First Day of School

The Day Before

A thousand emotions overwhelm the young parents because tomorrow their little girl, born five years ago this past July, will be sent out into the world via kindergarten, commencing at least thirteen years of basically five-day-a-week learning and playing and finding and losing and growing and hurting, all experiences and events consuming her time and energy, and theirs, too...starting at 8:15 am, when mom will escort her into the big building, where big kids–fifth, sixth graders!–will tower over her and make her feel small just when she is feeling so very grown up, confusing her and frightening them, until when, at 3:30 pm, mom will appear in the classroom door and see their precious one, just shared for seven solid hours with a teacher and contemporaries the family hardly knows: so relieved, so proud, all of them.

The Morning of the Day Itself

She scrambles out of bed at 6:00 am eager to be off to school this first morning it won't always be that way eat a good breakfast now put on your new outfit here your backpack help me put your lunch in it take a picture to send to grandma and grandpa get in the car arrive at school so many kids and parents around here take my hand so I can show you the way pay attention soon you will have to find your own way to your room remember your teacher met her last week at that meeting teacher shows the little girl her cubby your back pack in here and sit down on one of the circles on the floor mom steps backward toward the door waves a weak good-bye swallows hard goes home to sip a melancholy cup of coffee at the kitchen table secure familiar

That Evening

Dinner is over. The dishes are clean and stacked. Quiet descends.
It is time to go to bed. Dad oversees the routine.
The girl hasn't said much. Questions only receive one-word answers. Is there too much to think about?
She's washed her face. Her teeth and hair are brushed. She’s wearing her favorite fairy pajamas.
Dad and daughter sit on her bed. He reads three familiar stories. Too soon she will read to herself. School does that.
She quiets, as if at prayer. He turns out the light. It is time to say good-night.
"I dropped my sandwich on the floor. Teacher wouldn't let me eat it. It was too dirty. I was so hungry all afternoon."
"I'm sorry," he offers. He kisses her good-night.
The world out there is tough. Too soon she will learn. School does that, too.

a man, yet by these tears a little boy again (plus postscript)

two brief excerpts from

a man, yet by these tears a little boy again

from CHAPTER ONE

Bobby tried harder than ever to hold back his tears. But it was too late; he could not halt their flow. He was afraid, embarrassed, and ashamed of himself.

Not that his mother's cruel words told him anything new, about him or about her. He knew she resented his constant string of questions: what makes the sky blue? why does the sun shine? how high fly the clouds? how far swim the sharks? Bobby knew she’d never ever had time or energy for such questions, but certainly not now, now that his father was gone. But why did she have to yell at him, to call him stupid, to slap his face?

Nothing she (or anyone else) could do would drive his questions away. That was the trouble with it. That was a trap of it. He wanted to know...to know...to know everything and then some, but when the questions came the only person he could ask didn't have time for them. It's tough for a seven-year old boy's brain to take a break from asking to know, to forget wanting to understand the world. It's tough for his mind to mind only his own business.

Bobby quietly closed the door to his room behind him. His silent tears moistened his pillow into sleep's calm.

from CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Rage drove Robert into Frank's corner office on the 21st floor of the Terminal Tower. He knew what was about the happen: another whistle blower quietly escorted out of the building at 10:30 a.m. when nobody would likely notice.

He had tried hard to maintain his composure, to speak calmly to the right people about how the brokerage’s cooked books hid the bilking of unsuspecting investors out of millions of dollars. He had documented it all, memorizing long columns of figures and names of shell companies during the day so he could enter the evidence in his computer at home each evening. The hours he spent holed up in the den made his wife suspicious that he was visiting porno sites or worse, which at times he really wished he had been. But the work had to be done carefully to provide everything management and prosecutors would need to build a case.

But the decision to fire him had been made, or so the rumor mill had it. His rage nearly morphed into tears of fear and disgust: fear for his future, and disgust at the callous treatment he and all the material he'd gathered were getting. Why didn't they hear what he had to say; why couldn't he convince them of its truth, of the danger it posed to them all? But his tears would have to wait; now he had truth to tell, as clearly as he could, now, one last time.

Robert knocked on Frank's door, heard “come in”, entered, and closed the door silently behind him. He was surprised to feel that, now, he was ready for anything.

+   +   +

Simon and Who?

During yesterday’s class my critique group consisted of three young college students and myself. One of the guys wrote a compelling piece about a boxer’s fall from grace. I commented that it made me think of Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer. He looked at me sort of quizzically, and I realized I was showing my age. “You have heard of Simon and Garfunkel?” I asked. “I think so,” he replied, perhaps not wanting to disappoint me. The other two had never heard of them. He later told us he hoped to learn how to write lyrics for popular songs. I suggested he might look them up.

I am tempted to conclude, “SO THAT’S WHAT’S WRONG WITH KIDS TODAY!” But damn, all three sure wrote fine pieces anyway.

Regarding Syria Strike: to my Senators and Representative

I urge you to vote against the President's plan that is to be before you this week to take military action against Syria.

Like you, I have read the reasons for and against this proposal. I would only add that I hope you will take seriously the words of the many religious leaders both within and outside of Syria who are urging you to vote no.

I have little new to add to anyone’s arguments. Except this: as a young child I learned that "Two wrongs do not make a right." The purpose of that admonition was to make you think at least twice before responding to a wrong with a wrong.

“Two wrongs do not make a right” works on many levels in this situation. No doubt, using chemical weapons at all is a grave wrong. It cannot be ignored. But responding to it with the "wrong" of missile strikes that may or may not kill or injure civilians, that may or may not hit useful targets, that may or may not lead to a wider conflict, that may or may not stop Assad, that will most likely lead to the kind of situation we left in Iraq is wrong because it is nearly certain that greater harm will be inflicted on more people than was done by the original act itself, and the US will be no more secure.

Further: killing civilians and destroying their homeland is always the wrong way to enhance our credibility and standing in the world. It’s a sad day when that's what the US must do in order to be considered credible.

Our President has put us in a serious predicament. I am dismayed; I hoped for so much more from him. Now he is asking Congress to pull him out of that predicament. Make him work harder at it–vote against striking Syria.

Sincerely,

Keith Dean Myers

So Gracious the Day

So gracious the day (the sun rises before I): light illumines lands and lakes emerging from night's shadowed shroud; stars relinquish status, and the phased (yet never fazed) moon fades; cool night breezes collapse, temperatures trek upward, day's noise nudges night's narrative into silence.

Animals active with darkness descend to their dens, nodding vague acknowledgement to those emerging to engage again in their search for survival. Shadows born long and narrow slowly shorten and assimilate into mere mid-day selves, then reverse course to stretch again toward the eastern horizon. Birds chirp seducing songs, locusts saw away, arachnids arc webs around flapping flies (buzzing), fish drop deep into the cool reaches of the pond, leaves lean into light: each one speeds or slows, calculating its own course under the command of our single shining star working its daily way west.

All 7 billion homo sapiens (we who wallow in our wisdom!) live or die by the grace of the orb our gracious orb orbits. But we hardly know it. We assume it self-evident that we are in control, charge, and command: but our self-elevated placement is not at all apparent to our environment. Our star and our sphere surely laugh and lament the sorry swagger of our wordy ways and wars and wanderings. Who, beholding our hubris from heaven's heights, would not be amused, ashamed, afraid?

But I arise, wash my face, and bemoan the start of another day.

Stalwart sun (rising before I): you mock my pathetic self-pity!

Notes from a Road Trip West: Where It Began

Which is more important: the journey itself or the journey's destination? Is it more important to travel than it is to get there, whether there is determined by you or by someone or something else, where there happens to be?

In our time, pop psychology and philosophy weigh in heavily on the side of the journey itself. Is that because we do not know where are going, or even headed, these days? Or is it that we fear there's nothing out there that we can imagine might be more interesting or challenging than the world we glimpse as we rush through it?

The European-stock scouts and settlers of North America no doubt regarded their journey west as a high-risk necessity on the way to a life-promising destination. There were unimagined vistas to see and prairies and mountains to cross on their way, and those scenes and sights no doubt generated a wonder and an awe in them that our own experience of them can never duplicate. Nevertheless, it was the destination that mattered, that made the journey necessary, and they dearly hoped, worth its many costs.

When we left our home near Cleveland, Ohio, on Tuesday, July 9, 2013, we knew where we were going and we had a fairly clear idea of what we would see and when we would see it. Maxine and I packed all we could into our green Prius, and headed west on the Ohio Turnpike at 75+ miles per hour. The first day we drove some 675 miles to Grundy Center, Iowa, my home town, where we stayed with my mother for three days. Then, on Saturday morning, July 13, we headed west again, mostly on US 20 in Iowa, then jumping north to I-90, our main route for the remainder of our journey.

Our western-most destination was Spokane, Washington, home of our older daughter and her husband and their two children. But it was only an intermediate destination: after three days there, we turned around and headed back east, eventually arriving again where we had started in Ohio, by way of Iowa. The journey itself–nearly 6,000 miles of it–mattered most to us, for its final destination was the familiarity of where we had started. Ironically, even our most western stop, Spokane, was about to lose its significance for us when two weeks after we were there the family moved east to New York State. Will Americans ever learn to sit still?

What follows are entries into my blog, www.coelietterra.blogspot.com, which I made during our journey. I did not intend a travelogue as in a point-by-point description of every experience, but only to post a message coming out of what seemed to me at the time to be most interesting, perhaps even revelatory of the larger reality we were visiting at the time. You have read, two paragraphs ago, one of the few references to our route. What ended up mattering to me on this trip is not the journey nor the destination(s), but the markers along the way...as is true of life itself.

Just before we left home I downloaded an app to my phone called simply, "Altimeter." Turns out not give not only height above sea level, but latitude and longitude. So, at each place we spent the night, I recorded our elevation and our coordinates.

Here in our kitchen in Orange Village, Ohio, we are 1,180 feet above sea level, 41° 25' 46" N, and 81° 28' 19" W. It's a great place to start...and to return to as well.

Notes from a Road Trip West: Noticing Home

It's long past time for that summary post I promised nearly a month ago...

...we drove too quickly through the Tetons, vowing to go back and explore them more fully one day. Little did we know we were about to cross our highest pass on our way east: the sign told us we crossed the Continental Divide this one last time at 9584 feet above sea level, and my altitude app gave just about the same reading. We then drove and drove a long descent through more kinds of landscapes that I can remember, finally landing in Chadron NE (3471 feet, 42° 49' 19" N, 103° 1' 0" W) to spend that night, before the last mad dash to Iowa, three nights there, and home late on August 1.

If there's one word that keeps coming to mind as I recall our journey it is the word "vast." We live in a vast country sprawled across a vast continent, seemingly beyond the bounds of any natural or human limitations. Perhaps that is one reason we American’s play our part on the world stage as if we were answerable to no one but ourselves and our own desires.

Upon and underneath much of the landscape we traveled are the vast resources with which we have built our wealth, and that we count on to propel us into the future. From petroleum to precious metals to just plain, but absolutely essential, water, the great mid-section of North American holds riches every bit as valuable at the fertile Iowa soil of my birth. The cost–human, economic, and environmental–of extracting and exploiting this wealth is enormous, and we are willing to pay it because we trust it will lead to even greater wealth. Maybe it will, though that is not as sure a proposition as it once seemed, as the costs grow greater and the risks to the future livability of the planet increase.

I would like to see us contemplate the vastness of it all, more often, more deeply, more intentionally. To let where we now are sink into us, just as it is, and bring us face-to–face with the graced giftedness of this land we call our home. We might then treat it with the kind of respect we are told the original inhabitants had for the bison and for everything they used in their living. We might then realize that our living is not just an ongoing journey toward an imagined destination, but a series of stops and experiences along the way that hold value and worth in themselves, just as they are, just as we are.

Quick Thoughts on a Road Trip West: Up High, Down Below

Traveling Glacier Park's Going to the Sun Road makes one feel on top of the earth. Walking among Yellowstone Park's geothermal features makes one feel uncomfortably close to earth's nethermost regions. Either place, one is may be forgiven for feeling small and powerless in the face of overwhelming geological forces. One may also be expected, no matter what his or her religious convictions, to feel the force of the Psalmist's question: "What is humanity that you–God–should pay any attention at all to us?"

Am I wrong in thinking Yellowstone Park is like no place else on earth? I don't care; I like thinking that. After a day mostly spent exploring thermal pools and geysers and the like we visited the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It took our breath away in a way that perhaps only the other Grand Canyon might do. On our drive back to our room we saw bison and elk and one pronghorn grazing in vast valleys cut by glaciers and rivers, almost the way nature meant them to feed. Our planet is writ large in Yellowstone, and complex, and vulnerable, too. Awe strikes unawares, and even massive buildings such as the Old Faithful Inn cannot compete.

What's been the most impressive and moving site or experience on this Road Trip West? About that I have to think much harder than I have energy to think at the end of our last full day of sight-seeing. (We will perhaps drive by the Tetons on our way east tomorrow, but do not have time to explore them...everyone has to head home eventually.) A summary post will no doubt follow as I process and feel it all. Meantime, thanks for coming along for this ride.