“Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower…”
Today, I hadn’t considered a slice of life I wanted to share, but then I saw the quote Kathleen wrote on the post and I liked it. I let that be my inspiration. First, I read “The Butterfly” by Hans Christian Andersen–the fairy tale from where the quote came. Butterfly is looking for a spouse among the flowers, but doesn’t find one he wants to settle down with. Finally, he gets pinned down and stuck indoors. Here is a sweet passage about the daisy:
The French call this flower Marguerite and say that it can prophesy. Lovers pluck off the leaves, and as they pluck each leaf they ask a question about their sweethearts, thus: “Does he or she love me? Dearly? Distractedly? Very much? A little? Not at all?” and so on. Each one speaks these words in his own language.
The butterfly came, also, to Marguerite to inquire, but he did not pluck off her leaves; he pressed a kiss on each of them, for he thought there was always more to be done by kindness.
Yesterday I watched an art project video that included grounding oneself in the earth, and I wrote about it here. But I did not take time yesterday to go outside, as it takes quite a few hundred steps to get past the concrete and bricks that surround me. Instead, I just stayed home and did the art project.
Today, however, I did go sit in a garden. I thought I’d look for a companion for Butterfly. There were so many possibilities…
The frangipani, or plumeria, so splendid that it needs two magnificent names to handle its impact. Long-lasting and sweet-smelling like the flower garlands around the necks of celebrants and honorees.
The impatiens are anything but impatient. They hold their hand open wide and welcoming. At the same time, they line the sidewalks like strong little bodybuilders willingly doing the heavy-lifting in this summertime heat.
The intoxicating oleander, beautiful but bitter.
The bougainvillea running all over the yard like a wild party, but they are ready with sharp claws if you take advantage.
The tiny bouquet-within-a-flower of the lantana, a medley of colors. They seem so wholesome, a homespun treasure.
I couldn’t decide either. I just pressed a kiss on each one and left them in peace.
Last Monday Kate Messner sent out the first week’s #teacherswrite summer camp prompt. We were to go outside and breathe intentionally and write. It was a hot day, but I did go out and breathe and write. I wrote a post about that here. I had yet to take this challenge though: “think about a time when you were growing up and you felt peaceful and whole.” So for my Slice of Life today, I wrote this…
We the Peoples?
When I was a little girl, I spent most weekends
in the land of the peoples of
the Serrano, the Chemehuevi, and the Cahuilla.
We worked hard to clean up the place homesteaded by Grandpa thirty years earlier.
It had been sitting empty
except for the birds and other creatures
who found shelter through the broken windows.
Weekends of hiking, exploring, and collecting memories,
along with picking up stuff abandoned long ago
by homesteaders who bought five acres of land
in baby homesteading grants,
many sight unseen. They
built 12 x 16-foot shacks
on parcels without water
or situated in a wash.
Most didn’t stay.
When I was a little girl, I spent most weekends
in the land of the peoples of
the Serrano, the Chemehuevi, and the Cahuilla.
The homesteaders who came and built
were not native peoples who in centuries before ate and survived in this rich Mohave desert.
Most homesteaders wanted
a vacation getaway from Los Angeles.
Some were like my grandfather
who left his work in policing
because of his emphysema,
and came for better air to breathe.
After we cleaned up the “cabin” (we called it), my grandma eventually moved in
to live the rest of her years. After she died,
my mother lived her last thirty years
in that same cabin.
When I was a little girl, I spent most weekends
in the land of the peoples of
the Serrano, the Chemehuevi, and the Cahuilla.
I felt peaceful and whole
growing on weekends in this place
that held my family’s history.
Free to be wild and roam in safety far away
from the busyness of the suburbs,
away from the L.A. smog,
which ravaged the air back then.
When I was a little girl, I spent most weekends
in the land of the peoples of
the Serrano, the Chemehuevi, and the Cahuilla,
though I don’t remember ever knowing
anyone from these people groups.
Most of the people I saw were white.
I was a person full of privileges–
a car and the means to travel two-and-a-half
hours to get away every weekend,
generations of loving family surrounding me,
skin that didn’t get questioned by police,
skin that was never stopped from
going anywhere we wanted,
but instead gently warned
to be wise for our own safety,
When I was a little girl, I spent most weekends
in the land of the peoples of
the Serrano, the Chemehuevi, and the Cahuilla.
I felt peaceful and whole in this place,
Full of the privileges afforded
white people in a system made by and for them.
I lived in a nation of we the people,
not we the peoples.
Though I felt peaceful and whole,
how many peoples around me
did not feel the same?
What are your goals for Teachers Write?
I participated in Kate’s #teacherswrite summer camp in the past in 2012 and 2017. I also dabbled in the summers between those two years. I did not participate at all in 2018-2020. Now, here I am again. I have been writing more than ever since the pandemic started, mostly poems and blog posts. So when I saw the tweets about #teacherswrite, I was excited and wanted to try again. Funny though, I didn’t even make a goal this year. I have other kinds of goals that include writing. Here is my summer list of goals. However, I am not writing a children’s novel like I tried to and never finished in 2017. (Maybe next year I’ll come back to that children’s novel.) This July, I think I will just follow the prompts. The one goal I have is to be more descriptive and take more time with the writing on my blog posts. (I sometimes write too much, and it’s boring, as you can see here.) Also, now that I’ve seen Kate Messner’s Week 2 prompt where she takes us on an adventure of picture book writing about ourselves, I will take that challenge–I wonder what I will learn about the child that became this adult.
How did you do this week? Did you meet your weekly goal(s)?
Because I didn’t have any writing goals, I just watched for Kate’s email and thought I would let that inspire me. I am already behind, but getting back on track now!
What was the pit of your week? (The hardest part, the non-fun part?)
The pit of my week was not about writing, but I’ve had to say goodbye to some special people who are leaving Bahrain this week. I will be leaving myself in six months. That has been hard to say goodbye, but also being reminded that I will be saying goodbye soon.
What was the peak of your week? (The best part, the most-fun part?)
I’m going to go back to last week because I’m behind on the check-ins and another is coming up in a couple days. On the last weekend of June I participated in The Poetry Marathon, which was writing 24 poems in 24 hours. It was very rewarding and lots of fun. I wrote about it on Friday.
Monday, after two weeks working on a memory book for our beloved principal, we were finally ready to turn the files in for printing at the Copy Top. We had made a collage of photos for the cover but had a hard time deciding what to write. We couldn’t settle on a title for the book. We finally decided we would write what has become an unofficial motto of our school this year: “with great love.”
The Copy Top shop is actually closed during our present lockdown. They are only allowed to do pickups and deliveries, so all business happens on the phone, WhatsApp, and from the car in the front of the shop.
I went to the shop and M came out to the car to collect all the needed files. I started to explain that we wanted just three words printed on the cover. He said to send the words in WhatsApp and then gave me his phone number. Before I had a chance to add his number to my phone, he texted me because he got my number from his boss, whom I had been communicating with.
We then had the following conversation:
I laughed after I saw the timing of those texts wondering what he thought of my first “with great love.”
Tuesday Morning…
Just 24 hours later M called and said the book was ready. A presentation was made to the principal on the last working day for the administrative staff. A rewarding job complete!
We had just been married a few weeks. Keith was on a camping trip with the youth group. On Friday morning, my only day off of the campout, I drove the two-hour trip to enjoy the day with them at the state park.
It had rained the night before, and everything was damp. We spent part of the day dealing with wet camping gear, but also swimming, hiking and other fun.
When dinner time approached, my husband tried to start a campfire for the hotdogs and s’mores. He had a metal can of Kingsford Charcoal Lighter Fluid, the kind you squeeze onto the wood. He tried to start a fire with this damp wood and kindling, throwing matches on that would not fully catch on fire. He doused it some more, then threw another match.
The lit match-squirt pattern continued until finally the fire took hold and shot up during the squirt phase. Our previously non-existent fire leapt from the ground up to become a flame thrower’s masterpiece–a flaming river flowing up from the ground. He instinctively threw the flaming bottle up and out of his hand. “We’re all gonna die!” he yelled. In that split second he pictured the metal can had sucked the fire into the fuel and became a bomb ready to explode (as we had seen on recent news warnings).
Being the brave fool I was, I grabbed not a handful of dirt, but someone’s sleeping bag that had been drying on a makeshift clothesline. I smothered the fire, which had spread out of the fire ring.
I don’t recall where or if it was spreading really; it was damp there in this forest and obviously not a fire tinder box ready to create a forest fire. Fortunately the charcoal fluid bomb fizzled, but the scorched and ruined sleeping bag now needed to be replaced. So, instead of sitting around the campfire, I drove to Target in the nearest town and bought a new sleeping bag so the teenager could sleep that night.
Fast forward 38 years. Last week was our anniversary, and we reminisced about some early memories, this one included. At the time he yelled “We’re all gonna die!” I wondered what I had gotten myself into. He may have wondered about me too.
Today Keith is known in meetings and groups as the non-anxious presence–a wise leader, looked to for surety and strength.
It’s good to not look too soon for the final person another will become–this wisdom is not just for children, but for partners, as well. Thanks be to God that we have hung onto each other through all kinds of exposing behaviors, and I am so grateful.
Today I did one of the last things I will need to do as a teacher at my school. I spent three hours in my room for a final cleaning and organizing blitz. It’s been since February 2020 that I had spent any significant time there. Over the past year and a quarter, I have stopped in occasionally to grab something, but that’s it.
I spent some time today with the teacher who replaced me this year. She had end-of-the-year paperwork to complete, which included listing the resources in her classroom. It was sadly ironic, though, because she hasn’t had this or any classroom this year. She and I looked through the materials, and I identified the resources she needed to be aware of if school ever goes back to anything pre-Covid-like.
I then spent the next 2.5 hours pulling things out of closets and looking through supplies I had neglected for years! Two cupboards in particular had not received any attention when we stopped teaching in person.
I quickly made a mess!
Too many times I said, “Oh, there is ______!” (that hammer my husband’s been looking for; my hot glue gun; that new journal Fatima gifted me, etc., etc., etc.) I ended up carrying four bags home for a variety of purposes–to return things to people I borrowed them from, to give away to friends I know will appreciate them, to add to my own supplies from things I purchased and still needed, a book to read, and a few things to repair or work on that will go back to school.
29.7 pounds (I weighed these beasts because it seemed I carried 50 pounds home!)
I told myself I would not bring any more than I could carry in one trip, and I managed to do that. I carried all four bags for the several blocks home, with a few breaks to set it down and rest. (How does that weight thing work? I’ve lost 30 pounds in the last year, and today I felt I needed Super-Woman-strength as I carried an extra thirty pounds home. When I had that extra 30 pounds on my bones and not in my hands, I didn’t even notice it. Hmmm….)
Four bags of trash–just trash–came out of those closets.That’s better! Ready for the new teacher to organize and go through.
This weekend I wrote a tritina because of Liz Garton Scanlon’s Poetry Friday post. It was there she mentioned the sestina, as well. I had heard of this 39-line French form with six stanzas, and the same six words rotating at the end of each stanza, but I didn’t have much confidence or interest in trying one myself. After trying a tritina, though, I thought I’d give it a go. I started a list of favorite words, trying to decide which six to use. I wrote hope, launch, and cry on my list.
Why cry? I thought. Because I need some sad words in my poem too, I answered myself.
Then I realized what an impossible task it would be to pick the right six words. I need a topic, I thought. So I started brainstorming: family, pandemic, food, vacation, etc.
Instead of continuing with my sestina drafting, though, I decided to go to bed. Before I slept, I sent a last-minute appeal text to my family WhatsApp group:
I woke up in the morning to these words, two from each family member. (Are these really favorite words?)
With bizarre, turpitude and exhume, I figured I didn’t need any sad words, so I left cry off my list.
So now the challenge begins. First of all, I only need six words for my sestina, but I gave myself a bit of a buffer zone by asking for two words. I can choose from these twelve–the six I will use for my end lines, for they will be repeated seven times each. And the other six words I will try to fit in one time anywhere in the poem.
When I looked at these words, no subject jumped out. That’s for sure. So I went to read the newspaper, actually The Washington Post, online version. When I read this opinion piece by Jonathan Capehart, “Kamala Harris Speaks the Truth About Race Unafraid,” I thought, Ah-ha. Here is my subject. Living overseas, I see all the -isms and -phobias that the U.S. has, plus some. The world has systemic injustice and inequity issues, and America is part of the world. I don’t understand how some people in the U.S. argue that America does not have a problem with racism (or any other -ism or -phobia) (e.g., one hundred years ago today) Do others want to immigrate to the U.S. because it’s perfect and their country isn’t? No, they can see the truth. But at least we say there is liberty and justice for all. With every generation, in every century we have to go “further up and further in” to a just nation, a union becoming more perfect. Speaking the truth–admitting, repenting, and repairing problems–is what makes America good.
I was thinking of these things when I drafted my first sestina:
Speak the Truth: A Sestina
America: It is sunlight and a future, but dappled, Still needing to exhume the tangled turpitude Of isms: racism, sexism, anti-Semitism. The zenith Of America will near as it produces its delicate Song of the ages. It will usher in inclusive kindness And bring forth a love song of rambunctious hope.
Over the past eight years I have met people of hope In this country of invited workers sweetly dappled From all over the globe. We’ve met many in kindness, Sometimes coming from countries where the turpitude Of governance makes their citizens retreat to this delicate Pearl in the Gulf. For them, Bahrain is the zenith.
Thankful their career brought them to earn in this zenith, They send money home to their families in hurting hope. We’ve met people from 131 nations here in this delicate Population of one-and-a-half million. The light is dappled Across the land as people are launched from turpitude And given a renewed promise to germinate kindness.
When people find that we are from America, kindness Rises. “Tell us more.” Many long for the ultimate zenith Of their immigration–to move to America. Moral turpitude During the past few years, notwithstanding. They hope. America the Beautiful is beautiful, even though dappled With phobias–gay, trans, Asian, Islam. Speak the truth–delicate
Harsh, truth–not an attack on the U.S. We aren’t delicate. America dares to weed out -isms and -phobias, choosing kindness. Look at the color and fearlessness of the current dappled Administration. America is not yet perfected to its zenith. Let us not go back to when America was “great,” but hope That, in the future, we will continue to uproot turpitude.
All people are created equal, and it’s turpitude That bizarrely distorts equality all over this delicate Earth. No matter how great Bahrain is, people see more hope Where a Black woman with Asian roots takes her power. Kindness
In America, land of the free; liberty and justice–the zenith. It is hard, but America faces unafraid our history dappled
In non-anxious, bold turpitude; Yet, at times we choose kindness. We battle to help the delicate soul of America reach her zenith. Hope like Kamala brightens the complexion of America dappled.
By Denise Krebs
Postscript: Poetry gives heart and soul to numbers and patterns. I love to puzzle words, syllables, and meter together to fit poetry forms. However, after being in this process for a while today, wrestling with the six words at the end of each line, I couldn’t also think about iambic pentameter. I can’t even manage consistent meter in a short poem. After counting the syllables in the first few lines, I stopped! I’m publishing this draft without worry of iambs and meter. At least for now. I’ve learned that sestinas are a challenge!
Here is a Sestina generator to help you make a template with the word order for each stanza. I discovered it after I made mine.
If you’ve written a sestina, please share a link in the comments. I’d love to read it.
Yesterday was my husband’s fourth day off from work in a row. It was Eid Al-Fitr over the long weekend, and now he is back at work. Normally he works six days a week, so we don’t usually have such an extended time to revivify. It’s been a great week.
Yesterday’s pleasant and relaxed day included:
a long walk at the mall because it’s already too hot to walk outside
sitting and enjoying a cup of coffee (for him) and tea (for me)
shopping for a few needed items at the grocery store
time in the kitchen making applesauce and roasting broccoli, carrots, green beans, zucchini, and butternut squash (I love having Tupperwares full of healthy food in the fridge ready to dish up and warm throughout the week)
napping and reading
book study discussion with our kids (Holy Curiosity by Winn Collier)
Tweeting out a request for help to identify the tree below that I noticed at the mall
and finally going out to a neighborhood store to get a 5-gallon water refill
On the way up the elevator, after our walk to the store, my husband asked me if I was really happy not working fulltime this year. (After the first quarter this year, I began volunteering at my school.) Without hesitation I said, yes. It is the first year I’ve felt that I am living first and teaching second. For years in the past, I explained, I chose teaching over living. Teaching always held a disproportionate amount of my heart and time. That is a sad truth.
This is the tree I saw at the mall. It reminded me of the jacaranda tree, which I grew up with in California, except for these vibrant flowers.
I tried to figure out what this tree was, but I’m out of practice using a dichotomous key and I couldn’t identify it. I sent a tweet and Brenda kindly answered within five minutes, (reminding me of when I used to like Twitter.)
Today’s poem was inspired by this Flamboyant tree, also called Royal Poinciana tree (Delonix regia) and Flame of the Forest tree in India, as Prarthana later pointed out on Twitter. Our tree here in Bahrain is young or perhaps the climate is not quite right for all those gorgeous and showy blooms. I’ll be keeping my eye on it and see if it adds more color this summer.
