Category: Real Self BS

I’ve written about them before, probably with more poetry and thought. On the anniversary of my paternal grandmother’s death, I want to take a moment to pay respect to the many women I admire.

Elizabeth Thouvenel lost both of her parents at a young age and helped raise her younger sisters. She ran a boarding house for several years while going to school and raising her sisters. She ceded official control of the boarding house to her middle sister when Grandma went to work for a local real estate company. She invested her savings well, made sure her sisters married well, and then met the love of her life. She live nearly thirty years before meeting an Oregon State Trooper, they were married for thirty years before he died, and she lived a full, fully independent life for nearly thirty years before she needed to turn to family for help.

My maternal grandmother was blessed in wholly different ways. She grew up with an often divorced, often single, mother in a time where no one wanted to admit single mothers existed. She and her younger sister grew into women who loved helping others and turned that into marketable skills. Darlene Reese Fletcher has two great loves in her life and found a way to be happy and fulfilled after more than sixty years of marriage to two men who really understood and loved her. She raised children, influenced a brood of grandchildren, and still finds ways to keep her circle of friends (new and old) vibrant and full of love.

My mother developed gestational diabetes with me; and, it exploded on her between my and my younger brother’s birth. It started to affect her health dramatically the same year I started teaching. I’m impressed by the constant renegotiation she and my father have weaved through for 46 years; I’m amazed by her ability to deal with declining health, and a declining quality of life, with grace and faith. [My father loves her to the point that he would rather be her caretaker than see her taken away, and , luckily, they both have enough mobility to make this continue to work.]

My closest female friends amaze me with their resilience, their willingness to love and lose and love again, their passion for their work. They have raised or are raising (or are helping to raise) some pretty amazing human beings. They are strong and passionate and kind.

Even with the humanity and flaws each of these women acknowledge and deal with, they work hard to be the best versions of themselves just like the women before me in my family.

I just want to thank every woman who does her best with what she has, every woman who tries to teach the children in her care to be true and to be kind and to be their best selves, every woman who stumbles or falls and rises again. They each play a part in who I aspire to be whether it’s risking their hearts, their financial security, or letting go of the plan they thought they had for their lives. Thank you all.

I remember moments from my childhood, but I don’t seem to remember as much as some people do. I know that some of my memories have been fuzzied by time or exaggerated retelling, but I know there’s a lot I’m missing. Tonight, I had dinner with my Aunt and Uncle. Among the many topics we covered was Wild Wild Country and I gained some clarity about why I allowed some memories to drift.

Until tonight, I hadn’t put together the time my dad was really sick when I was little and the time all the salad bars in The Dalles were spiked with salmonella.

Until tonight, I hadn’t put together why I have such a deep issue with something that happened around me from third grade through seventh grade.

My parents did a really solid job of sheltering my brother and I from the increasingly scary reality they dealt with for five years. I’m sure I didn’t want to remember why it was important not to be alone walking to or from school. I ignored the people openly watching our house. I didn’t put all of my father’s little lessons on how to be safe into the right context.

What I did remember was our only elementary school lockdown and the speculations we all had as sixth graders—we were pretty convinced the Rajneesh has returned with their guns. I have to give Mr. Mac credit at least for talking us off that ledge. I also remember that I stopped taking art classes of any kind at WOSC when they purchased some cheap trailers from what was left of the settlement outside of Antelope, Oregon while the art building was being retrofitted for earthquake safety.

I know I’m more than old enough to sit down and watch a documentary series about this on Netflix, but I totally walked away twenty minutes in when Wild Wild Country already started to seem awfully sympathetic to people who really did do some serious (and seriously intentional) damage over the course of building their “intentional community”. My dad was a confirmed name on a Rajneeshpuram hitlist because he was the publisher at The Dalles Weekly Reminder; and he was working closely with his editor to figure out exactly what was going on inside and outside of Antelope. Their peers at other local news organizations probably went through similar issues during those years.

I don’t like seeing this minimized into a simple case of “rural overreaction” or “rural intolerance”. I’ll finish watching it, but not tonight.

The biggest monsters always have human faces.

The first school shooting I remember as a teacher was in October 1997 in Mississippi. I heard about it on the news that night and realized it was easily something that could happen in the rural Oregon town I lived in where teachers were warned not to have tests on opening day for deer season. I moved across the state to another town and for the first couple of years students were reminded over the announcements not to have guns in their rigs on school property. As school and mass shootings began to accelerate in frequency, security and consequences also amped up at schools.

Our school, like many, encouraged students not to walk out today. Instead our administration is encouraging students to practice kindness as part of “What’s Your 17?” Our administration has been trying to build a sense of community and positive change over the last few years by implementing positive reinforcement through recognizing students who go a little above and beyond. As far as I know, none of our staff mocked students or told them they couldn’t leave and we had a few students who walked out—talking to some of those kids afterwards was interesting because they walked out for a variety of reasons.

Some kids support gun control, many don’t. Some kids didn’t want to be political, they wanted to show respect for the people who lost their lives a month ago. Some kids wanted to show support for the people who survived. None of the kids I talked to were just trying to get out of class or disrespect anyone. Yet they received blowback from adults on various social media platforms.

I want my students to figure out what they think and why they think those things. I want my students to take in new information, assess its bias/value/source, and apply that information to their lives and opinions. They need to be adaptable and stay true to themselves which is a tough and lifelong balancing act. At some point they need to pull away and start making decisions—that point depends on their level of maturity and how they’ve been raised.

I go to work every day hoping my students will make good choices and stay safe. I go to work solid in the decision I made over twenty years ago to protect my students and prepare them for the rest of their lives. But last month’s shooting in Florida was different from those that had come before it. This time I had students who had watched videos posted by survivors. This time anyone who wanted to could find a way to watch it. Between those videos and the way the survivors are channeling their grief, something has changed. It’s too soon to tell what and how, but our kids have a right to feel safe at school.