What does it mean to be American?

It’s been twenty years since I taught American Lit to 11th graders in a high school in Washington, DC. After I’d taught the course a few times, I used to start the class with the question students would answer on the final exam: What does it mean to be American? In September, students answered glibly: duh, you have to be born here. But even as they said that, they could feel that it wasn’t right, so they would hack away at the edges of the answer: you have to have an American parent, or maybe an American passport. But a cursory look showed that didn’t work, either. First, not all Americans have passports and second, does the passport make a person American? The rest of the school year just made things more complicated.

Were the Pilgrims (born in Europe) and other early settlers American? We read some of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation. Ok, the students said, the Pilgrims count as American (even though “America” didn’t exist at the time and obviously the original settlers weren’t born here); if you came to America for a better life, that counts. I complicated things: So, if people who fled their homeland in search of freedom count as American, what about people who do the same in modern times? We read short stories by Edwidge Danticat (American, born in Haiti) and Jhumpa Lahiri (American, born in England to Indian parents). Are their characters American?

What about the people who already lived on the continent when the colonists arrived? What of the Native Americans? (Honestly, I’m a little relieved to realize that even 20+ years ago we read at least one speech by a Native American, though we should have done much more.) And what if you didn’t choose to come? What of people who were enslaved? Surely Jim in Huckleberry Finn was American.

Maybe being American is about a set of values? We looked at Puritan leader (born in England) John Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill” (from his essay “A Model of Christian Charity”) and considered what he calls on fellow Puritans to try to create: a community of virtue, effort, and compassion. We read the beginning of the Declaration of Independence (written by Thomas Jefferson, born in the colony of Virginia) and excerpts of (French author) de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” Does he see in the mid-1800s what Winthrop dreams of two centuries earlier? Is that what Huck Finn seeks when he decides to “light out for the Territory”? Is it what Jay Gatsby is striving for as he reaches for the green light? What Janie longs for in Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Gatsby is definitely American – no question about it – but there is the pesky concern of the “foul dust [that] floated in the wake of his dreams.” Perhaps, students thought, Americans had strayed from important original values, as Jonathan Edwards (born in America) thundered in his famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Again, this gets complicated. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne’s (born in Europe) sin is the impetus for the whole novel, but in the end, (like Gatsby? unlike Gatsby?) she is the best of them all, except for maybe her daughter Pearl (born in America) – but Pearl takes her riches and moves to Europe. Hester stays in the New World. So who is American?

But, those are just characters, the students protested. True enough. But many real live Americans, good Americans, I insisted – Americans who shaped our nation – were sinners and criminals. Some students were doubtful – 20+ years ago was, I think, a more innocent time. Still, I said, Roger Williams (born in England) was banished from Massachusetts for advocating religious tolerance and the separation of church and state. We read Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience” and Martin Luther King, Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” We read Walt Whitman, Zora Neale Hurston, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and more. One year we read My Antonia and made popcorn balls. Always we came back to our central question.

(How did I get them to read so much? I have no idea.)

By the end of the course, no matter what we read, we had a massive tangle. Americans, it seemed, could be born anywhere and live anywhere. They could be Americans by birth, by choice or by force. They could be saints and sinners, criminals and leaders. And then it was time for the exam. We ended where we started: “What does it mean to be an American?” The answers were always complicated.

****

Last week, on the 13-hour drive from South Carolina to Buffalo, my two sisters and I had plenty of time to talk. We usually see each other only once a year, and we never run out of conversation. This year, after a gas stop in West Virginia and a possible sighting of ICE agents, our talk turned to politics and family.

I guess you could call our family “blended,” but mostly I think of it as chaos held together by love. Even if I just tell you about the children (my six various siblings) who go with my dad and stepmom, things get complicated. My step grandmother was born Dutch and became an American; my stepmom is Alabaman through and through. I was born in the US but am now a dual citizen. My children, born and raised in Canada, are dual citizens. My partner is pure Canadian, but his mother, my mother-in-law, is a dual citizen; my father-in-law is 100% American. One of my sisters was born in Panama on an Air Force Base, but she doesn’t remember it at all and does not speak Spanish. Her daughter, my niece, born in the US, does speak Spanish and is dating a young man whose family is Mexican (his dad was born there; I can’t remember about his mom); he is American. My sister-in-law is a naturalized American who was born and raised in Cuba. Her mother is living with them (very legally) but is not yet a citizen. My brother, her husband, is pretty much a good ol’ boy (in the best of ways), but his kids have olive skin and dark hair and speak both Spanish and English. Except for my sister-in-law’s mother, I would say all these people are American. Even she may be a future American.

Adding in my mom’s side – she has four siblings – doesn’t make things any more clear. My uncle married a Filipina woman who is now American. One of their two sons, my cousins, just got out of the Marines, so definitely American, right? But when he was on tour, children in Saudi Arabia made the “slant eye” face at him, annoying him to no end. My mother’s sister married a Brit, and they live in the Cayman Islands; their child, my cousin, is American-British-Caymanian. He went to college in the US and worked in NYC before meeting an American woman and moving back to Cayman. Their children were born in Cayman. All except my uncle have American passports.

As a family, we are Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, atheist. We are white, Asian and Latino. We speak English, Spanish, Tagalog, and French. We are gay, straight and bi. We are addicts and we abstain. We have committed crimes and been arrested for them or gotten away with it. We have done good things and been recognized for them or overlooked. We have high school diplomas, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, MDs or PhDs. We are business owners, doctors, teachers, CPAs, hourly employees, unemployed, researchers and more. We were born in six countries, and we currently live in three countries; we have lived in many, many more. We voted for Harris or for Trump or not at all. We are all American.

In the car, my sister worried about a friend who is married to a US permanent resident who was born in El Salvador. His parents brought him here when he was a toddler. As a young teen, he got involved with a gang and committed “a bad crime” (yes, it is bad). He was arrested and went to jail. He served his time, got out, got a job and got married. Now in his mid-40s, he has never committed another crime. As we drove north, he was on his way south to his annual check-in with immigration, and they were terrified. The family has money and a lawyer, and a no-deportation order. But they had no idea if, after he followed the law and went to the courthouse, he would come back out or be disappeared. “We talk about ICE deporting ‘criminals,’” my sister said, “and everyone seems to think that is ok; but he’s a good person who did an awful thing. He’s here legally. Should we deport him because of something he did when he was 15? Why can’t we talk about the human cost? When did we stop thinking of immigrants as fully human?”

As we drove through the mountains of West Virginia, I mused, “What does it mean, then, to be an American?” I still don’t know, exactly, but I am sure the definition should be rooted more in love than in hatred. If there’s one virtue that my loving, chaotic family and all those texts I used to teach have in common, it is compassion.

Well, maybe not “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” but really, that one is kind of over the top.

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.

Cheating Cheater #SOLC25 18/31

He was shamelessly cheating. While the “big boys” (my teens) and my spouse splashed around the small pool, calling loudly to each other, my cousin’s 7-year-old ducked underwater every time he heard the dreaded cry, “Marco!” Others might give away their position by replying, “Polo!” but he was no fool. You’re a lot harder to find if Marco can’t hear you.

Of course we called him on it, tickling him and dunking him. “You’re a cheating cheater!” my sons teased, and he didn’t deny it. Seven is the perfect age to check out what happens when you break the rules. Turns out, if you cheat long enough, we’ll change the game – and we’ll love you anyway.

***

After school, my child tells me that one of his teachers has accused him of cheating. “The worst part,” he says, “is that I did it: we wrote that section together – but only because we thought we were allowed to.” He takes a deep breath. “I tried to explain. I tried to tell him that we obviously thought it was ok because we used the exact same words. If I was trying to cheat I wouldn’t be so dumb about it, but he wouldn’t even listen.”

My son is upset, and rightly so. The idea that someone thinks you have intentionally been dishonest can be devastating. Worse, he likes this teacher and this subject; he’s worried about the ramifications of this incident.

“Will you write to him and tell him I’m not a cheater?” he asks. I counsel him to send an apology email, even though he’s still upset about the accusation itself. He pulls out his phone and shows me the email he’s already composed. “Is it good enough?” he asks. “Can I send it?” It is and he does.

***

We all knew that the 9th grade Mythology test was nearly impossible. Senior students recounted horror stories. “No one passes,” they assured us. “It’s killer.” I studied and studied, and worried so much that I made myself physically ill before the test. I vomited and got sent home at lunch.

My teacher announced to the class that what I had done was a form of cheating. She gave them the “easy” version of the test and “saved” the hard one for my return. Then, she told me that she assumed I had lied about being sick. I cried while I took the make-up test – which I aced, even though it was very, very hard. I’m still not sure if she ever thought of me as completely honest after that. I know that I never quite trusted her again.

***

I don’t know what to write to my son’s teacher, but I know what I want to say. I want to say, even if he did it, even if he intentionally did the wrong thing – and I don’t think he did – please remember that he’s a child, not a cheater. Please don’t do to him what my teacher did to me all those years ago.

I’ll find the words for the email, but before I do, I’m going upstairs to give my child an extra hug. I can’t change this particular game, but I’ll love him anyway.

Late to the Party #SOL24 30/31

My friend’s text makes me laugh: Argument in our car: everyone but Dad, “We are late.” Dad, “the invite was for any time after 3, so we are not late.” Everyone else, “We are so late.”

Follow-up: We arrived 20 min late. And by far the first to arrive.

****

I am 22 or 23, living in Washington, DC. Somehow, I’ve fallen in with a crowd of young French people who are here largely working for the French government. We meet up for drinks, go out dancing, and generally spend a lot of time being young and single with few obligations in a city full of things to do. Eventually, I am invited to a dinner party at the home of the one married couple in our group.

I’m pleased that I am officially part of the crowd (and secretly proud that my French is good enough for this invitation), but I play it cool. I’ve lived in France for a year of study abroad, so I know that French time is different from American time. I plan my arrival carefully, and show up a full half hour after the suggested time.

I am by far the earliest. Seriously by far.

Anne is gracious. She offers me a peeler and asks me to help with the potatoes. We chat as she finishes getting ready for her guests. By the time the others arrive, a slow trickle starting about 45 minutes later, I’m at ease. The rest of the evening goes well.

Over the next few months, I learn to arrive on Paris time (or young-person Paris time): at least an hour after the time of the invitation. It’s hard, but I manage. Then one night, at another dinner, a slightly tipsy conversation partner leans over and says, “Anne dit qu’elle n’a plus besoin de planifier quelquechose pour t’occuper.” (Anne says she doesn’t have to plan something to keep you occupied anymore.) I must have blushed, but he didn’t notice.

Over drinks later that week, Anne ‘fessed up. “Oh yes,” she laughed, “I had heard about Americans arriving extremely early, and how they like to be useful. So I saved a task for you to do when you arrived. And it worked!”

****

Looking back, I marvel at how each of us tried to adapt to the customs of the other. No wonder we remained friends for several more years, even visiting each other when I lived in France again.

If I were to find her now, I suspect Anne would shake her head fondly and say, “Yes, I have heard about how you Americans hop from friendship to friendship. We French, we keep our friends for a long time” and then, she’d probably hand me a peeler and some potatoes, and we could sit down with plenty of time to catch up before the others arrived, both late and perfectly on time.

Cheesy #SOL24 13/31

Tonight’s dinner will be raclette. The potatoes are already boiled, the cheese is laid out, and the raclette grill is warming. Soon, the whole family will be melting the cheese then pouring its oozy deliciousness over the potatoes. Everyone is excited.

As I prep, I’ve been thinking of the first time I ever had raclette – which was also the first time I’d ever heard of it – in France during my junior year abroad. My (French, obviously) boyfriend and I had been together long enough that I was finally starting to meet his friends. That day, we drove into the countryside for dinner with a group of people I’d never met before. After aperitifs, we sat down at a table with this odd contraption on it. Small potatoes were piled in bowls interspersed between the guests. Long trays were layered with thick slices of cheese and various cured meats. Here and there were small bowls with cornichons. Everyone was talking and laughing and I had no idea what was going on.

Pause here. Prior to arriving in France that September, I had eaten cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese mozzarella cheese (on pizza) and Velveeta. Surely I had seen brie before, but I’m not sure I had tasted it. I had definitely heard of blue cheese, but all I knew was that it stunk. Similarly, I had never drunk more than a sip of wine and certainly had never had an aperitif. Also, I didn’t exactly speak French. I mean, I had *studied* French, and I did very well on grammar tests. I could even write a reasonable paragraph. I could not, however, actually talk to people.

So, when I moved in with a family that spoke only French and who cooked only French and Alsatian food, I had had to either figure things out or, I suppose, go home. Then I met Jean-Luc, whose English was also limited, and promptly fell head over heels for him. That turned everything up a notch.

Now it was maybe January, and I had gotten used to only understanding some of the conversation and not always knowing exactly what I was eating, but tonight I really wanted to make a good impression on Jean-Luc’s friends. I wanted to be part of the gang. But what does one do when seated in front of something like this (see below) and given a tool called a pelle – which I knew darn well meant “shovel”- and a wooden paddle?

At first, no one noticed my unease and, I had become expert at copying those around me. Soon enough, however, Jean-Luc realized that I was a neophyte and started helping me pile various meats on the grill and melting cheese underneath. Raclette, I discovered, was essentially an excuse to eat all the cheesy potatoes you could. It’s not especially refined and lends itself to laughing and chatting as you wait for something to melt or cook – or accidentally take your neighbour’s pelle. We had a fantastic evening. I was hooked.

My American friends in Strasbourg also discovered this dish, and by June we were all more than happy to go with Erin to a raclette restaurant for her birthday (even though raclette is, at its heart, a meal often served in the winter). There, we saw “real” raclette: a heater brought up to a giant wheel of cheese while a server scrapes the melting cheese onto a plateful of potatoes.

After I left France, I doubted I would find many places willing to serve melted cheese as a large part of a meal. I was going home to a land of cheddar, Swiss and mozzarella. I knew there was always fondue, but somehow that seemed almost as unlikely as raclette. And, sure enough, none of my friends at home had ever heard of raclette. It became just a delicious memory…

Until I got engaged to a Canadian. We were looking at things to put on our registry (“just in case”) when I noticed the raclette machine. My fiancé was taken aback by my extreme enthusiasm for something which he thought was, well, kind of normal. I tried to explain – France, cheese, years ago – but he just shrugged and said, “well, let’s put it on the list.” So we did. And we got one.

Pretty much every winter we find raclette cheese at the grocery store and drag the raclette machine out of the basement. We boil the potatoes and find the meats; we cut some veggies and, often, gather friends. Then we put the cheese in the shovels and thrust them under the heat. While it bubbles away, we grill the meats and veggies on the warm stone. We scrape it all onto potatoes and eat until we’re bursting.

I love it every single time. And now, dinner’s ready!

Bangs #SOL24 10/31

On Friday, my best friend from high school texted me a picture of my high school yearbook senior photo.

Look at those bangs! They started about ⅓ of the way back on my head. Every morning, I carefully curled them, brushed them to the side, and then hairsprayed them until they were stuck together in one giant flap of “feathered” hair. And, though you can’t tell here, that blue sweater has sparkles in it. Sparkles! Oh, the 80s.

That picture was still on my mind on Saturday when I went for a hair cut. Chuckling, I pulled out my phone and showed my stylist. I couldn’t quite tell if he was horrified or impressed. He chatted on about 80s and 90s clothes and hairstyles, while I stifled a laugh: He wasn’t around for those eras, so what does he know?

The picture must have stayed on his mind, too, because after my colour was done, as he was starting the cut, he said, “You keep saying you want something different. How about bangs?”

It was my turn to look horrified. “No, no,” he reassured me, “not like in the picture. You know, something more modern.” I still looked doubtful. “I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t think it would look good.”

So I said yes, and now I have bangs again for the first time, I think, since that high school photo. Way back then, in English class, Libby had once declared, “everyone looks better with bangs.” (At least I think it was Libby. It could have been Anne. At any rate, one of the stylish girls.) I haven’t thought of that comment in a long time, but she might have been right. If nothing else, I like the new look: it hides some of my wrinkles.

Учителката #SOL24 8/31

We had only been talking for a few minutes when her phone rang. She glanced at the screen and said, “I have to take this. It’s my father. I’m so sorry.” With an apologetic look, she answered. I looked down at my notebook to give her what little privacy the conference room afforded.

“Говоря с учителката на И”

I looked up, startled. I had perfectly understood that sentence. She said it again, adding “да, да но…” Yup, my student’s mother was definitely speaking Bulgarian.

She hung up and started to apologize again – after all, she’s the one who had asked for this parent-teacher conference – but I interrupted and said, “Are you Bulgarian?” She looked at me quizzically, so I added, “I speak a little Bulgarian; I could understand what you said.”

Soon, the parent-teacher conference had taken a decidedly friendly turn. We talked about Bulgaria, which city she was from, where I had lived, and more. She told me a funny story about getting married in Canada: Bulgarians nod their head up and down to say “no” and side to side for “yes.” As she stood in front of the judge, answering questions so she could marry her fiancé, she kept saying “yes” but, in her enthusiasm, moving her head “no” – to the point where the judge decided he couldn’t accept her verbal answers. They had to call in an interpreter to verify her responses. “I tried to explain,” she laughed, “but I could tell the judge was worried.” In turn, I told her about trying to gauge students’ understanding during a lesson and finding myself completely bewildered by the sea of heads shaking all different directions.

“But… when did you live there?” she wanted to know.

I had to calculate. “Um… 1995? Nearly thirty years ago!”

“And you still remember the language?!” Her astonishment was clear.

“Oh no!” I laughed. “You just said about half of what I remember. The first half of what you said was more or less what I memorized so that I could leave phone messages for people. And the second part was about teachers.”

I spent a year teaching in Bulgaria. I loved it – the teaching, the country, the people, the language. As I started to make friends, I also started needing to call people. The problem was, no one lived alone in Bulgaria, so I always needed to ask to speak with the one person I knew – who was almost always the only English speaker in the home. I quickly learned to say, “May I speak with…?” (Мога ли да говоря с) Then, I waited. If there was silence followed by a familiar voice, I’d found my friend. If instead there was a long string of what was gibberish to my years, I took a deep breath and said, “Кажи му, че Аманда се обади”… “Tell him that Amanda called.” And then I hung up. Because that was all I could say. I was pretty much terrified every time I made a phone call all year, which means that those two phrases are tattooed in my brain.

I can also still remember bits of what I used to call the “train conversation.” That’s the conversation you have when you take the train from your town to the next one if you’re a blond foreigner in a sea of dark-haired Bulgarians. It’s pretty much always the same: Where are you from? What are you doing here? How long have you been here? How long are you staying? Do you like our country?” The whole train conversation lasts just under 10 minutes, and I must have had the conversation dozens of times in several languages.

All of this came together this week when the parent was speaking because what she said was, “Dad, I’m speaking with I’s teacher.” And I can 100% remember all of those words – apparently even 30 years after I last needed them.

The rest of the conference went swimmingly. Shared language can do that. I’m confident that we can work as a team to support her child for the rest of the semester. And I get to spend a few days reminiscing about a year of amazing experiences – and trying to call up a few more words.

(Written for “Multi-Lingual Friday”)

Marching through the years #SOL23 25/31

I first saw this format on Elisabeth’s post, and she, in turn, got it from Erica. And Molly, too, wrote about how having her phone available has changed how she takes note of the world. If you follow me on FB or Instagram, you know that I have been walking every day since early in the pandemic and that I started taking pictures not long after I started walking, so I was intrigued by photo posts. Today I had the time to go through my photos and choose from all the March 25th pictures available. Talk about a slice of life!

March 25, 2023 (today)

I walked 5km this morning & took a few pictures. There are a few green shoots here & there, but mostly we still have a lot of snow & ice on the ground. Yesterday, I wrote a haiku that matches today’s picture.

Ice stretched thin across
the mud puddles in the road.
Crystalline beauty.

March 25, 2022

Reflection – tree & wires in a piece of glass on the ground. I remember this being one street over and near our friend Laura’s place. Today (2023) she has an article in the Globe and Mail. I can’t get over how lucky I am to live in this neighbourhood with these people.

March 25, 2021

This makes me laugh because I took a picture almost exactly like this yesterday. Apparently I often spend March looking for colour.

March 25, 2020 – pandemic March

We had spent 8 months in a two-bedroom apartment while our house was being renovated. We finally moved back in the weekend of March 13. (Yes, the weekend things started shutting down – how lucky were we?) The boys were happy to be home & very close after spending a long time sharing a small bedroom.

March 25, 2019

Sometimes, you get home from school, throw your backpack on a pile of snow at the end of the driveway, and go play in the backyard with your friend – just because you can. (Squint & you can see two boys playing in the background.)

March 25, 2018

On the move. Mr. 7 was ecstatic about his newfound ability to get to the top of the doorway. Both boys started parkour classes (and one is at parkour right now as I write!).

March 25, 2018

Meeting our friend’s baby. Just got a hilarious video of that baby – now a kindergartner! – doing a butt wiggle yesterday.

March 25, 2017

Mr. 6 snuggled up with his buddy. Little did we know that the ipad was prep for the pandemic to come.

March 25, 2012

I can do it myself!

What happens in Arizona… #SOL23 23/31

Today is parent-teacher conferences. As I got dressed, I put on a particular necklace – not a necklace, really, more an amulet, maybe – and I immediately felt a little stronger. Let me tell you a story that I don’t quite believe…

About six years ago, we were visiting my in-laws in Tucson, and my mother-in-law scheduled our whole family for an energy work session with someone she knew. I didn’t really believe in energy work, but I did (and do) really believe in my mother-in-law, and I pretty much always believe in spending time lying down and letting people try to make me feel better, so I said yes.

I’d never tried anything like this before, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt anything. The kids went first, and I was frankly astonished when the therapist (? energy worker? I have no idea) hesitated and then focused on a place on my child’s body that did, indeed, require healing, but that he could not possibly have known about. There was more, but afterwards, when he explained what he had felt and done during the session, he commented about that part of his work. I was intrigued. Nevertheless, when it was my turn for energy work, I wasn’t expecting much. I lay down, assuming I would feel nothing, anticipating thirty minutes of quiet.

Now, the thing is, that I’m not in Arizona anymore and this happened a while ago and I’m still largely a reading/science type of person, so when I talk about this it all feels like a bunch of hooey. If I were reading this, I would probably not believe it, and if you don’t believe this, I’m ok with that, but let me tell you, whatever that man did, I could feel it – and he never even touched me. It was intense. At the end, he told me that he had pulled a sword out of my gut (which, again, is ridiculous) and I shocked myself by looking directly at him and saying, “Give that back. I need it.” Well.

He did not give it back – because even an energy-work-person will not put a metaphorical energy sword back into your belly because that sounds like a terrible idea, even if it had previously been metaphysically there – and I felt oddly bereft for the next day or two. Finally, my mother-in-law (who, as I said, I fully believe in) found me and offered me a necklace-type thing: a green and white spheroid stone set in an odd elaborate metal bezel and fixed to a brown cord. She told me that she had bought it years ago; it had been sold to her as an amulet of protection and she felt that it had called her. Now, she said, she thought it was mine.

I wore it for days and, placebo or not, I felt better. Eventually, I put it away and only pulled it out every now and then. Even today, when I put it on, I feel powerfully protected – and I know for sure that whether that protection comes from the universe, or the stone or the depth of my mother-in-law’s love for me, it doesn’t matter. One way or another, the energy is there.

Parking #SOL23 17/31

I used to drive a school bus. Yup, you read that right. When I taught in Washington DC the school was so small that PE requirements were fulfilled through after school teams and young teachers got our commercial drivers license so we could drive the teams we coached.

Most of the school’s bright blue fleet was short buses, but Amy and I coached the (giant) middle school soccer team, so we drove the full-sized bus all over the DC area. We regularly garnered startled second looks from drivers as they passed us on the highway, but that didn’t bother us: we knew we were more than competent. Mel, Head custodian and general fixer of everything (who was also in charge of the buses) knew it, too, which is why he trusted Amy and me to park the size bus after all the kids had been picked up.

Because the school was in the middle of one of DC’s downtown neighborhoods, there was only one nearby space that could accommodate the big bus. The operation required two people and a lot of nerve. We negotiated narrow one-way streets until we arrived perpendicular to a long alleyway. Here, we maneuvered our blue behemoth in a fifteenish-point turn, then threaded our way between two buildings, the sides of the bus mere inches from the brick walls on either side. About a third of the way up the alley, a pipe snaked up the side of the building on the right; a few feet further on, a meter jutted out of the building on the left. There was no room for error.

Once we made it through the alley, we emerged into the relative freedom of a very small parking lot, where we slid the bus into a spot right against a wall. Finishing was always exhilarating.

Which explains why I blushed with pleasure tonight as a group of us left the restaurant and the woman at the next table touched my arm and said, “I watched you park your minivan. It was amazing.” I looked out the window, suddenly realizing that everyone inside had been able to see me parallel park in a very tight spot, then I grinned, “well, I used to drive a school bus.”