Fourth Grade

 Now that my eldest is attending public school, I keep digging through my own school experience to compare.  I have many distinct memories of fourth grade, so I will start there.  I think I will leave Anne's fourth grade experience out of it, because that is her own story.

My class at our neighborhood elementary school met in the right half of a portable we shared with a fifth grade.  The portable across from us had a sixth grade class, as well as a mixed 5th/6th class.  Around the corner, closer to the main building was the portable with Miss Jeffrey (music) on the left and the frightening-to-me Mrs. Mendoza (art) on the right. Around the next corner was the portable with the other two fourth grade teachers.

I liked Miss Jeffrey and her class.  She was young, and probably had a general education music degree.  I was far younger, of course, and obsessed with Baroque and even older music, studying - with the required daily nagging and imprecations from my parent - the violin and piano at an intermediate level (easy Mozart sonatas, and Vivaldi concertos, for example), sang in church choirs, and as my mother put it, "played anything that wasn't nailed down."  I was always divising instrumental teaching curricula for fun and was about to launch my own now-forgotten, private classical composing career. Miss Jeffrey's class was easy, and interesting, and I eagerly  joined the team for something called "Music Memory" - a statewide contest where we had a list of art pieces to memorize from genre ranging from Baroque to 20th century with some ragtime thrown in.  At the actual contest, all of the teams crowded into UT's Bass Concert Hall and listened to the Austin Civic Orchestra (with whom I would solo a few times in the upcoming years) play little excerpts, drop-the-needle style from the list, while we were to annotate the blank page in front of us with the title and composer of each work.  I also distinctly remember seeing and hearing Westside Story on film for the first time, thanks to Miss Jeffrey.  Once I was quite embarrassed for being singled out when she was teaching us something and couldn't recall a specific musical term at the moment; I raised my hand and supplied the missing term, and she kindly and jokingly said she should hand me her masters degree off the wall.  We studied the recorder in her class, and I took this endeavor seriously,  eventually amassing not just the required soprano, but also an alto and tenor.  When I had some spending money, I would go to the sheet music store and purchase volumes of recorder music to read through, and I also taped a Handel recorder sonata off the classical station and carefully and diligently learned it by ear.  Miss Jeffrey formed an after-school recorder club,  which I immediately joined, and we prepared music to take on tour to the little Renaissance Festival one weekend in Waxahachie, a small town between Dallas and Waco.   My mother made me a costume from a Breugel painting, and it is possible that our Saturday journey to that magical place of imagined historical reenactment was one of the highest highlights of my first decade.  Miss Jeffrey also had an after school choir club, which I joined, and a young astronauts club, which was another area of great interest to me.  I very much looked forward to sixth grade when I could join the orchestra and learn the cello.  However, I did not remain in that school long enough to see that dream come to fruition.

Mrs. Mendoza, the art teacher, seemed pretty hands off.  I said she frightened me, which was true, but I am not sure why.  Perhaps I was not able to read her well enough to predict if I was pleasing her or not.  She would present the project we were doing - making a collage of our family from old magazines, or using clay to make candle holders, or whatever.  Then she would circulate around the room to check up on our work, and I mostly didn't want her to come round to me and tell me I was doing it wrong.  I still have the afore-mentioned candle holder and a clay baby guinea pig I lovingly made in her class.  I always loved making art, but mostly for my own enjoyment and edification,  and not so much in this uncomfortable setting.

My own homeroom teacher was the very young Mrs. Baker, who left us for many weeks in the spring when she gave birth to her first child.  One afternoon not long before the school's-out bell rang, Mrs. Baker called to all of us in an atypically sappy voice with unusual-for-her word choice: "Gather round, children. "  I had no idea why she was talking out of character and immediately felt embarrassed and confused.   I "gathered round" as requested,  with my back very intentionally toward her so that I would not have to deal with the intensity of seeing her face or anyone else seeing mine, as I processed this weird off-the-script encounter.   She announced to us, that as many of the class had observed (though not I), she was pregnant and would be leaving us soon for some weeks when her baby was born. I felt excited about the idea of the baby, as I think I have always been drawn to the tiniest humans, but I also felt betrayed.  It takes so long to get used to a new teacher and new routine,  and now I would have to do it again with a stranger.  (We ended up with a man in his 50s who probably carried on as best he could with us, but I was relieved when Mrs. Baker returned.) 

Each day I, and a few others, went to Mrs. Ramirez's class for language arts, as this was a subject we switched classes for.  Mrs. Ramirez was probably in her 50s or 60s, and lived in the neighborhood; sometimes I would see her walking home from school.  She was regarded by the kids as the toughest 4th grade teacher, and I liked her, while I also felt little personal connection with her.  In retrospect,  it was probably the most advanced readers who were sent to her for language arts, and she stretched and challenged us.  My usual odd written drivel, inspired by language of previous decades and centuries with which I had rather insufficient experience, didn't merit automatic adulation from her.  At one point we were to give a report on a topic she helped us choose, complete with hand-drawn slides.   Naturally I wanted to do something about music, and was rather frustrated when she assigned me, to broaden my horizons, the topic of jazz, a style which was distinctly uninteresting to me for its lack of antiquity and foreign-ness.  We also did a poetry project and I still have the mimeographed book of 4th grade poems and illustrations we put together.  I still rather like one of my illustrations of my brother in the middle of his technology projects, but my own poetic contributions were rather insipid.

After lunch we went to Mrs. Thomson,  the final (middle-aged) 4th grade teacher, who was notable in our mostly-white neighborhood as being the only African-American faculty member.  It was for health class one semester and D.A.R.E. (to keep kids off drugs) the other semester.   D.A.R.E .was slightly more interesting than health,  as we got to hear all about the gruesome results of substance abuse.  Health was more mundane,  and probably more useful,  as we read in our incredibly dull text book about the importance of hand washing,  the four food groups, and wearing helmets and giving hand signals when riding our bikes.

Mrs. Baker's class was comfortable enough. Two academic points stand out to me.  We had our daily math book, which was full of the regular arithmetic numbers manipulation,  which I rather liked.  Then there was a secondary math book which I liked rather less, called Real Math Book, which was filled with word problems.  When assigning classwork or homework from said volume, she would write on the board: R.M.B. p. 17 #3,4,6,8,15.  As you can see, those are my initials, too, and I always felt that those assignments were directed at me. 

The second notable item was that when we opened our social studies book for the year (it was a Texas-based book), there was a demonstration map showing how to read a map key.  The map was of a real place, as it was paired with an aerial photo. I caught its import immediately.  It was the city park on the same property as our school and was the playground on which we took our daily recess, fifty feet from where we were now seated.  I felt some pride of place, knowing that students all over the state would be studying OUR park.

Each morning after we were arrived and settled and announcements had been made, our first activity was to walk as a class to "specials."  The music and art were already alluded to.  The third on the daily rotation, was P.E.  The P.E. teacher I found most terrifying.  She was tall and stocky, her wild, long, crimped hair, streaked with early gray stored in an 80's scrunchy, wavy bangs across her forehead.  She dressed in matched sweat suits and athletic shoes, and wore oversize, loud, dangly earrings.  She never spoke, she always shouted; she never encouraged, she always cheered; her whistle was shrill, and she kept us in order.  I was happiest when I was at the back of the gym, as far from her as I could muster, but we had assigned and rotating spots on the floor for our daily warm-ups, so proximity was not to be helped on a schedule.  I rarely earned an A in her class: I was small, slow, awkward, uncoordinated, short on stamina, and very disconnected from the rules of organized sports.  We did a unit on football (a subject which I have never learned to appreciate in the slightest), and on the written test, which I failed miserably, we had the chance to earn extra credit by writing in the names of professional players.  I remember one boy laughing and remarking that that was the stupidest,  easiest extra credit ever, and I cringed inside, as I would have no way of picking such a name out of the thin air.  (I may do no better today.)  I did enjoy track and field day, because I loved running hurdles.

Each day, midday, we took a trip to the industrial-smelling, noisy cafeteria, where Mrs. Baker took leave of us for 20 or 30 minutes.  On rare occasions I went through the lunch line and had to endure the terror of talking to the lunch ladies, pointing out which items I wanted on my tray and the terror of trying to pay the correct amount to the cashiers.  Usually, though, I had the standard lunch, packed daily by my mother - a sandwich, usually peanut butter and honey or tuna salad (or on rare occasions cheese), along with something plant-y: apple slices, orange sections, or carrot sticks.  This, plus an apple juice box.  We had assigned seats at our class's two assigned brown fake-wood-topped, folding cafeteria tables, with their alternating attached blue and orange circular seats.  There were more girls than boys in the class, and Jennifer and I were assigned seats together at the boys' table.  Jennifer was quiet and studious, as I was, but seemingly less awkward.  I assume we were assigned to the rowdy boys' table, because Mrs. Baker thought we could be a good influence on them.  It may, instead, have cemented our social distance from the more popular girls and made us the target of merciless teasing by the boys.  I was gullible and unsure of what was malicious and what was meant in good humor, so I became the brunt of much teasing,  moreso, I think, than Jennifer.  I dealt with this injustice by raising my hand at each infraction from the boys, who seemed to be eating this up, and reporting each misdemeanor to the lunch monitors.  These poor, long-suffering lunch monitors must have quickly reported this continual annoyance to Mrs. Baker, as she soon produced a laminated copy of the lunch seating chart, and a dry-erase marker, which I was to take to lunch each day and mark the infractions on. This had the positive effect of reducing the lunch monitors' constantly and fruitlessly visiting our table, and I think over time it reduced the boys' tormenting of us, allowing Jennifer and me to eat in relative peace, while still desperately longing to join the girls' table, which problem was never resolved.   I handed the marked chart and marker back to Mrs. Baker when she came to retrieve us as we lined up to leave for recess.  Once I was hurt to see her erasing my list of unassailable accusations without inspecting them.  I was, however, inwardly assured that whether or not she cared, I had done my duty in promoting justice.  I have puzzled over this lunch situation many times throughout the years and have never really decided what to make of the whole thing, my own part included.  I was invited to Jennifer's birthday party, where I saw an Ouiji board for the first and only time.

I went to a few other birthday parties that year, too, including those of the other girls in my "club".  Margie, whom I had known since preschool, had asked me to join a little club she started, whose membership included two others besides us - one, her future stepsister,  though it would be a few years before they knew about that, and another girl who lived up the hill, daughter of a pastor father and Amway sales woman, who had a fabulous trampoline.  The club did not have much of a point or any bylaws, but by jove, we were a club, and got our parents to approve meetups at the various houses every couple of weeks, though mostly not mine.

There was one other whose birthday party I remember with much vividness.  The celebrant was Stephanie Villegas, and she lived across the street from my former piano teacher, and more exotically, a few doors down from her own older cousin.  Hers was a sleepover party, which I was permitted to stay for all of, and the centerpiece of this gathering was the watching of the newly released New Kids on the Block video.  As a rule, I was against pop music, on account of its lack of antiquity and its obvious vapidity, but this boy band was all the rage amongst the female turning-ten set.  I don't entirely know the reasons - were the ripped jeans and dance moves considered hot?  Were they all looking forward to the freewheeling world of junior high and (ew!) dating in a few years like their older sisters?  I mostly did not watch the video, carefully keeping my back to it most of the time, but my musical mind couldn't help but get sucked into notating and secretly enjoying the repetitious refrains....

...We hung our backpacks in the cupboard in the back of Mrs. Baker's classroom, and once I chanced to have left a cloth bound blank book in my bag, which I brought from home.  I learned from one of my neighbor boys that he and a couple others were in the habit of snooping through everyone's things, as he told me they'd found this book.  And was it my diary?  And they hadn't read it, because it was probably full of gross stuff.   I was careful to excise with scissors everything that could be construed as gross stuff that evening in sheer horror (don't recall now what that might be), and I still have that book with many years of pictures and words, with probably a quarter of the pages removed by me.

During recess I mostly kept to myself, but interacted with others when our paths crossed.  We had a fun playground and some magical, gnarled live oaks.

I did talk with a boy called Richard who sat at my table for math.  I think he was in one of the other fourth grades and came to Mrs. Baker's class for math.  He was funny without making fun of me, and I enjoyed his company. 

There was another boy who came for math who was often sent to the principal's office on account of being disruptive.  I marveled at his lawlessness as he related a story, which I believe to be true, of being dropped off at school in the morning, sneaking out the back and hanging out at home while his dad was at work,  wandering over to play pinball at 7-11, and returning to school in time for pick up without being caught.  He was disruptive enough they sent him to Dill for a couple of weeks, which I learned later was the district's reform school for their toughest behavioral cases.  From the distance of more than 30 years, I wonder whether visits to the office and Dill made positive or negative impact or any impact at all, what was making school hard for that boy, and what ever became of him in later years.

One more thing sticks out to me from fourth grade.  In usual fashion, I had created something I had rather enjoyed in my free time at home.  This one was a detailed map, in colored pencil, of a mythical land, drawn from various literary and artistic resources in my mind.  I was quite pleased that I had seen this vision to fruition and not dropped it for another grand idea partway through, which was a common enough occurrence.   I wanted to show it to Mrs. Baker, and I was much too shy to just go talk to her about it - there was no script for such a scenario, and I would have been too nervous to make more than a squeak, anyway.  So I put it in the homework basket with a note, saying I was submitting it for extra credit.  I was rather fond of the map and looked forward to having it handed back in a day or two.  When it was not returned promptly,  I panicked, but waited another day.  I submitted another note to the homework basket requesting its return, and Mrs.  Baker caught me at a quick moment before recess to let me know she thought it was brilliant and had not returned it yet, because she wanted to show it to other teachers.  My response was a squeaked OK, but inwardly I felt humiliated.  I did not want to be some object the teachers were discussing behind my back  (even for supposed brilliance); I had only wanted, in my own awkward indirect way, to make a connection with an adult over a topic that I found exciting.

During the summer break, I was at the mall with my mother (a chore I am not sure either of us liked) when we ran into Mrs. Baker with her baby boy in a stroller.  I did not recognize her, as she was in the wrong place, and I was not in the habit of recognizing adults' faces anyway.  She and my mother chatted, and I was probably remonstrated to give a hello.  She seemed a stranger to me, off somewhere in the giant universe full of social rules made up by adults, that I couldn't ever quite grasp sufficiently. 

Happy Moment

 I was on my usual stroll, unhurried, as it was a warm Sunday evening.  I came round a bend, and saw a small, unnotable car pulled up to the side of the road, radio blaring.  The two occupants were disgorged with rhythmic steps and hands waving.  They circled the car, and met in the street.   The engine was still running.  The song, unknown to me, was upbeat, and similar in style to U2. The pair, a man and woman, perhaps in their 30s, dressed in ordinary clothes, he in casual linen and she in jeans and a red T-shirt, danced and danced to the radio, together, and the woman laughed and laughed.  Another man, close to their age, who had been sitting on a nearby street corner, talking on his phone, said to me in a thick accent, as I passed him, "Happy moment!"  I smiled and nodded, kept walking, and smiled more, as this observer had given words to what I had just seen, and the words seemed an accurate definition and thus vanished all traces of my confusion.  I could not imagine myself being one of the dancers,  and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing their own happiness.  Happy moment, indeed!

Wonder

 Many things which would have made dramatic stories on my blog some years ago have become common enough to ignore now.  And so many stories involve others who deserve their privacy, that I am turning to other sources of material.  As a child, I assumed, as probably all children do, that others' inner lives work the same as ones own.  Peoples' feelings and thoughts follow familiar tracks.  Yet, there are clues all along that one is different to others, and eventually one is 42 years old and intensely interested in what it is like to be other people.   By reading, particularly well-written realistic fiction, one can glimpse the inner workings of other beings.  I am digging up old thoughts, old feelings, old stories from my own insides, some neglected for decades and thinking about them.  Wondering....  Wondering what bits others relate to.  Each person has their own constellation of inner parts.

*******

...I was just lying here in bed and mentally cataloging moments of sheer wonder from my life.  They do not come to me in chronological order, but I am rooting around in the drawers of the library of my mind, searching the card catalogue for these moments.  They are almost out-of-body experiences, but also carry the feeling of being more Real than the mundane experiences of the daily logistics of real life.   They are also all very much alone experiences.  I would not describe them as religious, because that implies interpreting them according to doctrines, traditions,  and narratives, but I would easily describe them as spiritual.  They all seem to involve a sense of time which makes way for the ancient, perhaps even eternal, and they have all been fleeting,  while I yearned to hold on to them....

I was perhaps ten, and walking alone in the woody patch of hillside below my extended family's log house, perched above an untamed river in the Texas Hill Country.  I remember moving off the trail and carrying a walking stick, though my mind may not be accurate on that last point.  I also had the distinct sense of wearing a robe-like garment,  though I can't be sure of that either.  It is entirely possible I was in make-shift costume of ancient times,  as that was absolutely in my repertoire,  but I may only have wished I were, and the desire impressed itself in my memory.  I distinctly had a sense that I was not alone,  but I was in the presence of the Divine, the same Ancient one that the Hebrew wanderers on the other side of our globe had been aware of.  I felt connected to these unknown people of long ago, the trees and rocks whose home I was in, and that Ageless Thing which permeated and connected us.  It was not a biblical sort of moment - there was no voice, no message, no revelation - rather, just a breath-quickening, quiet,  immutable Presence....

Another lonely walk - in the field above the same house, this dotted with prickly pear cactus and prickly juniper shrubs.  I may have been older or younger.  I chanced upon the clean skeleton of a young fawn in the wild, hardy grasses, and rather than taking a scientific interest in it, as I might do at other times, I had a deep sense of the finality of death.  This specific animal had lived a short life.  Now that life was gone.  Had the life gone somewhere?  Or had it fizzled out of existence?  The no-more-ness of that small deer was all-encompassing....

I was eight, and our family had driven out west to Ft. Davis.   I was seeing mountains for the first time, hiking amongst ancient bits of volcanic history.  Without having seen such before, the distinctive rough, red-brown rocks told me a story as I sat among them.  High elevations, views, a few quiet moments to think to myself.  An overwhelming quiver of beauty, a planet far older than human memory....

A walk along the pounding waves of the Pacific Ocean at Rialto Beach.  Jared has the kids for a while, and I am alone.  The ocean is so vast, so insistent, so ancient.  I am an alien here.  This is an ocean planet, and the ocean is inaccessible to me - so watery, so deep, so cold.  I am here on its fringe, living my life on a shelf of rock on a tiny, ancient volcanic ball orbiting a one-of-billions star in a vast and seemingly empty universe.  Are there other planets like this?  Are there other beings on them feeling just as alien and alone and awed to be part of this fathomless evolutionary time?  I talk to G-d about a smaller matter, and I hear what I do not want to hear: I must reach out and answer my own plea, rather than waiting for a more comfortable deus ex machina....

I am in my early twenties, perched in the balcony of the performance hall at the Cleveland Museum of Art.  I am listening to a full-length concert given by a string quartet.  I enter a place where I am catatonic, but not asleep - the usually hyperactive analytics dashboard of my mind has dimmed.  I am carried by the waves of the music, and there is no time, only emotion.  Everything else is gone, though I feel rooted in my seat and physically present in this room. The world ceases to exist.  Is this what music is for?  How many others over the millenia of human existence have been carried away to this quiet, private place by woven sound?...

I am eleven.  My father's airline miles from work have made a dream come true - I am standing on ancient Roman ruins in the north of England.  Many centuries ago, the Emperor ordered this wall and these outposts built to protect his stolen lands to the south from marauders to the north.   It is a wild, rolling, grassy place, inhabited by sheep, perhaps not too different than it was when all these conscripted young men were marched up this way to build this fortification with their hands, and to live in the brick huts, eating, laboring, exercising, and discharging their duty to this distant power monger.  Being in the presence of these ruins, I could almost see the people who lived here long ago, with their handmade physical culture and their strange language, which fascinates me.  Old art and old photos have faded, and it is easier to imagine the past in a blurry black-and-white.  But in this moment, I can see that ancient present in color - the blue sky,  the tall yellow and green grasses, and the muddy orange brick...

Ode to a Sofa

It was found on Craiglist around five years ago - a beautiful,  red, well-engineered Scandinavian design.  A student with a minivan drove out to pick it up from the German speaking family in north Seattle who were selling it. Wide enough to seat our young family of five, it folded out into a queen sized bed - incredibly comfortable.  It was a place for our visiting relatives to sleep, we put in the front bedroom, which was at that time, a teaching studio.  A place for our student's families to lounge during lessons, it became a storage place for unfolded,  clean laundry on our off days...

Eventually our teaching moved to the outbuilding, the front room became the kids' room, and the sofa migrated to the living room to join our leather-upholstered love seat, a hand-me-down from a former student.

The main problem with the red sofa turned out to be NASA.  Our cats, in general, had enjoyed its texture for sharpening their claws, and I had long since covered it with a giant off-white drop cloth.  The specific issue is that Black Bean did not like NASA's arrival, and although many spots in the house became recipients of Black Bean's wrath, the odors could not be removed from the red sofa. 

One day last summer, the red sofa was taken out, as we attempted to load it into the back of our new-to-us SUV for its final voyage to the Renton Transfer Station.  Except it was just a few inches too wide for the vehicle's orifice. 

It was installed on one end onto the front corner of our house, partially blocking the front walk, keeping it from getting to heavily soaked in the rain, and fading badly in the sun.  Still a faint odor greeted visitors as they walked by, and NASA and Feathers made it their high observatory perch and napping spot.  

I was keen to offload it as soon as possible, but the pain of making a phone call to strangers kept it in place. (And it had become a favorite haunt of the two afore-mentioned cats.) Finally, I asked Jared who I would have to call, and he walked me through it.  It only took two business days to get up the nerve to dial, and it was a simple call with no questions I did not know how to answer. 

Late last night, Jared and I hauled the red sofa to the curb and balanced it on its end on the sidewalk behind the hedgerow, where I cannot see it from my windows.  

By the evening, it should be off to the dump in a truck.  I am quite sad, and as long as I have cats, any future sofas will have to be leather or something else that cats cannot destroy. I will not see it leave.

One of my elderly neighbors who walks by each day with his dog (and does not appreciate my approach to landscaping/lawn care or probably housekeeping),  now peered at the remaining cultural garden on my front porch, which was made visible by the removal of the sofa.  People who have garages put things that are awaiting donation and recycling in that more hidden location.  I am out there doing my part to bring down the neighborhood...

...The truck has just pulled up, and the two little kids have gone out to watch.  Goodbye wonderful old sofa!

Window of Realization

 On Thursday, I had a small window of time when it worked out for me to take a solo walk.  I had chosen my route to include the neighborhood grocery, on account of my sick child needing an electrolyte beverage and cough drops.  As I walked up the hill north of the elementary school, I saw an obstacle in my path- a tow truck at the car shop, making a damaged vehicle delivery.  The front of the tow truck was hanging out of the tiny parking lot, across the driveway apron in the sidewalk, and onto the street.  There were undoubtedly at least two people around this somewhere, involved in the unloading process.  

I quickly ran through the options in my mind - cross the street (*too dramatic, since I was turning left at the corner just a few feet past the tow truck), walk catty corner through the little car shop lot (*slightly non-standard, vaguely tresspassy, might need to greet someone working there, efficient, quite understandable), or walk around the cab out into the street (*might be oncoming traffic, might need to greet someone on the backside of the truck, more efficient than crossing the street).  Time slowed down, or perhaps more accurately,  my brain went into hyperdrive, and in a very long, short moment, I enacted option C.  

I did not meet oncoming traffic, I did not need to greet anyone, but I had to navigate one more small car shop issue as I rounded the corner: an ancient pickup being driven on the perpendicular street by one auto mechanic had its passenger door swing open unbidden, and a second auto mechanic dashed across the sidewalk in front of me to help close the wayward door at the stop sign.

Having slightly slackened my pace and enacted a minimal veer to the left to accommodate this new obstacle, I continued on my merry way, lost in surprise.   Surprise that this entire unexpected navigation produced no anxiety.

It occurred to me that at other points in my life, seeing the tow truck blocking my route on the sidewalk would have called up a massive shot of adrenaline,  followed by panicked evasive maneuvers.   I thought through the scenario from the perspective of my younger self.  I could have imagined theatrically remembering I had forgotten something, turning on my heels, and quickly moving back down the hill.  Then either navigating a street crossing when I thought no one was watching, or possibly heading over some blocks to avoid being seen retracing my steps.  

In retrospect, that would have been really weird and inefficient behavior.  I was surprised when it did not come up as a viable option this time around.  Honestly I had never noticed this level or detail of social anxiety before - it was just the usual operating system.  I have always felt watched, not necessarily in a creepy sort of way, but more that I was unwillingly on stage, trying to play a part without rehearsal, and with minimal stage directions.  The bigger question now is, why was that crazy and unwelcome adrenaline rush gone?  I have noticed many other little scenarios like this lately.