The Imaginary Front Porch

Taking advantage of ”Buy one, get one free,” I hastily plucked two boxes of Shredded Wheat off the store shelf.  It was with a sense that something felt different about the boxes that I put them in the cart.

Opening one of them the next morning I realized why it felt different.  I also instantly returned to my childhood…long before the days of Bite Sized Shredded Wheat.  This was the “real” big one-piece Shredded Wheat as I had known it; bite-sized had seemed too easy when it came into being.  With the “real” Shredded Wheat there was a methodical system to eating it.  My sister even confirmed this when we talked about it.  One had to have a strategy and it turns out that ours was the same.  After pouring milk over the rectangular piece that took up a whole bowl we took our spoons, cut a line neatly down the length of the Shredded Wheat, and then cut each half into bite-sized pieces, trying to make them as equal as possible.

The childhood moment, however, passed quickly. As I stared at the large, one-piece Shredded Wheat that I didn’t mean to buy, I realized it didn’t seem right anymore.  I found myself saying to my cat, “Now how am I going to eat this?!” I was convinced that the company must have scrimped on the content…the large piece did not seem nearly as dense as the original and when I went to cut it, it simply crumbled into bits and pieces with no equal sections.  Maybe it does contain more air now…or perhaps I had lost the original Shredded Wheat touch because for many years I have been eating the bite-sized brand, though I couldn’t tell you exactly when the transition took place.

If a marketing person had asked my opinion as a child about whether I would like Bite-Sized Shredded Wheat or not, I think I may well have said no thank you…that I enjoyed the big piece, the fun of cutting it, and the fact that when I saw big hay bales in fields I always thought of Shredded Wheat.  But they didn’t ask and somewhere along the way I eventually became a bite-sized convert.  In a small way the Shredded Wheat struck me as an example.

I have never been on the marketers’ list to ask about anything. They know better. We’d make progress very slowly. So I simply find myself in the currents of change that often would not be my choice if given the vote. I would still have my dad’s ‘32 Oldsmobile, my little solid state transistor radio that could be tucked under my pillow and for which I did not need headphones to hear it, communication that was totally by mail that made me joyful to send and receive, a friend or parents’ special handwriting making me feel their presence in a closer way…and on and on and on…the ”old-fashioned” ways of being, as today’s children would think of them.  I can live easily with a much slower pace, savoring kairos moments that I often accuse change of stealing.    

The other side is that without change I wouldn’t be having the fun of blogging or enjoying emails from those who love the quick communication but would never write a letter.  The delete key is an amazing little key.  I’ve gone from talking to a phone operator to rotary dial to touch tone to only having a cell phone…from handwriting (which, by the way, I have not had to give up) to typewriter to word processor to desktop computer to laptop…not quite to Blackberry or iPhone yet…but who knows?!  Perhaps it will happen seamlessly and I’ll find one in my hand.  As I watch the new Promethean Boards in use with young children and realize what a fabulous educational tool they are, I know that I will continue to be carried on the current of change…there’s no stopping…sometimes resistant, but almost always, finally, admitting what fabulous end results change can bring.  There was no such word as “byte” in my school days but as I watch the evolution of all manner of things and find my way, I have to acknowledge exquisite “aha” moments even while holding on to all good things that came before. 

Life is like that and who knows what the norm will be a generation from now, when this blog will seem like pony express days.  Perhaps the real truth is that I don’t mind being carried along on the current of change; what I fear is giving up what I know and drowning if I don’t know how to manage what is new and different, if I feel it is beyond me.  So far I have been able to come up for enough air to keep going.  I also realize that I am adding new and wonderful opportunities to my repertoire of choices for how to live life…some days in the slow currents and some like a wild raft trip…both can be exhilerating. 

The prospect of joining people around the world for an hour in darkness on March 29th was something I looked forward to all day long.  After consideration of candlelight or using a portable lantern during that time I made the decision simply to enjoy the dark and let it be filled with music.  Sibelius symphonies were my choice.

CD on…lights out…all settled into a comfortable chair with a view out my study window… no obligations.  I am very good at relaxing and doing nothing, though I discovered long ago that my mind rarely understands the “doing nothing” part.  I am certain that my teachers and parents would have loved clarity about that many years ago but I have come to enjoy that aspect of myself.

I completely relaxed into the music, listening closely to the individual instruments, the tapestry of sounds, the lulls and the swells and the measures that sweep me away with their beauty.  For a very few minutes it was just the music and me.  And then it was the music and me and noticing how many lights were off in the condos I can see from that window. I began imagining all of the residents who live there.  Who are they?  Did they know about Earth Hour or were they away from home? That made me get up and walk around the house to see if other neighboring lights were out.  I was like a little Earth Hour spy. 

All the while I was spying I was watching the incredible evening weather…trees in the wind…all different shapes, heights, leaves out, no leaves yet…but all swaying to the music of Sibelius.  It was as if they could hear it and feel the rhythm.  I watched and listened and was amazed at how indoors and outdoors came together in a dance.  And then the lightning and the thunder added their contributions and I realized that I was in the middle of the symphony of nature and the symphony of instruments, giving me a dazzling show that was free, one which I would have entirely missed had the lights been on.

And while all of that was going on I was thinking about John and Abigail Adams…the little orange 1950’s book I can still see, a story about Abigail’s life that I remember relishing… and the David McCullough rendering of John Adams’ life that I so enjoyed reading.  What would the two of them and everyone in that time of history think about a day having to be purposely designated to show the need for saving electricity? How did we get from candles and kerosene lamps to this? 

Thinking about that little orange book made me start perusing the bookshelves in the dark, unable to see titles but mulling the many categories, which led me to thinking about all of the bookstores I have been in around the country and the gift of books in my life

And this is long enough…but at some point when I knew the hour was getting close to ending I realized that the hour of darkness was the most wonderful gift to someone for whom focus is a challenge.  There were no parameters…there was nothing I was meant to be attending to at that moment and daydreams stealing the time instead…I wasn’t having to steer myself back to a task…I was free, free, free to think about all that I wanted to think about and let my mind go where it wanted…and it led me during that hour to all kinds of fabulous places. 

At 9 PM, with a tinge of regret, I turned the lights back on.

The minds of children who struggle with focus are often like this. The more I understand, the more I wonder how to make the world of education one that honors them more fully. 

It was a moment of feeling speechless when several years ago I was going through a box that had, unknown to the rest of our family, been stored in our barn by my father. In the box was a leather pouch.  Inside the pouch, in nearly perfect condition, were letters from a relative on my father’s side who served in the Civil War. The soldier had written to his family of his adventures of war and of his hopes of coming home soon. The last letter in the small collection, which I expected to be a continuation of his story, was from another officer in the Army telling of the death of the young man. The letter deeply moved me and I think of it periodically. How my father came to have the letters and the beautiful leather pouch that had so wonderfully preserved them all these years I do not know.  We found it, along with many other letters he had saved, after his death. 

Driving up Peachtree today I happened to notice the stone memorial in remembrance of the Battle of Peachtree Creek kind of tucked under the trees in front of Piedmont Hospital.  For a minute my mind was like an Etch-a-Sketch, wiping out all of the modern world and trying to imagine the landscape and those who fought in that battle.  What was the landscape like without all of the buildings? Had many of the soldiers just written the same kind of letter home and were then putting their lives on the line after posting it, knowing their words would take days to reach their families?  What were their medical options in the Battle of Peachtree Creek if injured? I know they were options I don’t like to hear about, and how ironic it is that a hospital stands on that land.  How many hundreds or thousands of footsteps were taken that we can no  longer see the remnants of?  The prints are long since gone, but they matter to what we enjoy now. 

I felt a strong sense that their time, persistence, and sacrifice, whatever all the conditions that came just before and just after, somehow enabled me to enjoy this new place I now call home.  The small stone monument reminded me (and I do need these reminders) that those who came before us matter in thousands of different ways…not just in the war that had the visible acknowledgement today, but creators of all kinds, writers, inventors, musicians, doctors, teachers and on into an endless list.  Their footsteps paved the way for our footsteps.  It struck me that we layer one another’s footsteps over time. 

Who walked the land and lived the land where Trinity School now resides?  When we walk through Discovery Woods, who walked there 50, 100, 150 years in the past? Whose footsteps do we cover each day with our own and how did they help create the world we so enjoy?  What did they learn that influences what we now learn and experience? Can we even begin to imagine what footsteps will cover ours 150 years from now? What legacy will our footsteps leave?   

The minute I walked into my office this morning the orchids talked to me…boom… Monday morning and they set up a reminder for the week that I could never have put into my calendar. 

There are two orchids.  Barbara and I each received one as a gift and have been working to keep them alive and well, neither of us apparently having an orchid green thumb.  I finally left mine in her hands, the second one under my care to look like it has about two days of life left. It is also the second gift orchid since I arrived at Trinity so I feel extra guilty that I have not done well keeping it blooming. Each weekend Barbara takes them from her office and sets them just inside my door where they will get a bit more natural light. 

I couldn’t miss the contrast today. Hers has the most beautiful green leaves and not one bloom.  Mine has several blooms and not one leaf to be seen.  I stopped and studied them. If I could only somehow blend the two, we might be able to get to the perfect orchid.  I wanted to touch them together and say some magic words that would make that happen.

Walking to my desk I thought: Isn’t that just the way life is for most of us?  We so much want everything to fall into place and have it be perfect and beautiful.  Sometimes we have dark green leaves and no blooms.  Or we are producing a beautiful “flower” but it will soon wither without the proper conditions and care.  Sometimes we try our hardest, as I can tell you Barbara and I have with the orchids, but things just don’t seem to come together.  We haven’t unlocked the secret yet. And maybe we haven’t sought the assistance we need…we’re trying to do it on our own.

Not only do I identify with the orchids, which sometimes produces great envy of others who seemingly have the whole beautiful plant, but I know that everyday in my life with children there are the ones who long for the whole package, who have parts of it and are working so hard to produce the perfect combination of leaves and blooms in a particular area.  It can and does happen, but not always… and sometimes in fits and spurts that won’t quite let us give up.

Though lacking in orchid talent, I do grow wonderful day lilies.  We need to help children discover and revel in the beauty of their own daylilies, whatever they are, dividing and sharing with others, and then look for ways to cultivate the “plants” that simply don’t grow easily or beautifully yet.  

If we had time to sit on the porch with a cup of tea, I can imagine that there would be a lot of “orchid stories” to tell, with the beautiful  daylily stories woven inbetween. 

Mr. Peacock owned the Shell station where my dad always filled up.  l was so jealous of Mr. Peacock’s job because as a child I loved the smell of gasoline being pumped into the car and wished so much that I could get out and do it myself.  How was he so lucky to fill car after car all day long? Little did I know what life held in store for my adult years!  It is amazing that I don’t own a gas station rather than being a school administrator, but now the fun is gone.  Everyone pumps their own gas.  That means every couple of weeks I get to pretend I am Mr. Peacock.

One Christmas in my early elementary years I asked for a toy gas station I had seen advertised in a catalogue. It was such fun to look at every detail and imagine what it would be like to have it as my own. And yes, with great delight I had a hunch what was in the big wrapped package on Christmas morning. 

There were no bells and whistles on that toy.  Everything that was to happen happened because I moved the cars in and out or cranked the handle that made them go up the elevator to the parking on top…for of course for my gas station there had to be an unending line of cars!  I had to create the dialogue between the driver and me, decide whose car was next, tell people to wait in line for their car’s turn on the elevator. I played with that gas station for hours and was completely content minus any electronic capacity. 

So of course part of my daughter’s Fisher Price collection had to be a garage, along with the house, the schoolhouse, the camper, the village and the airplane, to name a few.  I loved those toys as much as she did.  We had over 40 little people and most everyone had a name.  Poor Sally dropped into the pachysandra at my parents’ home and was finally recovered after winter…we wondered where she had been; we missed her.  They lined up along the bathtub, sailed in boats, and made for hours of fun and special playtime on the floor with Abigail. It was so many years ago, yet seems as if it was yesterday.  

I know I am getting older and older and the age of electronic games, DVD’s and more things than I even know has come along since my childhood and that of my daughter.  There are some wonderful opportunities in all of those.  For me, however, the time spent immersed solely in my own imaginary world, creation of every aspect being left to me with the prompt of one simple prop (or none), taught me that there are many places to go, things to do, and people to meet, all from inside our own imaginations. I loved every minute of joining my daughter to do the same and often to overhear her by herself…but not by herself at all…rather, with all the company in the world.  

I hope that in a culture that has so many headphone pieces and screens that we will continue to allow children to have the experience and pleasure of  being the artists and inventors of scenarios of their own, of creating the scene, the music, the dialogue, and being the perfomer.  I have no doubt that they will have just as much fun as tuning in to what someone  has already thought of and perhaps be astounded when their own imaginations lead to the writing of a novel, composing a musical piece, or drawing the landscape or character they have invented.  I am sure many would tell me it is about balance.  What I know is that I desire for all children to know that they are the best creators of all. 

It was much earlier than usual on a recent Saturday morning that I was eating breakfast..darkness and quiet still surrounding the neighborhood. Enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee, I picked up my sister’s most recent letter. Yes, most weeks, she and I pen multiple page letters to each other. I do love email but I treasure the art of handwritten correspondence…an art that is disappearing.

The story: a woman at their church had kindly baked an apple pie for my mother and sister, having heard that my mother always loved to bake pies. My mom, until the last couple of years, was a master pie maker…apple pie being the most common, but blueberry, mince, rhubarb, pumpkin…ah, I can taste them now…and always the left-over crust crisply baked with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on it. Her crusts were so delicate, rolled out to just the right thinness. Our family came to believe that thin crusts are the ultimate pie crust (isn’t it true how strongly our opinions develop as a result of family experiences!).

The gift pie had a thick, crumbly crust, apples hidden somewhere in all of the delicious, buttery, calorie filled homemade “favorite” crust of another person’s style. It did not taste right to my mother; it was not a thin crust and it wasn’t her own.

Thus, the comment by her that had me laughing so hard on that dark, still morning, but also my love for her rising as the sun in my soul: “I need to look in an etiquette book to see how to send a thank you note for a pie that is not edible.” I can just see the sparkle in her eye, but more touchingly, I know that saying thank you is something she never misses doing and she wants to do it well and right. At 99, it is still a habit and it is the proper thing to do, even though it sometimes takes two or three days to compose the note. I am sure in the finished thank you that “not edible” was left out!

What struck me in those early morning moments was the contrast between her habits of thoughtfulness, graciousness, consideration for others, and always saying thank you, which have been modeled for me all my life, with the number of books and articles written in very recent years about “civility” and our need to find our way back to it. How have we gotten to a place where we need to encourage random acts of kindness, or post road signs that say, “Beware of aggressive drivers,” and all of the other symptoms of a culture that has become lax in the habits of regard and consideration?

Two things: I am so taken each morning as I greet students at Trinity carpool with how most say thank you to those who open their car doors, say thank you to their parents for driving them to school, and the many who climb out of the car saying, “I love you” to a parent, often in response to the parent’s same words. May we do all that we can to preserve those habits that make such a positive difference.

Secondly, how do we continue to inoculate our children against the habits that sometimes seem to swirl around us of neglected thanks, not reaching out to help another, lack of consideration, and forgetting the basic qualities of civility of which we all want to be the recipients?

We’ll never do it perfectly; however, I know that in those early morning moments I was reminded that I can follow more intentionally in the footsteps of my mother and father and do it better…such as finding the right and gracious thank you wording even when some things in life are “inedible.”

On Halloween Eve I was, as usual, madly finishing my costume.  Stores were completely emptied of Halloween jewelry so it was on to the local craft store. At about 9 PM I was sitting at the table in my study with hundreds of little beads of all colors spread out before me, the elastic to string them off to the side.  The goal was black, orange, silver and gold beaded bracelets and earrings.  Sorting, it was easy to ignore the blue and green beads. The rose beads were trickier. I tried so carefully to sift them out. In their tiny size and shine they looked too close to the orange beads…not acceptable for a Halloween bracelet.  Four bracelets and two earrings later the mission was accomplished. I even double-checked.

Halloween dawned a glorious day, filled with all the fun of pretending to be someone else for a brief time, watching children proudly parade, and relishing the creativity and joy in the frivolity that too often get buried underneath the routines.  That is for another writing.

Driving home, arm resting on the open car window, the sun brought out the sparkle of the beads.  All of a sudden I noticed it…that one rose colored bead, gleaming at me.  My first instinct was disappointment with myself for not having caught it the night before and for the rose bead tainting the Halloween theme.  It was my “everything has to be perfectly so” voice and annoyance that I had missed the mark. It wasn’t perfectly so.  Had anyone noticed that one little rose bead that didn’t fit? 

That “perfectly so” voice rises up all the time and it both is and isn’t me. It is me because it is an ingrained product of my own schooling and the questions, “Did I do it right? Will this bracelet get an A?”  There is nothing wrong with wanting to do things well, even wanting to do them perfectly once in a while. But my truth is that A’s were few and far between and ultimately I have come to realize that for me they were not necessarily the right criteria.  What I truly love is ”quirky,” “different,” “unique,” and even “imperfect” and I know in my heart that many of my teachers missed hearing what I thought because it didn’t fit the “right answer.”

The more I looked at the bracelet and thought about it, the more the other real me came out. I loved that little rose bead making it different than the usual Halloween jewelry. It gave the bracelet its own mark and a unique sparkle.  Next year I might even be sure to put something non-traditional in on purpose.

It made me think about the children I am with each day and the little rose bead that each one most likely has, discovered  and sparkling, or perhaps still unnoticed. I want to be absolutely certain (yes, in this I want to be “perfectly so”) that children whose lives I touch know their rose bead is just fine. It is better than fine.  It gives them a beautiful, unique design.  And who is to say there can’t be two or three? 

Sitting with my mother this past weekend on the real front porch of my childhood home, built by my great grandfather, I was once again mesmerized by the stories of her 99 years. Though I have heard so many over and over again I am like a young child as I listen, rarely tiring of hearing the adventures and often catching a new detail.  One story recounted when as a young child she and her siblings would either traverse the miles to school with the horse and buggy or by foot…no snowpants in those cold Minnesota winters and frozen bag lunches by the time they arrived. When she was a bit older, her family’s Model T was so light that if it happened to tip over into a ditch several people could simply set it upright again. She drove it over the Rocky Mountains, to California, New Mexico, Texas and other places with no air conditioning,  no GPS, no 70 MPH freeways.  During those years could she even imagine the huge fire engine red ‘54 Packard I learned to drive on, with all of its 1950’s amenities, spaciousness, and increased capacity for speed?  Or dreamed of the original VW Beetle she acquired in the 60’s with the trunk in the front?  With each couple of decades and each new car came the “wow!” factor.  How could she possibly have imagined the improved engineering, style, computerization, and all the developments that have brought us to the world of cars in 2007?  I think of cars as an example…it could be Victrolas (mine is in my office) to record players to tape players to CD players to IPods to ?????  What will it be? Times hundreds of categories. In the next 40 years what will I be reminiscing about that will seem so “old?”

For children growing up with IPods, IPhones, SUV’s, Tablet PC’s, witnessing regular excursions into space, access to countries and people one could only dream about when my mother was young, what will the world be like 10, 15, 20, 50, 100 years from now? What will our children have seen and experienced when they turn 99?  How do we wrap our imagination around that, for much of what has occurred is the use of amazing imaginations to move to the next level and the next and the next, to see new possibilities that are not yet known.  Where will the imaginations and conceptual skills of our children take us and them? What will they add to what is already known that will create the latest cutting edge product or contribute to the strenthening of global relationships?

In education we try to think about these questions so as to prepare our students well for their world ahead. It feels like a daunting task, but  it is also one that invites us to access and use our sense of wonder and dreaming and to explore our own untapped thinking capacities.

And…how will imaginations  be harnessed to preserve our world for 10, 15, 20, 50 and 100 years from now?  What will be the future views from front porches?