I rolled out of Philadelphia today wearing this:

and listening to this:

Kashmir by Led Zeppelin

because that's what it feels like to be insanely

justifiably

proud

Anniversaries & Cupcakes

Twelve years ago today, I started my first day teaching. I was twenty-two, having recently fled art school to teach third grade on the Navajo Reservation. I had a grand total of zero education classes to prepare me, although I had observed in a second grade classroom for two whole days.

My first classroom had two books and eighteen students who didn't speak English fluently. Sheep wandered across the playground. Our school janitor was arrested during the D.A.R.E. demonstration of drug-sniffing dogs. All things considered, it is kind of amazing that I am still teaching.

Outside of school, Valentine's Day isn't my favorite holiday. It's like the Peer Pressure holiday. Sharing love and affection with a significant other is endearing. It also happens in organically sweet and lovely gestures throughout a relationship, not necessarily on the one designated Relationship Day per year.

Valentine's Day with it's overt and loud declarations of affection seems to be not about the gestures so much as telling everyone else about them. "What did he do for Valentine's Day?" friends will ask over lunch the next day. There is an expectation that the answer will be good. Otherwise, excuses start flooding out.

"She's allergic to flowers."

"He's out of town..."

"No, really, who likes chocolate anyway?"

A few years ago, I decided to straight-talk my boyfriend.

"Here's what I need you to do," I whispered conspiratorially. "Send flowers to school. Have them delivered to the office. Everyone will see them, and they'll be impressed, and they'll think you're an awesome boyfriend. That way we're both off the hook."

He sent roses. My colleagues were impressed. I was relieved. And I haven't celebrated Valentine's Day with a boyfriend since.

Valentine's Day in elementary school is an entirely different matter. It's essentially Halloween Part 2, only with a different color scheme. Kids make mailboxes out of construction paper, glitter, and doilies. They hand out tiny paper cards, some homemade with carefully drawn marker hearts, others glossy with Harry Potter characters on the front.

The rules are simple, no matter the school: everyone gets a card.

I love Valentine's Day in school because it seems to be an entirely different holiday from the one that belongs to grown-ups. This is a joyful celebration where everyone is included. They celebrate their friendships, and they eat cake. It's simple and joyful and lovely. It's the way Valentine's Day should be.

What a perfect anniversary.

Over the past twelve years, I've had some amazing Valentine celebrations. One year, my nine year old boys fought over the Britney Spears Valentine's card. José ended up with it after he said what no one else dared - "I want it because she's hot."

Another year, commercial Valentine's weren't allowed in the school. My eleven students carted markers and watercolors up to our classroom loft for the afternoon. They each left school with gorgeous, handmade odes to friendship.

When I taught on an island, the entire community held a party for the seven children at the school. The kids ran around the community hall, shrieking and dancing while the adults drank red punch and ate frosted cupcakes.

This year, we had a dance party. A string of girls started a conga line. The leader, a quiet and thoughtful girl, held the hamster in her clear plastic ball. The boys sang along to Taylor Swift, forgetting to be embarrassed by listening to 'girl music.' One thoughtful parent navigated the requisite 'healthy' component of school parties with chocolate covered strawberries. It was sweet and lovely. It was exactly what Valentine's Day should be.

In Defense of Stuffies

A few years ago, I took a group of nervous fifth graders to "Step Up Day" at the local middle school. After touring the beautiful, expansive school, and settling in to a meticulously organized classroom, one boy tentatively asked, "where do we keep our stuffed animals?"

"Oh." The teacher glanced at me, eyes wide. "Oh, dear. Oh no. We don't allow stuffed animals in sixth grade."

I teach sixth grade now in a lovely private elementary school. My students sometimes grumble that they are too old for 'baby school.' They are ready for the jumble of packed hallways, class schedules, and school lunches. Sometimes, watching them crash through first graders with the lurching, awkward grace of pre-adolescents, I think for a second that they may be right.

The feeling lasts until the next time I read aloud. Then my tall, mature, thoughtful group of eleven and twelves pile onto our rug. Tucking pillows and stuffed animals under their heads, they snuggle in close to each other. They are eager for the next chapter, even though every few days one of them falls asleep, and has to be gently woken by a friend. "Did I miss anything?" the child will blink. "What happened in the story?"

Technically, pillows and stuffed animals are a violation of the fire code. They are flammable; therefore, they are unsafe for elementary classrooms. I pointed out that if we are going to ban flammable items from the classroom, perhaps we should be more concerned about the 800 or so books adjacent to the heater. Would four pillows really be more dangerous than the two bins of "Post-Apocalyptic Fiction"? Yes says the Fire Marshall.

To be honest, I didn't intend to have stuffed animals. Pillows, yes, because who really loves reading while sitting at a desk? But something interesting came up during the first few days of school. In the middle of a discussion on creating a positive classroom community, a child tremulously raised his hand.

"Would people be teased if they brought stuffed animals to school?"

I looked around the room. "What do you think, group? Are we a community where people can bring stuffed animals?"

I held my breath. Sixth graders are wonderfully sensitive to anything that might be perceived as "babyish." Stuffed animals seemed very young to me.

Instead, wide eyes stared back at me. One whispered, "You mean ... we could bring in stuffies?"

Bo

A week later, a three foot stuffed penguin moved in. His name is Bo, like President Obama's dog. He was followed by a two foot penguin, a blue whale, gray leopard, dolphin, and a seal.

After seeing the menagerie, another teacher cautioned that the stuffed animals would prove to be too distracting. My response was to purchase a live animal, a soft, peach-hued hamster. She is significantly more distracting than the stuffed animals, as she periodically waddles out of her sleeping den to eat, yawn, and briefly spin on her wheel. These rare moments of activity can incite a full class riot as kids stampede towards her cage. Thankfully, she accepts her celebrity with aplomb.

Recently, I've been thinking about the stuffed animals as we wade through sex ed lessons. My class has learned about everything from gender identity to sexually transmitted diseases. Meanwhile, many are shooting up like sunflowers, growing nearly as tall as me. They are talking about crushes, and about being a little heart-broken when someone doesn't like you back. They are looking ahead to the day when they graduate. They are ready to fly out of the nest. Are they growing too old for stuffed penguins and fat hamsters?

Then I walk in the classroom bright and early to discover one of them arranged the stuffies into a diorama. The penguins are reading a book together; the leopard is peering into the hamster cage; the seal and dolphin are swimming over the supply shelf. When my students arrive later, they jostle and nudge, wheedle over late homework, shout about the game or the show last night. Then one by one, they drift to the reading area to find a stuffie and a pillow. The classroom grows quiet with the hum of children absorbed in books. It's a stillness like holding a sleeping baby.

When the fire marshall comes, we rush to hide the stuffed animals in the spare lockers outside. Otherwise, we're a sixth grade classroom full of stuffed animals. Childhood is short. Why not make it last as sweetly and as long as possible?

To-Do

Weekends open up with that sweet freshness of potential. They remind me of clean sheets, fresh baked bread, and first snowflakes. I wake on Saturday with near glee because it is the weekend and I can do what-ever-I-want.

What might seem amusing, were it not me, is that my weekend is actually not free. I have all the things I put off throughout the week: laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning, and, ohhhh, right, grading. At the suggestion of a friend, I now measure my grading in inches, rather than assignments. This weekend was a four inch weekend. Hey, good for me! (It's wise not to worry too much until one passes the 12 inch mark.)

Every Friday I leave school full of enthusiasm that *this weekend* I will come in and reorganize my desk. Yes, this will be the weekend that I finally tackle that filing, that I grade that pile of math homework I forgot about, that yes, I become Super Teacher!

Since I have the attention span of a golden retriever, I promptly forget all of this on Saturday morning. I pop out of bed with a blank, happy mind, ready to go tromp off for something really, really fun. Yay! It is Sat.Ur.Day! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

In a surprise to no one but me, come Sunday morning I resent the weekend and all the cheerful, normal people strolling around my neighborhood. They are walking their dogs and playing with their children, and it makes me hate them just a tiny bit. I also hate the leisurely coffee drinkers at my favorite coffee shop, and I really hate the hikers who are enjoying this bizarrely warm winter we're having. By noon, I find myself just shy of a good, old fashioned hissy fit.

Sometimes this ends badly, wherein I convince myself that I don't really need clean clothes or dishes this week and hey, couldn't I do the grading on Monday morning?

Other times, like this weekend, I pretend I am training for some really tough event, like... joining the Marines... and I push!push!push! all day. It's sort of like doing pull-ups.

I

can eeek

out

one

more

research

paper.

Oof! Done!

At the end of these weekends, I wait patiently for my medal ceremony. Someone is going to praise my efforts, right? You know, give me a gold star? A cookie? A sticker?

No?

Oh.

Given that gold stars have yet to materialize, and my sanity is somewhat thinning, I changed my weekend to-do lists. These new lists are full of things that I have to do, and things I want to do, and a few somewhere in between. Even better, I get to color things in when I finish them. With colored pencils, you guys. Nothing says Accomplishment like coloring in the "clean kitty litter pan" with bright pink pencil. And this weekend, I have a few things I'm feeling particularly proud of. In no specific order, I get to color in the following:

Going to the Farmer's Market

Trapeze with a friend

Folding laundry

Grading four inches of papers

Finally cleaning the dishes that took over the kitchen

Sending out the recommendations

Reading a new, good book (that was not written for people under the age of 13)

Making peace with an ex

Buying hamster food

Singing in the car

There was more.

But really, that was enough.

Futures

"I am patient," I wrote in my cover letter for an elementary teaching position some eleven years ago this week. My proofreader - my mom - laughed out loud when she reached that line.

"I mean, I think it's possible," I stammered in response. "I am sure being a teacher will make me more patient... Do you need a glass of water? No? Can you stop laughing, please?"

It's no surprise, then, that I am waiting (terribly) this cold January. Technically, I haven't been waiting long. It's just since December, just until February. Or March. Or the near end of March. Not that I'm counting.

At the same time, I've been waiting for nearly a decade. I was twenty-two, celebrating good news with a solo Thai dinner in Albuquerque. I unfolded my futures over crispy spring rolls and green chicken curry. In my hand I held the option I wanted most of all. I smoothed it out, flashed it like a sparkly new ring, and decided not yet.

I like the other futures that opened out after that night. One led me to a teaching certificate, a Master's degree, a professor who handed me Annie Dillard and told me I had a true voice as a writer. The next future took me to a tiny island off the coast of Maine, a one room schoolhouse, two years of loss and grief after my mother died. Another led me to Pennsylvania, then back home, then through the rabbit hole of friends and passions and a beautiful lilac-scented new life.

It's beautiful, this life I have now. Sun-struck and full of joy, even on days like today with too many meetings and too much grading and children who ate way, way, way too much sugar. (Whatever scientist said sugar doesn't affect children deserves to be locked in a classroom after a birthday party celebration.)

Beautiful. Joyful. Good.

And yet...

I'm waiting for the future I didn't take nine years ago. I'm waiting, impatiently, terribly, waiting, to see if this time it's mine.

Intentions

I have a theory about New Year's Day. I think the way I enter a year shapes what follows. It is just another day, usually one that arrives after a late night, and yet... its very newness makes it delicate. The day, the year seems to open like a butterfly drying its just hatched wings. How could the first day not set the tone for the year that follows?

Last year, I welcomed the new year by walking over to my work, which handily (or not) happens to be in my backyard. The parking lot was full; my colleagues, elementary school teachers, were working in their classrooms. Yes, it was a day off, a national holiday, and yet there they were - making bulletin boards and grading papers.

I brought mimosas. Nothing says "Happy New Year!" like sharing cold prosecco and orange juice at work, right? It would have been more festive had anyone actually taken me up on my cheery beverages. Alas, everyone declined because they were too busy working.

And that, in a nutshell, sums up my year.

This year, I went to the ocean. It was a match of joy struck in my heart when I say the waves nudged against the horizon. I was so excited I gamboled around my friend, running in circles, dashing off to the waves and then skipping back again. She drily noted that the newly arrived golden retrievers on the beach were doing the same thing.

We walked and talked. I danced back from waves, tromped along seagull prints, and found a stone that looks like sunshine. I filled my head with sand and salt air and light.

Usually, the long drive to my new home, a verdant valley, is full of melancholy. It is ... hard... to leave behind friends, the ocean, history, family, even when there is so much to love in my adopted home.

This day?

It was lit with possibilities, with contentment, with ease. I may not know what will come in this year. Truthfully, this year I can't even pretend to know what will come. I do know there will be friends, and the ocean, and happiness. It's a small start, but it's just enough for now.

PS: Should you happen to be driving to the ocean in a contemplative mood, I highly recommend playing "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack" by Liars. (With thanks to Kelly for putting them first on her Best of 2011 mix.)

Tonight