Memories from a Decade 9/11

What was I doing on that sunny blue-skied day? Teaching science-- Most of the nation's tragedies in my lifetime have taken place while I was in school-- a student, an aide, a teacher. The sky was spectacular. Who said turn on the tv? I cannot believe I do not remember that detail. I remember the full on horror as the second plane hit and the paradigm shifted. Was I wearing my feel good yellow dress? Maybe a student of mine would remember that--I don't. The day followed in stunned quiet. We had to go out for a bomb threat and stand, the entire school, on school property as far from the building as physically possibly yet within the "safety" of the fence. Did we do that twice in one day or twice in the week? At the end of the day as quickly as I could I went to the blood center and got in line where I stood for hours, was it dark when I left? I had thought of an act I could do. It was so difficult, I was still so very heavy. Some local business person sent pizzas to the people in line which was so thoughtful. Eventually my turn came and I was able to donate. Later it became clearer and clearer that the blood would help no one in that hideous pile of rubble. Maybe it only helped me to feel as if I had done something. There turned out to be no need for blood at all.

That was a week also wrapped in family drama. Larry was trying to drive to Texas before his dad died, he didn't make it and had to drive home. Rayne was on her honeymoon in Vancouver, Canada and the car rental company said keep the car, drive it home, do not try to fly out of Seatac. So they were trying to get home for Grandpa's funeral. Grandpa was on the very last plane to land in Indy before the skies were closed, he just missed sitting on the tarmac in Canada for the duration. Leah lived in Durango and needed to get home for the funeral. I was alone in Terre Haute handling the details of the funeral. Leah was on one of the first flights after the skies opened again, another terror filled flight for mom. Leah did a beautiful eulogy for her grandfather, not the last one for a grandparent, she has lost two more since then, the rest of the grandparents.

Have I said how beautiful the skies were completely empty of jet trails? I had no idea how much of what I see in the sky is from technology. It was so quiet for those days. Quiet and beautiful and hideous.

Annual Student Art Show

Yesterday was a dark and stormy day, that did not prevent the crowds from coming to the museum for the reception and opening of the annual show. My kids' work looked great, oops, I forgot to take pictures. What kind of a teacher am I anyway? The Sheldon Swope museum always does a wonderful job of hanging the art. High school seemed a little low on 3-D this year. This show has gone from being a Vigo county only show to a show of at least 3 counties, if not 4. My students feed into South and 6 of the 13 South High School pieces were from former students of mine. Am I proud? Yes, I am. I do not usually say things like this, but one piece of middle school art was embarrassingly bad, I would never show it-- another teacher suggested it was special ed. I asked her to choose the special ed students' work from mine-- she could not. HAH. Neither could I! I had to come home and look to see that 3 of my pieces come from a variety of special ed students. One student is autistic, 2 others are L.D., which, honestly, I hardly even think of as special anymore.

Afterwards I went with 2 of my elementary art teacher friends to the corner coffee shop where we sat and talked for 3 hours! Every possible topic was covered. Other tables of art teachers would cycle in and out while we were there. Thanks, Boo, for the convenient meeting place.

I came home started chilling and burning up with fever, went to bed for a few hours, the fever broke and now I am fairly OK-- I may just have a little touch of bronchitis again. grr. At any rate, a bit of a cough in my chest but no further fever.

Haven't Posted in Months

Larry is recovering from the nerve surgery on his leg at a much better rate than we hoped. He completed rehab for a time and will do it again when the leg is stronger and more nerve has regenerated. I am letting Pinterest and Words with Friends take the time I should be using on other things, like reading and art! Twitter and Facebook have replaced blogging, sad but true.

This has been a hard grading period with an unruly and so far untamed 6th grade! I have selected my pieces for the student art show and I am proud of the work. This year I am featuring more 8th graders. I have also hung art in 3 major hallways-- Things are looking really bright. A visitor told me how much she liked all the art hanging. I hung the trophy heads and dragon heads in the cafeteria in the very first grading period and they are still up, so I have also taken over the cafeteria! I did take one down to put in the student show.

High stakes testing starts tomorrow and we have high stakes nerves with the climate in the nation and the active work of our governor against teachers and education-- maybe it isn't so much against education as it is thinking children are widgets to be processed by automatons and turned out on a conveyor belt with no defects. Our principal and assistant principal are stretched thin between our school and a closing school and I will finally admit, it is rough going. Next year should be better for all of us.

My WLS health is good, vitamins are good and I have passed the 3 year mark following surgery. I cannot believe it has passed so quickly, I am pretty sure my body would have given out and I would have been forced to retire if I had not made the choice I did. After much reading, the only thing I would do differently is select Vertical Sleeve instead of RNY for the malabsorption issues.

Sitting in the Hospital Today--Not Too Worried

Larry has been suffering from drop foot since at least early last spring, I noticed something much earlier, a slapping sound, his tripping over very very small things. By the time his mother's funeral took place and he was tripping and nearly falling several times, even he had to admit something was not right. He began a round of doctor's appointments, spinal shots, MRI's It has come down to the tight leg muscles gripping the nerve so tightly that it is doing this damage. The orthopedic surgeon who assists in this surgery to make sure there is nothing orthopedic going on in the knee, says their results are good, but May to November is a long time to wait. The damage could possibly be permanent. Dr. B said there are a surprising number of misdiagnosis in this area and most docs just chalk it up to degeneration of the nerve but that it can be addressed and possibly cured. He also said the improvement can take as long as a year, like any neurological event. Larry is in good hands, both of these docs are top notch. Did I say they are going to start publishing about this condition? There is not much in the world literature on this.

I Slapped

I slapped a pound of bacon (probably 12 oz, the new pound) into a piping hot iron skillet and was overwhelmed with the smell of my grandmother cooking in her tiny apartment on Howard Street in Indianapolis, 55 yrs ago or more, it was a lovely rush of memory. Smells are so special. Several times since my dearest granny has been gone, my first real loss in my life, I would buy a jar of Pond's Cold Cream just to smell it and be brought back in time to her nightly ritual of cleaning her face with Pond's. But the bacon? A complete surprise. There was a special smell in the apartment building of all the combined cooking combined with my grandmother's waxing and cleaning of the stairs to earn money to buy 12 of us cousins identical Christmas gifts, you know, socks and panties. It turns out to be the combination of the hot iron skillet and the bacon, I don't have the scrubbed waxed wooden stairs with the black rubber treads.

Uncomfortable, Do Not Read. I Mean It

It has struck me that the corpses of children are not peaceful. Each one I see, even if I catch them out of the corner of my eye and try to avoid, is one too many. The latest was 17 and will always be 17. She had just started to get on the right track and turn her life around, contemplate a future when she had a tragic auto accident. The other two passengers have managed to survive and I am grateful for that. There is only so much the artistry of body preparation can do for a girl on life support for a week, then waiting for her funeral for another week. She did not look peaceful. Why should she?

I was ambushed at one funeral and forced to see the battered body of a true infant beaten to death by it's mother, the grandchild of a colleague. No, not peaceful. Why should her tiny body be peaceful?.

I stood by my sister in the place of my mother, who refused, while we looked at the body of my 9 year old niece, a murder victim. 24 hours in a pond, two long hot trips to Little Rock to and from the medical examiner, no way to make her look peaceful. Why should she?

Several years before I had to prepare myself and my son to lose my first niece, his closest cousin. After a valiant but terminal fight against a still incurable cancer, my 8 year old niece breathed her last, but not gently, not quietly and not ready to let go. I did not see her that last trip to Riley, Her arms were held above her head by the tumors in her lymph glands. I had to be the grownup and view. She looked angry, and that spirited little girl probably was angry at leaving before her time and going through so much pain. She was a bossy little girl and liked to get her way! That fighting spirit took her well past any projected survival date. She did not look peaceful and why should she? She was fighting for her life.

She grew me up in many ways--not ways I wanted to grow up, but in ways I needed to, to be able to face these losses over time, to act like a grownup in sad and terrible situations, and hopefully say nothing stupid to someone in grief.

There I go losing my focus. I felt the need to express this somewhere. Maybe I won't publish it. I did warn you.

Monster's Progress