Not What Is Missing-What is Going Right

 S is making me a cake for my birthday. She is looking for the plate. "You don't want to miss your birthday party. You want to celebrate it. I'm decorating it." You have to remember these moments. You can't dwell on all the disappointments and lack of connection with people because there are these moments too. Where you feel perfectly happy and fulfilled. The way the psyche works and the way the memory works is that it searches out when something is wrong and you forget when things are going right. I have so much to be thankful for. 

The inbox is always full. The house always needs to be cleaned. No of this will matter when your life is over. Who will be there at the end? Who will you think about and a smile will come to your face? Where will I go after I die. How old will I be when I die and how old will my kids be? Will they remember me with fondness? Will we be close until the end? I am not close with my parents. Was I ever close? We used to watch Sunday football games. We used to go to my soccer games and vacations together and we/I felt happy. We used to swim in the pool together and have bbq meals in the hot summer nights. 

How do you know if someone in your family really loves you and it's not just fulfilling the minimal family obligations? Who would really go out on a line for you? Who would stand by you when the chips are down? I saw who supported me when I was going through marriage challenges. When I called in that parking lot to tell my parents what had happened I didn't hear what I wanted to hear. There was not a human being on the other end of that line. 

I have learned certain lessons of compassion from all the different kinds of books I've read. I have a flexibility with people and a willingness to see things from his or her point of view. 

I have been a teacher for 15 years. I have had many positive experiences with students. I have tried coaching soccer, teaching advanced classes, starting classes, advising clubs, going to trainings and signing up for professional development. I have worked hard to build up my classroom library. 

What are the techniques or teaching philosophy ideas that I keep coming back to? Choice in reading and writing. Students learn writing by writing. Quickwrites. Gradeless classroom with maximum feedback while they are writing drafts. Writing conferences. Reading conferences. Book talks. 

Something Different This Time Though

 It's time to stop looking at the Covid dashboard. This pandemic will go on for a long time. The virus will be with us forever, but what will become of my day to day life? What will teaching look like in the fall? What will school be like for my children? It's exciting to see S read. It's exciting that he enjoys reading. It's one of the main pleasures of life for me. 

Where does that zeal come from that I was expressing in the Earth President script idea to destroy humanity and start over. A demilitarized zone where the animals can come back. Nature is healing. Chernobyl. Each death and each Covid case represents a web of relationships that have been permanently changed. Orphans. For some there is nowhere to go for advice, comfort and love. Now the P's are getting bombed by the I's once again. 

How can I's who were killed throughout history become the killers now? Short memories. Trauma. The nature of human beings. I've seen immigrants hating other immigrants for being immigrants. 

C is finishing up her Master's. Thank god. The debts we have continue to get paid. The American government continues to be imperialist. The American military continues to repress local movements. There is something different this time though. There is more in the media about the P's perspective. Social media can't be fully censored. Bits of truth are sneaking in. Slipping by. 

I haven't had a good talk with my parents in a while. I'm afraid to invite them up, especially now with what's happened in the family. Hope P is ok. He hasn't called me back and I haven't talked to him in a while. I know he's looking for a teaching job again. 

Teaching is a great job. I have so many unread books but it makes me happy to see them all lined up. I like to take them down and organize them. Straighten them so I can look at all the titles. My curiosity about the world has never dimmed. I continue to seek out new music. 

FDR's Bill of Rights. Clean Water. A clean environment. California is trying out a guaranteed income. You don't have freedom in our current system because you are indebted and you're too exhausted to enjoy your life. Too exhausted to enjoy your kids. I feel lucky to be a teacher. To have a union. To have medical and dental care and retirement. 

End of the School Year

 It will take some time for all that happened during this year to be absorbed. My students seem tired. I'm tired. I'm still doing Summer School. I don't know what that will be like. Some of my students have really tried and done great projects and pieces of writing this year. Overcoming obstacles. Students will always surprise you. There is great upheaval in this society. A forced reckoning with the past. It's always difficult to focus on the moment. To focus on this act of writing. There are so many forces clamoring for my attention. I'm trying to be a good father. A good teacher. Husband I'm not sure what to make of that right now but I am trying to help her in any way I can. When the chips are down you do let go of your quibbles and rancors. When it's life or death or someone's desperate or really hurting, you don't care what their politics are. We all come at life from different angles. From different life experiences and from what we believe is true. 

A Moment to Catch My Breath

 A moment to catch my breath. What a year! Move out of the house. Covid. Distance learning. Two young kids. Fearing for their safety and health and my own. Mental health issues in the family. Divorce in the family. Issues with a brother. Issues with parents over reading selections and classroom discussions. Presidential election. Paying debts. Paying rents. Preparing lessons. Managing my kids' interactions with other kids but still trying to push them to be self-sufficient and independent. 

Having gone through so much with my wife. Is the love still there? Are we meant to be together? Am I capable of love? Is she the right person for me? Does she make me happy? 

The conversations with one brother are good, but I feel I have to call him or he won't call me. The conversations with the other can be walking on egg shells. I don't feel the closeness with my parents. One of them is often there but won't come on the phone. Lurking in the background. The other one didn't give me the support I needed in a tough time. The common humanity and love was lacking. Something I sensed all along but it hit me hard because I really needed help in that moment. 

I would like to perform my poems at an open mic. I would like to go to live theatre. I would like to go to a U.S National team game or an MLS game. I would like to see my son and daughter play soccer or run. I want to continue my writing. I want to continue my reading. I want to continue to get better at being an English teacher. 

How to take all you've learned and integrate it into your daily practice? 

Another Day Another Dime

 Happy to have this job. With all the challenges I've faced this year, my life could be much harder. Reading through the list of stresses on children at Kaiser, I realized that I've shielded my kids from most of them, but when playing with the neighboring kids you've got to let them duke it out sometimes. Listening to the interview with Francisco Goldman talking about Monkey Boy and wondering what experiences I had as a young man that left a mark on me. I remember Eugene commenting on a huge zit I had on my face. Put me in a shell for a long time. Sports helped. Playing soccer and running. Being yelled at by the soccer coach. I wasn't equipped to handle it. No one had ever been mean to me. I didn't know how to handle unfairness and I wasn't close enough to my parents or they weren't equipped to give me the advice I needed. Maybe they did and I don't remember it now. Maybe I wasn't ready to receive their advice. They loved me how they could. I love as I can. I can see my own limitations sometimes as I'm talking to my kids. I hear my father's voice sometimes in my own. 

A New Life

 Will I take that leap? Will it hurt my kids? Will my kids recover? Is it the right decision? What is love? Am I capable of love? Is anyone capable of loving me? I don't feel it from my parents. I feel it from one brother. The other brother is distant from my life. I don't have any friends. The family members that I socialize with have so many of their own complications that I can't reveal my own. Covid has put a wrench in some family interactions because you have to either take the side that it's real or that it's a Democrat/government conspiracy to destroy business. That's it's been exaggerated. That universities are fabricating studies. There's no bottom to this conspiracy. Whoever is controlling all this is very smart! I put my own thoughts aside for the most part to keep family relations civil. I'm always doing this. There comes a point where you wonder if you should stop putting your own thoughts aside and speak up no matter what the cost. Especially because they have my dog. 

Moving in again in June. We'll see how the goes. I don't know where we stand or how I feel. I'm still hurt about what I've been accused of. No one can ever know the true nature of that. Besides my brothers and her sister. I'm a people pleaser and I avoid conflict until it boils up so much that I explode. There is a resentment that can set in if you're always the one bending over backwards and making compromises. On the other hand, in those instances where I was honest I do wonder if it was worth it and sort of regret it afterwards. 

So Much In My Mind

 Avoided going into Covid political discussion at a family party. What is the point? You can't argue with them without taking the whole family down with you. It's hard to brush aside certain family comments sometimes. "He's our dog now," for example. Struggling with conflicting feelings about my family. The life of an adult. You have to focus on the good. I need more time for my reading and writing, but I often find myself helping others. How can "when is there time for me" not come off as a selfish plea? The sad realization yesterday that our relationship will never be the same. Maybe I will meet someone new. How it will affect my kids is the central concern. In the Dollar Store yesterday I didn't want to buy my kids any more toys. They have so many toys they don't use. Places like that make me depressed because I hate consumerism, but sometimes people need to buy things. We're on this train of destroying the earth and there's no getting off. Here comes the fire season again in California too. You have to focus on things you can control. I need to run and start meditating again. I have some great books. Now I just have to read them and incorporate the teaching ones into my practice. 

Why does the loud win out? Something women have been saying for centuries. I just have to be confident in who I am and not compare myself to others. I don't want to get in that trap of tearing other people down to feel better about myself. It's hard to feel sometimes that no one truly loves you, but then I think my kids do. They miss me. How long will that last? Enjoy it now and don't worry about the future.