Twelve Days

In 12 days, he will be done with high school. Today, however, he is sitting in my classroom during his “spare” period, trying to catch up on what he’s missed. He has his earbuds in, his phone out. He’s using one of my Sharpies to write a thesis on a scrap piece of paper.

He will not catch up.

I’ve known him since his first day of grade 9, and I’ve taught him English three times. Usually, when I say that out loud, I put air quotes around “taught”. When he was in grade 9, I hid the Sharpies and push pins from him so that he wouldn’t casually harass his peers. In grade 10, I insisted that he read aloud to newcomers (which he loved) and tried to cajole an essay out of him (which he hated). Now he’s in grade 12, and during independent reading time he is (still) reading the book he started in grade 9. He claims he’s close to the end. These days, I can only occasionally convince him to come to class – and even then he doesn’t pay much attention.

Today, after a futile hour of explaining that a thesis statement is supposed to be about more than the plot of a story, and insisting that to create an effective thesis statement a person must actually read the story under consideration, I head to my office to grab lunch before my hall duty. In the stairwell, a colleague comments on my obvious exasperation and reminds me that, because of me, this child will (possibly) read one more story than he would have otherwise. He will, at the very least, write a series of (bad) paragraphs that are loosely related to one another. He will know that someone thinks he can do more.

I try to believe this is enough.

I manage a few bites of sandwich before the bell rings, then grab my apple and head into the halls. In the science wing, someone has pulled the handle of the emergency shower, so the floors are flooded. A VP stands amidst the resultant disaster, directing students away from the shimmering water while custodians run the shop vac. Around the corner, a large group of students talks loudly in the new bathroom; I tease that they must be having a bathroom party, and they laugh as they slowly move away. Nearby, a student sits against the lockers, their head tilted back, their eyes closed, creating a moment of peace in the chaos of the school day. A colleague pauses to ask me a question. Behind us, two girls chase each other, screeching, down the hall.

Outside, the sun beckons. The lawn is dotted with dandelions and dawdling kids. Students fill the basketball courts and the athletic field. The year is so close to an ending that I can almost feel the hallways holding their breath. “Soon,” they whisper, “soon.”

As I walk, I remember the day my mother dropped me off at university. When it was time for her to go, she cried. “I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said, not sure if I was comforting her or reassuring myself.

“I know,” she sniffed, “it’s just that I have so much more to teach you.”

She was right, of course, though so was I. My student will manage something, and it will be both enough and not nearly enough. I will put away the Sharpies. The year will end. He will graduate. I will have more to teach him.

Immigrant

Last week, my child had to interview an immigrant for a grade 9 Geography assignment. Everyone in his class had to do the same. Pause for a moment and take that in: we live in a place where a teacher can safely assume that every child in a class of 25ish can, with relative ease, find a person in their life who has immigrated to the country. Oh, and we live in a place where that is a good thing.

I no longer take this for granted.

My child chose to interview me because I am an immigrant. Some days I am highly aware of myself as an immigrant; others, it seems like a word that pertains to other people. As an American immigrant to Canada, right now I feel horribly connected to my birth country: people who, like me, have immigrated, only to the US instead of to Canada, are being targeted and deported – sent to rot in foreign jails from which they may never return – for no reason other than being immigrants. Yes, yes, I realize that there are trumped-up reasons for their deportation, but even the Cato Institute (not exactly a bastion of liberal thinking) has determined that many of the men recently deported to an El Salvadorean prison had no criminal record and had never violated immigration law. The immoral actions of the current US government must surely give many immigrants pause.

So, when my child started asking me questions, I was a little tense. He was conducting the interview in Frenglish because I refused to answer exclusively in English for a class that he’s taking in French. Soon, he learned that I had lived in five places (and two countries!) before I was ten; that I have taught in four countries; that people in the US don’t take their shoes off when they enter a home. (“Wait? Really? That’s weird. Why don’t I know about that?” he asked. I said that his American relatives probably just laugh at him behind his back. Hee hee hee.)

He learned about the visa process and what it was like to move to a country where I could not yet hold a job and didn’t really have any friends.

“What did you do?” he asked.
“Learned to knit,” I replied, which is sort of true.
“I never really thought of you not knitting,” he said.
Oh, my sweet child. One is not born knowing how to knit.

After the interview, he drafted his “article”. It was still in Frenglish, though the French was coming along. Tonight, he’s polishing it, so we’ve spent quite a long time making sure the French grammar is right and double-checking accents. “I trust you more than Google Translate and BonPatron,” he tells me.

I point out that I am American. He is literally writing about me being American. I am not a native French speaker and still have a bit of a Southern accent when I speak. He says my French is still “really good,” and I decide to accept the compliment.

He decides he wants pictures to accompany his article. He’s particular – he wants me at specific ages and doing certain things.
“Do you have any in the snow?” he asks.
“Not if I can avoid it,” I tell him, but I live in Ottawa now, so of course I do. I send him what I can.

After a few minutes he says, “Do you have any of you looking normal?” which makes me laugh – I love making silly faces for the camera. Still, for him, and to make immigrants look good, I find some “normal” pictures.

For you, however, I will share some of the funny ones.

There: faces of an immigrant. Remember this the next time another person gets deported. They might be a lot like me.

I bought you a book

She had grade 9 English with me and, though it’s hard for me to believe, she’s in grade 12 now which means we’ve been smiling at each other and saying hello in the hallways for three years. In seven weeks, she’ll graduate, yet it was only a few days ago that I realized I’d never told her the story.

Oddly, I’ve told a lot of other people the story: how we were both new to the school; how she was quiet but eager; how she finished reading a book then asked me shyly if I had any books about Asia. She didn’t even ask for something set in Bangladesh – her home country – just anywhere in Southeast Asia. Oh, how I wanted to say yes! I scoured my bookshelves – my classroom library suddenly seemed so paltry – but I could only come up with one, and it didn’t really fit: it was really about a girl living in the US who was dealing with issues of sexuality. The 14-year-old in front of me wasn’t ready for that book; she wanted something that reminded her of home.

I was sad to have to tell her that I didn’t have anything, really. We found another good book, and she continued to read, but I couldn’t shake my disappointment. I looked online to find books about Bangladesh. I checked out Samira Surfs from the public library – too young, too refugee-focused. I found books set in Pakistan, books by white authors, books for adults…

As the school year continued, I had to confront a sad truth: my classroom library was designed for a different student population. At my new school, the books I had didn’t reflect the students in the room. I knew I needed to address the problem, but I also knew I needed money to do it.

At this point, I applied for a classroom library grant from the Book Love Foundation (founded by Penny Kittle). I asked two senior students to write me a recommendation; they also helped me with my video. And then… I won a grant! Oh, the books I bought – books set in places around the world. Sports books and fantasy books and realistic fiction. Graphic novels and novels in verse and memoirs with main characters from places my students knew and I did not. And yes, a book set in Bangladesh.

By the time the books came in, she was in grade 10 and our paths rarely crossed, so I didn’t think to tell her what she had inspired. Last year, I barely saw her at all. This year, though, our schedules overlap, and I see her often. And this year, I finally realized that I’d never told her about the books. So, last week I told her. She was startled. She didn’t remember asking for a book and she was surprised that I remembered where she was from. She blushed a little and we went on our way.

Then, a few days later, there was a knock at the classroom door. Could she come in? Could she see the books? I showed her what I could find on the shelves, but I had to laugh: so many of the books that I would have offered her if only I’d had them then – Amina’s Voice, Amina’s Song, Amira and Hamza, The Last Mapmaker – weren’t there because they’re being read by current grade 9 students. Still, I showed her Saints and Misfits, and Love from A to Z, and The Patron Saints of Nothing – and listen, it’s not perfect, but oh how she smiled.

Three years later, her request and the Book Love grant have changed everything.

(If you are interested in information about applying for the grant, feel free to reach out to me – though honestly the link has all the information; if you are interested in donating to the foundation, please don’t hesitate. All kids deserve to see themselves in good books!)

The Day After

“Have you talked about the election in any of your classes today?”

Most heads shake no. Interesting.

“Do you know who won last night?”

Now a few heads nod. A few voices venture an actual response: “The Liberals.”

“Right!” I push on. “Great! So… who knows the name of the Prime Minister?”

Hmm… harder. Murmurs move around the room. Maybe it starts with an “M”? Someone is sure there’s a /k/ sound. One confident student says “Not Trudeau” and everyone laughs.

“Mark Carney,” I tell them. A few fingers snap, a few heads nod. Yes. Yes, that’s right. They knew that.

And now for the tough question, “What else do you know?”

I know I teach English, not Civics, and I know these students are only 14 and 15 years old – far from voting age, at least as far as they’re concerned. Still, last night was a federal election, and I believe that school must be about more than the assignment of the moment. In fact, in the last few years I’ve come to recognize that a big part of my personal “why” in teaching is to help students become thoughtful citizens. I want to help them learn to think deeply. I want them to believe in their own inherent value and to understand the value of others – and of compromise. In a world that tells them that they are valuable mostly as consumers, I want them to feel agency. So here we are, talking about politics in English class.

A few minutes later, we’ve put together some basic facts: the Conservative Party actually performed very well last night, even if they didn’t win; this means the country is divided; the NDP, which is more liberal than the Liberals (“that’s weird”) lost official party status; the Green Party still exists; people’s votes mattered because the vote in many ridings was close.

Someone asks if the Conservatives are “against human rights.” I assure the students that they are not.

Someone asks who I voted for. That’s private. Why? I explain the idea of secret ballots and the idea that someone like a teacher might have undue influence, even unintentionally, on students. Nevertheless, I acknowledge my bias and encourage them to challenge me if they think differently than I do.

Someone asks when the next election is. We talk briefly about minority governments and why that makes the date of our next election a little less predictable.

The class, usually extremely energetic, is somewhat subdued. I know they know some of this information already, and I know that sometimes inviting the outside world into the classroom can feel odd. Their focus holds for three minutes, maybe five, and then we’re back to the regular routines – requests for pencils, for water, for the washroom, for someone to move their desk, to pay attention, to “say that again” to “just be quiet already”.

Still “Mark Carney” stays written on the board until halfway through class when we move on to brainstorming evidence from our book. If I’m lucky, some of them will remember his name and how we talked about the election, even in English.

The student (prose poem)

April is Poetry Month, so I’ve been occasionally stopping over at EthicalELA to participate in Verse love and write some poetry. The people who write there are incredibly supportive, which encourages me to keep playing even though writing poetry intimidates me. Today’s prompt suggested writing a prose poem (a poem that looks like a paragraph but reads, somehow, like poetry), something which has fascinated me for a few years now – ever since I discovered Nicole Stellon O’Donnell’s book of poems You Are No Longer In Trouble – specifically, the poem “Marriage,” which makes me giggle. Here, see what I mean:

Marriage

The rash of weddings at recess continued until Mrs. Provencher had to give a talk. You are third graders. You cannot be married. Parents had called to express their concerns. The margarine tubs full of violets in your desk were bouquets and the flower girls had carried them, stems pressed into foil pilfered from the kitchen drawer. She can say what she wants, but you were married to Doug M. all those years ago, bound by asphalt promises over the screech of the swings’ metal chains.

Margaret Simon suggested that we use Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello’s prose poem, The Houseguest as a model and personify an emotion, so I gave it a go. Here’s what I wrote.

The student

Curiosity pops into your classroom before the first bell. You are writing the date on the blackboard – neatly, in the upper right-hand corner, in cursive. You finish, then place the chalk in its tray. Next, you connect the cord to your computer then cast about for the remote control. Curiosity discovers it over near the bookshelves and brings it to you. You continue your morning routine, aware that Curiosity is watching: straighten the student desks; sift through the papers. You want to settle in, but Curiosity has found the magnetic poetry in the back corner and is busy creating crude verses – and cackling. You hesitate, trapped in the fun house mirror as you pretend not to watch Curiosity who is pretending not to watch you. Should you interrupt the word play? Stop the game? Once, you would have sidled up next to Curiosity and, snickering, added an “s” to “as”. Once, you would have scrawled the verse on the walls in permanent marker. Once, you would have grabbed Curiosity’s wrist and run out of the classroom before the bell, after you had both arrived early. Today, you quietly allow Curiosity to continue writing poetry.

Thank you, Sen. Booker

One thing about writing later in the day is that sometimes I can catch an unexpected moment that might otherwise slip by. Tonight, I am writing in the moments after Senator Cory Booker broke the record for longest floor speech set by Strom Thurmond in 1957. While I realize that many people in the US and the world will not know or care that this has happened, or maybe they won’t recognize how impressive this is, Andre and I called the boys into the living room so we could watch this historic moment as a family.

While Senator Thurmond, a segregationist, spoke to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Senator Booker is speaking “with the intention of disrupting the normal business of the United States Senate for as long as I am physically able…because I believe sincerely that our country is in crisis.” As I write, he is still speaking, still saying important things, still imploring citizens to pay attention as he speaks in protest of “actions taken by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.”

Here in our house, Mr. 16 is in the middle of research for an essay on the historiography of the Civil Rights Movement, so he knows that, despite the way we often speak of it as mostly the actions of small group of leaders, it was truly a movement of everyday people, of mothers and fathers and workers and students. He is beginning to understand that ordinary people have power when they work together. He is, I hope, beginning to understand true citizenship. It’s hard for them to imagine, I think because my children have never known a world where a Black man cannot be president or where they cannot date or befriend or marry whomever they wish. My children believe that people are inherently equal and understand that while racism exists, it is something we can and should push against. It’s hard for us to remember how much has changed in a short time.

Cory Booker is speaking to draw attention to the fact that President Trump’s administration is rolling back many rights and bringing into question many others, to point out that many of their actions are unconstitutional. Around the world, we are seeing similar autocratic movements and democratic backsliding, and it is, frankly, frightening. Even writing this with an eye to publishing it on my little blog makes me nervous: we know that immigration agents are now asking people applying for a visa to provide their usernames for social media platforms. I’m a US citizen, but I live outside the country. Will I be allowed back in if I voice dissent? Some will scoff at the question, but Sen. Booker’s speech is part of what ensures that I will be – and that my children, half Canadian, half American – will be, too.

I took a picture of the kids watching Sen. Booker as he set the record. Mr. 14 declared the moment “not picture-worthy” and I am, unsurprisingly, not allowed to share it. Maybe my children will be right: maybe this moment will not be that important because civil rights will never be called into question again. Maybe we’ll forget the picture and the moment and the feeling of crisis that has led to it. Even if we do, Sen. Booker’s feat will help us remember that American ideals of justice and equal rights are foundational – “all men are created equal” – and worth fighting for. He will help us remember that ordinary people are the ones who have to stand up. Hopefully, tonight, my children heard that message; hopefully, other people did, too.

I Can Do Hard Things #SOLC25 31/31

Not for the first time this month, I nearly forgot to write. Tonight seems egregious, since it’s the last post of the March Challenge, but there it is. I’m the mom who would forget to leave the house with a spare diaper, even with the second baby – even when the second baby was over a year old. Apparently I have trouble forming new habits.

Of course, part of the reason I almost forgot to write is that I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. Wrapping up a month’s worth of daily writing and publishing is definitely part of the challenge, and this year is no different. I’ve been trying to put into words what I’ve learned this time around, or at least what I experienced. In my head, I’m close to knowing; in writing, I’m a little farther away from conclusions.

This March, I’ve sort of shoehorned writing in around other things. Some years I feel like it’s been more central to the month; this year it’s been more part of the fabric of my days. Predictably, some days have been tough, but mostly I had something to say when I sat down to write. As usual, I feel that I haven’t commented on nearly enough blogs, and I’m missing reading some of my “regulars.” I’ve come to recognize that this is ok.

Mostly, this March has been a reminder that I can do hard things – and I’m allowed to do them in a way that works for me. Write in the evening instead of in the morning? I can do that. Some days comment on only three or four other blogs? I can do that, too. Write a two-sentence post? Sure. Or use almost all pictures? Ok. Heck, accidentally post about extremely similar dinner conversations in the space of three days? Go for it. This month I have forgiven myself over and over for things that, as it turns out, others don’t even notice. Who knew that writing every day would help me continue to shed the shoulds that have governed my life for so long.

Tonight, I went to a class at my gym that I have never tried before. It “includes a little more intensity and choreography than our usual.” Since I can barely keep up with the “usual,” I wasn’t sure that I was making a good choice, but I did it anyway. I had to stop a few times, and for one entire “choreo” track, I gave up and just did my own basic steps. No one cared and I got a great workout. Once I got home, I had to wait a while to stop sweating – which is part of why I nearly forgot to write. The whole thing was more than my usual, but I can still feel the buzz of energy from having finished.

March is like that: it’s more than my usual, but the buzz – from the writing, from the community, from the challenge – lingers long afterwards, and it’s totally worth it.

See you on Tuesdays! (Um, yes, that’s tomorrow.)

Classic literature #SOLC25 30/31

The text from the young teacher comes in on Saturday. They want to start reading Lord of the Flies or maybe Hatchet with their intermediate ESL class. They’ve looked into purchasing copies, but it’s expensive. Maybe they could just print the pdf of the book, chapter by chapter? How do I buy books for kids?

I am quietly stunned. I sit with this for a few minutes, trying to decide where to begin my response. Finally, I point out that printing the entire book for 20 students is still expensive – we just transfer the expense to the school. Then, I suggest that the school has books – in both the ESL and the English departments. Then I pause.

In my next series of messages, I say that I find LOTF and Hatchet to be at very different levels. I casually note that neither of them has any female characters. (To be fair, in Hatchet Brian at least has a mother; no women exist in LOTF – just British schoolboys as far as the mind can fathom.) I wait again before adding that LOTF makes some “weird” arguments about the importance of British schooling for a civilized society.

I do not say that LOTF has a peculiarly western view of humans as inherently selfish and vaguely awful. I do not say that when a group of school boys were actually marooned on an island, they did not descend into chaos or madness. Instead, they worked together, supporting one another through hardships. I do not say that perhaps students from around the world will not be intrigued by stories in which western boys fight to dominate nature. Instead, I offer to brainstorm some other options and take the teacher on a tour of our tiny book room. They say yes.

Later that day, I read an article in the New York Times about The Great Gatsby turning 100. I love Gatsby and I love teaching it, though I haven’t taught it in a while. I have my reasons – its casual racism, its core critique of the American Dream in an era when that is all too easy – though I would probably teach it again if I could shoehorn it in somewhere. Still, I’m struck when the article reminds me that, upon the novel’s publication, “Reviewers shrugged. Sales were sluggish. The novel and its author slid toward obscurity.” I disagree with the early reviewers, but I find it interesting that the novel was not immediately seen as “classic” or even very good.

LOTF was similarly poorly received at first, and I can reel off a list of other books English teachers love that had rough starts – from Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights to Animal Farm and The Handmaid’s Tale with plenty of others in between. I’d love to point this out to those who wander through English offices saying things like, “there’s a reason they’re classics.”

In fact, someone said exactly that in our English office not too long ago. My most effective approach to these platitudes is a lot of listening seasoned with a well-timed word or two, so I let the teacher talk. Eventually, they pointed out that part of the reason that it’s hard to find new “classics” is because books need to be “just right” to work in a classroom – not too long, not too spicy, not too hard, not too dull. They need approachable literary devices and characters that are relatable.

By this metric, Gatsby, LOTF and even To Kill a Mockingbird are classics in no small part because of their length and lack of curse words. They have a plot and characters we can remember, so, assuming we ignore the racism and sexism and similarity in their world views, we can’t really go wrong.

I point out that “not too hard and not too long” means that our list has to keep changing. When I started teaching, The Scarlet Letter was on every high school bookshelf; now, the language makes it extremely challenging, so it is taught much less frequently. When I was in high school, everyone read Dickens. Now, his work is just too long and wordy. What has replaced these “classics”? I toy with the idea that The Outsiders is on the list; in the 70s and early 80s, it was just a good book to read. What about The Handmaid’s Tale? Atwood is Canadian, but we don’t teach her novel too often – too political or too long? I don’t know. Why has Their Eyes Were Watching God not made it into rotation in Canada? I have no idea.

I love to say that when we read everything, we can read anything, but many of our students are not reading everything or even very much at all. As a result, the books schools choose to offer take on outsized importance; each book is expected to do the work of ten: catch student interest, teach something worthwhile, be a paragon of “good” writing, reflect what our society can/ should be and more. Sadly – or maybe happily – no one book can be everything we want because good stories are, by design, problematic. To really use literature as a teaching tool, we need lots of it.

I don’t know how to make that happen, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t start by teaching students who are learning English in Canada in 2025 about shipwrecked British schoolboys in the 1940s. I’m going to suggest we start somewhere else.

Dinner Party Conversation #SOLC25 29/31

We may have been talking a little too much about politics in our house over the last few weeks. Just now, when I told Mr. 14 that I was writing about tonight’s dinner table discussion with friends – the US, Trump, tariffs, deportations, Signal – he rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows what you’re going to say.”

“What should I say instead?” I asked.

“Tell them that someone thought tariffs were a great idea,” he suggested. “Tell them that we had a big fight and we threw the person who thought tariffs are good into the backyard with the dogs.

“At least that will be different,” he added. “I mean, what Canadian thinks tariffs are good?”

So, um, yeah: that’s my 14-year-old’s take on Trump’s tariffs.

Back up two hours to the dinner discussion my son found so predictable. There, the 16-year-old daughter of a friend tried to fathom the Signal war planning fiasco. “Wait – what?” She squinted her eyes a little and looked at her mother and me like we were trying to pull a fast one. “They talked about bombing people in a group chat?” She paused and let that sink in. “Like, seriously? Grown men? Real bombs? In a *group chat*?” When we mentioned that they had accidentally invited a journalist and that some of them were outside the US, she was incredulous. “Do they even know how group chats work?”

Around the table, people talked about not buying fruit that came from the US, avoiding products they used to rely on, cancelling streaming services. The teen whose parent is cancelling streaming services was unimpressed, but consoled herself that “at least TikTok is Chinese.”

With that, we are treated to a TikTok video of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh demonstrating how he ties his turban while he talks about his Conservative opponent. (For the non-Canadians, the NDP is the furthest left of the three major Canadian political parties; we are having an election on April 28.) She calls this “hair porn” and we all watch, fascinated.

Not long after this, we piled into the living room to watch our movie. As we settled in, three families, four children, two dogs, I kept thinking of one of JD Vance’s lines from the leaked Signal chat, one which has been on repeat in my head, though not in the way he meant it. “I think we are making a mistake,” he wrote.

For once, I think the VP got it right. Maybe we should throw him in the backyard with the dogs.

The Blank Page #SOLC25 28/31

Tonight, I offer a true free write – from my brain to the page, and then to your brain. I warn you now: it got odd.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to write, it’s that I have everything to write.

It’s not that I have everything to write, it’s that I don’t have the time to write what I want in the way that I want to.

It’s not that I don’t have the time to write what I want in the way that I want to, it’s that I am doing too many things.

It’s not that I am doing too many things, it’s that there are so many things I want to do.

It’s not that there are so many things I want to do, it’s that I keep doing things that aren’t that important to me.

It’s not that I keep doing things that aren’t important to me, it’s that so many things must be done.

It’s not that so many things must be done, it’s that I’m not managing my time well.

It’s not that I’m not managing my time well, it’s that there’s not enough time to do everything.

It’s not that there’s not there’s not enough time to do everything, it’s the idea that there is everything to do.

Usually, when my brain reaches this point, I take a bath.

When I take a bath, I sometimes look at the state of my toenails. They could almost always use some love. Sometimes when I look at the state of my toenails, I wonder what they would look like if I had married the man who was interested in my feet when I was in my twenties. We didn’t date or anything – I didn’t even know him well; he was my roommate’s colleague, an attractive South African man who sometimes came by. Several times, he mentioned how much he liked my painted toenails. It turns out, he also mentioned them to my roommate once or twice when I was not there. Apparently he liked my feet. This felt… unusual.

Sometimes, I imagine that I married the handsome South African who I did not know well and who found my feet attractive. I imagine that my feet now would be amazing. I would get regular pedicures and I would not have done things that made my feet spread and whatnot over the years. If we had had children, I would not have walked around barefoot in the heat during my pregnancies. I would spend a lot of money on shoes, and they would all fit me perfectly, so my feet wouldn’t have the weird lumps and bumps that feet sometimes acquire. I probably would not do yoga or run. These things are hard on one’s feet.

I suspect that by now, if I had married him, I would resent the attention that my feet required. I would get pedicures, but I wouldn’t think of them as a wonderful indulgence; instead, I would consider them wasteful and time-consuming. I would look at women on their way to yoga and long for the inner peace I imagined they experienced. I would think wistfully of buying cheap shoes at PayLess and I would resent the way my friends casually compared me to Imelda Marcos. Maybe I would be considering divorce – or already divorced! – because I was so frustrated at having to take care of my feet.

I get out of the tub, happy with the revelation that I have better things to do than take care of my feet – things like write a slice of life about the weird ways my brain works. Then my spouse, who is not South African and probably prefers my writing to my feet, comes and settles in next to me. “I think my brain is better than my feet,” I whisper, and, while he looks perplexed, to my delight, he agrees.