my best gift

I was at the grocery store a few weeks ago. Not the Wal-Mart where we usually shop, but the little store in our small, country town. Everything costs more, but you can count on a smile and a chat with your purchases. That day, though, was not a chatty day for me. I had worked a long day. It was after 6:30 before I even got to the store. I was tired and not in a very chatty mood. There I was moving at a brisk pace down the aisles, barely stopping to think. The only thing I really wanted was to get home. Home.

A young girl with long, rich brown hair and a green grocery store smock stopped me. "Excuse me. Aren't you Mr. Lawson's wife?"

Don't sigh, Relyn. You aren't that tired. What's it going to hurt you to be friendly? I summoned up a smile and a friendly tone. "Hi. Yes, I sure am. Are you in one of his classes? Can I tell him hello for you?"

"Oh, sure. But, what I really wanted to do was tell you something. ... I was just hoping that you know how much Mr. Lawson loves you. He talks about you all the time, and he never says anything about you without saying, 'my gorgeous wife, Relyn.' Or, 'my brilliant wife'. Something like that. He really loves you."

As I left the store I was crying a little. Not for the gift those words were to me, though they are still an incredible gift. I was crying because of the gift his words are to his students. To those girls: some with terrible homes, some with no fathers of their own - those girls know that there are good men. Those girls know that it is worth the wait to find one who will speak only good things about them. To those boys: some who can only relate to girls with insults or objectification, some who have never been taught to honor their mothers, much less other women - those boys have seen how to treat women with respect. Those boys have witnessed first hand the kind of relationship it is possible to have.

What an incredible gift my Jeffrey is. He is a gift to me, to his daughter, to his students, to everyone who knows him. What a good and Godly man I have married. I am so grateful. Every day I am grateful.

Today is our wedding anniversary. We were married at half past two on a Sunday afternoon eighteen years ago. The day was perfect and beautiful. I thought that day that I could never love anyone more. Funny how deliciously wrong I can be. I love Jeffrey more with each day, each trial, each joy that we share.


I love you, Jeffrey, with all my heart; more and more every single day. Thank you for this beautiful, simple, magical life we share. Happy anniversary, my love. Each day with you has been a gift.


I chose this picture for today because Jeffrey spent over an hour scouting out the poppies in the wild, retracing his steps, and taking me to photograph them. That's just the kind of thing he does. Every day.

Sunday Morning Poetry

Before
I opened my mouth
I noticed them sitting there
as orderly as frozen fish
in a package.

Slowly water began to fill the room
though I did not notice it
till it reached
my ears

and then I heard the sounds
of fish in an aquarium
and I knew that though I had
tried to drown them
with my words
that they had only opened up
like gills for them
and let me in.

Together we swam around the room
like thirty tails whacking words
till the bell rang

puncturing
a hole in the door

where we all leaked out

They went to another class
I suppose and I home

where Queen Elizabeth
my cat met me
and licked my fins
till they were hands again.

~ D. C. Berry

updating The Big List

Week 16 of the Wednesday lists.
We've been enjoying having Jeffrey's parents with us so much this week that I missed my Wednesday list. Oh well - better late than never. A while back I wrote a list of 39 things to do before I turn 40.

The BIG List Update:

1. write that article and try to get it published - not sure why I keep postponing this one
   
2. get back to doing this brilliant idea
3. bake some bread from scratch
   
4. start saving for a Big Girl Camera
   
5. join GKGirl in doing this
6. read at least three professional books from cover to cover instead of just dipping in and stealing ideas - one down, two to go
   
7. make my Blog Camp St. Louis idea really happen
8. read a book in a genre I never read ie. a biography instead of a memoir
   
9. buy and play with a fun camera; Polaroid, Holga, or Fish Eye - I'm half way there. My friend loaned me her Poloroid 600. Now I just need the film.
   
10. interview my father-in-law and capture the real version of the story I want to write - he's here till Tuesday. I guess I'd better get busy on this one.
    
11. have a real life pen pal
12. take a class and learn a new skill
13. finally let go of some of those magazines I still have horded
    
14. get settled in and feel at home in our new church
15. eat Indian food again - done on our trip to Columbia
    
16. make walking a regular habit
17. meet in person at least four new blogging friends
18. attend this - I traded this for the family trip to Columbia. We had a wonderful time.
    
19. find the perfect apple crisp recipe and bake often for Jeffrey - I've been working on this one. Jeffrey would like me to find a recipe that has the sweet crumblies on top. Can anybody help?
    
20. spend an entire afternoon in the hammock
21. buy a vintage record player
    
22. go see Wicked (or another Broadway show)
    
23. take a weekend trip with Mom and Dad to an unexplored Missouri destination
24. have my own Moo cards made
25. find a way to turn my blog into book form - I have tried and tried. Does anyone know how to do this with Blogger??
    
26. go visit Grammy
    
27. take an online course
28. participate in some street art of my own
    
29. start up date nights again
30. begin art journaling
31. host a swap on my blog - who's interested?
    
32. make a gift for someone
33. read all the forgotten books that are living on my shelves
34. buy Photoshop Elements - Yeah for Jeffrey and Sloane. This was my Mother's Day present.
    
35. learn Photoshop Elements
36. read all of Jane Austen's novels
    
37. wreck a journal
38. transfer all my home videos to DVD
39. try something I absolutely think I can not do - This turned out to be my biggest surprise. I really didn't think I'd be able to save enough to buy a great camera. I did.
    

Only four months to go. I'd better get busy. Good thing I have the summer off. What about you? What are you working on right now?

love built into the walls

It is nearly full dark. The moon is glowing. The wind blows. The frogs and crickets compete in their nightly chorus. The first fireflies have just joined us. The swing creaks as Sloane swings. I get up from the hammock and go join her.

"Sloane, did you know this is called the blue hour, l'heure bleue? It's my favorite time of the day."

"Why is it called that?"

"Because for a short time each night as the sun sets, the light turns blue. Turns everything blue and the whole world is more beautiful. This is the best hour of the day."

"Not for me. My best hour is sunrise. I love how the colors paint the sky."

"Tell me about that, honey."

"The colors slowly paint the sky. When I watch that I feel rich. I feel like I am the richest person in the world. Do you know what I mean?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, I do. We are rich."

"Very rich and not only because of sunrises either."

"What do you think makes us rich?"

"Family. And love. And hugs. And lots of kisses. And a house with love built into the walls. We are so rich, Momma."

"Yes we are, my love. Yes we are."

fifth and tenth

My friend Gigi invited me to play along with her. The game is simple, you just repost your fifth and tenth posts ever. Since I'm on my 431st post, I found that intriguing. What did I even write back then? Let's go see. You know what? I liked it and it's still true. So, here it is. The words are the same, but the image is mine this time.

You know how we all have things we are really good at? Well, I am good at fun. That's it. Just fun. That's my skill, my number one talent, the main thing I am really gifted in. I can have fun with anybody doing almost anything. If fun is on the menu, you can bet I'm gonna love it.

Strange how the act of writing brings self-knowledge. As I try to describe what I am good at for you, I realize that my talent is not just fun, but also enthusiasm. I have a great enthusiasm for life and for experiences, which makes me good at fun. Whatever it is, I jump in wholeheartedly.

However, I also have enthusiasm for you. You know, you - the people with whom my life intersects. I just love people, their stories, their experiences, their opinions, their animated faces... just people. This love gives me great joy and pleasure in daily life.

I have been trying to find words to explain how this "talent" works. (See, there I go - belittling a talent, hesitating to call it that.) This is what I could come up with:

• I believe that everyone has a story - an interesting story.
• I believe that when we pay attention, we will find that the world is full of remarkable, magical people.
• I believe that when you learn how to really look, and really listen, you will find that so much of what fills your daily life is so interesting.
• I believe that the retelling of a child's recent dream is as worthy of real attention and interest as a heated discussion between political candidates.
• I believe fourth grade recess play is funnier than a Seinfeld episode.
• I believe that talking to your passengers is more important that finding a better song on the radio.
• I believe that experiences are worth more than things.

Don't get me wrong, I love music and movies, too. It's just that I know that people are more important and more interesting. In fact, if I love a movie or book you can bet the reason is that the characters are quirky, interesting, and feel like friends.


Speaking of people being important.... My daughter is waiting (not very patiently) for me to come play Go Fish. After that, I think I'll suggest we spend some time coloring while we sing along with the Grease soundtrack.

Sunday Morning Poetry

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

~ Langston Hughes

Important Words

Week 15 of the Wednesday lists
I love words and I love lists, which makes a list of words just about perfect. I have many, many words lists in old journals. This list is a bit different as it is collaborative effort. The words below are the ones my students think are important. I'll leave it to you to decide why.

Important Words

* cheerful * please * thank you * friend * you're welcome * responsibility * firefighter * stop * kindness * appreciation * self-control * curious * Army * gratitude * courage * read * respect * breathe * cerebral palsy * think * worms * chocolate * Hershey's * foggy * awesome * love * Bakugon * recess * monkey * hula * Cowabunga * tacos * dance * muffins * Yes! * freedom * learn * laugh * family * teacher * brain *

What are your important words?

like a top

The countdown is on, and I'm spinning like a top.

• Today was my final Monday morning character assembly with this class.
• Tomorrow I take the Poetry Masters out for ice cream. I had seven students this year who memorized all 34 poems of the week.
• Wednesday is Character Day with water, cooperation games, lots of fun, and Andy's frozen custard.
• Thursday is my annual Lawsonland Reading Pajama Party.
• Friday is the last day of school.

My, oh my!

I've been missing you lately. Very much. I'll be back tomorrow night with my Wednesday list, but I had to say, "Hello" now. I won't be around your places much until things calm down a bit. Say, Saturday morning. Is it a date?

What's been spinning you around lately?

Sunday Morning Poetry

Magician Suspends the Children

With this charm I keep the boy at six
and the girl fast at five
almost safe behind the four
walls of family. We three
are a feathery totem I tattoo
against time: I'll be one

again. Joy here is hard-won
but possible. Protector of six
found toads, son, you feel too
much, my Halloween mouse. Your five
finger exercises predict no three
quarter time gliding for

you. Symphonic storms are the fore-
cast, nothing unruffled for my wun-
derkind. Have two children: make three
journeys upstream. Son, at six
you run into angles where five
lets you curve, let me hold onto

your fingers in drugstores. Too
intent on them, you're before
or behind me five
paces at least. Let no one
tie the sturdy boat of your six
years to me the grotesque, the three

headed mother. More than three
times you'll deny me. And my cockatoo,
my crested girl, how you cry to be six.
Age gathers on your fore-
head with that striving. Everyone
draws your lines and five

breaks out like a rash, five
crouches, pariah of the three
o'clock male rendezvous. Oh won-
derful girl, my impromptu
rainbow, believe it: you'll be four-
teen before you're six.

This is the one abracadabra I know to
keep us three. keep you five and six.
Grow now. Sing. Fly. Do what you're here for.

~ Carole Oles

I couldn't resist another sestina. This is absolutely incredible. Did you notice the number pattern? Tell me you did.

an Ozarks Unphotographable

SOOJ means straight out of the journal. Unphotographables are moments from life that my camera couldn't capture. This post is both.

Friday night, May 14, 2010
screening of Winter's Bone

An old woman standing on a stage,
in old jeans and red gardening clogs.
There she stands - feet splayed,
hands thrust into pockets,
looking like nothing special;
like someone's great aunt.

And then she opens her mouth,
and she sounds like nothing less
than a whiskey voiced angel.

And I am reminded again
that angels come in a variety of guises and
beauty can not only be measured with your eyes.
In fact, your eyes are likely
the least reliable measurement of beauty.

a few things I love...

Week 14 of the Wednesday lists.
Yikes! We have six and half days left of school. Tomorrow is our Celebration of Learning and I still have a lot to do to be ready for it. It's a family night with a show, portfolios, and all that jazz; kind of an overview of the year. Lots of fun. Anyway, the list tonight is going to have to be quick and easy.

Just a few things I love...

watching Sloane sleep * Pandora.com * wind * my new camera - of course! * lip gloss * new pens * clarinet solos * the scent of lilacs * Braum's peanut buttercup ice cream * pedicures * tiny chandeliers * serving cold Cokes in an icy glass * flowers * good theater * mediocre theater * even bad theater * zebras * the ostrich skin wallet my Dad brought back for me from Kenya * Kid Rock's voice (too bad he doesn't sing better songs) * letters in the mail * turquoise scooters * starry nights * red lipstick * Eva Cassidy * over-sized rings * curling ribbon * the moon, oh yes, the moon * little wildflowers * old trees * decrepit, paint-peeling barns * the Corrs * red doors * curvy glass * donkeys - I really love donkeys * nose freckles * that libraries now have drive through service - how cool is that? * The Magic Kingdom * walking at the edge of the ocean * a good, long massage * Edith Head's costumes * putting stickers on my kids papers * the kshhhhhhh sound a Coke can makes when you open it * polka dots * dangling earrings * Daumier * the fact that my husband uses verisimilitude in a normal sentence * Bananagrams * convertibles * hot pink, turquoise blue, emerald green * bonfires and chili dogs * fireflies * the new Star Trek movie * fish and chips for lunch * presents * Netflix * Indian food * pedicures * this song * short dark red nails * stacks of books * lists

just call me Waterworks Willy...

My husband, Jeffrey, is a high school librarian. He started his education career as an English teacher and still teaches two English classes along with his full time library responsibilities. Last night was the graduation of his final class of journalism students. We weren't two minutes into the program before I started crying.

Pomp and Circumstance hadn't yet begun when my tears started. I looked over at Sloane and did some quick math. In just ten years Sloane will be the teenager in a shiny polyester gown and great shoes. She'll be one of the girls who are so excited they fairly wiggle. She'll be one of the slightly nauseous teens who can't wait for their future, but are a bit sad to be leaving all this carefree fun behind.

And me? I'll be one of the moms trying desperately to swallow around the enormous lump in my throat. I'll be one of the annoying parents with a camera in her face and loud cheers each time I hear her name. I'll be the one with no mascara so that I don't end up looking like a raccoon. I'll be one of the adults who sit there and know deep down that things will never be the same again.

I hope I will also be one of those parents who know that all of this really is OK. I hope I remember that things never have stayed the same. I hope I think back to this year and remember how many times I cried because Sloane is leaving second grade; my grade. She was born my first year of teaching, and next year she'll be older than my own students. I hope that I recall the way that every day, every school year has been new and different. The way that each year brings with it new heartaches and challenges; new successes and triumphs. I hope I remember, bone deep, that each day, every single day is such a gift. Every day with my sweet girl is nothing less than a miracle.

Because just now?

Just now I am old enough to know that ten years go by so quickly.
Ten years is no time at all.

Sunday Morning Poetry

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

~ Billy Collins

A blessing on you all, my friends.


You can listen to Billy Collins reading this week's poem here. If you haven't already, please click on my blessing for you.

Won't you come out and play?

If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.
~ from The Secret Garden

Today is one of those magical days when you don't even need to look the right way to see it. Just walking outside makes all the knots in your shoulders disappear. The Earth is laughing, grinning, begging you to come outside and play along. And of course, I said yes. I'll see you again tomorrow friends. Right now, I've got to get outside. Happy weekend.

no list tonight

No list on this Wednesday evening.
My head is full; just buzzing, actually.

I went as a chaperon with Jeffrey to his high school's prom.
I've been working on the few pictures I took.


Jeffrey asked me tonight if I would go back and do it again:
high school. Prom and all that stuff.

Heck yeah! I was good at being a teenager.
I loved being a teenager! I said.


I've spent the last hour with the mostly inane words written in my yearbook;
Don't change. You are so sweet. I will miss you.

Bah.
Why do most people struggle to say what lives in their heart?

I've spent the last hour remembering all the fun
and the laughter that didn't make it into those inscriptions.

Would I do high school again?
Heck yeah! I was good at being a teenager.


But, you know what?
I'm even better at being exactly what I am, exactly right now.

a wife
a mother
a teacher


and maybe, just maybe...
a photographer.

Sunday Morning Poetry

Conversation

Ordinary people are peculiar too:
Watch the vagrant in their eyes
Who sneaks away while they are talking with you
Into some black wood behind the skull,
Following un-, or other, realities,
Fishing for shadows in a pool.

But sometimes the vagrant comes the other way
Out of their eyes and into yours
Having mistaken you perhaps for yesterday
Or for tomorrow night, a wood in which
He may pick up among the pine-needles and burrs
The lost purse, the dropped stitch.

Vagrancy however is forbidden; ordinary men
Soon come back to normal, look you straight
In the eyes as if to say 'It will not happen again',
Put up a barrage of common sense to baulk
Intimacy but by mistake interpolate
Swear-words like roses in their talk.

~ Louis MacNeice

The portrait above is of Louis MacNeice and was painted by Nancy Sharp. MacNeice was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1907. He died in 1963. You can listen to him and many, many other poets reading their own work when you buy this.