The Long and Short of It

Saturday morning, while I was outside mowing our weeds, my friends Estelle and Ken stopped by and gave me a beer.  I normally don't drink at 10 a.m., although I'd like to think I'm flexible and open minded.  It was a home brew--a witbier, for you stuffy hopheads--with a lovely label that featured a photo of my friend Andrea, in full mohawk mode.  I held the bottle like I might hold a baby--one reason I'm done having babies.  And I promised to crack it open on May 24, the last day I'll be employed by Lincoln Public Schools.

This photo of Andrea and a motley crew of her fans--myself included--was taken when she was donning that same beer-label 'do.  She was halfway through her cancer journey, which meant that East High also was halfway through her cancer journey.

Andrea was a mighty bright light in my 29 years at this lovely school.  But she was not alone in that spotlight.

For someone whose dad changed jobs every 7 or 8 years, I am verklempt as I ponder this 32-year-long teaching career  (two years at Pius and one at Pound, as well) that began with a lunchtime visit to Teacher's College while I was writing sappy commercials at KFOR.

And, while I suppose it's possible that other jobs can leave a person changed, I can't imagine anything that changes you like a building filled with teenagers.

On those mornings when I woke without oomph,  there was lovely Maryam waiting for me, her shy smile hinting at the poem she wanted to share with me.

On that day when I wondered how we'd get it all done, there were Mya and Noah, across the street from Everett Elementary School, showing off the Little Free Library they'd helped make possible.   And dozens of their classmates--cheerleaders and nerds and woodworkers and readers--along with their teachers, stood on the steps of Everett, all of them celebrating a really cool project that built bridges between tweens and teens.

Over and over and over again, for 32 years, the kids just kept showing up.  Sometimes wily, often funny and kind, they found their way to school, to my classroom, into the library, and made a point to just say "hi."

And the adults did the same.  Like this fall, when, at the end of that really long week,  Pam and Luciano salsa danced on my patio.

Many people who become teachers do it because they love a thing--English or reading or history or art.  But I'd argue that, down the road a bit, it's the humans that keep us coming back.  It is the human framework on which the content hangs that makes this thing work.  And, as much as I love journalism and great books, it is the people I will most miss when I walk out the door May 24th.

. . . everything else was just an onramp to the person I've become.

Walking: The Superior "Sport"

The fife-and-drum-corps that is my nose roused me from a heavy sleep this morning, just in time to make the sunrise at Holmes Lake.   Sluggish, one foot still planted in my dreams,  I pointed the Altima eastward, hitting every red light along the way.   If I were a runner, the amber disruptions would've agitated me.

But I'm not, so they didn't.  Not really.

Along the way, Finn kept sticking his snout in my ear, snuffling a little.  We may have different ways of expressing our excitement for the lake, but ours is a shared enthusiasm.

We left the parking lot and made our way up the dam, anxious to take a look around.   One of the great things about walking is that you can stop walking at any time and just stand there.  In fact, just standing there is a big part of walking.

So Finn and I just stood there, silent, while the sun started peeking over the horizon.  For the next few minutes, I watched our shadows stretch across the dam and over the grasses until I eventually found myself in the living room of that lovely house on the hill.   And then I turned my attention towards the lake, where a dive-bombing, fish-hunting hawk plunged into the waters in search of breakfast.

We stood, immobile but hardly unmoved.

A pride of runners disrupted our reverie, their lycra-clad bodies whizzing by, not a nod or grunt tossed our way.  And, in some small part of my mind, I felt bad for them, certain that they'd missed the show in their noisy pursuit of the perfect heart-rate-to-body-fat ratio.

Standing still is never the goal in a runner's life, which makes no sense at all to a walker.

I've tried to understand the running culture.  Heck, one summer, I ran around Woods Park each morning for ten days, seeking to find out what the draw was.  I came away with shin splints and a growing fear of plantar fasciitis, not a sunrise or bird encounter emblazoned in my mind.

I have friends who run on purpose.  We remain close despite that fact, because that's what friends do, overlook each other's shortcomings in favor of companionship.  I figure running, for them, is a compulsion, like picking at a scab or double checking that the coffee maker is off.

The thing that runners don't seem to understand is that there are other--quieter and calmer--ways to get your heart rate up.   Coming off the dam this morning, I watched a blue heron glide above the water, casually pursued by a handful of red-winged blackbirds, until it settled on a large rock in the middle of the shallow channel.  Had I checked my FitBit, I'd have seen my heart rate spike at 150.

Slow and steady wins the race, so the saying goes.  But, to a walker, the saying is all wrong, because there is no race.  Just one foot in front of the other, until you decide to stop and look around a bit.

A Beautiful Puzzle

What do you do with a view like this when, 50 miles away, someone is standing in his living room, knee deep in mud?  This is the question that has haunted so many Lincolnites of late.

We who were asked to take fewer showers bit our tongues last weekend as sun and warmth pulled us all outside.  And we jammed our relief--a kind of dark, distasteful secret--deep into our pockets, determined not to show it.

As I write this, a handful of vultures buzz my neighbor's treetops and a dozen robins bend earthward, listening for worms.  This morning's view, against a lake no longer thick with ice, was yet another sign that spring may very well be here.

Was my hour at the lake a lavish waste, given the suffering of Nebraskans to the north and west of me?  Depends who you ask, I suppose.  And, while a part of me was tempted to feel guilty, I was grateful for that hour, for the way that it renewed and refilled me.

It has been a very long winter and a lot of folks are suffering right now.  All the more reason to seek out the things that make us more grateful--a beautiful sky, a semi trailer filled with supplies, a stranger's hand reaching out to lift us up.

Take the sunrise when you can.  Then put that light to work. 

Having a Heart to Heart

To the casual observer, it must look like I've got it out for my heart.  In addition to asking it to beat 30 million times a year, I've all but guaranteed that it'll be decimated, come May 24.

That's the risk you take when you love something.  Or, in this instance, two somethings (a job and a place) and all the someones therein.

In this photo, I'm with my pal, Jeffrey, who has been a part of my shenanigans for nearly 30 years.  If it looks like I'm in love, well, I suppose I am.  Lunch with Jeff and the gang is not for the faint of heart.  But, my God, do we laugh!   And, boy oh boy, am I excited about our April Fools Day plans . . . .

Jeff is but one of the people who fill my days with love and contentment.  For me, East High is a repository of quality folks and it's tempting to want to just plop down and refuse to go.

It was my idea to leave my job while I'm loving it, and I still stand by that decision, even though it is such a comfortable place for me to be.

Check that.

Maybe because it's such a comfortable place to be.

I'm 57.  Hardly old by today's first-world white-person standards.  But my oldest brother died at 46.  My dad was gone at 67.  And I've had a go with cancer, to boot.

For all these reasons, then--from love to lifelines--I'm choosing to leave my comfort behind me and walk into the mystery a bit. And, while I'm not a big mystery reader, I do get jazzed by an intriguing bend in the road.  So I figure I ought to bend while I can.  God knows it'll be difficult one day.

The weekend before school started this year, I was in the Sandhills, alongside the Niobrara.  There, I found peace and mystery, and I shared it with a handful of folks who loved the outdoors as much as I do.  It was the perfect place for me to be, before heading into my final school year.

I get the feeling that I'll be back there, maybe sooner than I'd imagined.  It would be a fine place to spend a little time while my heart heals from all that love and lacking. 

The Sacred Space Between Things

The morning I was lucky enough to be in this photo was the same morning that my sister, who was in a different boat,  claimed to have smelled the breath of a whale.  Proximity is a funny thing, especially if a 300,000-pound creature is the object of your attention.

Earlier this week, Nature Conservancy land manager Chris Helzer--whose mom, Sue, taught me to listen to every bird--was in Lincoln to talk about a year-long experiment he'd conducted with a single square meter of prairie.  More accustomed to the sweeping view of someone who works in the grasslands, Helzer committed to watching closely the life within that square meter of wild space.  The 110 plants and creatures he encountered in that sliver of land profoundly affected him.

In the past few weeks, I've been pondering the space between things, specifically in terms of journalism.

The daughter of a newspaperman, I grew up in a three-paper family--nibbling on the Lincoln Star and the Omaha World-Herald for breakfast and snacking on the Lincoln Journal just before dinner.  Even then, there was talk of what was missed in an a.m. or p.m. publication.  Which one had the leg up on the other?  And yet, each, with that built-in pause required from a printing press, had the benefit of the space between things.  In turn, journalists could reflect on the news before they packaged it into 600-word stories.

Our current 24/7 news cycle robs us of the space between things, that important place where discernment comes alive.  Where wireless and 4G networks take the place of clunky machinery, journalists lose touch with the gatekeeper days of old, and end up spending their days regurgitating rather than reflecting. 

. . . which is why, if we aren't careful, following the news can feel like trying to read a book while going down a waterslide.  I suspect the journalists writing that news often feel the same way.

And yet, like that morning when the whale broke the waters with its tail, I see signs of hope on the horizon.  A recent lunch with two former students was punctuated with talk of their favorite news sources--the New York Times and The New Yorker--and how disappointing it is when they come to the end of a riveting 3,000-word essay.  Hardly the stuff of empty-minded, easily-distracted Generation Whatever They Are.

Then, there's CNN, which no longer offers live reporting of White House briefings.  That act seems defiant now, but it was once the norm, building in a pause between what was said and what is reported, so that accuracy and facts frame the reported story.

In a time when it seems that all we are breathing in is the whale's breath--our perspectives warped and worn--we should seek out and encourage those sacred spaces, where discernment lives and our eyesight again grows strong.

Open Wide and say "Aaaaahhh"

I love that snow precipitates not loudly but in quiet whispers.  If it weren't for the occasional overnight wind batting flakes against the window, there'd be nothing to tell my sleeping self that, just outside, the world is being transformed. Beautifully so.

Already, a Sunday morning is my favorite part of the week, filled with not much at all, except Finn and a fat newspaper, crosswords and a nice walk, with a little NPR as background music.  Add the surprise of snow and I wonder if a heart can burst from contentment.

By 6:30, Finn's sideward glances have had their desired effect and I begin lacing up my boots, even though I know his near-naked paws too soon will call "uncle" against the backdrop of unshoveled sidewalks.  Sure enough, five houses from ours, he looks up at me, ashamed that he cannot walk any further.  I bend down, swoop him into my arms and cradle his icy front paws as I turn back towards home.

My paws, however, are still toasty.  And so, I drop Finn at home and head back outside, drawn by the quiet tabula rasa of untouched paths.  I walk for quite awhile, into the neighborhood and through the park,  warmed by the peace of it all.

This, this is what I see in my future--my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds, unfettered by deadlines or meetings.  A hundred Sunday mornings laid out in front of me,  my boots wet and scuffed and my heart filled to bursting.

Second and six

This photo, which I took on the last official morning of my last official summer, speaks to me today.  I love the softness of the fog, the sun-and-cloud sky, the unpaved road fading into the trees.  It was a happy morning for me, tucked between rolling Sandhills and the wild Niobrara. The deep peace of that weekend put me in a good place as I headed into the meeting-heavy start of this, my last school year.

Today, three months later, this photo acts as a telescope for me, a peek into the beyond that might be.    Its promise settles me, especially when I find myself wondering about my decision to retire. 

I am convinced that it's good to leave while my love is intact, but it is that very love that makes the leaving more difficult.  Especially when I'm nuts about so many Spartans.

. . . so, basically, I'm setting myself up to be heartbroken, come late May.

Most of the time, though, this impending heartache is tinged with something else--the strange pull of "what ifs" and "why nots"--and I am left slightly giddy, wondering how I will write this next chapter.

It is, I believe, a chapter that has been waiting for me.  I started to feel its as-yet-unnamed tug two years ago, when death and illness and Donald Trump came onto the scene.  Thinking back, I've come to believe that it's possible that a month of radiation literally left me filled with light.  How else to explain this transformation that fills me molecularly, intellectually, emotionally?

I am a different person today than I was two years ago.  Physically softer, yet stronger, too.  Less tolerant of BS.  More likely to question authority 

But I also am more willing to love ridiculously, with great joy and abandon, even if it means my heart will ultimately break into a million different pieces. 

These are my prism years, after all, everything beautiful and complicated refracting the light that fills me, and I can't quit staring at the wonder of it all.