Reflections and ramblings about life as an educator, writer, reader, knitter, and over-thinker. Trying to do the writing only I can do.
Dear anxiety,
sometimes you trick me
make me think
you’ve got the best of me
make me paralyzed
and dizzy
with fear of what you’ll
take next from me.
But anxiety,
I’ve got tricks up my sleeve, too.
I’ve got words
and breaths
and movements
that will help me shake free of you.
And anxiety,
I’ve always
always
survived your schemes.
So you can keep trying,
but you won’t catch me.
When I lived in Spain and started to really become fluent in Spanish, I loved learning the augmentative forms of words. I knew about the diminutives (perrito, cajita). But the augmentative — intensifying, indicating greatness in size, exaggerating — was new to me.
Ojos súper bonitos became ojazos.
Muy cansada was cansadete.
Today I feel eso — un cansancio tan grande que me siento cansadete. Agotada.
It was an events-filled week, where there’s a lot of fun, but the routine gets thrown off.
Entonces, esta noche, solo pienso en mi cama, y lo rico que será dormir esta noche sin alarma.
For today’s slice (day 9! wow!), an excerpt from my writer’s notebook entry yesterday.
***
The sun dapples differently in the morning, the humidity still thick. The brown vines hang and sway from the branches of the trees, almost like they’re dancing in the wind. I can hear birds chirping and roosters clucking. Car engines as they drop children off at school.
What if you could mute the sounds one at a time?
Take away the white noise of the whooshing air on the highway. Take away the rumbling car engines. Take away the whistles from the rooftop.
Leave the air rustling the leaves on their branches. Leave the birds tweeting in the trees. Leave the rustle of pen and paper, children’s voices.
Blankets of pollen coat the benches, allergy culprits. Like fairy dust, causing sneezing and watery eyes.
M found a worm, inching along his leg. We gave him a post-it pack home.
“He has good abs,” M said. “I’m gonna call him squiggly.”
This morning, I told the students to gather quickly with their writer’s notebooks and a pen or pencil, because we were taking our workshop outside to the park.
“No way!” They shouted. “Yessss!”
We headed downstairs and out to the park that faces our school, congregating around one of the picnic tables so I could tell them the teaching point.
“Writers, today I want to teach you another strategy for generating ideas for poems,” I said. “Poets see the world with eyes that are alert to the smallest details.”
I pointed to the vines hanging from the tree branch above us.
“Look at how the sun is glinting off of the vines, making them look golden. Notice how they’re waving in the wind, swaying.”
“Almost like they’re dancing!” T chimed in.
“Exactly!” I smiled back. “I think I’ll write that down. I might be able to use it in a poem later.”
I pulled out a mini-anchor chart with steps for the teaching point.
“Poets, today you’ll look at the park with new eyes. You’ll write long in your notebooks about what you observe, what you notice, and what you think about what you see. All of this can be used as inspiration for later poems! Now, spread out and find a spot where you can really fine tune your poet’s eyes. Off you go!”
And they all dispersed.
For the next thirty minutes, pens scribbled in notebooks, eyes gazed around in wonder, and when we gathered again, almost everyone shared an excerpt from their writing.
On our way back to the school building, we brought back plenty of new ideas, as well as a moth and a tiny inchworm.
As the door closed behind us, one student asked, “Can we have writer’s workshop outside every day?”
If only!
Yesterday, I forced myself out of the apartment for an evening stroll. I walked past the construction of the new bridge and highway towards Maurice A. Ferré Park, taking in the greenery.
I made my way towards the Perez Art Museum and climbed up to their back deck, overlooking Biscayne Bay. There, I saw a set of netted swings that I’d never noticed before. I tentatively sat on one, worried it might trigger my vertigo.
It didn’t.
In fact, it felt wonderful.
With one leg down and the other hiked up, I rocked myself back and forth, pulled out my Kindle, and enjoyed my new favorite reading spot in Miami.
As a teacher, I don’t like to take days off from work.
Whether it’s for self care or a true sick day (like today), the thought of not coming in and showing up for your kids makes you feel even more ill.
Because teachers can’t just take a day when they’re not feeling well. We have to find subs and create sub plans, knowing all too well that most likely, we’ll need to reteach it anyway.
Luckily at my current school and at my last school, I’ve had co-teachers. That’s a game changer.
Still, there’s always a sense of guilt as you let them know they’ll be managing on their own for the day.
The only thing that makes it better is when you return the next day and the kids brighten and say, “Ms. Amy’s back!”
I lived in Madrid for two years in my early twenties, working four days a week at an elementary school as an English language and culture assistant. That first year, I rented a room in an apartment with 5 other girls that became known to us as “el piso paraíso.”
The other girls were there on Erasmus, Europe’s study abroad program, completing a year of either their bachelor’s or master’s degrees. We were new to Madrid and excited to explore all it had to offer.
And Sundays were the best.
Usually nursing a resaca from a fun night out, we’d slowly greet the day in the kitchen with an espresso and some eggs or cereal. Then we’d shower, get dressed, and get ready for a slow walk through el Rastro, Madrid’s huge open-air flea market in the La Latina barrio.
We’d grab a tapa and a caña (a little hair of the dog always helped) from Calle Cava Baja, then stroll down the hill of the main street of the market. El Rastro had everything — from cheap sunglasses and leather belts, to vintage dresses and Levi’s jeans. We’d walk the side streets and find shops with antique trinkets and used books. A few times, we’d wander into Mercado San Fernando for lunch, some groceries, and a little bit of salsa. Other times we’d find a plaza and sit in the sun for a while.
Sun-kissed and tired after an afternoon of walking and shopping, we’d eventually meander home, where we would spend hours in the kitchen talking as we cooked and ate dinner, until finally it was time for us each to go to bed.
“Buenas noches, chicas,” my friend Giada would call out before she FaceTimed her mom and sister back home.
I’d fall into bed full and warm without a care in the world, catch the moon glinting off the window of my balcony, and drift swiftly off to sleep.
At recess on Thursday, one of my students was lingering by the jungle gym where I sat looking out at the group of boys playing soccer.
“So, _,” I asked, “what do you plan to do over your long weekend?”
He grabbed onto the bars above him and swayed a bit as he replied.
“Play basketball, probably.”
“Basketball? What happened to soccer?” He’d been newly into soccer for the past few months, so I was surprised to hear a new sport take the stage.
“Yeah, it’s all basketball now,” he said decidedly. “I mean, I’ll probably still play soccer at school and stuff, but my new focus is basketball.”
It reminded me of my own rotating carousel of hobbies, specifically with sports.
As a kid, I played soccer from 4 to about 16, when I developed a Haglund’s deformity in my right heel and couldn’t play anymore because of the pain.
After surgery and physical therapy, I was able to run, and I got into long distance running after graduating college. I ran four half marathons between 2014 and 2019, among a slew of other 5ks, 10ks, and other races. I love running, how it’s like meditation, but the high-impact of road running left me with shin splints and other aches and pains.
I have always done yoga on and off, but usually only about once or twice a week.
I love to bike.
Just before and during the pandemic, I started the Vertue Method, a 12-week, at-home, low-impact strength-training program, and was very committed to this until I’d seen each video enough times that I’d memorized all of Shona’s jokes and wanted something new.
Moving to Miami, I was inspired to pick up rollerblading again, an activity I hadn’t done since I was a kid. I took classes that helped me to feel more confident on the wheels, and which also incorporated extra fitness like squats. I was obsessed for a while.
But, some hip pain in the summer kept me from working out for many months this fall.
Finally, once I was feeling better, a friend introduced me to pilates reformer classes. I took it up with gusto.
This weekend will be a slow one, without any fast movements, as I recover from vertigo. But I smile thinking about all the sports I’ve done and can do, a variety of options I can choose from to keep my body active.
A veces, no me gusta vivir en Miami.
La humedad molesta, tener que manejar a todos lados es pesadísimo, y ser residente de la Florida puede ser… complicado.
Pero una tarde como hoy, después de un día agotador, pasando el atardecer con amigas en el jacuzzi de una de ellas, pienso: “Esto sí me gusta. Esto hace que todo lo demás vale la pena.”
Mi cuerpo se relaja, y como las burbujas en el agua caliente bajo mis dedos, las preocupaciones del día se van evaporando una tras otra.
Contenta estoy.
Una chica de Miami.
Sometimes, I don’t like living in Miami.
The humidity is annoying, driving everywhere is tiresome, and being a Florida resident can be… complicated.
But on an afternoon like this, after an exhausting day, as I spend the evening with friends in one of their jacuzzis, I think: “This, I like. This makes the rest worth it.”
My body relaxes, and just like the bubbles in the hot water under my fingertips, the worries of the day evaporate one after the other.
I’m at ease.
A Miami girl.
My head at 45 degrees to the right
I fell back against the cushion
and watched the classroom spin around me
It’s day 6 of this newly-acquired vertigo
and I now believe it’s worse
than any other sickness I’ve encountered
Room shifting
tilting
my hand reaching out against a wall
to steady me
I laid there with my head back
imagined the crystals
falling
into place
one after another
Wondered
why we have crystals
in our damn ears
at all?
Writing With Abandon 