Some people like pictures. I like words.
From the songs that have been soothing my heart, to you, my dear friends.
Wherever you are, whatever you are celebrating, I hope your hearts are full of love and peace and joy and magic.
Peace on earth.
Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart, and hand in hand.
Sweet Baby Jesus, you guys, we need a little laughter around here, don’t we? Or at least some smiles, right? Ok, here are some things that are working for me:
- Skip is currently asleep in my lap, sporting the royal blue Snuggie that my mom gave him for Christmas last year. Come on, admit it – a chihuahua in a Snuggie is FUNNY.
- Really, in my family, animals in clothes are ALWAYS funny. Proof of this can be found in the Christmas cards I selected for my loved ones while at the store last night.
- A colleague announced her much-wanted, and perfectly timed (due in August) pregnancy yesterday. She is a adorable and hilarious, and produces adorable smart children (based on the 2 year old version she already has.)
- Last night, at Fancy Birthday/Christmas dinner with the girls, I ate bison Wellington, which made me feel fancy, festive, and perfectly Canadian, all at once.
- While at dinner, the stupid Christmas Shoes song came on, and I DID NOT CRY.
- I decorated my blog for Christmas, and while I am normally not in favour of such ridiculousness, I am sort of loving the Christmas lights, and falling snow, and pop up Christmas card. Am sincerely hoping you all will just enjoy it and not find it annoying. It’s only for a few days, I promise.
- You know what? Even if you hate it, I’m not sure I care. Sometimes, Christmas is tacky and annoying, with a wide variety of opinions on the difference between “fun & festive” and “cheesy & terrible” and THAT IS WHAT MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND. This year, blog decorations are floating my boat. It’s my blog and I will subject you to pop-up holiday wishes if I want to. AND YOU WILL LIKE IT.
- Santa left hot chocolate for my class on Thursday, and I got video of their reactions. I wish I could share some of it, so you could all see how perfect their belief in magic is. They are hilarious, these kiddos. You’ll have to trust me on that.
- My hair got cut yesterday, and I am no longer at risk of shaving it all off myself. My girlfriends gave me a new, beautiful wallet, for my birthday.
I know, this is sort of a throwaway post, but we needed SOMETHING to change the atmosphere around here. I am not All Better, far from it. I am still achy and prickly; the covering over my FEELINGS is tissue-paper thin. You know how, in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (the amazing book, not the okay movie) Oskar refers to having “heavy boots” ? Yeah, that is how I feel sometimes – weighed down, slow-moving. BUT: my holidays have started; Winter Solstice has happened, and while the light may not be WINNING yet, at least it is evenly matched with the darkness. Christmas is in 3 days, and my brother and I will be together for the first time in years. My dad will be back from Texas any minute. My house smells like the odd assortment of scented candles I received as a gift (Winter Evergreen competing with Maple Pancake).
And under the tree, there is this:
Christmas Day is in our grasp, as long as we have hands to clasp.
Hold me together
This post is a mess. But the world feels like a mess right now. And I feel like the only way we are ever going to make it feel less scary is to share our messes. This is not coherent. This is not eloquent. This is bare naked. From my head and heart to my keyboard to your screen, inspired by Jonniker’s messy post about her own reactions to Newtown. It feels more okay to be messy together than neat and tidy and alone.
Ok, so. So this is how things are now. The tears constantly a hair’s breadth from the surface. Alright then.
Two colleagues have candidly told me that they have chosen to push Friday’s events to the bottom of their minds. Like it was the simplest thing in the world.
One of them offered the smug “This sort of thing doesn’t happen in Canada” and I nearly smacked her.
I have no words.
This is a watery sort of grief. It is like swimming in the dark, never knowing when I am going to bump into something that hurts until… I bump into something that hurts.
I see blog posts about mundane things – reading groups and Christmas trees and crazy mothers-in-law – and I get all angry like people have no business writing about anything that is NOT SANDY HOOK.
But my God – can you imagine if all anyone was ever writing about was Sandy Hook? THANK GOD for reading groups and Christmas tress and crazy in-laws, really.
Here’s the thing, and I am putting it out there: I am having a hard time with this. I am not high-strung or melodramatic. I am not prone to anxiety (other than some weird social quirks) or obsessive thought patterns. I am pretty stable, pretty no-nonsense, pretty grounded. I am, generally speaking, AWESOME in a crisis. I am good at keeping things in perspective.
I am not a particularly fragile person, but I am fragile right now. I HAVE NO PERSPECTIVE FOR THIS. Earlier today I was panicky about that – what is wrong with me? Why can’t I just DEAL? What is WITH the mood swings? Why am I SO CRABBY?
Oh, right, yes. It’s called grief. This is what grief does. Yes, now I remember.
Okay. So. F*ck it. This is who I am for right now. I cry over the goddamn Christmas shoes song.
I know the things that soothe me:
- Competitive cooking shows
- Hot chocolate
- Cool sheets
- My ridiculous dog laying on my chest
- Buying expensive groceries
- Braiding my hair
- Walking the hallways, seeking out the faces of my students from the last 4 years
I know the things I am grateful for
- Dinner plans with my best girlfriends on Saturday
- Which is also an excuse to buy a new dress
- A particularly huggy and snuggly group of kiddos in my class
- A boss who lets me yell and rage at her and with her
- My twitter people who share their own messes so freely and make me feel less weird
- My friend Lauren, who has promised to post pictures of camp to Facebook every day until I am through this week, just because I asked her to, because maybe pictures of the most healing place I know will help to heal… this.
I have a friend, from grad school. She is probably the only Christian Conservative friend I have. I love and respect the hell out of her. No pun intended. I am not a religious person, (Catholicism and I broke up a long time ago), but on Friday night, I asked this friend for some prayers. And now, every night around this time, she prays the prayer I asked for. And this weekend, her whole church prayed that prayer. And you know what? THAT is frinking comforting. A whole church raising up their hearts to pray for something I am worried about? Yeah, there go the tears again. There is something to be said for a friend like that, who will pray for you just because you ask. And not just in a “you’re in my prayers” sort of way, but in a hands-clasped, conversing-with-The-Big-Guy way. Michelle, if you’re reading? Keep talking to the Big Guy, okay? Because if He is listening to anyone, it is probably you.
My dad will be home from Texas for Christmas, soon, and as I always do at weepy times, I want my daddy.
So there. This is how things are now. I usually try to write better than this – tighter, cleaner.
But right now, things are messy.
How are you?
How do you mend a broken heart…
Yesterday, in Newtown, Connecticut, 26 people were murdered by a lone gunman who entered a primary school with an assault weapon. 20 of those lost were young children, many of them kindergarten students. Yesterday was a hard, hard, day to be a kindergarten teacher, no matter where you live. I have no illusions that my voice has any relevance today, but the only way I am going to find a way to lift my broken heart up off the couch and back into the world is to raise that voice. So here, here it is – the sound of my heart, my head, my voice, as a kindergarten teacher, a Canadian, a human being, on this, the day after Newtown.
I try so hard not to be a self-righteous Canadian, the kind who lords gun control and health care and gay marriage over my American neighbours. I am proud of my country, but have no illusion that we are perfect. I love my American neighbours. Many of my best friends are Americans, and I have spent some of the best times of my life there.
But today… Today, America, if I could break up with you, I would. I am so tired. So tired of crying and fretting and worrying over you. Of watching you hurt yourself over and over and not take steps to get help. I am tired of getting fired up about your educational system, your health care situation, your social policies, your gun control, your elections, and now… this. I have spent 24 hours crying over 20 of your dead children, weeping over your teachers who risked and lost their own lives to protect their students. Because of you, on Monday, I will request that my school has a lockdown drill THE WEEK BEFORE CHRISTMAS. I will ask for, or make myself, a curtain for my office window, so that, should the very worst happen, I, and the students I work with, would have a safer place to hide. Because of you, I may have to answer questions from five-year olds about a bad man coming into a school with a gun. Because of you, I had nightmares last night so bad that I finally gave up and turned on the light at 4 am. Because of you, today, my head is achy, my eyes are leaky, my heart is heavy.
Of course, I can’t break up with you. I love you too much to do so, and honestly, I cannot walk out on you during a crisis. So, I am begging you: fix this. Get over your ethic of individual liberties and start taking some goddamn collective responsibility for one another. You failed the young man who did this, and in doing so, in allowing him to fall through the cracks, you failed 20 small children, their families, their school, their town, YOUR ENTIRE MOURNING COUNTRY, and the world. The ENTIRE WORLD is weeping over your children this morning. Wake up, raise your voices, start thinking about what is best for ALL of you, and not just what is best for EACH of you.
Make no mistake, I know the rest of us are not immune. This could happen here, and it has. But it is NOT a coincidence that, in the time since Columbine, your country has had more than twice the number of school shootings as ALL THE OTHER COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD, combined. We love you, America, and we want to help you, but you have got to open up your arms and start accepting that help. You have got to accept that there are other ways of living, of being, of looking after a people, of running a country, and that maybe you could learn a few things from the rest of us. Stop bragging about being the best country in the world, and start focusing on just being a better country than you currently are.
I am your friend, America. I have sung your praises from the rooftops, defended you from your toughest critics, called out my own country and others any time we get up on our high horses. I have lived in 2 of your states, climbed your mountains, splashed in your oceans, fallen in love with your beauty over and over again. I have lain in a meadow under your starry skies and wished with my whole heart that I never had to leave you. I have wished that my people could be more like your people in their kindness, openness, generosity.
I love you, America, but today, today, as your neighbour, your friend, your sister, I am begging you: FIX THIS.
Alongside the rest of the world, I pray for the children, parents, teachers, of Sandy Hook Elementary. If tears could mend their broken hearts, they would already be healed.
I keep this moment by and by…
Update for 2012: It’s Christmas Concert Day once again, and so I am reposting this, grateful for all the people who have inspired me along the way to this crazy career.
I have a skirt I wear every year, on Christmas Concert Day. Wool, A-line, bias-cut. Simple, almost old fashioned. It hits just below my knee. It’s plaid, mostly dark green and navy blue, with a bright line of red criss-crossing over. With a ruffly white blouse and a red cardigan, it makes me feel festive without descending into the dangerous territory of Christmas sweaters.
But that is not the real reason I wear this skirt.
The plaid happens to be my family’s tartan, and while we don’t identify particularly strongly with my Scottish heritage (the circus folk and Swedish royalty being far more interesting), I do like having a tartan to call my own.
But that is not the reason I wear this skirt, either.
The fabric is the real deal, bought in Scotland by my Auntie Billie, sewn into a skirt for her by my grandma. And THAT is, sort of, the reason I wear this skirt.
My Auntie Billie was my dad’s oldest (but not older) sister, and the mother of my favourite cousin. She was a tiny lady, with a great big laugh. I spent most of my childhood hearing how very much I looked like my Auntie Billie when she was a little girl, and the comparison delighted me. Her first career was as a hairdresser. She gave me my first haircut (and also my first perm, but I have long since forgiven her for that). My favourite photo of her shows her bent over my three-year-old head, creating tiny ringlets for my very important job as a flower girl in my other Auntie’s wedding. I remember that day, sitting on the ottoman in my grandma’s living room, Auntie Billie’s fingers gentle in my hair, the sound of her laughing with her soon-to-be-wed younger sister. Later, at the wedding itself, I was suddenly too shy to walk down that very long aisle under the gaze of all those people. Auntie Billie, the maid of honour, came back down the aisle, and took my hand. We walked together to the front of the church.
Auntie Billie’s second career, and true calling, was as a teacher. At first, she taught high school beauty culture, but it wasn’t long until she found her niche with first and second graders at a high-needs school. Eventually, she became a vice-principal, helping to create an innovative year-round school program, the first of its kind in our city. She was a force to be reckoned with: passionate, articulate, stubborn, and oh-so-very funny. You can see why comparisons to her continue to delight me.
The year I met the first group of kids to call me “teacher,” Auntie Billie lost a seven-year battle with breast cancer.
I cried and grieved for her then. I knew I would miss her gentle smile, her hands reaching to hug me, the thoughtful and “just right” gifts that came at birthdays and Christmas, her genuine interest in all parts of my life, her laugh-till-you-cry stories about her students. I was old enough to know that not everyone grew up with a gaggle of aunties and uncles as loving and close as mine. I grieved for myself, yes, but also for my family as a whole: the loss of a sister, a mother, a daughter. But I didn’t know yet…
I didn’t know, yet, that my own career path would wind its way ever-closer to hers, and that, at every milestone, her absence would sting a little more sharply. As I started grad school, and began thinking and learning about children and families in a whole new way, I wished for her to sit next to me when I came home for holidays, and help me make practical sense of the dense research papers I was reading. When I got my first job teaching in a school (as opposed to a child development centre, rec centre, or community service agency), I wished for her to help me figure out the logistical realities of teaching two grades in one room, and the slippery alchemy of Teaching Children to Read. When I found myself at an unexpected professional crossroads, deciding between a job I didn’t want, in a school community I loved; and a new, scary, dream job at a strange new school, I wished for her counsel (I took the dream job, and I’m sure Auntie Billie would approve.) Now, as I struggle every day to balance my students’ day-to-day needs with the ever-increasing list of exciting-but-demanding additional responsibilities I seem to have taken on, I wish for her more than ever. I wish for her to hold my hand as I dance this dance, and walk this path. At 22, I cried for the loss of my beloved Auntie. A dozen years later, I cry for the mentor and cheerleader I know she would have been. It continues to surprise me, this grief that gets sharper, instead of smoother, over time.
I know she is with me, and I find ways to keep her close. A photo of her with her hands tweaking my tiny ringlets sits on my desk at home. The dedication page of my Master’s thesis lists her name. Nearly every day, I wear a small gold heart on a chain around my neck, a gift from her younger sister, to her, and back to me upon completion of grad school. Occasionally, I run into old friends of hers, or my dad’s, and the first thing they do is gasp at how much I am like my Auntie Billie. I hear her laugh coming out of my mouth when I tell my best teaching stories. I know she is proud, and in case I ever forget it, her siblings — my dad and my godmother — remind me of that on a regular basis. But still, I wish she were here, and I wish that the hardest on the days I am most proud: of myself, and my students.
And so, on concert day, I wear Auntie Billie’s skirt. I am not as tiny as she was, and so it has to sit high on my waist. The blouse and cardigan help cover this adjustment. As I kneel on the gym floor, helping 20 five-year-olds to remember the words and the steps, I’m pretty sure Auntie Billie is kneeling next to me. I wear her skirt, and I laugh her laugh, and I cry her tears of pride, and I hope that just maybe, when my students take my hand, they feel the love of her hands, too.
Peace on Earth.
