Talons

This week, when I asked my first year students why they came to Small Green School, one young man said, "It's the only school that would let me bring my hawk." His hawk? Yep. He is a falconer. He'd made special arrangements with OrnithologistGuy, who is on our faculty, and the red-tailed hawk is now living in a room at the top of the science building.

So this afternoon after class, a handful of students and I met Falconer in the big, park-like cemetery that adjoins our campus. Falconer held up a thick cowhide glove – a gauntlet, he called it – and told me to put it on my left hand. Following his directions, I stood still, with my arm raised in front of my face, my hand just a little higher than my elbow. He stuffed a piece of raw chicken between my thumb and fingers. Then he whistled to the hawk that was perched on a rock across the grassy lawn.

The hawk flew into the air, straight towards me, fast, and then landed lightly on the glove, just inches from my face. His sharp talons gripped the thick glove as he balanced, and he reached down with his hooked beak to rip apart the meat, swallowing it in a few gulps. His eyes, spaced on either side of his head, seemed to see everything as he swivelled his head about. A hawk's eyesight is eight times better than a human's. When I shifted my hand, the hawk opened his gorgeous brown-and-white wings, flapping until he was balanced again.

Today was a long day which included meeting a student at 8 am in my office, teaching three sections of my writing course, meeting with advisees, getting together with a colleague to sort through archival material, meeting with several independent study students, and teaching a 5 pm seminar. But what I am remembering from the day was that single moment -- standing in the cemetery watching the wings of a red-tailed hawk open.

Double

It was fall of 1982, and I was student teaching sixth grade at a middle school in North Country Town. One of my students was a girl named Linda, who was friendly and nice and smart, the kind of student who never caused trouble. I'd been there a few weeks and knew the students pretty well, when one morning, the strangest thing happened.

As the students were coming in, grabbing books and tossing off coats, Linda walked in and sat down at her desk. She looked up at me and smiled.

And I gasped. Because it wasn't Linda. She looked just like Linda -- the same light brown hair, the same blue eyes, the same mannerisms, the same type clothes -- but something was wrong. She looked exactly like Linda, and yet it was not her. I can't even explain how I knew, but I was sure. It was one of those weird moments out of Star Trek.

All kinds of scenarios went through my mind. Had Linda been kidnapped by aliens? Was this girl seated at the desk in front of me really an alien who had used her DNA to morph into her likeness? Had some creature slithered out of the deep to suck out her soul? What was going on?

"Hello Miss Jo(e)," the creature said calmly. It even knew my name!

"You ... you ... you aren't Linda, " I stammered.

Yeah, that is all I could come up with. Unlike Star Trek characters, I don't have a team of writers to come with good lines for me. Instead, I just stood there gaping like a fool.

Then I noticed the other kids in the room watching. They were smiling. And unafraid. They didn't see the least bit worried that the classmate they'd known for years had morphed into someone else. Were they all aliens too? Was this some kind of Night of the Living Dead situation?

"We knew she couldn't fool you," said PigtailGirl. She tossed her braids over her shoulders. "That's not Linda. It's Laura. They're twins."

Identical twins! For some reason that possibility had not occurred to me. But it did make just a little more sense than the whole alien kidnapping theory.

I hadn't thought about this in years, until yesterday, on the first day of class. I was taking attendance, trying to learn the names, and had gone through the whole list, when suddenly I glanced down and noticed that two students had the same last name. I looked to my right, at BoyWithDarkHair and then to my left, at BoyWithSameDarkHair.

Somehow I hadn't noticed the first time through how much alike they looked. In fact, they looked exactly alike.

BoyWithDarkHair noticed me looking.

"Yep," he said, "We're twins."
"No one can tell us apart," said BoyWithSameDarkHair.
"Even my mother gets us confused," said BoyWithDarkHair.

A new twist to the first week challenge of learning names. But at least they haven't played a practical joke on me. Yet.

Blogger meet-up

So what was it I am supposed to tell my kids about meeting strangers on the internet?

I tried to remember those safety rules as I drove home from campus today. It seemed to me I might have broken a few. Just a few days before, I had exchanged emails with a blogger who was planning a trip to Snowstorm region and I'd sent him directions to my house. I told him that I would be on campus all morning, and my two youngest kids would be home alone. I might have even said, "Don't worry, I will leave the house unlocked in case you get there ahead of me."

Luckily, he did not turn out to be an axe murderer.

We'd figured out through email and blogging that we had all kinds of things in common. And I had felt confident that anyone who had a Hawaiian nun in his background could not possibly be evil. I mean, what would be the chances?

And really, I had done an extensive background check. I had even talked to his fourth grade teacher.

So the blogger meet-up was more like running into a cousin I hadn't talked to in years. We jumped from topic to topic, talking about places and people we both knew, and what paths our lives had taken us to get us to where we were now. It was funny to see the parallels between our lives, and how we had come to some similar conclusions on a variety of issues.

And this blogger meet-up matched all the other blogger meet-ups I've had. Nothing about the blogger surprised me at all. I had not so much even talked to him on the phone, and yet he was exactly what his blog and emails had led me to imagine: smart, funny, articulate, warm. I am amazed once again at how well words can convey who a person is.

Since kindergarten

We've been friends for almost exactly forty years, since the beginning of kindergarten. I explained that to my kids as we drove to Kindergarten Friend's house for dinner on Saturday, but they have heard the story before so they weren't really listening. Such friendships are pretty common here in Snowstorm region; it's only my blog friends who are impressed. And actually, Kindergarten Friend's husband went to school with us, too, so I guess I've known him almost as long, but he doesn't count because he's a boy so I was too shy to talk to him until at least tenth grade or so.

Kindergarten Friend had invited my parents and her mother, a retired fourth grade teacher. I've know her mother since I was in kindergarten; she taught my siblings and then years later, my two oldest children. Boy in Black used to say she was his favorite teacher because she told stories about the "old days." She retired from teaching a few years back, so she never had a chance to teach Shaggy Hair or With-a-Why, but she still knows everything that goes on in the school community. And she's got a great story about what happens when you invite a bunch of nuns to your basement and get them drunk.

Kindergarten Friend has this gorgeous house, with a comfy living room that makes you want to curl up near the window with a book. She is the kind of person who actually plans things like wallpaper and paint and curtains, and coordinates things to match or contrast, and puts up shelves with decorative items on them, and walking into her house is like stepping into some kind of magazine. Except of course, she doesn't act at all like someone who lives in such a beautiful home; she didn't even flinch as my kids and her kids and one of her extra kids went tearing around the place, repeatedly knocking over a plant that is not likely to survive the year.

I couldn't help but notice the Snowstorm City china that my friend pulled from her cupboard. Her family must have a million sets of Snowstorm City china; I know the dishes well because I was really shy as a kid so when I ate at Kindergarten Friend's house, I spent most of my time staring down at the plates and eating all the food Kindergarten Friend's mother used to make for me. What's funny is now as an adult, I'll be at a conference in a strange city, and I'll notice that the restaurant is using Snowstorm City china, and suddenly, I'll have a flashback to that dinner table in Kindergarten Friend's house on a Friday evening, that familiar cosy kitchen where I used to sit listening to the family chatter while I ate a big plateful of food.

My father had brought over a CD of music that he, my daughter, and my oldest son recorded this summer -- at trio of clarinet, piano, and guitar. After dinner, we listened to the CD while we sat around the kitchen table and talked, and the little kids ran around as if they were at a playground instead of this perfectly decorated house.

My father, who is 75 years old, has lived in this area for 75 years. Kindergarten Friend's mother has lived here all her life as well; in fact she lives within walking distance of the house she grew up in. They were talking about people they knew in common, and the places that were popular when they were young, and my father started talking about how, as a musician trying to pay his way through college, he played most of the dances in the area in the early 1950s.

"You went to Railroad Village High School? What year did you graduate?" he asked. When Kindergarten Friend's mother answered, he said, "I played at your prom."

"The fellow I was dating didn't like to dance much," Kindergarten Friend's mother recalled. We all smiled. They were talking about an event that took place 56 years ago.

The passage of time is a peculiar thing. It is a jolt to me to watch Kindergarten Friend's daughter, Blonde Ponytail, running around the house. She looks exactly like Kindergarten Friend -- or what Kindergarten Friend looked like when we were in elementary school.

How strange to watch the kids playing, and realize that we, sitting at the table with cups of tea and grown-up talk, are the adults.

School Memories Meme

I am feeling all nostalgic about my elementary school because it's the same school my own kids went to, and now for the first time in fifteen years, I have no children there. With-a-Why begins the big public junior high this year. So I started doing the RevGalBlogPal meme, but it quickly turned into a longer meme. I am very bad at following rules.

Smells that remind me of elementary school: Chalk dust. Paste. Magic markers. Wet rubber boots.

Things that remind me of elementary school: Nuns. Hawaiian shirts. Any kind of decoration made out of construction paper. Green knee socks. Ice cream sandwiches and those pre-wrapped ice cream cones with the chocolate and nuts on top.

How much milk cost when I began school: Three pennies. And ice cream was a dime.

Scariest thing about school: I dreaded oral reports. I was very shy, and the thought of standing in front of the room talking absolutely terrified me. It's funny because as an adult, I am not the least bit shy about talking in front of people.

Thing I didn't like about school: Waiting for the school bus on really cold winter days. And I was afraid of some of the big kids on the bus. Those eighth graders seemed so tall and loud.

Favorite school clothes: I wore the same outfit to school for nine years since we had school uniforms. It was a tradition to complain about the school uniform and say how much we hated it, but I actually didn't mind it at all. It was easy to just grab the same skirt and a clean blouse each morning, and not worry about clothes. The outfit was comfortable, and like most of the other girls, I wore shorts under the skirt so that I could still do cartwheels and stuff like that.

Party tricks I learned in elementary school: I can sing Silent Night in Hawaiian. I can dance an Irish jig. I used to know the capital of every state but that was before I killed all those brain cells in college.

Strangest thing: Whenever a kid vomited on the floor (and this seemed to happen fairly often), the janitor would come in with this bag of weird orange stuff, almost like kitty litter, that he would sprinkle all over the mess. This happened throughout my entire school career. It was some kind of weird vomit tradition that all janitors had sworn to uphold. I always use to think, "Why doesn't he just get the mop and clean it up?"

Favorite classroom: One teacher put a rug in the corner so that we could go and sit there to read. I loved that. And the main thing I loved about all the classrooms was that one whole wall was all windows. I spent many hours staring out those windows, watching snow fall or daydreaming.

A significant elementary school memory: We were walking down to the gym, and another teacher was coming up the same hall with her class. I can still remember the exact place I was standing -- in a patch of sunlight on that grey linoleum floor in the tunnel between the school and the gym. The two teachers stopped and practically bumped into each other, and started laughing and joking around about which class had the right of way. I can remember watching them and thinking, "They love this. They love being teachers. " And I decided right then that whatever I did when I grew up, it would be something I loved doing.

Favorite teacher: In second grade, my teacher loved to dance. Every afternoon, we would push back all the desks, and in the middle of the room, she would teach us to dance. I don't remember what else we learned that year, but that is the main thing I've remembered -- how good it feels to move my body to music.

Best seasonal memory: Every year, sometime late in October, we would get the first snow. We'd be sitting in the classroom, with this whole wall of windows right next to us, and snowflakes would start coming down. Nudges and whispers would begin moving around the room, and pretty soon we'd all be looking out at the snow. Even the teacher would say something.

Usually, the first snow doesn't stick, usually not enough for snowforts or sledding, but still that first snowfall did something to the classroom. Suddenly, the warm, well-lit room with its clusters of desks would seem cosy. I'd look around at my classmates, and realize how well we knew each other. Many of the kids I'd known since kindergarten, of course, but even any transfer students would be part of the group now. The room had become our classroom, decorated with our construction paper artwork and neatly stapled Friday spelling tests done on ditto masters that included seasonal pictures to color. That first snow always made us seem like a family.

What I wanted to be when I grew up: In first grade, I announced that I wanted to be a teacher and a writer. And have lots of kids.

Feet Photo for Friday

I remember taking this photo, although I couldn't tell you why. My extended family were all gathered on an island, taking a swim, and I yelled, "Who wants to be in a foot photo?" Within seconds, the rock I was standing on was crowded with family members jostling each other to get a foot into the picture. If I had said, "Who wants to be in a nice smiling photo?" no one would have come. The only way you can ever get people in my family to pose for a photo is to suggest something weird.

I can remember when I lying in bed at night when I was a little kid, and hearing my mother come up the stairs, and realizing that I could recognize that it was her, just from the sound of her footsteps. In the same way, it is easy for me to recognize each foot in this photo. What might look like random feet to anyone else represent ten family members to me. I could even tell you the stories behind each foot -- why that one foot is bandaged or why that other foot is particularly dirty -- although I am not sure I could explain why my mother always wears red nail polish in the summer. I've always mocked her for it, even when I was a little kid.

From the way the feet are positioned, I can even tell you how people are standing -- my daughter leaning on her brother, cousins balanced with their arms around each other, my niece crowding next to her grandmother. I recognize the towels on the rock, and I can tell you which cousins were relaxing there, letting their bodies soak in sunlight after a swim in the cold river while they chatted. And of course, I can also tell the story behind the feet that aren't in the photo: family members who were busy leaping off the cliff into the water, or taking a nap, or lounging on boat with a fishing pole.

That bit of grey rock beneath the feet is as familiar as the feet themselves. Many times over many summers, I have pulled myself from the icy cold river to lie on that rock, my body pressed against the warmth, my face leaning against the rock to warm myself, to feel all that wonderful sunlight the rock had absorbed all day long.

(Okay, I know that Mona and Sergei said that the theme for today was HAND but I didn't have a photo of a hand so I went with feet instead. Hey, when you pick a random body part for the theme, I don't think you can be picky about variations on that theme.)

Classroom Moment

In a post over at The Happy Feminist, she describes a light bulb moment her father had, which reminded me of a discussion in my classroom some years ago.

We were talking about a chapter in a bell hooks' book, a discussion of cultural attitudes towards homosexuality. One student was analyzing historical reasons for homophobia in southern communities -- slave owners wanted their slaves to reproduce -- while another student was analyzing what she thought were the dynamics behind homophobia -- fear and anger.

SmallTownBoy, who seemed visibly disturbed by the discussion, kept interjecting phrases like, "it's just wrong." His reaction seemed so emotional that it made me curious. I wondered if he would have any sort of anecdote or reasoning to back up his vehement opinion.

Finally, SmallTownBoy told us that he had worked at a pizza place over the summer, and that one of the other workers was gay. He paused at that point, clearly ready to give us the important part of the story.

"And he hit on me," he said. He sounded shocked. "This guy wanted to date me. And even after I said no, he kept after me."

He looked at his classmates, clearly expecting sympathy and perhaps horror.

The women and a few of the men in the classroom looked at each other. Some rolled their eyes. Most of the men in the classroom were silent, shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

Finally, a woman sitting behind SmallTownBoy spoke up. "Congratulations," she said. "Now you know what it is like to be a woman."

College begins

My Wonderful Smart Beautiful Daughter is putting up posters in her campus apartment. Efficient and organized, it took her about twenty minutes to unpack. This is her third year in college, and she is looking forward to seeing her friends as they return to campus.

Boy in Black is sitting on the bed in his dorm room, playing his guitar. He is not as efficient and organized as his sister, but he has very little stuff, so he too was unpacked in about twenty minutes. His bed is made with the new black sheets his sister picked out, and his meager wardrobe, which consists almost entirely of black band t-shirts, is hanging in his closet. His roommate hasn't arrived yet, so that side of the room is still blank and empty.

I'm back home, sitting at my desk, thinking about how I too need to organize things for the beginning of the semester. Classes begin Monday. I like the energy of fall, the cold crisp air, and the way it feels to have students back on campus. I am proud of my oldest two kids and excited for them. But still ... it seems strange that they will not be returning to sleep here tonight.

I am grieving.

Transformation

I am shedding. Layers of translucent skin, white and ragged, scrape off as I wriggle my fingers.

Last week, I could barely use my hands, they had so reacted to the delicate toxins of the poison ivy plant. The skin between my fingers swelled up until my hands looked like they belonged in a Harry Potter book, a reaction to a spell or a potion gone wrong. When the itching drove me crazy, I held my hands under hot water. The hot water made the itching even worse, an intense urgency that is borderline erotic, but then when I pulled my hands away from the heat, I could feel the relief, sort of like the chemicals that come after a good cry or sex.

I've read that you should never break the blisters, but when some of them puffed to the size of kidney beans, I considered taking a sterilized needle to them. Of course, I did not have the patience to find the sewing kit or sterilize a needle -- I am not a patient person even when I don't have a weird itching rash all over my body -- so instead I took a thumbtack out of a band poster in the boys' room and popped the blisters with that. Yeah, all the oozing fluid was a bit disgusting, but at least I could close my fingers again.

Poison ivy rash keeps me awake on a hot August night, making me toss and turn and think about all about all the usual demons that come in the dark of the night -- doubts, insecurities, stupid mistakes. It's as if the plant knows how to trigger the fear and sadness trapped just under our skin.

But now, more than a week later, the skin is sloughing off, peeling away. The edges hurt, even after I soften my skin in the shower, and yet, it seems miraculous. All the soreness, the puffiness, the angry red welts have disappeared.

And underneath grows clear new skin, the colour of spring petals, smooth and beautiful.

Twin Towers

The movie theatre was crowded, and yet, it was strangely quiet. No shuffling of feet, no whispers, no munching of popcorn. Just the sounds of breathing. In the dim light, I could see faces, most curiously blank, almost as if the members of the audience were wearing masks to protect themselves. This was not a suspenseful movie: we all knew the ending before it even began. And yet, all around me, people were leaning forward, staring intently, their bodies tense.

Nothing exciting had happened on the screen yet, no action to advance the plot, just lovely scenes of the city on a sunny fall day. Ordinary people heading to work on an ordinary September day. And yet, at the sight of the familiar skyline, a scene hauntingly familiar even though it no longer exists, the way that your childhood home will always be accessible to your brain long after your parents have packed up and moved away, the air in the theater stirred softly as women and men began fumbling for tissues, raising their hands to wipe their faces.

I cannot tell you what I thought about the movie or the choices that the director made. I cannot even analyze the dialogue or offer a feminist critique in the way that usually annoys everyone around me. I cannot separate the movie from the memories.

The woman on the screen paced as she waited for a phone call about her husband, a cop trapped in the rubble. My mother called to say that Urban Sophisticate Sister was alive, still uptown because she hadn't gone to work yet -- but that her husband, a stock trader, was missing. A family gathered around a kitchen table, bracing themselves for bad news. An email chimed in to let me know that a friend's daughter, a dark-haired, hot-tempered young woman pregnant with her first child, had been last seen on the 92nd floor -- and was missing.

The energy that filled the room came from the audience and not the screen. For 129 minutes, people around me were breathing through their remembrances of that day: the waiting to hear, the not knowing, the frustration of jammed phone lines, the realizations that came gradually when names stayed on the Missing list. The most dramatic image in the room, the scene of the towers coming down, the one that played over and over all that long day while we here in Snowstorm region waited desperately to hear from family members and friends who may have been inside that building -- that scene never actually appeared on the screen.

My palms tingled.

I thought of Manhattan Man, the student who left my office in September of 2001 to drive to the city, to report for long hours of searching through rubble. Because he is a skinny guy, the rescue team kept sending him to crawl through tight places, desperately hoping to find some survivors. In one crevice, he and a firefighter spent long minutes retrieving what turned out to be a stuffed animal. His team went crazy trying to find the child that might have been with the toy, wiggling their way into every possible crack. A bigger guy held him by the ankles so he could descend into dark openings. But they never heard a voice or found the child. He wrote later in the journal he kept for me that this single realization changed the search profoundly for him: "There were kids in this building."

The movie ended, and groups of people began rising in the darkness to leave, slowly and quietly, as the credits rolled on the screen. There was none of the usual chatter and laughter, no talk of the movie or arguments about where to go to eat. People walked out into the hall, blinking at the bright light, and towards the exit signs without talking, the way people walk away from a gravesite.