Reflections and ramblings about life as an educator, writer, reader, knitter, and over-thinker. Trying to do the writing only I can do.
Today my mom and my sister visited my grandparents’ home in Philadelphia to go through and gather the final things we want to keep before saying goodbye to the apartment.
Tillie sent me some photos along with this letter my grandfather sent to my grandmother. It’s clearly from before they were married, and it makes my heart full. They married so young and were together for decades. Companions.
It’s a love you can only hope for in this life!
I love teaching, I really do, but it is certainly a draining career. The pandemic really shook things up for me in terms of realizing how the boundary between work and home was nonexistent. The past two years have been much better, but as someone with multiple interests, hobbies, and talents, I still find myself daydreaming sometimes about alternate careers…
Like copywriting. A side gig I started last spring, which I’m really quite good at and can be very lucrative. A job I could do remotely, allowing me to travel the world or live in a different time zone.
Or becoming a full-time fiber arts maker. I’ve been a knitter since middle school, and recently took up punch needle, which I love. My family friend, a fellow crafter, texted me yesterday, “We should start an Etsy shop!” And I let myself think about that possibility, too.
Or maybe I could open a bookshop/café/yarn shop with my best friend down here. Miami certainly needs one, and I loved working as a barista as a 22-year-old.
Or I could be a writer, if I finally got my act together and wrote every day.
Maybe I could go back to school and study psychiatry, become a therapist for children or young people.
What alternate careers do you daydream about?
Have you ever gone to a grocery store on a Saturday or Sunday morning, soon after it opens?
That’s my favorite time to get the weekly shopping done.
Everyone in the city is in bed still, sleeping the night’s antics away, while I arrive on the scene to encounter fully stocked fridges and shelves, aisles empty of carts, and no line at any register upon checkout.
I can take my time if I wish or get out quickly, not wasting minutes searching for something that sold out hours ago, or weaving in between other shoppers.
I follow my list — produce, pantry, fridge — and make it home within the hour.
The perfect start to a week off.
Today I got to see my older sister, Tillie, for the first time since Thanksgiving! She’s here on a “moms getaway” weekend with 3 of her best friends, resting and relaxing by the poolside. We met for breakfast and when she told me a story about my nephew, John Henry, I knew it was perfect for today’s slice.
Apparently, my niece and nephew are obsessed with Rihanna’s halftime show (I mean, who isn’t?) and have requested for my sister and her husband to play it for them a million times.
“And he’s been drawing so much lately,” my sister told me. “Every holiday, he makes a new drawing for our front door. On Thanksgiving, it was a turkey. On Christmas, a tree. On Valentine’s Day, we cut up a bunch of hearts. And this weekend he even made a St. Patrick’s Day drawing of a leprechaun with the belt and the pot of gold and everything!”
Super cute, I know. He’s also been writing a ton, thanks to his amazing kindergarten teacher who teaches him writer’s workshop.
Recently, they’ve learned that writers label their drawings.
Here’s where Rihanna comes in.
“So he drew a picture of Rihanna in her halftime outfit,” Tillie said. “And—wait, I think I have the picture on my phone, hold on.”
And that’s when she showed me the detailed drawing — with labels! — of Rihanna in her halftime show outfit.
“He labeled her crotch!” Tillie exclaimed.
And he sure did.
“What does that say at the top?” I asked.
“Rihanna,” Tillie laughed. Ah yes — Reeona. Gotta love phonetic, inventive spelling.
“Wait — is that her baby?” I asked, pointing to the stick figure in a circle inside Rihanna’s tummy.
“Oh my god, I didn’t even notice that!”
Man, do I miss my nephew!
HOW-TO HAIKU
Taught kids to haiku
They tried traditional ones
And silly ones too
*
FUNNY KID
Reluctant writer
Manages to write the best,
Funniest haikus
*
SPRING BREAK
It’s finally break
School is out — Quick! Run away!
Ready to relax
*
SOCIAL MEDIA
Deleted TikTok
It is a total time suck
Now screen time is low.
*
HYDRATE
Remember to drink
It’s important to hydrate
Gotta love water
I have a student who tends to get sick a lot. Sometimes it’s his immune system, and sometimes it’s psychosomatic (like when I explained to the children a couple weeks ago that I was experiencing vertigo, and after recess he told me, “I think I’m having what you had!” with a hand to his head).
Today after PE, as we sat down for math, he told me he was feeling nauseous, and I could see how it was making him nervous. Thinking it was a combination of thirst from exerting himself in PE and hunger (lunch was 45 minutes away), I told him to drink some water, try going to the bathroom, and wait to see if he felt better after eating something.
On the lunch line, though, I could feel his anxiety radiating from him. I suddenly recognized myself in his fear — this weekend, overwhelmed with my own health crisis, I broke down to my therapist. Not only was I run down from the health issue itself, but I was exhausted by the anxiety I was having over it, losing actual sleep and making myself sicker with worry.
So I leaned into that.
As he waited for his food, I rubbed his back and told him how when I get sick, I feel just like him. I told him that what helped me was to talk back to my anxiety, to remind myself that yes, I didn’t feel well, but I was going to get past this. This wasn’t forever. I would feel unwell and then I would get better.
“Tell your brain, ‘I’m going to be okay. I’m safe,’” I told him.
I felt him sigh under my hand, the tension releasing.
“Do you feel like you can eat?” I asked.
“Yes,” he nodded, and made sure to get some pork in addition to the rice I had suggested.
He still felt sick afterward, and I called his mom to pick him up, but I hope I helped make that fear go away, at least.
I grew up just a couple blocks away from the St. Agnes Public Library in New York City. I remember my first library card, and all the amazing books I borrowed from there. Scratching mystery crust off of pages, but turning them all the same, eager to finish new stories, experience new worlds. From middle grade books to the dramatic young adult series I read (hello Sarah Dessen and Jodi Picoult!), I devoured them, borrowing stacks at a time.
When I lived in Madrid, I visited the Pedro Salinas library, found their tiny English fiction section, borrowing British editions of literary novels like Zadie Smith’s On Beauty.
Back to New York, I lived and worked in Washington Heights. I loved the children’s section in the library closest to my apartment, and took my third graders to the Fort Washington Library for a magical field trip.
A few years later we lived on East End and 78th, and I had the Webster Library just steps from my front door. I adored the used bookstore in its basement.
When COVID hit, I couldn’t take books out for a while, so I borrowed them from the NYPL and the Brooklyn Public Library on my Kindle. I continue to borrow books on my Kindle constantly. (The airplane mode trick is the best, if you don’t know it yet.)
The first week I moved to Miami, I set out walking under the blazing July sun to visit the main branch of the Miami Dade Public Library. I sent my parents a selfie with the three books I found and borrowed that same day.
Today I returned to that branch with my class. Though they weren’t initially excited, the anticipation grew. Parents emailing us that their children were begging them to get library cards in time, and would the e-card work to take out physical books, otherwise their daughter would “kill them”? Children bouncing on line before going in, as though we were going to Six Flags. And finally, the visit — in awe of all the information the library had to offer, and each of them finding a small (or large!) stack of books to borrow.
Every month or so, on professional development Tuesdays, we have an “Ask the Expert” session with Lina Acosta Sandaal, a psychotherapist, child & adolescent development expert, and creator of Stop Parenting Alone. She is amazing and I always feel that I learn so much from a session with her.
Here are some notes I took from today’s session that really stuck with me, and which I want to keep in mind:
Note: Spoilers ahead! Do not read if you haven’t finished the season finale of “The Last of Us” or have never read Watchmen.
Tonight, my husband and I caught up with the final episode of the first season of “The Last of Us,” the excellent HBO series based on the post-apocalyptic video game of the same name. Joel and Ellie have finally reached their destination: a Fireflies-controlled hospital where doctors will attempt to create a vaccine using Ellie’s immunity. The problem? Ellie will have to be killed in order for them to attempt to produce this cure.
So Joel has a choice: potentially save all of humanity, or save Ellie, a girl he’s fallen in love with over the course of the season?
For Joel, it’s an easy choice: save Ellie, escape, lie to her about it later, even though she knows he’s lying and her heart will break for it. (Bringing us back to that moment in episode 6 when Ellie’s told it’s only the people we trust who can truly hurt us.)
But this question had me wondering. And it also reminded me of the end of the famous comic, Watchmen — Veidt plans to save humanity from nuclear war by faking an alien invasion in New York, which kills almost half of the city’s population. His plan works, but he ends up wondering if he did the right thing in the end.
I don’t have the answers, but it’s got me wondering on this Monday eve.
Today after going to a farmer’s market in a botanical garden, we stopped at an old school ice cream parlor for scoops of cookies n’ creme and coffee with rainbow sprinkles. The shop had black and white checkered linoleum flooring, silver shiny tables, and red and white striped decor. Collages of tiny photos of patrons covered the walls in huge frames, relics of the 90s and early 00s.
It reminded me of my favorite ice cream shop as a girl, Emack and Bolio’s on 79th and Amsterdam.
As a kid, the cones and scoops seemed enormous, and I always got the same order: grasshopper pie (mint chocolate oreo) in a cone with rainbow sprinkles. As a teen, I’d meet friends there after school or on weekend evenings, and we’d gossip about classes or boys as we walked around the block with our cones. As an adult, whenever I visit, I walk by and watch as families make a line to get their ice cream, and occasionally join in if it’s summertime and I get the craving.
Because there’s nothing quite like an ice cream on a hot day.
Writing With Abandon 