I haven’t yet been able to find words— a sentence for what happens when I brush my daughter’s hair and divide into thirds enough hair for a family of four (one barber said, the rare one I trusted). Honeycomb-colored braid, she’s out the door for school (green coat, pink backpack), and rushing right on time, little Virgo, to the bus. One-woman-show with harmonies, alone— amazed, bowed down (deep inhale) O the joy contained in waves on waves: a shimmering song my daughter’s hair sings as she floats each afternoon high up into a tree. Against the clouds she climbs, far beyond me. ~Megan Buchanan “My Daughter’s Hair”, from Clothesline Religion
She was born with the announcement from the doctor: “we have a bunch of red hair here on this little lady!”
Then as a little girl her hair was straight as could be, until one day she woke up with hints of waves and ringlets which eventually became a virtual thicket of auburn tresses.
No longer could I quickly comb through her hair or even trust myself with scissors. Instead I stood back in awe, with my thin straight hair, marveling at how this could happen to a child of mine. This was her daddy’s hair.
Her amazing mane is but one part of who this remarkable woman has become, these endless waves, yet it is only the surface of a strong light that dwells richly within her. Now, as a teacher of 10 year olds, she floats among children who someday will transform overnight as she did. She is part of determining who they will become, her effect on them like a wave upon wave upon wave.
The others bent their heads and started in. Confused, I asked my neighbor to explain—a sturdy, bright-cheeked girl who brought raw milk to school from her family’s herd of Holsteins. Ann had a blue bookmark, and on it Christ revealed his beating heart, holding the flesh back with His wounded hand. Ann understood division. . . .
Miss Moran sprang from her monumental desk and led me roughly through the class without a word. My shame was radical as she propelled me past the cloakroom to the furnace closet, where only the boys were put, only the older ones at that. The door swung briskly shut.
The warmth, the gloom, the smell of sweeping compound clinging to the broom soothed me. I found a bucket, turned it upside down, and sat, hugging my knees. I hummed a theme from Haydn that I knew from my piano lessons. . . . and hardened my heart against authority. And then I heard her steps, her fingers on the latch. She led me, blinking and changed, back to the class. ~Jane Kenyon “Trouble with Math in a One-room Country School”
I avoided all potential trouble in school by avoiding the trouble-makers. I never was disciplined or even looked at crossly by a teacher. They loved me and I wanted badly to be loved by them.
I looked away whenever another student got in trouble; I didn’t want to be a lookie-loo enjoying the travails of another child. It was painful for me to see another kid disciplined. I know I would have been crushed to be publicly called out, sent to the hallway, name on the board, or worse yet, banished to the principal.
So my heart broke when I saw another child cry, or be defiant or be removed from class. I knew I couldn’t fix it or them. I knew I couldn’t help the teacher to like them. I knew some kids have their own secret pain they endure. I knew it would change me to know what their pain felt like. So I just imagined being good and compliant and rule-abiding and lovable.
Forever.
Of course, I wasn’t and I’m not, sixty years later. I too changed, just like everyone else. It still makes me sad to think how much we change, how many hearts we break, how our innocence is so fragile and as a result, how badly we need forgiveness so we can learn to love ourselves as we are loved.
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I remember the first day, how I looked down, hoping you wouldn’t see me, and when I glanced up, I saw your smile shining like a soft light from deep inside you.
“I’m listening,” you encourage us. “Come on! Join our conversation, let us hear your neon certainties, thorny doubts, tangled angers,” but for weeks I hid inside.
I read and reread your notes praising my writing, and you whispered, “We need you and your stories and questions that like a fresh path will take us to new vistas.”
Slowly, your faith grew into my courage and for you— instead of handing you a note or apple or flowers— I raised my hand.
I carry your smile and faith inside like I carry my dog’s face, my sister’s laugh, creamy melodies, the softness of sunrise, steady blessings of stars, autumn smell of gingerbread, the security of a sweater on a chilly day. ~Pat Mora, “Ode To Teachers” from Dizzy in Your Eyes.
School is back in session for some and will be soon for others. We cross our fingers it can remain in person, masked face-to-masked face, rather than via screens.
Students and teachers will find their way back to one another – learning each other’s stories and how to transform one another through sharing those stories.
Two of our children are school teachers – one at elementary level and the other in high school, while the third spent two years teaching high school math on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. They were transformed by their own teachers, inspired to do what had made such a difference in their own lives. They have become the teachers who I wish would teach me.
Some of my own teachers helped transform me in those early years, encouraging me in my shyness to raise my hand despite my thorny doubts, tell my story despite my tangled angers, share something of myself when I felt I had nothing of value to give.
I think of you and thank you – Mrs. Neil, Mr. Duffy, Mrs. MacMurray – for helping me break out of my broken shell in my grade school years. You taught me to wholly trust to this day those who love enough to push me to become a better me.
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When I pray I go in, and close the door, But what, really, do we mean by prayer? Isn’t it anything done with full attention Whether sinking into silent depths, or Relishing a sun-ripe peach, or gazing At the zinnias freshly picked this early Morning, these multi-petaled shouts of joy, Lemon yellow, orange, reds, a carnival of Flame-filled light, the sweet green scent Summer flowers. ~Sarah Rossiter “Zinnias”
My father’s mother grew a garden of zinnias to divide the house from the woods:
pop art tops in every color—cream, peach, royal purple, and even envy
—the sunburst petals…
the heads little suns you watch die on the stem if you want the bloom back. ~Tyler Mills “Zinnias”
As an eight year old, I grew zinnias from a tiny package of seeds tucked inside a Christmas card by my third grade teacher whose rapt attention turned to her backyard garden when school doors closed in the summer.
She nurtured each of us students like one of her cream-colored zinnia buds arising boldly on a single sturdy stem, growing tall almost before her eyes, yet still undefined.
Watered and fed, her warm light shining on our bright faces, we opened expectantly under her steady gaze, each one a sunburst bloom smiling back at her, which kept her coming back, year after year, to sow a few more celebratory seeds with her sprinkling of wisdom.
Thank you to Chris and Jan Lovegren for sharing their zinnias!
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In the quiet misty morning When the moon has gone to bed, When the sparrows stop their singing And the sky is clear and red, When the summer’s ceased its gleaming When the corn is past its prime, When adventure’s lost its meaning – I’ll be homeward bound in time
Bind me not to the pasture Chain me not to the plow Set me free to find my calling And I’ll return to you somehow
If you find it’s me you’re missing If you’re hoping I’ll return, To your thoughts I’ll soon be listening, And in the road I’ll stop and turn Then the wind will set me racing As my journey nears its end And the path I’ll be retracing When I’m homeward bound again
Bind me not to the pasture Chain me not to the plow Set me free to find my calling And I’ll return to you somehow
In the quiet misty morning When the moon has gone to bed, When the sparrows stop their singing I’ll be homeward bound again. ~Marta Keen “Homeward Bound”
Seventy eight years ago, my parents married on Christmas Eve. It was not a conventional wedding day but a date of necessity, only because a justice of the peace was available to marry a score of war-time couples in Quantico, Virginia, shortly before the newly trained Marine officers were shipped out to the South Pacific to fight in WWII.
When I look at my parents’ young faces – ages 22 and just turned 21 — in their only wedding portrait, I see a hint of the impulsive decision that led to that wedding just a week before my father left for 30 months. They had known each other at college for over a year, had talked about a future together, but with my mother starting a teaching job in a rural Eastern Washington town, and the war potentially impacting all young men’s lives very directly, they had not set a date.
My father put his college education on hold to enlist, knowing that would give him some options he wouldn’t have if drafted, so they went their separate ways as he headed east to Virginia for his Marine officer training, and Mom started her high school teaching career as a speech and drama teacher. One day in early December of 1942, he called her and said, “If we’re going to get married, it’ll need to be before the end of the year. I’m shipping out the first week in January.” Mom went to her high school principal, asked for a two week leave of absence which was granted, told her astonished parents, bought a dress, and headed east on the train with a friend who had received a similar call from her boyfriend.
This was a completely uncharacteristic thing for my overly cautious mother to do, so… it must have been love.
They were married in a brief civil ceremony with another couple as the witnesses. They stayed in Virginia only a couple days and took the train back to San Diego, and my father was shipped out. Just like that. Mom returned to her teaching position and the first three years of their married life was composed of letter correspondence only, with gaps of up to a month during certain island battles when no mail could be delivered or posted.
As I sorted through my mother’s things following her death over a decade ago, I found their war-time letters to each other, stacked neatly and tied together in a box.
In my father’s nearly daily letters home to my mother during WWII, month after month after month, he would say, over and over, while apologizing for the repetition:
“I will come home to you, I will return, I will not let this change me, we will be joined again…”
This was his way of convincing himself even as he carried the dead and dying after island battles: men he knew well and the enemy he did not know. He knew they were never returning to the home they died protecting and to those who loved them.
He shared little of battle in his letters as each letter was reviewed and signed off by a censor before being sealed and sent. This story, however, made it through:
“You mentioned a story of Navy landing craft taking the Marines into Tarawa. It reminded me of something which impressed me a great deal and something I’m sure I’ll never forget.
So you’ll understand what I mean I’ll try to start with an explanation. In training – close order drill- etc. there is a command that is given always when the men form in the morning – various times during the day– after firing– and always before a formation is dismissed. The command is INSPECTION – ARMS. On the command of EXECUTION- ARMS each man opens the bolt of his rifle. It is supposed to be done in unison so you hear just one sound as the bolts are opened. Usually it is pretty good and sounds O.K.
Just to show you how the morale of the men going to the beach was – and how much it impressed me — we were on our way in – I was forward, watching the beach thru a little slit in the ramp – the men were crouched in the bottom of the boat, just waiting. You see- we enter the landing boats with unloaded rifles and wait till it’s advisable before loading. When we got about to the right distance in my estimation I turned around and said – LOAD and LOCK – I didn’t realize it, but every man had been crouching with his hand on the operating handle and when I said that — SLAM! — every bolt was open at once – I’ve never heard it done better – and those men meant business when they loaded those rifles.
A man couldn’t be afraid with men like that behind him.”
My father did return home to my mother after nearly three years of separation. He finished his college education to become an agriculture teacher to teach others how to farm the land while he himself became bound to the pasture and chained to the plow.
He never forgot those who died, making it possible for him to return home. I won’t forget either.
My mother and father could not have foretold the struggles that lay ahead for them. The War itself seemed struggle enough for the millions of couples who endured the separation, the losses and grieving, as well as the eventual injuries–both physical and psychological. It did not seem possible that beyond those harsh and horrible realities, things could go sour after reuniting.
The hope and expectation of happiness and bliss must have been overwhelming, and real life doesn’t often deliver. After raising three children, their 35 year marriage fell apart with traumatic finality. When my father returned home (again) over a decade later, asking for forgiveness, they remarried and had five more years together before my father died in 1995.
Christmas is a time of joy, a celebration of new beginnings and new life when God became man, humble, vulnerable and tender. But it also gives us a foretaste for the profound sacrifice made in giving up this earthly life, not always so gently.
As I peer at my father’s and mother’s faces in their wedding photo, I remember those eyes, then so trusting and unaware of what was to come. I find peace in knowing they returned home to behold the Light, the Salvation and the Glory~~the ultimate Christmas~~in His presence.
In the quiet misty morning When the moon has gone to bed, When the sparrows stop their singing And the sky is clear and red, When the summer’s ceased its gleaming When the corn is past its prime, When adventure’s lost its meaning – I’ll be homeward bound in time
Bind me not to the pasture Chain me not to the plow Set me free to find my calling And I’ll return to you somehow
If you find it’s me you’re missing If you’re hoping I’ll return, To your thoughts I’ll soon be listening, And in the road I’ll stop and turn Then the wind will set me racing As my journey nears its end And the path I’ll be retracing When I’m homeward bound again
Bind me not to the pasture Chain me not to the plow Set me free to find my calling And I’ll return to you somehow
In the quiet misty morning When the moon has gone to bed, When the sparrows stop their singing I’ll be homeward bound again. ~Marta Keen “Homeward Bound”
May the wind always be in her hair May the sky always be wide with hope above her And may all the hills be an exhilaration the trials but a trail, all the stones but stairs to God.
May she be bread and feed many with her life and her laughter May she be thread and mend brokenness and knit hearts… ~Ann Voskamp from “A Prayer for a Daughter”
“I have noticed,” she said slowly, “that time does not really exist for mothers, with regard to their children. It does not matter greatly how old the child is – in the blink of an eye, the mother can see the child again as she was when she was born, when she learned to walk, as she was at any age — at any time, even when the child is fully grown….” ~Diana Gabaldon from Voyager
Just checking to see if she is real…
Your rolling and stretching had grown quieter that stormy winter night twenty seven years ago, but no labor came as it should. A week overdue post-Christmas, you clung to amnion and womb, not yet ready. Then the wind blew more wicked and snow flew sideways, landing in piling drifts, the roads becoming impassable, nearly impossible to traverse.
So your dad and I tried, worried about being stranded on the farm far from town. Our little car got stuck in a snowpile in the deep darkness, our tires spinning, whining against the snow. A nearby neighbor’s bulldozer dug us out to freedom. You floated silent and still, knowing your time was not yet.
Creeping slowly through the dark night blizzard, we arrived to the warm glow of the hospital. You slept. I, not at all.
Morning sun glistened off sculptured snow outside our window, and your heart had ominously slowed in the night. We both were jostled, turned, oxygenated, but nothing changed. You beat even more slowly, letting loose your tenuous grip on life.
The nurses’ eyes told me we had trouble. The doctor, grim faced, announced delivery must happen quickly, taking you now, hoping we were not too late. I was rolled, numbed, stunned, clasping your father’s hand, closing my eyes, not wanting to see the bustle around me, trying not to hear the shouted orders, the tension in the voices, the quiet at the moment of opening when it was unknown what would be found.
And then you cried. A hearty healthy husky cry, a welcomed song. Perturbed and disturbed from the warmth of womb, to the cold shock of a bright lit operating room, your first vocal solo brought applause from the surrounding audience who admired your pink skin, your shock of damp red hair, your blue eyes squeezed tight, then blinking open, wondering and wondrous, emerging saved from the storm within and without.
You were brought wrapped for me to see and touch before you were whisked away to be checked over thoroughly, your father trailing behind the parade to the nursery. I closed my eyes, swirling in a brain blizzard of what-ifs.
If no snow storm had come, you would have fallen asleep forever within my womb, no longer nurtured by my aging placenta, cut off from what you needed to stay alive. There would have been only our soft weeping, knowing what could have been if we had only known, if God provided a sign to go for help.
Saved by a storm and dug out from a drift: I celebrate each time I hear your voice singing, knowing you are a thread born to knit and mend hearts.
my annual January 5 “happy birthday” to our daughter Lea, a 4th grade school teacher, soon to be married
All day we packed boxes. We read birth and death certificates. The yellowed telegrams that announced our births, the cards of congratulations and condolences, the deeds and debts, love letters, valentines with a heart ripped out, the obituaries.
We opened the divorce decree, a terrible document of division and subtraction. We leafed through scrapbooks: corsages, matchbooks, programs to the ballet, racetrack, theatre—joy and frivolity parceled in one volume— painstakingly arranged, preserved and pasted with crusted glue.
We sat together side by side on the empty floor and did not speak. There were no words between us other than the essence of the words from the correspondences, our inheritance—plain speak, bereft of poetry. ~Jill Bialosky fromThe Players
The box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for decades. The time had come.
My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself for the island battles to come.
I’m now half-way through reading them in chronological order. I’m up to March 1943 when my father received orders that he would be shipped out to the South Pacific within days. They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce.
The letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. Much of the time they wrote each other daily, though with minimal news to share and military censors at work, but they speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper.
I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.
Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in their future and ultimately mine.
photo of Jane Goodall by Rhys Logan, smiling at me as I came up to give her a hug, courtesy of WWU University Communications
Dr. Jane Goodall, now 84 years old, paid a visit to our city of Bellingham, Washington last night to give a lecture on behalf of Western Washington University to an audience of 1300 adults and children, emphasizing once again how any one unassuming and highly motivated person can make a difference in the survival of the earth and its inhabitants, whether plant, animal or humankind.
It had been over two decades since I’d last seen her so it was a great privilege to be able to greet and hug this former teacher of mine and a hero of our time, and to see the next generation have opportunity to hear her stories in her own voice.
I’ve shared this story before here but watching her speak last night in the historic Mt. Baker Theater, I couldn’t help but recall the first time I met Jane one-on-one, over forty-five years ago:
Standing outside a non-descript door in a long dark windowless hallway of offices at the Stanford Medical Center, I took a deep breath and swallowed several times to clear my dry throat. I hoped I had found the correct office, as there was only a number– no nameplate to confirm who was inside.
I was about to meet a childhood hero, someone whose every book I’d read and every TV documentary I had watched. I knocked with what I hoped was the right combination of assertiveness (“I want to be here to talk with you and prove my interest”) and humility (“I hope this is convenient for you as I don’t want to intrude”). I heard a soft voice on the other side say “Come in” so I slowly opened the door.
It was a bit like going through the wardrobe to enter Narnia. Bright sunlight streamed into the dark hallway as I stepped over the threshold. Squinting, I stepped inside and quickly shut the door behind me as I realized there were at least four birds flying about the room. They were taking off and landing, hopping about feeding on bird seed on the office floor and on the window sill. The windows were flung wide open with a spring breeze rustling papers on the desk. The birds were very happy occupying the sparsely furnished room, which contained only one desk, two chairs and Dr. Jane Goodall.
She stood up and extended her hand to me, saying, quite unnecessarily, “Hello, I’m Jane” and offered me the other chair when I told her my name. She was slighter than she appeared when speaking up at a lectern, or on film. Sitting back down at her desk, she busied herself reading and marking her papers, seemingly occupied and not to be disturbed. It was as if I was not there at all.
It was disorienting. In the middle of a bustling urban office complex containing nothing resembling plants or a natural environment, I had unexpectedly stepped into a bird sanctuary instead of sitting down for a job interview. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do or say. Jane didn’t really ever look directly at me, yet I was clearly being observed. So I waited, watching the birds making themselves at home in her office, and slowly feeling at home myself. I felt my tight muscles start to relax and I loosened my grip on the arms of the chair.
There was silence except for the twittering of the finches as they flew about our heads.
After awhile she spoke, her eyes still perusing papers: “It is the only way I can tolerate being here for any length of time. They keep me company. But don’t tell anyone; the people here would think this is rather unsanitary.”
I said the only thing I could think of: “I think it is magical. It reminds me of home.”
Only then did she look at me. “Now tell me why you’d like to come work at Gombe…”
The next day I received a note from her letting me know I was accepted for the research assistantship. I had proven I could sit silently and expectantly, waiting for something, or perhaps nothing at all, to happen. For a farm girl who never before traveled outside the United States, I was about to embark on an adventure far beyond the barnyard.
giving Jane a hug, courtesy of WWU Communications (Rhys Logan)
45 years since we met in her Stanford office full of wild birds – photo by Rhys Logan (WWU)
(this essay was published in The Jane Effect in 2014 in honor of Jane’s 80th birthday)
A new documentary “Jane” is now streaming on Amazon Prime and is reviewed at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/18/movies/jane-review-jane-goodall-documentary.html
Barnstorming 