I am never shocked but always amazed at the bitter-sweet
nature of life. In blog-land my work is fickle but my life is rich with so much
I want to share and think useful to…but often time doesn’t permit, or more
accurately, like most moms I need to
constantly prioritize. Thus, sadly there are always many things that must get the
shaft in this process. However there are days like today that the culmination
of so many things is unbearable and I must share.
In my physical life I am a high school English teacher who
also advises our school’s Key Club. One of my close colleagues decided she
wanted to start a charitable drive called the Pillow Pet Project and asked if I
could help out and get my club members involved—I loved the idea and eagerly
agreed. She came to speak to my students during our Wednesday afternoon meeting
and explained the task and result: Sell school bracelets in order to raise
money to purchase Pillow Pets for all of the children in our local hospital's
cancer ward and a few days before Christmas she will take the toys to the unit
along with entertainment from student performers. She was inspired by a video of a young boy
Jake McConahay and his zeal for the toys. She recommended we watch the video and
because my day was wrought with its own set of nuisances I did not watch the
video. Then today while I was teaching my first class she sent a student to my
room to get my attention and from down the hall she revealed that in trying to
show her students the video on the Smartboard she learned that the boy had passed away.
She was devastated. I will admit, I could barely react. My class knew enough to
be curious so I took the teachable moment and discussed a multitude of
pertinent issues that serendipitously relate to the text I am about to teach (Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya)
which also has an example of infanticide among other tragically real
circumstances. My colleague was afraid that students involved would be
discouraged by the news of the boy and not feel passionate about helping
others, but I disagreed, I felt the kids would put in extra effort out of
appreciation for their own lives and for those still living.
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| Some Thanksgiving beauty--headband made by me and later destroyed by baby. |
The point in sharing this story is two-fold. For one, I send
so much love and prayers to Jake's family. I am still processing how much my life
has changed now that I am a mother and thank the universe daily for the
beautiful and healthy child I have been blessed with. The other reason is
because thematically speaking, with tragedy also comes profound realization of
all that is beautiful. The last week has been rather challenging, I have had
anxiety that has manifested itself in physical ways mostly because I have had
to deal with overall abrasiveness from my child’s father. This upset mixed with
the story of poor Jake actually inspires me to appreciate the good even more--sometimes because I need that to be able to handle a life with so much sadness
implicit in it. This is a lesson I try to impart on my students and one
Markandaya vividly portrays in her novel.
In the epigraph she writes: "Work without hope
draws nectar in a sieve, And hope without an object cannot live." I would
go as far as to say that a life without hope, or more accurately without the
cognizance of beauty is not really a life at all.
For me I need to make beauty from suffering. I need to find
ways to create karmic balance on my path. I am lucky that the universe often
manifests it for me. Despite everything I wrote, today was ultimately better
for me because it was not yesterday (which involved being grossly disrespected)
and when I entered my classroom, not only were my books for this marking period
delivered, but they were done so artfully. I was mesmerized and beamed from my love of random acts of awesomeness.
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| book art! |
Then later in the day, despite the upset of the Jake story
and my lingering anxiety two students walked in the room and made my day with
the following surprise. Some set up is necessary: These two students are very
animated and funny in a post-modern ironic but also ridiculously goofy kind of
way. These same two sophomores told me yesterday that they wanted to bring me an
apple because that’s what one is supposed to give a teacher, I laughed and
nodded them off. Today they walked into class and said “We couldn’t find any
apples so we brought you oranges” and handed me these:
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| This shiz is bananas. |
Naturally I laughed and spent the rest of the day recounting these two unique incidents to mark this day as something special, particularly because all of the events of the day starkly reminded me that life is very sad but it is also unbearably beautiful too. If I ever leave this earth before my time, I want to acknowledge that I am blessed for my experiences, my mind and especially my daughter, and I hope to always find a way to make something beautiful in even the darkest of days. |
| beauty. and books. and boogies. |
