Garth, Ruthie, and Chuck

When I woke up this morning and heard the radio guy say, "It's February 7, 2019. Garth Brooks is 57 years old today,"  I wondered, in my half-awake state, how he could be possibly be soooo old. It seemed a little sad and wrong.

A little while later, I realized it was my friend Ruth's birthday, also. Just a few months older than I am, she too was turning 57. I reached for my phone to text her my best wishes.

Here's our exchange:

42 Minutes a Day

Having a student teacher reminds me of what a complex task we tackle every day: mastering content, delivering engaging instruction, and managing a mini-mob of evolving human beings. It is a little like juggling the universe.

And, how odd it is to sit on the sidelines and observe the students in my classes being instructed by someone else! The novelty of the perspective is bright and shiny; I have the opportunity to actually look at each one of the 131 kids I teach, in real time, and see the person he or she is, with a whole world of hopes and worries and dreams and losses.

New Sheriff in Town

My student teacher has been getting her feet wet, trying a little instruction over the last couple days. Even though we explained who she was and what her role would be, the shift has taken some students by surprise. They enter the room and are astounded to find me at my desk and the intern up front by the smart screen.

"C'mon guys!" she encouraged them this morning. "You need your iPad and your writing notebook! Let's get ready to go!"

One student stood by her table, stunned. "But... where are we going?"

The Grind

What? Rising at the usual hour and working a full day, five days a week?

There must be some mistake!

Now about that 61 degrees in February...

Freewriting

"We can write about anything, right?" asked a student the other day when I introduced the new daily free-writing assignment.

"Anything," I assured her.

"Then I'm going to write about that!" she pointed out the window and up. "What is it anyway?"

I looked at the skeleton of the elementary school being built in our former parking lot. "The school?" I tried. She shook her head. "Those big wooden beams wrapped in plastic?"

"No! Those white things in the sky! There were only 2 before, but now there are six."

I looked up, way up. Six bright white contrails scored the brilliant blue sky. "Do you really not know what those are?" I asked with wonder. 

I could tell by her face that she did not. 

"They're airplanes," I explained. "It's so cold that their exhaust freezes and leaves a thin cloud behind them."

"But I see them in summer, too," she replied.

"They are miles above us!" I said. "It's always cold up there."

She was silent. We looked at the sky together. I was thinking of all the hundreds of people aboard those flights, wondering where they were going and why. I don't know what she was thinking, but I hope she wrote about it.

Good for What Ails Ya

Sometimes it's easy to focus on the inconvenience and, let's be honest, expense of having a dog. Arrangements have to be considered before spending any significant time away from the house; quality food and veterinary care are pricey. Plus, when your dog is young and energetic, she needs considerable exercise, every day.

It was this last condition that brought us to the dog "gym" at noon today. It was too cold and muddy for Lucy to play anywhere else, so Heidi arranged a crew of three of her canine buddies to meet us down there for open hours. The place is really nothing more than a cavernous industrial space with inexpensive agility equipment, rubber mats thrown on the floor, a couple of skylights punched into the 25 foot steel roof, and whitewashed cinder block walls with colorful frolicking dogs stenciled upon them, but the joy that being there gives Lucy is contagious. Watching her literally leap and bound and bounce and pounce, tail up and tongue out, is a warm remedy for any cold, muddy day.

Imagined Life

Yesterday I had an appointment at home at 3, which forced me to dash out the door along with the students a little after the last bell of the day. At 3:30, when the serviceman was finished, I started dinner. Josh and a couple of his friends were coming over at 6, and I made a hearty vegetable and shrimp posole and baked a cranberry cake with caramel glaze and whipped cream. Next, I vacuumed and set the table, then laid a fire to start a little later. Soon it was time to go get Heidi from school, so I bundled Lucy into the car, and she bounced around the frozen fields outside our building for 20 minutes or so. On the way home, we got a text from our neighbor, and ended up inviting her over for dinner, too. It was a lovely evening, enjoyed, I think, by all, and as we loaded the last of the dessert plates into the dishwasher, I couldn't help but wonder what else in the world I could accomplish if I left school every day at my contract time.