Another One Bites the Dust
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May 23, 2012 5:27 pm
120 Views
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My school year is coming to a close. My kids have all tested and the seniors are away on a class trip. I still have to close up my classroom and go to graduation commencement ( I always love that commencement means the beginning, not the end as most grads think). There are a few end of year lunches, awards ceremonies and such to make it all official. I will be teaching for six weeks at the college as soon as the high school closes down.
So, I am ending my 31st year at the school where I am teaching. That is a whole lot of years in the classroom. The end of the year is always a moment for reflection for me. I hate to see the last kid in a family graduate. It is a fairly strong good bye except I have been teaching so long, I am now teaching some of the kids of the kids I taught. When I was a young, green teacher, I never thought I would be around that long! I see the childhoods coming to a close and the excitement of moving on to a new phase of life. They are afraid, they are excited. Parents are happy, parents are proud, parents are also sad. There just aren't a whole lot of moments in life where you see such a big, big 180 degree shift in life. Graduations, births, weddings, deaths. They do come along.
Some of the kids are excited that their education is over. You and I oldsters know that simply is an illusion. We know that while schooling may be ending, their learning is only gearing up...what a wild ride they are going to have through their adult years. Some are going to discover life passions they simply don't even know exist right now. Some will find love. Some are going to go through terrible tragedies and I hope they emerge intact and stronger.
I love the end of the school year. Not because it is the beginning of vacation (I work, remember) but because it is a time to see the young take flight.
So, another school year bites the dust. It was a good year, overall. I will miss these kids as I have missed 30 other classes.
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Crisp Mornings After a Good Rain
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May 14, 2012 3:04 pm
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It has already started to heat up here on the Gulf Coast of Texas. Last week, it was already breaking the 90s.
A big storm came in towards the end of the week and it was quite rowdy outside all night long.
When I left for work the next morning, the sky looked like it had been scoured clean. It was such a bright bue and beautiful golden rays of sunshine pouring down. The storm took away all the humidity and heat. All that was left was a beautiful, crips spring morning. The whole day, it was just pleasant.
It made me thing that this is how life goes. We will have some uncomfortable times, and many storms will come. During the storm, there is no safe quarter. It surrounds you. Often, it is dark during the storm and you can't see anything for the storm. Finally, the storm passes and you are left with clear, clean, fresh air.
How many times are we beset with the storms of life? Once they pass, and we have come through the troubles, life just seems a little clearer, a little sweeter, more peaceful and definitely more appreciated.
May all of you weather your storms to the calm that comes afterwards.
Happy Monday! Love life!
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Been away
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May 5, 2012 6:04 am
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April ended up being a long month full of variety for me. I had a wonderful visit with my family, a major plumbing repair, a good 2 weeks of being sick and now I am entering my very busy end of the school year crazy time period.
My family visit was wonderful. I got to spend time with my son and daughter-in-law and precious new grandbaby who is still in the too cute for words stage. By the time they left, however, we were all sick and it just was a very tenacious little bug that came to visit all of us. We had some magnificent weather the week everyone was here. It is usually too hot, too humid, but that week was pure bliss.
The end of the year crazies at school always happens. I think the mental challenges are the greatest. Sometimes it is mentally hard to keep the seniors engaged and sometimes it is mentally hard to keep the senior (me) engaged. I have closed many a school year though and I know what I need to do to make it through the month of May. I am going to start by getting a pedicure today.
So, this morning, there are no profound little tidbits racing through my head. I am just enjoying the morning, the quiet, a good cup of coffee and thinking it is all good.
Have a lovely Saturday and love life!
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Birthdays and Moms
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Apr 17, 2012 8:20 pm
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I read an interesting status this morning. One of my friends lost her 20-something year old daughter last August in a driving accident. Her daughter left a two year old and three year old son behind and now, the grand mom is trying to raise the babies. She is doing a wonderful job and is a young-ish grand mom and she has tons of energy to spare. Nevertheless, it ain't easy. Of course, she is grieving for the loss of her own youngest child by this accident. The little ones have kept her strong.
The oldest one had a birthday today. My friend could not find it in her to celebrate this day. She was full of memories of her own baby giving birth to her son just 4 years ago. She hoped today, that the little one would not remember not having his 4th birthday. He probably won't. I can't even try to imagine how difficult everything is for her. She really does try to make the boys lives as normal as can be, but her own grief sometimes overwhelms her.
It got me to thinking about how when we are young, our birthday is all about us. We don't usually think about our moms and them going through pregnancy and labor to get us here. I have been happily blessed to watch a lot of young women recently become mothers. It is so sweet to see their excited and all the preparations for the arrival of their babies. It makes me wonder how our mothers felt when we arrived. Births just seem to bring out the best in us. Those little newborns steal our hearts.
Somehow, it just doesn't seem I ever got an appreciation for the joy of my own arrival. I have a feeling it was there, but do we all somehow just miss that?
I feel bittersweet for my friend. She knows she was blessed to have her daughter and she knows she is blessed to be able to care for her grandsons. She would give anything to have her own child back. The boys bring her both sadness and happiness.
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Baby love
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Apr 15, 2012 6:17 am
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I have had such a wonderful week visiting with my family. My son, daughter-in-law and new grandson came for a visit. We spent Easter together, went and took pictures of the Texas bluebonnets, and visited the Kemah boardwalk near Galveston. My son, the avid Astros fan since his childhood got to go to a game (and introduce his infant son to the sport). It was a wonderful week that flew by too fast. I could not get enough of holding and playing with the baby who has just started to crawl. Ah, these were good days.
It seems that the very best things are not things, but the people we love. I have spent the last year and a half getting rid of all my un-needed, un-used, un-necessary stuff, and I don't miss it at all. However, I sure do miss the people that aren't in my life day to day and the people who have recently passed away.
I love how a baby can come into the world and immediately create a sense of love. It seems that everyone else that comes into your life needs some kind of connecting moments for love to grow. With the babies, they appear and it is instant love that grows as they do.
I am already looking forward to my trip to Tennessee in the summer so I can get another large dose of love from that baby...and of course, his daddy and momma.
Happy Sunday, enjoy life!
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Calling all Long-Distance Grandmoms for Advice
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Mar 30, 2012 5:55 pm
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I have a 9 month old grandbaby. I got to be present for his birth and first two weeks of life and then I had to come home, which is far, far away.
He and his parents are coming to see me at the end of next week for Easter and a week long vist. I am thrilled.
I have grieved that I am not around him but the fact is, I am not. We Skype often and I think that will be a good thing ultimately.
How do you long-distance grandmom's develop a close relationship with your grands?
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The Cold War...the real one with the Soviets
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Mar 28, 2012 8:22 pm
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Tonight, I got to teach about the Cold War to my night students. I get a little taken aback to realize that absolutely no one in my classes have a clue what the USSR was or is.
I was born only a few years after World War II ended, but in my mind, it might as well have happened 100 years before my birth. It was a long time before I realized how close I was to it. I guess the students today feel the same way about the 50s and 60s and even 70s, 80s, and 90s. It was simply "before their time."
Maybe we should use AMT (after my time) instead of AD and BMT (before my time) for events before you were born. I am just being silly here. Did you guys know that textbooks no longer us A.D. and B.C. It is now CE and BCE (Common Era and Before Common Era). Ah, political correctness! Ugh!
When class was over, about 5 of the students lingered to tell me it was a fascinating lesson and one of them said it might make a good movie. I had to laugh inside.
Oh well, it is good to know they learned something. They never heard of the Berlin Wall, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, the space race, Sputnik, the Korean War, McCarthyism...none of it rang a bell. Boy, I had my work cut out for me tonight.
Nothing feels so good though, as to see curiosity on the faces of your students and to see them interested enough to ask questions and want to learn some more.
I just taught about the 1950s to my high school kiddos and introduced the lesson with Hound Dog by Elvis. Most of them had never heard him sing.
I would like for the younger folk to have wht we call cultural literacy, but I understand that they have their time, and their ways. I just wish they could share some of the fun we had and understand the times we grew up in. Maybe it will come with age.
Happy Wednesday. Love Life!!
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The Other Side of a Birthday
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Mar 27, 2012 8:09 pm
165 Views
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Well, I survived turning 60 on Monday and am pleasantly happy to know I don't feel any different than I did at 59 years 364 days  . I had to work a long day but I got so many sweet birthday wishes, I felt like I had a little mini-movie of my life playing all day long. I even heard from a very long time ago love and that just made my day.
As I was going to sleep the night before the big change over to 6-0, I was lying there thinking about my mother. My mom died when I was 10. She left 4 children. One was in college, one was graduating and going to college, then there was me, and then there was the baby brother who was 1. I had a good and loving relationship with my mother and her death still can cause me sorrow. I have talked to many adults who lose a parent when they are a child and the effect can be profound.
I became fairly responsible at a tende age. Child raising duties were turned over to me. Of course, I was clueless and I just took care of my brother as if her were one of my favorite dolls. I fear I was woefully inadequate. My father kind of checked out. He threw himself into work and trying to be strict enough to keep me out of trouble. I am not sure he succeeded at that, but I suppose I turned out okay.
So, I am lying in bed thinking about how my mother died so young. She did not get to see any of her children marry or see grandkids. She would have loved being a grandmother.
I don't have a lot of clear memories of her and her mother but I know they spent a lot of time together. It must have been very special to be able to talk to your mother about raising your children and about day to day life.
I have a grandson now and it is nice to see my daughter-in-law share so much of his ife with her mother. I don't live very close to them and I am grateful that my grandboy has a grandmother around and that my daughter-in-law is so close to her mother.
I wondered what it must have been like for my mother, to be one day away from giving birth to her 3rd child. She had a girl and a boy already. You all know, back in the dark ages, the gender was always a surprise. I wonder if she was weary about another babe to take care of. I wondered if I was an easy baby or a difficult baby. I wondered if she greeted me with happiness at my arrival.
I suspect that many mothers have many secret places in their hearts where they store up their treasures. I think she would have hated leaving her children so alone and so sad.
So many times, in our culture, a birthday is all about the birthday boy or girl (or man or woman). I have always wondered why it wasn't about the mom. I suspect it was a mother that said it should be about the child.
I have lived much longer than she lived. As I celebrated yesterday, I celebrated the life of the woman, Elizabeth Anne who gave life to me, who, 60 years ago held me in her arms for the first time and never let me go until she herself was gone.
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it must be the "one"
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Mar 25, 2012 6:42 pm
244 Views
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I am fairly new here at SFF. Even so, I did not fall off the turnip truck yesterday, as my granny used to like to say.
The last 4 emails I have received have been from men who have fallen in love with me simply by flipping thru the searches. Lol and behold, I have captured their hearts. My smile has made them desperate to contact me. They can't wait to hear back from me.
I must be so fabulous because somehow, my stunning attributes have hypnotized them into writing the very same letter to me. Am I amazing or what!
I don't know how I am able to restrain myself and not beg them to come live with me and let me take care of them forever.
And now, I hurt for anyone who takes these sleezy opportunists seriously and actually believe their speil. These letters should be grounds for prosecution of the abuse of the elderly (well, at least, on paper, the elderly).
I would like to at least get an email that was original! I do like to read interesting thoughts.
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What did you do after high school that gave your life direction?
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Mar 25, 2012 1:12 am
235 Views
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I am sleepless in Houston tonight so I thought I would blog a bit.
In trying to divert my mind from heavier matters, I thought I would write a little about my past and ask all of you, where did you go to college if you went and how did it change if your life, if it did!
My dad always told us he went to the school of hard knocks. I am sure a lot of you heard that one. I hated him saying that. He thought it was funny.
I went to the University of Tennessee at Martin from 70-74. Martin was a sleep little town in West Tennessee. I honestly do not remember why I went there, but I found myself enrolled there in the School of Education. I wanted to be a biology teacher, and somehow ended up being a history major. Go figure. UTM was one of those schools where lots of kids from surrounding areas commuted and the ones who stayed on campus left on the weekends. I never saw a place so dead on the weekends but it kind of forced you to find creative ways to have fun and to focus on the friends you had who managed to stay on campus. I loved UTM and the small town atmosphere. I worked in the cafeteria to financially support myself. On Sunday, all the people from town came to eat at the cafeteria. I believe at the time, the school had a larger enrollment than the town had people. I met my love and married while I was there. The love did not last but it did give me two sons. I would say going to UTM directed the course of my life. I got the teaching degree, I teach. I found a husband, I had sons. Those two things became the driving forces of my life.
The professors of history gave me a wonderful gift that I use every single day.
I haven't been back to that little town since about 1976. I wonder if I would recognize it now. I left a little piece of me there, it might be fun to go back and see if I can find it.
So, where did you go to school or what did you do that directed your adult life?
Love life, Happy Sunday!
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