Spring and my mother's final face

As I think of Spring and my memoir coming out in April, I think of my mother walking down the long, winding road of Peter Cooper Village where we lived in New York City—and my face pressed to the windowpane on the second floor of the apartment building. I wanted to see her final face from the window and hoped that she would finally look like all the other mothers.

My parents were burned in a gas explosion in the basement of a rental cottage(while my sister and I slept upstairs). My mother would endure 37 operations, mostly on her face and hands. She was promised that she would look “presentable.” So after every operation, when her face still looked disfigured and strange, we believed, as she did for a time, that the next operation would finally fix her, maybe even make her look like a movie star.

It was in late Spring, I believe, though sometimes the timeline of operations is a blur, that I looked for her in her red coat. Many of the mothers wore red coats then—and I thought, that she would look like all the other mothers, though even more pretty and of course special because she was my mother.
But that wasn’t the reality and it was never to be the reality. She had been terribly damaged and walking down the road she was also terribly brave. And I held in my tears when she asked me, “How do you like my face?” It was Springtime then—the beginning of new life and my mother’s new and final face.

Creating a Room of One's Own

I’ve been teaching Woolf’s famous work over the last month. I teach at an enormous urban community college—I’m trying to relate the book to my mostly working-class non-white(first generation college students). All but one has heard of Jane Austen or Oxford College. Most don’t have the luxury of a separate room to dream in and no one has a stipend that rains down like mana from heaven. They have trouble with the language(I also have a lot of international students). Most try and take a full-time load at school and work often thirty hours a week at fast-food places, Safeway grocery stores and other places around San Francisco.

But right now I’m with my students in a computer lab. My friend, James, a librarian is helping them find sources for their paper on women and work(flex time, sexual harassment, etc). He has a master computer and changes all their screens, so I don’t need to monitor as well. I have been a grading machine for the past week as papers have flooded in. I’m craving some writing time. So I take it. Right here in the lab with all my students.

None of my students has privy to the fact that I am “blogging” now, creating a private space amidst a room where 27 students learn about data bases and MLA citations. Perhaps this is what I can teach them—to take the time when you can to do what you love.

I am fortunate now—since my children have grown--to have a room in my house where I can close the door and write. When my children were very young, Monday nights were “Mom’s writing night?" I wrote in my bedroom. I took no phone calls—My husband walked them to the nearest video store where they got a movie(a clever distraction from wanting to knock on my door) and slowly, my Monday night writing night took hold—allowed me that private space—I often went to sleep for an hr. before I woke up to the “creative zone.” I began my memoir there that is finally being published this April. I wrote poems. Sometimes I cried when I wrote—and then emerged to say goodnight to the children—and then back to my writing.

So I ask my students how many of them feel they don’t have enough time to dream. All hands shoot up. I tell them that even though most don’t have a private room—or a stipend, that they can take time to do what they love, sometimes at the most unusual times—like I did today in the computer lab at City College of San Francisco in the middle of 27 computers.

110% 24/7--Is this the world we want?

I Give 110% 24/7


I was in Starbucks in the West Portal district of San Francisco the other day, grading papers and saw a woman with a very cute little boy(of about four or five) come into the café. He was a bit shy, pulling on his mother’s hand and asking if he could have some chocolate milk. She let him get it. He then dropped the milk box and then quickly picked it up and turned around. When he did, I saw his t-shirt. It said, “I give 110%” and had a picture of a football. The football picture was fading, but the words glared from the small boy’s chest.

110%? The thought of it made me want to curl up in my bed and sleep for a long time.((I was particularly tired that day anyway). And he’s only four years old? Wouldn’t the energy of 110% suck away the life from his small body?

I then thought about the 24/7 lives that have been thrust on us(or some have chosen to live) and couldn’t help but combine the two phrases. Sundays are no longer boring days of rest where teenagers complain about nothing being open and families and friends gather for a weekend meal together. I remember that time when stores were closed in NYC. Those days have a sweet luminescence in my memory now.

Also, why do we always have to give so much—110%-- to try and be the best, the greatest, the top of the game? Determination, yes, motivation, yes, but having had two daughters who played soccer-- many times the intensity of the game when they were still small seems so far away from the races, ping pong games and jacks that we used to play in Playground # 2 in Peter Cooper Village. No uniforms or referees.

Maybe I’m overreacting? My kids loved their soccer teams. Determination is a good quality as is motivation. But the constant pressure—I don’t think that’s good. If you feel like giving 20% one day—that’s okay. I remember a teacher one of my daughters had who said the pressure is too great. “We’re human beings not human doings.” I remember that phrase when I see a small boy with a t-shirt that says, “I give 110%.” It’s okay to take a day off and rest.

The Solidity of Rocks

The Solidity of Rocks—Some Musings

In Yosemite visiting my younger daughter and I wonder what the rocks remember? They are not preserved in special mylar-like material(my daughter works as a historical archivist up here). The rocks, whether they tumble across the road, change color from weather are just there—solid and immutable. They do not panic at the sight of a bear or a mountain lion but neither do they feel the soft pads of an animal’s feet, feet which leap lightly over their granite backs.

Though the rock is solid and does not cringe at the sound of lightening, it is also not human. We humans sigh, love, laugh-- are born and die.

When panic has gripped me in the past, closed over me like the concrete inside of an elevator stopped between floors, I want that panic to stop. But I don’t want to be armored, 21st century, against pain.

When panic stirs in me again, I will imagine a waterfall, the cool sweet water that cuts through rock: Yosemite Falls, Vernal Falls, Horse Tail Falls, flowing tufts of white emerging triumphant from the granite cliffs.