Looking On

The Halifax Explosion has been very much on my mind lately. I have even entertained the notion of perhaps going there, looking at the harbor, trying to imagine what is must have been like on that tragic day when all those people, ordinary people like me, were drawn to their windows to watch those burning ships and were killed, maimed, or blinded as a result of their onlooking. What is it about catastrophic events that draws us to look on?

My principal was fired this week. I have been an onlooker of this catastrophic event, watching and knowing that the handwriting was on the wall for quite some time. I watched, saying what I could when I could, knowing that it was futile. Onlookers are sometimes killed, sometimes maimed, sometimes blinded, sometimes escape unharmed, but seldom walk away unaffected.

If January was any indication of our activity level for the rest of 2006, I will be worn to a frazzle by December. There was the Visioning Retreat, Study Group meeting, mentoring session at USM, coffeehouse session with live music and poetry reading (which I skipped because by Friday night I could no longer put one foot in front of the other). Tomorrow night, we have a Continuity meeting at Cane Creek and I should be looking through my books right now, selecting titles to take to the book swap we're having, but it's really difficult for me to let go of a book. Right now, I'm reading six--five about writing and one about labor unions in the twenties( it is impossible for me to think in terms of abject poverty, of waking each day and having one's primary objective being to survive until day's end). One of the books I'm reading is entitled "Rethinking Rubrics". I've been rethinking rubrics for quite some time, and I don't know why I didn't write that book myself. I do, however, believe that rubrics are effective for a lot of projects, just maybe not for a piece of writing. I've seen them really bring down the level of writing among my first graders when I introduce them toward the end of the year. Suddenly, and for the first time, there are boundaries and definitions from without whereas, before, it was all organic and grew from within with no artificial additives, just well-prepared soil, air and light. Artificiality brings a kind of contamination of the previous purity and makes the writing less palatable.

This was an exceptionally hard week for me for a lot of reasons. I had to finally put my foot down about parental interruptions. Two of my parents were dropping in so often--sometimes twice each every day, which makes four interruptions from them alone, not counting the parents of the other 20 students who drop in only occasionally and when there is a good reason to do so. This is in addition to the phone calls these two make to my home every week, about three each, and then there are the e-mails. I was talking to these women sometimes eight times each week(sixteen conversations, count 'em). I have contact with most of the other parents two or three times a month, but these two would be waiting for me in the mornings at 7:15 (when I am trying to get ready for the day, and in spite of the fact that no one except staff is to be on campus before 7:30), show up every day during my planning time (which is for PLANNING, and which I already have too little of), and come early in the afternoons to check out their children (a crucial time when I am trying to bring closure to the day). A couple of weeks ago, I started trying to tactfully put a stop to the excessive visits, but they didn't get it so I had to be very firm. The funny thing is (well, not really funny to me at all) they thought this was so out of character for me they began to think something was "wrong with me", which made them increase their visits to "check on me" and their phone calls at night to "see if my day went alright". They even had gifts and balloons delivered from the florist to "pick me up" because I "wasn't myself". That kind of thing turns my stomach. I am not having bad days; I am trying to enforce the visitation rules in order to ensure uninterrupted learning time for my children. That's all I want: I don't want candles and balloons and toiletry items, no matter how nice they smell. I asked the principal to send a letter home reminding parents of the visitation and checkout policies, and he did. We'll see what happens.

Yesterday we made the three hour drive to Lake Tiak O'Khata to celebrate Cleve and Georgia's sixtieth wedding anniversary. I sure didn't like spending six hours in a car on a Saturday when my to-do list was (and still is) several pages long, but we did see a lot of old friends and had a good time of fellowship.

Hannah is getting funnier and funnier. The other night we went to Cracker Barrel to eat and I stayed at the table while Tim and the girls went to play checkers because the frazzled (aren't they all) waitress had not yet brought our ticket. While I was waiting, Hannah came and brought some tip money and told me Tim had said he paid when we came in. I knew that wasn't right, so I told her to go ask him again what he said. When she came back, she said, "Look, I just don't have a short term memory", and I said, "What'd he say, Dorie?" Without missing a beat, she said, "He said, 'Swim toward the throat'." There I was, thinking I'd been quick with the Dorie thing, but I can't get anything past her at all.

I had a cancer scare a couple of weeks ago, but the biopsy was normal and the symptoms that led me to the doctor in the first place seem to have disappeared for now. I wrote a long piece about it, but it all kind of runs together and doesn't make a lot of sense in its current form. I wrote it in two voices, a "living voice" and a "dying voice" and I think I could polish it and make something out of it except for the fact that I'm not dying anymore and when I wrote it I really thought I was. It would probably not be possible to recapture that mood.

I love to smell the crown of someone's head. Each crown has its own unique smell. This morning, Tim and Lizzie were sitting at the table counting money for a deposit. I smelled and kissed Lizzie's crown, then smelled and kissed Tim's. Totally different, and it has nothing to do with shampoo or styling products, either. I wonder what the crown of my head smells like. I'll never know.