Big Floweredy Dresses

My sister and I made our first trip to California together, two undeniably Southern women in our fifties, expecting to be swaddled in the messages that we remembered as teens from the 1960’s.

My sister couldn’t wait to mingle with the hippies that she was certain would be evident on every block in Berkeley. She says she saw them – but I saw linen, khaki, shoes you wear to walk to work, people with the good sense to dress comfortably.
The two of us, however, were dressed in big floweredy dresses, the kind women our age wear all over the South. I’m talking flowers the size of dinner plates - bright reds, blues, yellows, and oranges, all splashed onto the same wearable canvas. Nothing in Berkeley was blooming as loudly as we were.

In the South, when you see women our age enter a room with bold colors and patterns, it sends a message. Not the same message as “tacky” which requires a sense of style cultivated over a lifetime and a “bless your heart” level of condescension. Just look at the jewelry my mother wears to go to the grocery store.

But, you can expect boldly dressed women to speak up freely and often. At home, at least one woman would have rushed over to me on the street to ask, “Where did you get that beautiful floweredy dress? I’ve been looking for something just like that to wear for jury duty next week.” A middle-aged Southern woman wearing a loud dress would never have a problem being the lone holdout on a hung jury.

The obvious statements I did find in Berkeley were on the T-shirts sold by the street vendors. For months after my return, my husband drove around Greenville, SC, with his souvenir shirt that read, “Born OK the first time.” Lord knows what that man will have to say when I get home after my next trip.

Moving Pictures

Our son Will is moving, from his student apartment in Spartanburg to an upperclassmen dorm at Winthrop University. The transition is marked by boxes and crates, dirty laundry, and computer equipment painstakingly delivered to safe storage. Tomorrow, we will fill cars and make the two hour drive to Rock Hill to deposit everything that now sits in our hallways, our family room, our garage. Well, probably not everything. The boxes he leaves behind will remind us that he still calls this home.

Our children do tend to come and go. Will, of course, is still a student. Geoff works at Yellowstone National Parks and comes home for the extended closures that mark the seasonal transitions from wheeled vehicles to treaded vehicles for use on snow. Geoff’s visits home are commemorated by piles of ski bibs and boots in the spring and hiking boots and camping equipment in the fall.

George and I are headed for a move ourselves to what was once a Better Homes and Gardens feature home but is now a dilapidated abandoned house that we clearly see as a dream retirement home. The house waits to see the renovation that will mark its return to a home for a family that really wants it. We will have garage sales, make drop-offs at Goodwill, donate items to our favorite school, and throw out trash – lots and lots of stuff that once held some value in our lives. A lot of items won’t make the cut – resources for teaching careers, odd family plates, the few pairs of heels left in my wardrobe. We will ask our sons to help with our boxes and crates, leisure clothes favored by retirees, little boys’ pictures lovingly delivered to safe display, Legos for future grandchildren, and our faithful family dog who will patrol her new borders, bark at new neighbors, and delight in the number of squirrels just begging to be chased.

The Family Craftsman

My husband George recently built a table of antique year old heart pine reclaimed from the ceiling of an abandoned cotton mill in Enoree, SC. The mill was the sole employer in that small community for more than a century. A friend of ours delivered a load of rough pine boards and beams, blackened with decades of grime and tufted with cotton lint, and asked George to transform them into a coffee table for her brother. After George pulled handmade nails and spikes, planed and joined the planks, the rich red veins of the wood were exposed as clearly as the day when the trees were cut and milled at the site of construction.

George is teaching himself woodworking and intends to become a craftsman, evidenced by the growing collection of woodworking tools and machinery in our garage.

He’s made several small pieces for his students in the Family Learning GED program. These include stands for the family fish tank, a coffee table for a family room, and several small work tables sized for a child and parent to play together. His adult students dropped out of high school to marry early, have children early, and go to work early – like many of the generations who preceded them in the mill-based economy that once sustained the South.

They now hope to earn their GEDs so they can find better jobs or continue their educations, but, more than anything else, they hope to break the cycle of school failure before their own children become the newest family members to be entrapped. They bring their infants and preschool children to an early childhood classroom next door to his. Each day the parents, children, and teaching staff meet for lunch and for parent/child activities which help prepare the children and their parents to meet the challenges of the long years of schooling that lie ahead.

George’s tools at work include math textbooks and a guitar, test prep problems and play dough, resources on opening family businesses and picture books. Like teachers everywhere today, he must measure progress by student practice test scores. But he also notes with delight the child who took his first steps or spoke his first words during the day.

Recently one of his families took their two year old son to see Santa. He asked for “Georges” for Christmas.

Unanticipated

I find myself in a totally unanticipated position – I am retiring after twenty-eight years of teaching kindergarten. Despite measuring the years by the number of Halloweens and Valentines Days that remained in my active career, I never actually expected the count to get down to zero. I guess I thought it would be more like continually dividing a pizza into slices; no matter how minute the portion, there would always be some left to divide again.

I am not actually going to stop working. I won’t stay at home to read or garden or volunteer or travel. In June I will retire from the public school system where I’ve worked for most of my life. Next fall I will teach at one of the colleges in our area. During the last two years as a specialist working directly with teachers, I often thought that I would like to end my career back in the classroom. I just never anticipated that it would be with kids who can tie their own shoes, cut their own meat, and drive their own cars.

It took me over a month to make up my mind to actually do it. I don’t think it was an age issue. It’s more like it’s a RETIREMENT issue. I mean, I remember my first week of teaching and how happy I was when we were snowed in for the entire second week of my career - and again for the entire fourth week. I remember the kid (what was his name?) who brought a snake to school in his pocket and pulled it out after lunch for show and tell during that first spring. Not many people get off to a start like that.

I was stunned to find that after thirty years of a wonderful marriage, raising two great children, and a career as a really strong teacher, I was completely unprepared to make a decision that was so obviously to my advantage. My gross pay will go way up. My workload will go way down. I thought I turned the job down once, but apparently I was negotiating. Who knew you could do such a thing? I certainly did not and I bet not many of my public school colleagues know it either.

This time in my life is actually a lot like cresting the first climb of a new roller coaster. I chose to go for it. I can see some of the loops, turns, and drops ahead. I can appreciate the view. A lot of my friends and family are getting ready to go for the same ride. I have some idea of what lies ahead. I just hope it won’t be over about the time I quit screaming and open my eyes.

Two Women

Today in the lobby of the theater, I eavesdropped on two men with all the answers to the problems of public education.  For twenty minutes they went on about the way America’s children were actually being “retarded” by their teachers.  They’ve seen the research to prove that public school teachers not only don’t know how to teach, they don’t know the subjects they are supposed to teach.  I watched while I listened.  They never once looked at their own children, who began to amuse themselves as children do when  nothing else presents itself – by arguing, pushing, fighting for fun.  One of their wives followed the group of kids from water fountain to stairs to theater doors while these two men single- handedly analyzed the failures they could so clearly see.  The mother did her best to put an end to the children’s fighting, but she was always one step behind them, always reacting to situations that were already a reality while the two men were unwilling, perhaps unable, to acknowledge any of it.  I debated whether to approach the men and defend what I believe to be a more accurate picture of public education.  But, truthfully, I was more curious to know what that mother had to say, how she sees the problems that affect children and discipline and management and organization and delivery.  I wonder if she has the time to contemplate those challenges in the daily struggle to do what she can in the face of realities which other people either don’t want to see or are truly unable to see. I suppose that is the more accurate picture of the problems facing public education today.  Without some direct experience in meeting the realities which our children face, we cannot comprehend the totality and complexities of the problems.  We cannot isolate one problem as “the problem.”  We cannot rely solely on our understanding of our own school careers or those of our own children to provide either enough experience or the diversity of experience required to comprehend the ranges of abilities, needs, and possibilities schools must now meet.  And we can’t claim to have any possible answers at all without becoming involved it their application.  We can’t stand aside and speak with authority about the weight of the facts while someone else shoulders the burden.  We need to develop multiple solutions and be willing to risk using them, to test them, to evaluate their possibilities, and to assimilate whatever we’ve learned into building a dynamic system of education.  We all need to be involved, as teachers, as parents, as community members, and as Americans, but, most of all, as active learners ourselves who are willing to risk turning needs into challenges and realities into opportunities.  

Duck Tales

Yackey was our pet male duck – actually rather soft-spoken when compared to his mate. I always believed that he was henpecked. For years, I took my triumphs and my troubles to him because he didn’t mind being stroked and talked to - didn’t even mind tears dropping his back on my childhood’s darkest days. He and Fluffy stayed in the creek or rummaged in the neighbors’ yards until we came to feed them.

One morning at school the principal called my name over the intercom with no explanation – just “Come to the Office.” I walked down those long tiled halls past the library and restrooms and lunchroom. There were never any lights on in the hall. I walked into the foyer to find Mr. Cravey standing beside his plants, the ones we never dared to touch. Without a word, he led me out the front door and there was Yackey, padding back and forth with that soft w-a-ack, w-a-ack of his, waiting to be admitted or to be acknowledged or perhaps even waiting to be educated as so many of us inside were waiting. Cravey said, “Is he yours? Make him go home.”

“I can’t sir – I’ll have to take him home.”

“Take him and come back” and Cravey was gone – no need for a parent dismissal, no phone calls for permission.

Yackey must have been relieved to find me, because he willingly followed. My dad delighted in saying that we only lived a block from the elementary school, but it was an endless block that day – me, in front, head hanging down, feeling ashamed for someone else’s actions; Yackey, behind me, asking quiet questions all the way home.

I suppose it was my first experience with parenting, poor parenting. Suddenly this dependent creature who shared in the daily events of my life had shamed me by pulling me into his own event, had made me accountable for his actions, and yet still trusted me enough to follow me even though I simply wanted to be rid of him and the embarrassment he had caused me. He continued to trust me in innocent ignorance of the fact that my unspoken, unrealistic expectations had been violated.

I thought of that walk last year when I wrote:

I’m not a very good parent tonight –
I keep wishing there was someone to call who had no idea
I even was a parent.
I hurt and tonight I’m overwhelmed with hurt –
I’m disappointed –
All that glittered didn’t turn out to be gold.

I’m ashamed
That I didn’t do better in the first place
That I screamed
That I got angry
And that I don’t know how to get to the real problem.

The Power of Vision

The window in the pastor’s study at Ebenezer Baptist Church in January 1970 provided a view of a large, vacant inner city lot, certainly not prime Atlanta real estate. It was a sunny lot, but otherwise matched the general condition of the neighborhood around the Baptist Church.

Four college students had come to talk with Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., about the ministry his church provided in the inner city. The window was behind his desk and Dr. King turned his chair so it was always within his view, although he never looked directly through it. There was not activity on the lot, yet he seemed to be addressing something on the other side – something larger than we could see. As he talked about the church’s programs, Dr. King would mention his son, Martin, Jr., and his wife Alberta, who later would also be violently murdered in the sanctuary of that church. He discussed his loss openly, and yet we were filled with a sense of his tremendous dignity, serenity, and vision rather than a sense of grief. He began to tell of the new ministries for Ebenezer Church, most particularly the construction of a resource center named for his son, Martin Luther King, Jr. He described a plaza with fountains, a gathering place, not a monument, and, as he talked, the empty lot began to change in our eyes and our minds.

It became a place and time long past when ancient people gathered at desert wells, temporarily casting aside their differences and mistrusts in search of the precious water which would sustain them. And it became a place and a time yet to come, when people of all walks of life would gather to share ideas, to serve as each other’s resources, and to build foundations of peace and understanding. It became a time when people would choose, as Dr. King had, to let go of their own sufferings n search of something better for all mankind.

A decade later, this empty lot did indeed become part of the Martin Luther King, Jr., National Historic Sight and Center for Social Change. I am not sure if Dr. King was talking to his son or to an idea when he looked through the window that day, but I am sure of what he saw. I remember knowing that I was in the presence of a man of vision for perhaps the first time in my life. And, at that moment, I saw the vision shared by a father and a son, and I, too, shared their dream… “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of George the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood…”