning from a leisurely lunch, lamenting the fact that my summer vacation is dwindling (less than one week left), I entered my tornado of a house and thought, "Who lives here?"  This residence cannot possibly be owned by me -- the calendar-driven, checklist loving, slightly "type A" me.  I'm organized.  I write things down and pay bills before they're due.  I was raised by a stay-at-home mother who was raised by her Slovenian Catholic mother who believed that dust was one of the seven deadly's, a neglected sin that surely deserved to be on the list just as much as lust or avarice.  

The chorus of barks emanating from the study jolts me back to reality.  Yep, I live here, but the place looks a little like, well...like my husband's apartment when he was he and I was me -- in those long-forgotten days before we were "we."  Slightly cluttered, slightly messy, things not put away in their place, empty pizza box on the counter, unfolded heaps of clean laundry on the dining room table, books stacked everywhere, dusty, lived in, and in dire need of a vigorous vacuuming.  

You see, among the many favorable and even enviable traits possessed by my mate -- things like generosity, kindness, a wicked sense of humor, a contagious laugh and a real knack for fixing anything, from a bad day to a leaky faucet, he has also perfected something else -- the art of procrastination.  It is this art that allows him to sleep in on weekend mornings, not worrying about what he's missing or what has to be done, while I putter about (loudly) making coffee and planning how I'll use my time off.  It is also this trait that makes grocery shopping an all-day affair, and why I'm fairly certain that prior to sharing a refrigerator fresh produce never resided in his.  Despite my ongoing struggle to understand his procrastinating ways, today I realized that this very trait seems to have seeped from the very pores of his skin and burrowed itself deep into mine. 

I have officially become a procrastinator.  I am writing this blog right now, merely as a diversion to housework.  I know I should be dusting, the cobwebs and dead skin particles on dark furniture surfaces are mocking and baiting me, and yet here I sit, blogging so as not to face mopping.  Everything else on my list today is done -- 2 mile jog, 9:30 Zumba class, lunch with Kodi, schedule windshield repair appointment, and catch-up on email from the weekend - check, check, check, check, and check.  But the housework?  I just can't face it -- I don't have the energy, the will, the desire.  I'd rather listen to Pandora, blog, and aimlessly read status updates and Tweets, until my fellow procrastinator-in-crime comes home.  I really should make dinner.  But take-out is so convenient.  I really should fold and put away that laundry.  But I am on summer vacation.  I really do want my life in order before starting back to work next Monday...but how badly?  Enough to squander a summer day on housework?  Enough to pay a housekeeping service?  Enough to resign myself to living in the dust or train myself not to look at it?  

I fear there is some truth to the "you are what you eat," maxim -- in fact, it is this fear alone that stops me from surviving on a diet of ice cream, tiramisu and cocktails.  But could it also be true that , "you are who you meet?"  If this is the case, than I am truly thankful that I have chosen wisely when it comes to friends, am blessed to be surrounded by a loving family, and indeed, am sharing a life with a person who makes me want to be a better woman, and who reminds me that really there is really very little of importance in this life that can't wait until tomorrow.  

And since imitation is the highest form of flattery, I think I will let the dust settle for a few more days.

Knee-Deep in Nostalgia-ville

Is life really about living in the present, carpe diem and all that jazz, or is it sometimes necessary and even rewarding to re-visit the past?


This summer has been one of nostalgia and remembering the past for me.  In most cases, doing so has helped me figure out the present, and maybe even the future, and in all cases it has made me realize that indeed, time goes by too quickly, and moments and memories are fleeting and precious.  Cliche, yes...but also true.


Examples of being "knee-deep in Nostalgia-ville"


Example A: As mentioned in previous posts, I spent a month writing alongside 19 other K-12 teachers in the Denver Writing Project.  I have a notebook filled with quick-writes and exercises, many of them snippets of childhood memories that manifested themselves in poetry, prose, or at least words on the page.  I worked through the life and death of my grandmother, and some hilarious and horrifying childhood moments among other things, and for the first time I felt like I had "real" and "raw" creative material to work with - stories to tell...most of these stories are from faulty but lasting memories.


Example B:  Favorite movie of the summer (and no, I haven't seen Part 2 of the 7th Harry Potter saga yet) - "Midnight in Paris."  Why?  Many reasons, but one is that Owen Wilson's character time travels to Paris in the 1920's (coincidentally moi's favorite time period) and meets legendary figures like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cole Porter, Salvador Dali, Gertrude Stein, etc.  I loved the movie because I, as the viewer, also vicariously traveled to a time when bobs, sequins, fine writing, and even finer music filled smoky salons - any writer's paradise.  Saw it on the big screen - twice.  Now, I'm waiting for the DVD -- because you never know when escaping into Paris in the 1920's will come in handy.


Example C: I found out this week that Cyndi Lauper is playing in concert in Denver at the Ogden Theater.  My very first cassette tape was her "She's So Unusual" release - the girl who paved the way for Madonna in many ways, and a real-life Betty Boopish kind of vocalist.  Naturally, I talked one of my best friends into going so I can look forward to re-living the 80's - all that hair and leg warmers - in the fall.  


Example D: And speaking of 80's, this year for our anniversary we escaped into the 80's via the Denver tour of "Rock of Ages," - lots and lots of big hair, make-up, Poison, and...wine coolers.


Example E: Last weekend, members of the Regis class of 2001 gathered together for our 10 year reunion.  While there was some conversation about the present - who we are and what we're doing now, along with the inevitable celebration (weddings, babies, careers, bla, bla, bla) as well as devastation (separation, divorce, illness, unemployment) - most of the talk focused on reminiscing about who we were and what we did...10 or more years ago.  The experience itself was in many ways like stepping back in time - most people looked the same (or even better in a few cases - fitter, tanner, filled in, and well-dressed), and time had a way of erasing any of the negativity, drama, break-ups and fall-outs, and replacing it with, well, fondness and nostalgia.  


At the Friday night gala there was a shocking lack of dancing as an ambitious band attempted to tackle seven decades worth of music (to hit every represented group's era).  We requested Dean Martin's "That's Amore," and you could hear the giggles and snickers from the class of '71 before the opening accordion notes sounded.  "Oh, how cute...look Fred, the young people requested Dean Martin."  P.S.  We may have been among the youngest ballroom dancers on the floor, but I'm fairly confident we had the best waltz, and I certainly had the best partner - my husband - who was not a part of my life at Regis and who I wouldn't even meet until January of 2006 in a post 9/11 world, but who willingly stepped back in time with me to glimpse who I once was to better understand who I would become.  Yep, that's amore all right... 


So, is it better to remember the past but live in the present?  Can we do one without acknowledging the other?  


Off an isolated stretch of I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis, there's a place called "Nostalgiaville."  It is, as the name implies, a nostalgia shop, where antiques and collectibles, relics from bygone eras, line the cramped shelves. Crossing the hardwood threshold a silver bell on the door jingles, signaling to the clerk that a patron has entered the shop, another weary traveler who needs to stretch his legs or pick up a last-minute souvenir.  For a brief moment, if your cell phone is silenced and it's the off-season, you can breathe in the history of the retro objects, and a little dust, and literally experience stepping back in time.  


I visited "Nostalgiaville" once, more than a decade ago, so I'm not sure if it still exists, and if it does, if the floors indeed are really hardwood, and the bell, silver and tarnished.  Memory has a way of romanticizing the past, but then again isn't that the point?  If we didn't, how would we ever move through the grieving process, survive a broken heart, forgive others, form new relationships, and ultimately, become the people we are supposed to be?  

DWP & Figment Fiction Contest - Story Starter, "I wish spoken words..."

Okay, so I learned many things in the Denver Writing Project, but perhaps the most important lesson I learned is just to write...to write more and write often.  So, I had hoped to make some sort of "real" writing (beyond emails, Tweets, and status updates) a part of my daily routine.  So far, today is the first day (since the project ended last week) that I've written - between oil changes, eye appointments, Zumba, lunches with friends and happy hours, I have already begun to slip off the "writing wagon."  This little contest - a 750 word challenge that requires contestants to use the opening lines:  I wish spoken words were things that could be erased, forgotten.  But now I knew, and we could never go back, is my self-imposed challenge for today.  I admit it.  I love YA (Young Adult) literature...it's short, snappy, and can often bring universal themes (both adolescent and adult) to the surface.  The prompt and contest specifications lent themselves to a a "YA" teen angst/acceptance type of story so here it is...it's not as deep, universal or original as I'd like it to be, but some days you just have to write...something and anything.

Confessional Scars

I wish spoken words were things that could be erased, forgotten.  But now I knew, and we could never go back.  So instead, I replayed the two-word phrase over and over in my head, and like a deep wound that refused to heal, each time it left a new ache in my heart.  I wanted those words to be a lie or a practical joke.  But deep down I knew they were the truth. 

There were other words that had scarred me over the years.  Words like “divorce,” and “last,” and “mistake.”  Words like “fat,” and “ugly,” and “worthless.”  But between those words I had found comfort in putting my head into my mother’s lap and dumping all of the words that had been dumped on me into her patient ears, seeking solace in between bites of Oreo cookies.  

“Things will get better,” she always said, “Tomorrow is a blank slate.”

And until now, I had believed her.    

Things had gotten better when my father finally left us to pursue other women and other interests.  Relieved of the burdens of a wedding ring, a mortgage, an overweight adolescent daughter and an aging Labrador retriever, he had freed us to move out and start over – just the two of us, well three of us: my mother, lumbering, loyal Duffy, and me.

Things had gotten better when we moved to the city and I switched to Roosevelt High, where droves of students, in all shapes, colors and sizes, helped me disappear behind hooded sweatshirts and baggy jeans into the back rows of overcrowded classrooms.  Invisibility is a security blanket after years of being a target.

Things had gotten better after meeting shy and studious Simon in AP Biology.  A lab partner who became a friend, and then a friend who became my first kiss outside the movie theater on 10^th and Trenton, his lips tasting of Sour Patch Kids and comfort.  That kiss had turned into others, and into soft, unsure hands traveling under my shirt and up my back in hurried, gentle bursts that left me breathless.  Things were definitely better with Simon.

That’s the trouble with wanting to be wanted.  You set yourself up.  It was then, when spring’s buds were turning into summer’s warmth, that I began to get comfortable in my own skin, a skin that was fitting into jeans better, responding to lip gloss and suntan lotion, enjoying the daily dog-walk with Duffy, the feel of his coarse leash around my wrist and Simon’s hand inside my own, damp with sweat and anticipation.  It was then, when for the first time in my life my skin felt beautiful because he wanted to touch it, that I began to believe that I could in fact be like other girls.  Girls who were blonde, slender and freckled, who giggled in carefree waves that consumed cafeterias and shopped in packs, brushing up against boys with confidence that oozed from heavily mascaraed lids.  Girls I had stared at with wonder and awe in locker rooms, and secretly listened to in bathroom stalls, waiting for their tales of that week’s flirtations and fashion mishaps to dwindle and disappear, before daring to flush.

Simon had changed everything.  And then, he uttered two words, from the same lips that had first kissed me at 10^th and Trenton that left me right where I had started.  A chubby nobody, a nothing, a fraud.

It was at the end of one of our daily walks, when our hands parted and I reached out to pat Duffy’s head and scratch behind his ear, that a hesitant sigh escaped Simon’s lips.  “I need to tell you something, but I don’t want to hurt you.”

Puzzled and suspicious, I met his gaze, words escaping my lips in a forced, robotic fashion, “You can tell me anything.  It won’t change the way I feel about you, what you mean to me.”  For added emphasis and support, I leaned in for a peck, his sheepish withdrawal my first indication that indeed the next words he uttered I did not want to hear.

“I’m gay.”

And just like that, all of the hesitant kisses and touching, the progress I had made in meeting my own gaze in the mirror, the internal beauty I was beginning to trust, shattered by those two words.    Words that sent me straight to cookies and my mother’s arms.