Lone Star State of Mind
I was in the airport, getting redressed in my shoes, jacket, belt and whatnot, remarking to the guy beside me that in my wildest dreams I never thought I’d be undressing in public and I never wanted to do it again. I was also thinking,
“Why are you struggling to grab your belongings from plastic bins rolling off a conveyor belt? Trying to get a guilty look off your face in case one of your liquid bottles is 3.1 ounces? Here at 6:00 AM when you could be home asleep with your husband?”
Why to get to the other side of the country, San Antonio, Texas to be specific. I never thought I’d go back there.
And why was a northern girl going to the Lone Star state? For business, the siren call of work or more specifically, STAR. Last year I was trained to teach this new reading method and now I’d been chosen to train other teachers. So I was off to the Student Achievement in Reading Training of Trainers or “STAR TOT” for short. I felt like I was going to a small fried potato convention.
The DOE, in its infinite wisdom, had chosen four of us--Merilee, Carey, Elaine and me, to be trained and so that is how I found myself standing in Logan in semi undress. I was grateful that I was at least given the choice of stepping through a regular scanner or the new full body one because I don’t like the idea of a stranger inspecting my middle-aged body x-ray. And I know I don’t ever want to be patted down by anyone with a TSA badge, but that’s a whole other column.
My flight was short so I thought I could stand anything for four hours until I saw the plane. I don’t know how they did it but they took a full sized plane and turned it into a miniature sardine can. They must have added at least 20 extra rows of seats. I could barely fit into the bathroom and couldn’t help but wonder how the taller, healthier riders were going to manage. That was a visual that wouldn’t leave me.
Griping aside, the flight was fine and I made it to my hotel in downtown San Antonio in time to enjoy the hot humid air. I settled in and waited for Carey, Merilee and Elaine to arrive. That evening we went down to the Riverwalk, which is located about 2 stair landings down from the sidewalk and meanders through the city, and had a celebratory Mexican dinner. Afterwards Merilee and I joined one of the barges for a tour. We ended the evening by getting completely lost but thankfully a pair of mariachi players got us back to our hotel. We fell asleep totally unprepared for the deluge that would hit us the next morning.
The next day we learned what the year ahead would be like. From 8:00-5:00 we stayed in the same conference room (with an adjoining room for a quick lunch) wistfully gazing out the windows at the happy people outside, while we were fed information. We learned that there were only 30 STAR trainers in the U.S. and that our cohort only had 10 applicants. We learned that we had so much to read, remember and organize that we might as well give up now. We learned that the certification period was a year and that it would be “rigorous”. We already knew that our first training would be in January so Merilee and I would have only about two months to get it all together but I was never going to do this, never! It was reassuring that our former STAR trainers, Jane and Becky, understood and appreciated the crazy people from Boston. They had confidence in us and that helped but we were still scared silly at what was ahead of us.
We also learned that the Massachusetts contingent was the rowdiest cohort there (we couldn’t shut up if we tried) and Merilee and I were sisters separated at birth. Those three days we also discovered how much coffee we could consume before we got killer heartburn. We also learned that Elaine’s daughter-in-law was expecting a baby at any second and that she was having a rough time. For 2 ½ days we jumped each time her cell phone beeped. We thought she would never have that baby!
But it was the final evening that gave me chills. Merilee had never been to San Antonio and she was determined to see the Alamo. Unfortunately it closed before we got out of each day’s training. But the last night Merilee, Elaine and I decided to walk over to at least see the outside walls. As I stood alone before the gate and gazed into the gardens beyond I felt a soft whisper at my shoulder. It was Mark, my first husband, with whom I had visited this Texas shrine over 30 years ago.
“I came back Mark,” I said. “How about that, after 35 years I came back to Texas, and I have the feeling that you never really left. Isn’t life funny?”
I could feel him smile and hear his twang answering, “I’m glad y’all came back after all. I somehow thought you might.”
Yeah, I keep learning over and over again, never say never.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Cotnrol Issues
Control Issues
Last week we spent the better part of a day going through the boxes that my mom had shipped here from Israel. There were only 13 boxes left of the household that she had dissolved last summer. I wonder if there’s some sort of mathematical life equation for this as in, forty years divided by thirteen boxes equals the ratio of mom’s old life to her current one?
There we sat a mirror image of what we had been doing a few months ago. But this time mom was deciding what she wanted to take to her apartment and what she wanted to store in our attic. The movers had written just one word on every carton and it seemed that when they didn’t know an English equivalent they just wrote books or clothes. That meant we had to open them all.
As I took out a beautiful blue vase, or a picture or a book, mom would gaze at it, lost in thought. I was wondering what was going through her mind as she saw all her things come to light and was about to ask when she said,
“Why did I bring all of this? Why did I think it was all so important that I had to pack it up and ship it thousands of miles? Now it all looks like a bunch of junk!”
I was stunned. I never expected her to say that. I remembered the arguments we had over what to ship and what to leave. She saw memories but I saw things that could be easily replaced. Not the photographs, letters or one of a kind remembrances—those were going of course, but household items and clothing. Mom would show me something with a wistful look and I would say, “Absolutely not! We can buy a better, newer, cheaper one in the States instead of paying a fortune to ship it!” I guess I was being practical, but in retrospect I was also heartless. My only excuse is that there seemed to be so much to organize in too short a time and every little thing became too much.
Most of the time mom gave in, but every now and then she would hand me something and say, “This is going!” and I wouldn’t argue because I hated being the gatekeeper of her memories.
So hearing her say that everything we had shipped so carefully meant so little to her now, I was shocked. And so was mom. She was confused. “Why do I feel this way, I don’t understand? I wanted to bring all of it and now I see it and I don’t want it at all. How could I have changed in a few months?”
When I thought about it though, it made sense.
“Mom when we were leaving Israel you were sad and angry and definitely feeling out of control of your life. Even though Shatz and I told you that there was a lovely home waiting for you in the States, you hadn’t seen it so you couldn’t imagine it. All you knew was that you had been so happy here and if you had a choice, if you were in control of your life, you wouldn’t be leaving. And so you wanted to bring everything you could of your old life with you. But now, you’ve settled in, you love your apartment, you’ve made friends, you’re enjoying yourself and so all these things, that seemed so precious before, have become just things.”
After thinking a bit she agreed that it was true. So we compromised: I asked her not to get rid of anything. We had plenty of room in the attic. She could go through it little by little—keeping some things, giving things to her granddaughters, getting rid of others, but she would take her time. And that’s how we left it.
We all long to be in control of our lives. There are even heady times when we think we are. I spend most of my time uselessly thinking that I can control what happens even though I am endlessly proven wrong. This fall has been a perfect example. I have spent the last few months filling student slots in my GED program. I have tested and assessed and interviewed scores of applicants, placed them in classes and written lesson plans.
And then reality appears: A student’s brother is shot in Mattapan. Another student looses a friend to a machine gun while shopping in her neighborhood convenience store. I have listened to my students describe a life where gun shots are as common as rain, where the simple act of shopping at the corner store means taking your life in your hands, where they cannot allow their children to play in the street for fear that they will be slaughtered.
We have lost students to murder, addiction, cancer, homelessness and even lack of money for bus fare. One of our top students cannot find a place for his family to live and is facing eviction. Others live in shelters facing all the difficulties involved in living what we simply take for granted--a “normal” life.
Despite all this, or rather because of all this, we do our best one student at a time. And I will have to learn the hard lesson that I can’t control a damn thing—except perhaps, my attitude.
Last week we spent the better part of a day going through the boxes that my mom had shipped here from Israel. There were only 13 boxes left of the household that she had dissolved last summer. I wonder if there’s some sort of mathematical life equation for this as in, forty years divided by thirteen boxes equals the ratio of mom’s old life to her current one?
There we sat a mirror image of what we had been doing a few months ago. But this time mom was deciding what she wanted to take to her apartment and what she wanted to store in our attic. The movers had written just one word on every carton and it seemed that when they didn’t know an English equivalent they just wrote books or clothes. That meant we had to open them all.
As I took out a beautiful blue vase, or a picture or a book, mom would gaze at it, lost in thought. I was wondering what was going through her mind as she saw all her things come to light and was about to ask when she said,
“Why did I bring all of this? Why did I think it was all so important that I had to pack it up and ship it thousands of miles? Now it all looks like a bunch of junk!”
I was stunned. I never expected her to say that. I remembered the arguments we had over what to ship and what to leave. She saw memories but I saw things that could be easily replaced. Not the photographs, letters or one of a kind remembrances—those were going of course, but household items and clothing. Mom would show me something with a wistful look and I would say, “Absolutely not! We can buy a better, newer, cheaper one in the States instead of paying a fortune to ship it!” I guess I was being practical, but in retrospect I was also heartless. My only excuse is that there seemed to be so much to organize in too short a time and every little thing became too much.
Most of the time mom gave in, but every now and then she would hand me something and say, “This is going!” and I wouldn’t argue because I hated being the gatekeeper of her memories.
So hearing her say that everything we had shipped so carefully meant so little to her now, I was shocked. And so was mom. She was confused. “Why do I feel this way, I don’t understand? I wanted to bring all of it and now I see it and I don’t want it at all. How could I have changed in a few months?”
When I thought about it though, it made sense.
“Mom when we were leaving Israel you were sad and angry and definitely feeling out of control of your life. Even though Shatz and I told you that there was a lovely home waiting for you in the States, you hadn’t seen it so you couldn’t imagine it. All you knew was that you had been so happy here and if you had a choice, if you were in control of your life, you wouldn’t be leaving. And so you wanted to bring everything you could of your old life with you. But now, you’ve settled in, you love your apartment, you’ve made friends, you’re enjoying yourself and so all these things, that seemed so precious before, have become just things.”
After thinking a bit she agreed that it was true. So we compromised: I asked her not to get rid of anything. We had plenty of room in the attic. She could go through it little by little—keeping some things, giving things to her granddaughters, getting rid of others, but she would take her time. And that’s how we left it.
We all long to be in control of our lives. There are even heady times when we think we are. I spend most of my time uselessly thinking that I can control what happens even though I am endlessly proven wrong. This fall has been a perfect example. I have spent the last few months filling student slots in my GED program. I have tested and assessed and interviewed scores of applicants, placed them in classes and written lesson plans.
And then reality appears: A student’s brother is shot in Mattapan. Another student looses a friend to a machine gun while shopping in her neighborhood convenience store. I have listened to my students describe a life where gun shots are as common as rain, where the simple act of shopping at the corner store means taking your life in your hands, where they cannot allow their children to play in the street for fear that they will be slaughtered.
We have lost students to murder, addiction, cancer, homelessness and even lack of money for bus fare. One of our top students cannot find a place for his family to live and is facing eviction. Others live in shelters facing all the difficulties involved in living what we simply take for granted--a “normal” life.
Despite all this, or rather because of all this, we do our best one student at a time. And I will have to learn the hard lesson that I can’t control a damn thing—except perhaps, my attitude.
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