It’s quiet when they leave. When supper was finished, the younger boys washed the dishes and mopped the floor, while the older ones packed and I baked banana cake. Then, an hour later, we piled down the stairs and out to the parking lot, where we waved goodbye, Sound of Music style, to the seniors….
Category: Life
A New Year: Reading and Recommending
You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. II Corinthians 3:2 (English Standard Version) It’s like a high school version of Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. “If you teach all the eleventh graders English–and both they and you do a reasonably good job, and…
This I Believe 2012: Seasons
I’ve shared with some of you in the past that my students start each year with their own statements of belief, in the form of a “This I Believe” essay, modeled on the National Public Radio segment of the same title. With the start of school three days away, here’s a look into my teacher…
Moving In
We didn’t always live on Mango Street. Before that we lived on Loomis on the third floor, and before that we lived on Keeler. Before Keeler it was Paulina, and before that I can’t remember. But what I remember most is moving a lot. Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street We finish just before lunchtime, then prepare plates…
Getting Rides
“And how are you different now, since moving to Germany?” asked a long-time friend, three days before I returned to Kandern for my third year at Black Forest Academy. “I think I’ve learned the most about living in a community,” I replied, thinking about the richness of the last two years in the intimacy of…
Retying the Knots
#12: Front Porches -From “Things Kristi Likes About America” 2012 Edition It’s already nearly dark when we come out to the porch. Or rather, when we sit down on the front steps, between the house and the giant fir tree in the front yard. We’ve always called it a porch, these seven stairs leading to…
Reading Every Word
“There is much beauty here, because there is much beauty everywhere…” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet There’s a moment in the first installment of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, when Sam pauses at the edge of a field full of sunflowers, a few steps behind his hobbit companion, Frodo. “If I take…
Garage Archaeology
After an hour, the floor disappears. Everywhere I look, a fine layer of dusty paperclips, dusty books, and dusty teacups covers the hardwood floors of the Green Room, the office guest room which used to be my room, which before that was Noah’s room. Today, it’s a museum of my belongings, all dragged up from…
The Shorthand of Shared History
The sun is setting over the evergreen spiked canyon as we drive west of Leavenworth, Washington in the North Cascade Mountains. We’ve been climbing–my brother, sister, sister’s boyfriend, brother’s friend and I–for most of the afternoon, and now three of us are searching for a place to camp. “Couldn’t we just light it with toilet…
Back Again
We didn’t fly much when I was a kid. We were a road-trip-and-camping family. These road trips were long affairs–typically way down to California and back–but they were for sure on the ground. That’s why flying always seems like a miracle to me, and a bit like cheating. Driving takes time, but it makes sense. You…
The Way Home 