E is for Everything I Want to Write About is Taken!

Today is my sister Courtney’s birthday, but I can’t write about that, because the S, the C, and the B are already taken in my alphabiography. Nor can I write about my brother, Bill, or book reviews, or corn on the cob, or SOLs, or Survivor, or scolding students for being sassy when they should be silent. I can’t write about my magnificent mother, either, because the M is gone, or people without pencils, or getting good grades, or zipping zippers, or having headaches, or yackety yacking. I might have been forever fooling with fruitless fantasies, except for the existence of the ever-excellent E!

Life Lesson: A little alliteration is always a last alternative.

P is for PostHunt

The fourth annual Washington Post PostHunt commences on Sunday, June 5, at 11:30 AM. What is that? you ask? Well, the PostHunt is kind of a puzzle-solving scavenger hunt that anyone can participate in. If you want to play, you just have to show up at Freedom Plaza on that day.

The premise of the whole crazy thing is to "challenge participants to solve five ridiculously complex puzzles plus a final End Game in less than four hours. Finding the answers to those puzzles requires following a clue, possibly scrambling to another location, pausing to scratch your head and consider what it all means, then repeating."

My nephew, Treat, and I have joined the competition each year since it started back in 2008. We have had varying success, never solving fewer than 4 of the 5 puzzles, but never solving the end game, either. On the Saturday before, we pore over the Washington Post Magazine for the first clues, familiarizing ourselves with the official map, and making note of anything that may play a role in one of the puzzles. Then on Sunday morning, we hop the metro and join the throngs that are gathering for the challenge. The weather does not always cooperate-- we have been drenched, frozen, and fried, but it doesn't really matter, because it's really a lot of fun.

Maybe we'll see you there this year?

Life Lesson: It's the journey, not the destination, that counts.

G is for A Gift from the Sea

On the first day of our vacation in South Carolina, my mom called us down to the beach to see all the sea stars. There were hundreds, and since this was our first time there, we had no idea if it was a normal thing in those parts. In any case, it was exceptional to us. Over the course of the week, the starfish became much rarer, and we turned our attention to finding sand dollars and shells. I did pull a live whelk from its hiding place in a tidal pool, but as tempting as it was to keep it for its shell, after a few photos I reburied it with a wish and a prayer.

I recognized the whelk from a day trip I took to the Outer Banks one February a long time ago. On that day, it was sunny but freezing, and the beach was deserted. Huge, unbroken whelk shells, the kind and size you never find just lying on the beach, were everywhere-- so many that we couldn't carry them all to the car.  I wasn't worried though, because I was coming back in a few weeks, and I planned to fill a bucket with them then. I would have, too, except they were all gone.

Life Lesson: The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

B is for Bike

My first bike was a purple Huffy with high handle bars, a banana seat, and coaster brakes. It never had any training wheels-- my parents taught me to ride it by running along beside me holding on to the back of the seat and then giving me a push. After that, I got my momentum by starting on the downhill of the driveway, but it wasn't long before I could ride by myself. I loved that bike.

A few years later, my brother and I got bright yellow ten speeds for our birthdays, and they were nice, too, but never as comfy as my Huffy. We raced the ten speeds around the block, but it was always too close to call, so we decided to race in opposite directions. That was an epic crash.

In high school, I didn't own a bike-- it was a boarding school in Switzerland, after all-- but the school did offer bike trips, and two of the best weeks of my life were spent on a bike, first riding through Tuscany in the fall, and the next spring touring the south of France.

After college I lived at the beach for a few years, and I had a sweet beach cruiser in those days. It was black with hot pink detail, padded handle bars, a wide comfortable seat, and again with the coaster brakes. I rode it up and down the boardwalk and all over town, but when I moved up here, it was just no good on the hills and I had to get rid of it.

Now I have a nice little hybrid. It's the prettiest pale shade of robin's egg blue, and with eighteen speeds it can comfortably take me as far as I'm inclined to go. It has a loud bell for passing folks on the trail, a water bottle cage, and a rack on the back. It even has a bracket for my iPhone on the handlebars. I can't say I ride it as much as I'd like, but I enjoy it every time I take it out, and just like all of the others, I LOVE my bike.

Life Lesson: Keep on rolling!

F is for Finders Keepers

I found a five dollar bill on the ground today; it was just lying there all alone, and there was not another person in sight. Now I consider that pretty lucky, although I do feel a little bad for whoever lost it. When I was little, finding a penny was a pretty big deal, but back then a penny would buy a piece of candy or at least a gumball from the machine at the grocery store. A dime was a small fortune, a quarter untold wealth, and a dollar? Forget about it!

I pocketed the five, but these days when I walk past pennies in the parking lot or on the pavement, they are hardly worth bending over for, and I usually leave them there. I confess that I feel a little guilty every time, though. In the back of my mind I wonder if there will come a day when that one single cent would have made all the difference.

One time when we were kids my sister found two hundred bucks on the tarmac as she was walking out to board a plane. She reported it to the crew, and they said that if no one claimed it during the fourteen hour flight, then it was hers. Guess what? She got to keep the money and spend it with a clear conscience. Now that was a fun vacation for her!

Life Lesson: Whatever is found has also been lost.

C is for Cooking

I don't know why people think cooking is hard. I love to cook--you just get your ingredients and slice, chop, dice, toss, saute, grill, bake, season, marinate, dress, flambe, and/or sauce them, put them on the plate or in the bowl, grab a fork, spoon, knife and then enjoy. What could be hard about that?

Now writing on the other hand... that's hard!

Life lesson: When the going gets tough, the tough sit down and have a nice meal.

M is for Milkweed

When I was a kid we used to call the silky puff balls that would occasionally float by on the wind "wish bugs." We believed that if you caught one, you could make a wish on it and then blow it gently back into the sky. Your wish would come true as long as it didn't land on the ground.

Later I found out that those silky little parachutes are part of the milkweed plant and worked just as the puffs on a dandelion do to carry the seeds. But even now I still feel a strong impulse to chase after any wish bugs I might see, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure most of them end up on the ground, especially since that's what they are meant to do.

There's a poem called The Milkweed by Richard Wilbur that I really like:

Anonymous as cherubs
over the crib of God
white seeds are floating
out of my burst pod.

What power had I
before I learned to yield?
Shatter me, great wind:
I shall possess the field.

I love this poem because of the second stanza. The idea that sometimes you have to yield or bend to be successful is something that I find easy to forget. I also like the image of all the milkweed seeds floating over the field: it makes me think of teaching. The seeds are our students going off into the world in all different directions, and even though we might not know where they land, they "shall possess the field."

Life Lesson: Sometimes you have to yield to be successful.