Memories, Moments, and Dinosaurs...

Dear Maria,

Thought I might dash off a quick note as I know I promised to write more often. After nearly two hours outside this morning, Max is sacked out in the foyer. The cooler temperature had him just standing out back for stretches, nose lifted, taking in the fresh air. The kind of morning that is very nearly life-altering, but I won’t say fall-like, not yet.

A recent dust-up at a local high school over a student writing about getting a gun and killing the neighbors’ dinosaurs led a former student of mine to recount writing a gruesome little tale in my class one day. Apparently, rather than call for an administrative strike, I read it out loud on its merits as a narrative. I say apparently very pointedly because I don’t remember the moment at all. The student, yes, but not the assignment, not the particular work, not the moment in the classroom.

Perhaps I would have handled the moment differently ten years later or two years ago. I don’t know. Even if I could remember the event, I might not be able to recapture the tone of that class period—how was I feeling, what kind of mood the class was in, did I have some agenda in mind other than plot construction.

A moment in a life that is a stream of moments—well, so many, so very, very many that are not life-altering. But, a few may be—maybe only one.

The other evening I was being tailgated for about half a mile on the way home from Barnes & Noble. The front half of the sedan’s hood behind me was hidden from my view, but I could clearly see the driver in my rearview mirror applying eye makeup as she looked in her rearview mirror, using her left forearm to steer her car. We were moving along at 45 in a tight pack of vehicles on a divided stretch of a four-lane highway.

I tapped my brakes a few times, but she held her pace and distance. I could only watch ahead for even the slightest need to brake. Had I slammed on the brakes, she would not have been able to stop in time without crashing into me. Later, I wondered whether she was running late because her boss held her at work a bit longer than scheduled. Just a few minutes beyond what she expected. Maybe a child dumped a plate of spaghetti on the floor ten minutes before the babysitter arrived. Or did she build in applying makeup in the car to her travel time to be on time.

At any moment….

Right on cue, Max is nosing my hip and arm. Outside again to enjoy the lovely day. Good call, Max.

Hope all is well in your direction.

Yours, srk

 

 

Timelines...

Dear Maria,

Seems impossible and unforgiveable not to mention the death of Robin Williams. The comments from friends and family—so personal, this communal sorrow—expressed so eloquently the shared loss. Almost as if the moon were no longer in orbit.

What more do we need to learn than that today there are the individuals who share our world with us and tomorrow that may not be so. Fragile beings we are, and all us with no certain future here save our mortality.

Fortunately, I still had as a defense against the gloom the memory of an afternoon with two students—both wonderfully bright and thoughtful and articulate—who spoke to a sense of being on a timeline for reaching certain milestones. Each felt the markers ahead that would define their lives. Completing college, getting on with a career—which for these young women will most probably come to fruition.

Of course, I spoke to uncertainty, that life would come as answers to questions that may never be voiced. My trump card was the same one I always toss onto the table—not becoming a high school teacher until I was 27.

That autobiographical note perhaps speaks more to my lapses in judgment or a lack of direction, but even so I claim it also makes the larger point that life may not be a series of dots connecting.

The past few weeks, Max has decided that we should move our morning walk closer to sunrise, and this morning after the high school bus chugged through the neighborhood and as the first light touched the treetops, off we went. A slender hawk has become our morning herald as her shrieks begin at dawn. I watched crows fly at her to ruffle her feathers, but she held fast to her limb and continued her shrill cries.

Max never lifted his nose from the ground, and the elementary schoolchildren gathering on the corner were too stunned to care either. And so all that human energy that must be expended to push through the first day back in the classrooms is unleashed yet again. Clocks and bells and calendars to the forefront for so many of our friends, our colleagues.

For me, after two mugs of coffee, Max’s low growl from the foyer and the hawk’s morning call are enough to set the day in motion.

Be well, and may what unfolds only bring goodness into your world.

Yours, srk

 

 

Sugar, That Is Sweet

Dear Maria,

Rain, rain, rain, rain, no rain. And no rain today. No one wants the suck-the-life-out-of-you-heat that can define an August around here, but we don’t want cloudy skies either. Maybe time to move to Oahu. Oh, right—two hurricanes pointed that way.

A few days ago, in some sort of fit of I don’t know what, I decided to check the sugar count for one of my favorite 16-ounce coffee and ice cream slurps. Okay, I didn’t want to see the number 66 as in grams of sugar. My frame of reference is a snack bar with 6 grams. Hmmm, 11 snack bars at one sitting?

Next mistake, checking on how many grams of sugar in a teaspoon. Only 4. So I’m essentially putting 16-plus teaspoons of sugar in my grande serving. I didn’t want to know that. At least I don’t put sugar in my morning coffee, so I have that going for me.

Need a feel good about myself moment. Let’s see, switched to brown rice and wheat pasta. Check. And check.

I’m hardly one to be a food scold—or a scold about much of anything for that matter. Anyone who has seen me chow down half a pizza or a ridiculously huge serving of shrimp and grits, or been along on the once-a-year mecca to take on a sausage cheeseburger, would thwack me upside the head for any pretense of better living through better eating.

I do remember an article in Esquire many years ago touting a simple strategy that urged reducing caloric intake by 10%. Leave it on the plate, leave it in the cup or glass. For me, switching to a 7-inch skillet upended my version of serving size. True confession: Measuring out a third of a cup of cooked rice crushed my spirit. I am a half-cup-serving guy now.

Of course I am going out for lunch today. Maybe going with the fish tacos, maybe going with chicken quesadillas. Definitely going with the pecan pie—sans a la mode.

Hey, I’m no paragon of dietary virtues.

Have fun, and be sweet.

Yours, srk