Back in the Saddle

One of my Facebook friends, a friend from high school days, commented on my return to work by saying, "While being back in the saddle might still be enjoyable, getting back into it is sometimes more difficult!"  That statement is very true.  


I began my new job of teaching English to international students at the CSU-Pueblo on Monday.  Thankfully, Monday morning's alarm did not totally jar me because awaking early and to an alarm occurred on only the second day of our return to standard time.  My body thought that it was 7:00 a.m. rather than 6:00 a.m.  I actually got out of bed as soon as the alarm rang.  I then immediately took a shower.  This act alone signaled a big change.  I had showered, dressed, put on make-up and done my hair by 6:45.  Normally, if I had even gotten up before 7:00 a.m.,  I would still be in my p.j.'s, and would be just sipping my coffee, reading the newspaper, and watching the news on the Today Show.  


Proud of myself for remembering the routine for getting myself out of the door no later than 7:30 a.m., I proudly left the house on time after having eaten breakfast and reading a newspaper.  The campus where I am working is literally a five minute drive from my house.  I found that I was actually one of the few on campus at my early arrival time.  Ah, yes, I remembered, college students and retirees have something in common: they both get a late start in the morning.


By 8:00 a.m., I had arranged my teaching area, written my name and contact information on a large tablet on an easel located at the front of the room, and was greeting my new students as they arrived in the classroom.  I could tell they were as nervous and anxious as I about seeing how this new situation would fit.  They had just told one teacher good-bye, and now they had to break in a new one at the end of the semester.  They wanted me to introduce myself first.  I guess they wanted to see if my credentials were up to snuff.


I have five students who are in the beginning stages of learning academic English.  I have not yet asked if I can photograph them or write about them on my blog, so I will just say that I have three students from Asia, one from Africa, and one from South America.  The class is a wonderful mix of ages, abilities and personalities.  All are warm and welcoming.  Some are confident, others rather tenuous about using a language that still seems difficult to speak.  They have formed a rather tight knit bond of support, encouragement, and friendship.  Their respect and love for each other was much evident.  Their respect and support for me was refreshing and uplifting.  I had forgotten what it feels like to have a student make a slight bow when they greet me or speak to me.  I again felt humbled and honored to be shown the respect that foreign students give to a teacher.  I could not stop smiling.  I was so happy.  


It has been a rough five months.  After losing my 34 year old daughter to suicide in late May, I have gone through a long, hard journey of grief that I hoped would lead to healing.  I lost a large part of myself with her death.  Returning to my profession is helping me rediscover another part of myself that I treasure.  


 I have learned that grief can a times be a solitary journey.  I have striven toward finding an equal balance between spending time in solitude and in fellowship.  I think I have been mostly successful in not isolating myself, but I worried that winter would present a challenge when it came to keeping myself busy.  At just the right time, I was called and offered this job.  The timing was perfect.  I needed something to do, something to get me dressed and out the door everyday without putting a lot of pressure or stress on me.


Being back in the saddle felt just right.  I have not forgotten how to ride.  I can still teach gerunds, and vocabulary, and I can still understand early, fearful attempts at using a language that seems very scary to use when it is not your native language.  I am excited about the enrichment that teaching people from other cultures, languages, religions and belief systems always brings into my life.  I am meeting new friends, experiencing new adventures, and using the gift of teaching that God gave me.  I am continuing to heal.  I am moving on into the future.  I know Julie would be very proud of me.  I can almost feel her arm around my shoulder.  I am smiling a lot again.

Julie and Sally - Walk for The Cure 2008

Retired English teacher is going back to work.

Last Sunday, my husband confessed that he reads the "help wanted" ads every Sunday.  I asked, "Are you looking for a job?"  He answered with, "No, just an income."  We've both been retired for about three and half  years now if you don't count the times we've come out of retirement.  If you count those times, we've has been retired for about a year and a half.  He always says, "If they ask me to come back again, the answer is 'no'."  I, on the other hand, am always fantasizing about going back to work.  That is until I think about getting up every morning, getting myself fed, dressed, and out the door any sooner than 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning.  I also get real about my thinking of working again when I remember discipline at the high school level.  Then, there are all of those papers to grade.  That is enough to shock me into being very satisfied with retirement.

Substitute teaching has never been anything I really considered doing.  I did a lot of subbing when I was a stay at home mom.  I would take a sub job when someone at the neighborhood schools had an emergency. Now, after being out of the classroom for six or seven years, I just did not want to fill in on a temporary basis no matter how much I missed teaching, the kids, and the other teachers.

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call asking me if I would consider teaching ESL students in the international program at Colorado State University-Pueblo.  Since the job was quite temporary, just until the end of the semester, and since I would be helping out a friend who needed me to fill in after an unexpected vacancy, I said I would be glad to help out.  Two days later, I was again called and told that the teacher was not leaving after all.  I was ok with that.  Especially when I didn't have to get up early on Monday morning.

I was then asked by a former teacher friend to come and speak with one of her international students who was having some difficulties with his English class.  That was enough to hook me.  I went up on campus, visited with the student, and realized just how much I missed teaching ESL.

Me with some of my former students...

Yesterday, I decided to call the international program to see if they needed me to do anything for just a few days a week.  Before the director of the program could even call me back, the professor over the language institute called and asked me again if I could come and teach for them.  I jumped at the chance.

So, this retired English teacher is going back to work.  I will be teaching five students who, according to TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) scores, are at the intermediate level.  I will work half days, 8:00 to 12:00, Monday through Friday, starting next week.  The job ends at the end of the semester.  That is only three and a half weeks of school.  I can handle that.

Today, as I drove the few blocks to campus, parked the car, got out and walked to the offices of the international program, I found myself feeling very excited about and quite grateful for this new opportunity.  I love teaching ESL to students who are high school and college age.  I will be meeting some new students from different parts of the world.  I will be kept busy planning and teaching.  I will again be on the campus that I love for many reason.  And, I will get paid.  That seems like a bonus when I am really being able to resume my relationship with a passion that keeps me interested and inspired.

Back Fence Neighbors and Conversations

The backyard of my childhood home is enshrined in a special place of my memory.  Mostly, I have happy memories of that place.  I visit it often when I think of simple times and happy, carefree activities.  After all, it is in this place where I formed my fundamental beliefs about life.  It was there where I established how I thought the world should look, and how it should function.  It was not a dull place, nor was it unexciting.  I think I mostly had an underlying feeling of curious expectancy each time I went into the backyard to play or to observe life.

Life was pretty much self-contained  within the neighborhood of my childhood.  The city block where our home was built was just one block from my grandmother's home, the place where my father and his siblings had grown up.  Across the street from my grandmother's home was the church that we all attended.  Next door to the church was the elementary school where we went to school.  Across the street from the school, at the end of the block where my grandparent's lived, was a small neighborhood grocery where we bought a loaf of bread for our mother and couple of pieces of penny candy for ourselves.  As I said, as children, we seldom ventured far beyond the fun filled few blocks where we lived.

Our neighborhood block was configured in such a way, that sections of the block were more conducive for particular types neighborhood interaction.  The block must have contained about 19 homes that had all been constructed between the years of 1900 and 1924.  Some homes were small bungalow types, while others were large Victorian types.  Some had small lots with no garages or sheds in the back. Other homes were built on large lots.  All of the lots on the block could be accessed by an alley.  In fact, the block had a total of four alleys.  As children, we named each alley in order to have a frame of reference for where to meet if were going hide from the younger kids.  

I noticed that while the kids loved playing in the alleys and observing life from the alley, our parents rarely ventured across the alley to see what was going on in another quadrant of the block.  My mother mostly connected with the neighbor who was her closest confidant on the block.  She was her "back fence" neighbor.  

In my memory, Gordon, that is what we called my mother's "back fence neighbor," forever looms in my mind as the model of what a neighbor should be.  When I was very young, she lived in the house on the west side of our home with her son and daughter, who were twins, while they were in high school.  Her husband passed away when I was an infant or young child.  After her children left home for college, she moved into the small cottage behind the large Victorian house on the east side of our home.  She spent her days teaching home economics at the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind.  I still remember her coming home after work, driving her car into the garage, entering her little cottage.  Not long afterward, she would emerge from the house into the yard with her hose (the type of stockings her wore!) rolled down around her ankles laced up shoes.  (I'm sure she must have removed her garter belt as soon as she walked in the door!)  She was ready for some backyard fence talk.  

Or, I remember Saturday mornings when my mom and Gordon were each in their own backyard hanging out the laundry.  Before long, laundry time also became a time for sharing some back fence talk.  They talked about everything.  I know this because I used to try and listen in.  Mostly, I was just shooed off out of earshot distance because it was grown-up talk time.  

I love those memories of a time when life seemed so much more simple.  I know there were problems in the world.  World War II was just over.  Money was tight.  Gordon was a widow trying to make it alone.  My mother, an only child, whose parents had died before I was born, must have really appreciated this older woman in her life.  For me, as a child, I saw the importance of having a friend who was a neighbor and neighbor who was a friend.

Now, we live life so differently.  Few of us have backyards, and if we do, the fences are six feet tall!  We no longer hang our clothes out on the line, thank God! Times have definitely changed.  With all of the progress that we have made in the last forty or fifty years, I can't help but think about how much we have lost from those days when we spent time in the back chatting over the fence, or on the porch chatting with the neighbor from next door who stopped by by lemonade on a hot summer afternoon.  I think mostly the art of knowing how to connect to one another in a real live conversation is being lost.  I worry that our grandchildren could start to believe that being shut in the house connected to technology is a good substitute for having a real conversation.  

I love technology and the way it allows me to connect to so many people in a myriad of ways.  I would be lost without my BlackBerry.  I check FaceBook several times a day.  I love my blogging friends.  I love reading their news.  I love learning new things from them.  I delight in their stories.  I laugh at their humorous rendition of what is going on in their sphere of existence.  I am grateful for Skype when I visit with my son in Bangladesh.  I love communication in any form.  Having said all of that, I must say that I am most grateful that I learned the importance of community connections and conversations while I was still a child growing up in my beloved neighborhood in the Shook's Run area of Colorado Springs, Colorado during the '50's.  Those were the days...

Image from orangevinyl.com

My Life As An Educator

In this post, I'm sharing an article that I wrote for the Fall 2010 issue of  "The Colorado Communicator," a newsletter for the Colorado Council International Reading Associate.  Serving as co-editor for this newsletter is one of my "retirement jobs."

My Life As An Educator

A photo from The Herald Democrat recorded my work with Head Start in 1965

During the summer of1965, just before I was beginning  upper level courses that I hoped would lead to a degree in elementary education at what was then Colorado State College, The Office of Economic Opportunity began an eight-week summer program that would launch Project Head Start.  Across the country, there was a rush to hire tutors and teachers to serve the over 560,000 children who would enter this newly created program.  It was my good fortune to be hired as a tutor to work along side of other  early workers in Head Start in beginning a “comprehensible program for preschool children that would meet their emotional, social, health, nutritional and psychological needs."

I wish I had kept a journal of those days because now, nearly 44 years later, my mind is a bit fuzzy about it all. Young and idealistic, I had great dreams about the kind of educator I would become.   Coming of age during the 60's,  I embraced the Civil Rights Movement and the "new" ideas about education, but I also respected and looked up to those who had been in education for a long time.  

My mentor for the summer of 1965 was Idelia B. Riggs.   As I reflect back on her now, I consider this consummate educator as one the best with whom I have had the privilege to know throughout my entire lifetime.  She must have been in her sixties when I was a young college student.  She had already taught everything from kindergarten to college.  She had even been the principal of a one-room schoolhouse at one point in her career.  

Mrs. Riggs knew what children needed to grow and to prosper educationally, emotionally and socially.  She embraced the ideals behind Project Head Start and imparted them to me as she spoke of all of the reasons why she believed the program could be successful.  

She said that the children of poverty in the our local area were beginning school without the skills that other children brought to school.  Sometimes, they didn't even know how to use indoor plumbing.  Yes, in 1965, in our program in Leadville, Colorado, some of the children did not have indoor plumbing.  We had to teach them how to use the bathroom facilities.  Many did not receive proper nutrition at home and were undernourished.  They lagged behind their peers in knowing how to grasp a pencil or how to turn the pages of a book. Many did not know the alphabet.    Many did not know colors or shapes.  They did not have group or personal social skills. 

Project Head Start’s comprehensive program was based on a belief that  school readiness was achieved by giving the children equal portions of playtime, story time, art activities, and basic academic preparation such as learning how to recognize and form letters through reading and writing.  

Our lead teacher, Mrs. Riggs was a very practical woman who put up with no nonsense from anyone.  Her character was stellar.  She saw her role as an educator as one as a public servant.  She was not interested in feathering her own nest or building her career.  She was there for the children she taught and for the families she served.  

In my mind's eye, I see her now.  She is wearing an apron with pockets so she would have "a place for those tissues to wipe a child's nose or tears," or as a place to keep stray crayons, pencils or rubber bands that she might need while she was teaching.  Patient, kind and loving, she was also demanding when it came to giving something your best efforts.  We ALL learned from her.   

Now that I have retired as a classroom teacher, it is nice to reminisce about those days of both my own personal and the national idealism that abounded  60's.   Mrs. Riggs, and the ideals of Head Start, greatly influenced my philosophy of my own role as an educator. I am grateful that I came of age as a person and as educator when programs like Head Start were new and fresh and perhaps idealistic.  Those early lessons and philosophies, rooted deep in my heart,  are still driving my passion today as I serve CCIRA in supporting teachers as they strive to make sure that all children are on The Road to Literacy. 

Bittersweet Summer

Summer 2010 won't be over for a few days.  Officially, Fall 2010 begins on September 22.  Ever since Labor Day, my family and I have been expressing to each other how happy we will be to put this past summer behind us.  Certainly, our individual lives and the collective life of our family was changed in ways we never could have imagined on Memorial Day Weekend when my fourth child took her life at the age of 34.

As a family, we love to be together.  Each personality of each of my five children is unique.  Taught never to be afraid of individualism, it seems that my children have always majored in expressing that individualism in unique ways.  A well defined sense of self has always been articulated in intelligent, funny and sometimes overpowering ways whenever the family is together.  Let's put it this way, Thanksgivings are not boring at my house if everyone is home.  Political and religious views many times are on opposite ends of the spectrum, and my kids love a good argument.  I've often pitied the poor soul that had enough courage to marry into this family because it can't be easy to run with this tribe if one is faint of heart.

None of my children or grandchildren live near me.  The closest family lives about 120 miles from me.  We don't get together often enough.  In fact, in the past ten years, it takes a pretty major event to get everyone home at the same time.

When Julie passed away, the first thing on everyone's mind was getting the youngest member of the family home.  Jonathan and his wife and young son were all half way around the world away in Bangladesh.  It would be three long days before they were able to arrive in the Boulder, Colorado after making the long, sad journey home.  Our hearts were full of grief and happiness at the same time when we were finally able to all gather together safely at the home of my third child.  Her home officially became the headquarters for all events that followed and the hotel that housed the surviving siblings, their spouses and all seven of the grandchildren.

Looking Over the Back Fence
(I think there was a blind kitten who lived there)

Breakfast on The Back Deck

My grandchildren give me great hope for the future and fill my heart with gratitude and pride.  I hope that they will remember the time that they had together as a time of healing as well as a time of sorrow.

I know that for me, because I was surrounded by the strength of my children and the youth and beauty of my grandchildren, I will look back on the Summer of 2010 not just with grief and sorrow, but with a sense of bittersweet memories of time we all spent together loving each other, crying together, and trying to make sense of the tragic event which had just occurred to us and to our loved one who left us way too young and way too early.

My Beautiful Granddaughters

My Handsome Grandsons

This photograph has become a very special one to me as it captures the grandchildren gathered together playing a board game next to a table that is coved with the bright, colorful daisies that were the family flowers for Julie's services.  Life does go on for those who remain.  Families come together and celebrate just being together even in wake of unspeakable loss.

Heartache - Living the Definition

Julie looking out over a great divide

Until the death of my daughter in May, I had never really experienced grief.  Yes, I've had my losses.  Who can reach the seventh decade of life without experiencing loss?  Those losses, some of them quite significant, pale in comparison to the death of a child.  


A few months ago on an especially painful afternoon, the acute sorrow that I felt gave me new meaning to the word heartache.  Heartache was no longer just a word to me.  Heartache, a noun, a thing, could have become a proper noun and been capitalized as it applied its meaning to my life.  

I felt as if I were actually experiencing the origin of the word.  In fact, I said to my husband, "My heart hurts."  The pain I felt during those first few weeks after my daughter's death was visceral in nature, constant, and debilitating.  Many times I felt terribly alone in my pain, not because I did not have support or love surrounding me, but rather because the external love and support around me could not break through to touch the deep heartache in the core of my being.  


Heartache is a condition that is experienced internally.  Even as I went through the external motions of life, the internal reality of loss, shock, pain, anger, and sorrow never seemed far from the surface.  Thankfully, during that time, and now, I have been able to accomplish the external motions of living.  

A dark black line was drawn down the timeline of my life on a Saturday morning in May.  That line marked life before Julie's suicide and after her suicide.  At times, the divide seemed too wide and too deep to ever cross.  The divide that seemed too wide and deep to ever cross will always be there, but the depth is not as deep as it once was, nor is it as wide.  Somehow, carrying on traditions from the past link the two periods of my life together.  

Gardening, walking, reading, writing, journaling, those activities which have been a part of the daily and weekly fabric of my life, have helped me transition into the resumption of life before I walked through life with great heartache.   Lunching with friends gave me a feeling of normalcy.  

Last week as my husband and I attended the first football game of the season for the high school where he served as principal, I was aware of how important it is to continue many long established traditions while one is on a grief journey that involves great heartache.  Sitting on the 17th row of the football stadium, surrounded by a sea of black and white, listening to the high school band play, felt normal.  

Heartache's intensity has decreased as I have gone about the business of living and grieving.  I believe I am somehow melding the those two opposites into the whole of my life.  I was once told that one must integrate all the events of one's life to truly heal.  Perhaps, I am integrating the ability to live each day the best that I can with the process of grieving.  By doing this, I realize that I am becoming a the person who will be forever heartbroken, but I will also be one who strives to live a rich and productive future.

Loss and Grief in The Technological Age

Over the past few years, I have loved how technology has kept my family connected.    When cell phones first became the norm in our family, many of us soon decided to stay connected more economically by either making sure we were all using the same provider, or by  having a family plan that allowed us to call each other out of a "free bucket of minutes."  Even though my children were all grown and had left home when we first became connected by cell phone use, suddenly, Mom was always available, even when she was away from home.  I was ok with this new phenomena.  I love being connected to my kids.

When texting came into vogue, my daughters reacted quite strongly to my first few texts.  They said it  was "just wrong" for a mom to be texting.  That didn't last long.  We were soon texting each other regularly.

Then, along came facebook.  My oldest daughter got me started on that social networking system.  Before long, it seemed the entire extended family was connected.  Cousins, aunts, uncles, siblings, even my 94 year old mother, were all sharing memories, experiences and daily status updates with each other via facebook.  It was great.

Then, my youngest daughter died in May.  The unthinkable happened.  She ended her life.  By doing this, all communication with her stopped suddenly, and without warning.  I never got to say good-bye.  Even worse, she did not call me, text me, or try to talk to me before her fateful last action.  In a time when I thought we could all communicate so readily and easily, communication with my fourth child stopped.  No matter how amazing technology has become,  I will never hear from her again.

Not long after Julie's death, my oldest daughter set up a "Memorial Page" on my youngest daughter's facebook page.  She writes to her sister often.  She expresses some of her sorrow, her grief, and even her anger, on this memorial page.  Sometimes, my daughter's friends will post to her memorial page.  When I read these posts, I sometimes cry as if my heart will break.  Even though these public expressions of grief often greatly upset me, I also find that they are also very comforting and healing.  Julie's friends and I are now all connected in a new way:  we are connected via the internet in our experience and expression of grief.

I never write to my now deceased daughter on her memorial page.  I may make comments to other postings.  I seldom mention my grief on my facebook status update.  I have not devoted much blog space to my loss.  Instead, I have mostly expressed my grief and loss through a more private modality.  I have not felt comfortable expressing the depth of my emotions in the public arena.  

After the death of my daughter, I turned to my handwritten journal to express all that I was experiencing and thinking.  My journal has always been where I have recorded my private thoughts, fears, dreams, disappointment, frustrations, deepest longings and most wonderful joys.  Writing seemed to be the most logical action to take when I found myself stripped of everything that made sense.  

I have filled nearly an entire journal with pages and pages of writing since my daughter's death.  This writing has been for me, and me alone.  It is through writing, with pen and paper, that I have been able to pour out my heart.  I have not wanted my expressions of grief to be in the public eye.  I may change how I feel about this someday, but for now, I find my private, hand-written journal to be my source of comfort and healing.

I do believe I am on the road to healing, whatever that means.  At least, I know that I am not as overwhelmed with grief, shock and unbelief as I was in the early days of summer.  I am grateful for that.  I must also acknowledge that technology has been an important part of my healing.  Through technology, I am able to connect with my daughter's many wonderful friends.  They have been a source of comfort to me.  I laugh at their posts about daily life.  I admire the pictures of their children.  I cry over their expressions of grief.  I am amazed at how compassionate and supportive they have been to me and my entire family.  We are connected because of technology.

I am able to chat and text my other children.  We cry with each other and express our sorrow via cell phones and texts.  We try to support each other as much as we can since miles separate us.  Through technology, I am able to Skype my youngest son in Bangladesh.  When a mom has a son and his family so far away, I often find myself thinking, "Thank God for Skype and instant messaging." Technology keeps my family connected in wonderful ways as we deal with our incredible loss.  The other night, I was texting with a daughter, while she texted with her sister, and I was at the very same time instant messaging with my son in Bangladesh.  Technology is really very amazing. It certainly plays an important role in the way I am dealing with my own personal loss and grief.