Graduation

(me at NHS graduation, May 18th, 1994)

I am going to speak at graduation this year.

Ever since I started teaching at Niwot High, I have wanted to speak at graduation. I think it is because I went to Niwot and my dad taught at Niwot and my birth was announced over the PA system. I've taught there for 7 years (this year will be 8) and it just seems to get better every year. My students are so funny and interesting and weird and odd and real and human and wonderful. I feed off their energy.

I was so honored to get the "official" invitation from the sweet Student Council reps, I couldn't stop smiling. Then I had to email my people and let them know, and I asked them what they would say. So far, I have received some great responses. I have so many ideas about what to say and how to say it. But the idea of coming around full circle, of stepping out onto the field where I graduated, fills me with a sense of honor. I tell you, if I had won the Nobel Prize this week I wouldn't be happier than I am now.

So what would YOU tell the graduating class? I am compiling ideas and weaving them all together. Hopefully, I will have something better than "Life is like a backpack". :-)

Love is all around

Valentine's Day is coming up and I decided to send some Valentine love out to people I think are just the Bee's Knees. My valentines are (in no particular order):

• Patient, hopeful Kara and her inspired prayers for me
• Jen for her humor and friendship (and encyclopedic knowledge of all things Royal)
• Sammie, Jen's son who is just... so..... DARLING

• Angie who eats lunch with me daily and reminds me to laugh.
  
• Shannon for braving the isolation of the South Pole with a wink and a smile (START YOUR BLOG, SHANNIE!)

• Amy for her vivid art and infectious laughter
• My momma--knitting stuff for me and sending me care packages
• Aunt Marti and her Scrabble game
• All the students who make me laugh (AND the ones who don't)
• My cats... but then I feel like crazy cat lady who talks to her cats..... ummm...
• Gerard Butler now, always, forever

There are many many more....but I wanted to take a sec and give a valentine's shout out to some of the lovely lovely people who make me smile and who remind me on Valentine's Day that while I am not IN love, I do get to LOVE every day.

Judgment January

For the last month I have had a pervading feeling of, well, bitchiness. I seemed to filter all events through my lens of shrewish crappery. I labeled January "Judgment January" for the simple reason that there was a lot to judge and be bitchy about. Believe me, my gossip filter was off and if someone had business to get me all up in, I was up in there, and I had an opinion about it. I think it began when I started reading a popular book by a popular Christian writer who shall not be named here. I was super annoyed by this writer. Irritated by his writing style (that, considering how many books he has published, should have improved by now) and his message that I feel has already been stated and written about many many times, I wanted to toss the book across the room in annoyance. And to top all this off, I kinda feel like this writer has sold out a bit. I know, super bitch. It just got worse from there. My students annoyed me, my friends annoyed me, even my cats were pushing my buttons.

I was talking about this with dear Kara yesterday and as I told her all that I had been bitchin about, I noticed that my blood pressure was rising and I was getting angry. Really angry... UP-IN-ARMS kind of angry about this laundry list of blargh. But that anger was really about something else. It is easy to stand in judgment over others, period. We do it all the time. It is really easy to turn off my judgy filter when I am scared or conflicted or hurt or fearful. Well, I am scared, conflicted, hurt and fearful. The journey my aunt is on is scary for all of us. Pancreatic cancer is a bully. And knowing my aunt is not herself, is in any kind of pain, is alone is beyond my coping skill set right now. My family is stoic, quiet, and persevering while I am emotionally turbulent, loud, and ready to throw in the towel. I want to go get this done. I want to take care of her. I want to stand up to cancer like Gandalf to the Shadowfax and say "YOU SHALL NOT PASS".

So that was January. Now Tuesday is the first of February, and February is about love and all that shit. Stoopid love. Love comes in and heals what is wounded. Love is intolerant of judgment. Great. I guess then February is going to have to be about Forgiveness.

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them" --Mother Theresa

All I have is this poem

My aunt is in the hospital with pain related to her pancreatic cancer and I feel so utterly helpless. There isn't anything I can do to make her hurt less. And I am so bloody far away from New York. My hands are raised up and I want answers, dammit! I want to feel some certainty in this day and know that everyone is tucked in bed safe and sound. These spoke-halting moments I can't figure out and I can't get right seem to be a symptom of my inner futility. The only thing I can do is go back to this great Miller Williams poem.

Love Poem With Toast
Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.

The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

from Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems, 1999
University of Illinois Press

WTF... Where's the Forgiveness???

First of all... did you see the Octomom on Oprah? She definitely opened up a new can of crazy in that hour. Oprah was even a little stunned by her obvious anxiety. She said that she had kids because she was addicted to the unconditional love that kids give. Really? Reaaaallly?? Here's the thing, that woman has to live with her addiction FOR-EVER!

Okay, I will get off my hooty-tooty high horse for a minute. What the Octomom couldn't be honest about was why she had a hole in her heart that not even 14 kids could fill. Denial is coursing through her life, and believe me, there are rapids in that river of hers. What I took from that really awkward hour of train-wreck TV (other than a profound appreciation for Suze Orman... LOVE her!) is the painful understanding that we have to be honest enough with ourselves and gracious enough to deal with the honesty.

Topic #2: I went snowshoeing today. It was awesome.



I live in a part of Colorado where it seems that a person is measured by how many miles they run and how many fourteeners they climb. I am the opposite of that. And when I get out in the wild, I try to enjoy it for enjoyment sake, not because I have some crazy bucket list. Summer is harder to hike in. It's crowded and hot and my engine runs into overheat pretty fast. Then I feel like Shrek-ette huffing up a dusty, dirty trail. But in the winter, the crisp, cool, clean air seems to inflate my soul and I fly up a trail. Plus, everyone on the trail is on wobbly snowshoes, a great equalizer. You may have climbed Maroon Bells, Climby McMachoman, but you have crappy balance, ha HA! I don't mean to be so bitter, but sometimes I just wish I lived around non-mountain obsessed people. Like people from Kansas. Bless you, Kansassians!



But all this leads to my main idea, which is that we all need a little forgiveness. When the tragedy in Tucson happened last week, I was reminded about how much forgiveness we need to give ourselves. Don't get me wrong, the shooting was a senseless, horrible crime and I weep to think of the lives lost. But that is a whole other blog post. I guess I wonder if that gunman would've opened fire on a crowd of people if he was able to be really honest and gracious with himself. Let's not wonder about this guy's motives for a sec. Whatever motivated him was secondary to how much he hates himself. Taking that self-hate out on an available target is really cowardly, but really easy. My mom always said that 99% of how someone treats you is about them and not about you. I wonder how much of that guy gunning down innocent people is about his own self-loathing and the inability to deal with that hatred. I wonder how much of Octomom's problem is about how she can't open that big, dark box of painful honesty in her emotional attic. I wonder how much of my antipathy towards Climby McMachoman is really about me.

I beat myself up a lot. I'm a bit of a bully when it comes to picking on my own faults. And then my friends get all up in my face and tell me to stop beating their friend up. We all do it. And each time we beat ourselves up, we build a brick wall of shame, denial, and defensiveness. Listen to that Patty Griffin song, "Forgiveness" and try to hear what she is singing. Times are hard, life is unfair, difficult and painful. We do life because we know there will be moments in the sunshine. But the hard work is to be honest and gracious with ourselves.

"We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us." --Martin Luther King Jr.