All Life Ends in Death (Journal 20)

Write about the first time you truly understood that all life ends in death.

I was sixteen.  I left work at the Gorham House with a couple of friends.  We had plans to watch a movie that night.  I don't even remember what the movie was, only that I didn't really want to go, but felt that I should.  At some point in the middle of the movie, my friend Jason took a phone call.  Then, in a moment that changed my life forever, he came tearing back into the living room, screaming at the top of his lungs: “Steph, oh my God, your dad had a heart attack!  We've gotta go!”  I grabbed my stuff and ran to his car.  He sped all the way down route 25, and as we approached my house, the red lights of ambulances and fire engines pulsed like arteries.  We had to park at the end of the driveway, so I ran out of the car, not even pausing to shut the door, and raced up my driveway.  I pressed my face into the glass of our bay window.  There was my dad in his favorite teal t-shirt sprawled out on the living room floor, paramedics pushing and shoving at his chest.  They wouldn't let me in.  My sister was curled up in a ball on the front steps.  My mom was crying and trying to make phone calls.  After they loaded my dad onto a gurney, they carried him into the back of the ambulance, and raced with sirens blaring the 45 minutes to Maine Medical Center in Portland.  My dad worked there, had spent all day there, and was now headed back there.  My mom had friends come to pick up my sister.  She also took off in the ambulance, leaving me behind to pack some clothes and things for my dad.  After shoving clean clothes and my favorite photograph of us into a duffle bag, I hitched a long silent ride to Portland with Jason.  We parked and went in the ER entrance, but I was almost immediately directed to a small conference room instead of the germ-ridden waiting area.  I opened the door, took one look at my mom's face, and walked out again.  I had to catch my breath.  I knew he was gone and had no need for the things I had packed for him.  Over the next few days, I helped my mom pick out caskets, choose hymns for the memorial service, and was repeatedly told to be strong.  I was afraid my mom and my sister would eventually dissolve in all the tears they shed.  I was daddy's little girl, now without my daddy.  Where did that leave me?

It has taken me a long time to write this poem about the photograph I had packed to send with him to the hospital.  It's an old photograph; I was about 2 years-old, and my dad was holding me in the sunlight streaming through the window of my family's camp on Sebago.  We were both napping.

Daddy

If she knew then

what she knows now,

she would wake up

and tug his beard

turned fiery in the molten light

and ask him for a story

any story

and she would rest her head

on his chest

and listen to the thump-thump

of his heart

and be shaken by the deep timbre

of his voice and his chuckle

and try not to think about

how much she would miss

his voice, his smile,his warmth

and only try to burn this moment

into her memory

so that she could return to it

again and again

savoring each word and each breath

like so much Swiss chocolate

A Bucket List (Journal 19)

Name 20 things you'd like to do before you die:

1. Go to India
2. Go on a Disney Cruise
3. Publish a book
4. Retire
5. Learn to knit
6. Hold my grandchildren
7. Learn to play an instrument
8. Become a National Board Certified teacher
9. Get my PhD
10. Spend at least a month in the United Kingdom
11. Go on an Adventures By Disney trip
12. See Australia/New Zealand
13. See my children go to college
14. See my children get married
15. Take a cooking class from a professional chef
16. Get another tattoo
17. Celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary at Victoria and Albert's 
18. Grow old with my husband
19.  Run a full marathon (preferably a runDisney event!)
20. Own and enjoy a camp on the shores of a lake

Awakening Genius in the Classroom (Journal 18)

Journal: Awakening Genius in the Classroom, p. 21

Thomas Armstrong, author of Awakening Genius in the Classroom, believes every student is a genius.  I tend to agree:

Every student is a genius, I would agree, but I would also agree that the word “genius” itself must be redefined.  Many people connote genius with high IQ or high-power job status or even social class standing.  If every student's potential for genius is to be recognized, then the word itself must be re-evaluated.  For example, I work in a building where colleagues of mine tell students that they are the “future pot-hole fillers of America” and where a student reading two grades below grade level is disparaged and disabused of the notion of being a psychologist.  The teacher in that situation seemed to think the student in question could become a pot-hole filler, but that she had no prayer of being a psychologist, and the sooner she realized her own shortcomings, the better.  This is no way to run a school, a classroom, or even deal with students.  In the move toward standards-based education, every student is supposed to be held to the same standard.  They may need different tools and strategies in order to be able to achieve that standard, but there is no real reason to think that students aren't capable.  Every student has the potential to be a genius, but like a garden, they must be nourished, given sunlight, and allowed to grow.  Schools also need to learn to value other forms of “genius” instead of focusing almost exclusively on verbal-linguistic or mathematic strengths.  What of the student who is a genius at dealing with others with compassion?  What of the student who exhibits genius with regard to humor and wit?  These students must also be valued and nurtured.  They are geniuses, too.

Awakening Genius in the Classroom (Journal 17)

Awakening Genius in the Classroom, p. 20

Prompt: 

Thomas Armstrong, author of Awakening Genius in the Classroom, believes every student is a genius. In fact, he lists the twelve qualities of genius. Write about a few of these qualities in relation to yourself: curiosity, playfulness, imagination, creativity, wonder, wisdom, inventiveness, vitality, sensitivity, flexibility, humor, and joy.

My grandmother and my mother always told me that curiosity killed the cat.  Sometimes they said it as a warning, but at times they said it with admiration.  For them, curiosity was connected to wisdom.  In fact, one of my mom's favorite stories to tell about my childhood relates to a conversation I had with my grandmother's friend, Anne.  Anne is a retired teacher and she had a passion for mythology, a passion that I shared.  I almost always had my school's copy of D'Aulaire's Mythology checked out of the library.  I read it voraciously until I could almost recite its stories by heart.  It wasn't long before I moved on to Edith Hamilton as a 9 year-old.  Anyway, this one summer, my mother and my grandmother thought it might be fun to pit me against Anne in a jeopardy-style contest.  Anne asked me mythological questions, and I would answer them.  Anne thought she could trick me by asking me who Aphrodite's parents were, and my mom still likes to talk about how my curiosity fueled my wisdom, allowing me to answer the question correctly (minus the whole castration bit...I was still a little young to understand that particular facet of the story!).  

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I suppose my playfulness most comes out to play when I spend time with my daughter and my nieces. We invent stories and use our imaginations to create fantasy realms or to act out certain situations.  I often let them take the lead, but I am right there beside them, hoisting a pirate sword or a magic wand or a tea cup.

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Inventiveness and creativity go hand in hand at summer camp.  I help direct and tech. direct a musical theatre production for upper elementary and middle school students.  Designing and painting a set with few materials and little to no money requires amazing resourcefulness.  Our backdrops are often queen-sized sheets bought on discount at Mardens, but by the end of the week they have been transformed into towering forests, flourishing gardens, or Bethlehem sky-scapes.  Last summer, it was a snowy airport scene.

My Ideas Get Me (Journal 16)

Frequently schoolchildren ask me, “Where do you get your ideas from?”  The answer, which always puzzles them is, “I don't get my ideas, they get me.” ~Robertson Davies

Compelling a character to speak or a story to breathe is fraud; waiting for that first whispered word or that first miraculous escape of air takes patience.  I keep a journal of lines or phrases that speak to me and echo through the corridors of my mind.  Every once in a while, I'll take out that page to see if any of those lines or phrases have more to say.  Sometimes, more patience is required.  At other times, those lines and phrases begin pouring out their life stories.  One such line for me came one summer at camp.  I was looking out at the stillness of Lower Narrows Pond.  The trees on the shore were perfectly reflected in the calm blue waters, and here came the line, unbidden: “still waters steal the souls of trees.”  There was nothing more for some time.  Then came the summer three years later when my husband and I weathered a thunder storm at my family's camp on Sebago Lake.  That line came back to me out of the ether, and I struggled for a time until the rest of this poem finally came to fruition:

Tempest Tossed

still waters steal the souls of trees

holding them captive in unquiet depths

as turbulent as the liquid blue of your eyes

and mottled with mist

as Aeolus unleashes his minions

scattering clouds across the burgeoning dark of the sky

obscuring the pale sun with a rumbling crescendo

pure energy streaks, jagged and bright

electrifying grey-blue waters

with white-hot intensity

cold, cleansing showers pelt my flesh

I tremble as I stand beside you in the rain

here, on this shore,

where we once breathed alone

Multigenre Metacognitive (Journal 15)

I have just recently come to the conclusion, and by conclusion I mean due date, for my multigenre project exploring my love for Disney.  I say I have come to the conclusion, because I can't honestly say that I've really finished.  I mean, I have a lot more to say and many more genres I could explore.  I wanted to make some crossword puzzles and word puzzles for my daughter and nieces to work on during our next vacation.  I wanted to make a soundtrack, but I couldn't figure out how to legally share and post all of the Disney songs I wanted to share.  Over the course of creating this project, I worked a lot with the photos from our first Disney trip in 2012, but I still have a lot of photos and video from our 2013 trip to work with.  And the list goes on and on.  Oh, and I'm a perfectionist, so I could tweak that project for years and still find ways to improve, add to, rearrange, or just plain work on it. 

For me, the writing of this collection of genres really was a process, and one I thoroughly enjoyed.  For example, I had video footage that I recorded of my daughter last summer that this project encouraged me to finally sit down and edit together; if not for the interview genre, I may have just let that video continue to languish on my hard drive for who knows how much longer.  This project also helped me get into the Disney spirit.  We are actively counting down to our next trip there, and we have just made our ADRs (advance dining reservations), but now we have to wait until June in order for our next round of official bookings to occur.  Working on the multigenre helped the time pass by more quickly.  Oh, and it was fun to write and explore something I really love: my family and Disney.

Giving a Voice to the Silent (Journal 14)

The Pocket Muse, p. 18

“I've always been interested in writing about people...who are not able to speak for themselves.  As in my novel Black Water – I provide a voice for someone who has died and can't speak for herself.”  ~Joyce Carol Oates

Write about something in the voice of someone who has, until now, been silent.

Preface:  I have been thinking a lot about Greco-Roman mythology.  My husband and I have been heatedly debating it, in fact.  He has recently been re-playing this video game: God of War III.  In the previous installment of this game, the main character (which he played) killed Zeus.  So I've been thinking about what it would take to truly kill an immortal, and what makes someone immortal.  I've been thinking about the geography of Hades itself and its four rivers.  You cross the Styx to get in, and drink from the Lethe to forget your previous incarnation so that you may remain in the Underworld untroubled by who you used to be.  This thought trail then led me to thinking about one of my favorite myths: Orpheus and Eurydice.  In this myth, Orpheus descends into the Underworld to save his true love, but instead banishes her to an eternity there.  The myth focuses solely on his point of view and his grief following his failure.  But she is the silent one whose voice I attempt to recapture in this poem.

"Greek Tragedy"

You cannot trust my muffled foot treads

echoing in the back of your brain.

You hear my bare feet fall;

broken glass crunches beneath my bloodied toes.

You know I am there, in your shadow,

my wraithlike presence

calling to you from across dark Stygian waters.

I am your Eurydice,

and you cannot stop yourself from turning back,

looking over your shoulder, just to see.

You do not trust Black Hades' promise

or your own knowledge of my steady steps

mirroring your own.

I am banished by your thoughtless blunder.

Exiled to those Elysian Fields

I feast on pomegranates, juicy, and red

as my heart betrayed.

Lethe's purple waters urge me to forget this wound,

but I am unwilling or unable,

while you with your lute sing of love lost,

your haunting voice filled with self-pity.

I loathe you, wish upon you the trials of Tantalus

or Prometheus's pain,

but you do not notice,

self-absorbed as you are,

singing of your own loss,

melancholy mourning and lyrics of lament.

Yours is a melodic sound of sorrow

while Cerberus's three-headed howls

echo my cries, my ululation.

You inhale, breathing the breath of life,

laden with sweet verdance,

and I am left the sole heir to this, our legacy.

I will wear these riches, the jewels of this journey,

baubles of bitterness.

I remove the gold coins from my eyes

and I will remember:

it is you who has forsaken me.

That Special Book (Journal 13)

Asking a girl who has over 5,000 books to write about “that” special one is surely a form of cruel and unusual punishment.  Where do I even begin?  Could you clarify the question?  How about that special novel?  Or that special children's book?  Or that special nonfiction book?  Honestly, there are so many to choose from.  I could pick that special book from each of my 42 bookshelves, but that might take a while.  So, how about we compromise?  Instead of that “special” book, I'll tell you about one of the books I'm reading right now.  Will that suffice?  My book club chose Lawrence Hill's SomeoneKnows My Name as this month's book.  It was originally published as The Book of Negroes, but the title was changed for publication in America.  It is a novel of great scope and imagination that follows the life and travels of a woman, Aminata Diallo, who was stolen into slavery, survived the Middle Passage, was enslaved on a Gullah-speaking Carolina island indigo plantation, escaped to freedom in New York City, served the British Loyalists during the Revolution, was relocated as a free woman to Nova Scotia and then again to Sierra Leone, and ultimately ends her life in London arguing for an end to slavery in front of Parliament and the king himself.  Aminata's narrative voice carries echoes of the many places she has been, the many lives she has led, and the many sorrows she carries with her.  Above all, she is a survivor and her story is compelling.  This is a fantastic book because Aminata is such a compelling character and the history is extremely well-researched.  I highly recommend it!

Consequences (Journal 12)

“In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments – there are consequences.” 

                                                                                                                 ~Robert Green Ingersoll

Consequences is such an interesting word.  For most, it is a word that carries some very heavy emotional baggage.  Consequences are negative-sounding; they're almost always bad.  I can remember my grandmother telling me as a little girl that if I did not listen there would be consequences.  Even at the age of four, I knew that those consequences would not involve cookies.  No, consequences were no good.  This lesson was similarly ingrained at school.  If you talked out of turn, if you didn't listen to the teacher, if you said a naughty word, your name was put on a rung of the “Consequences Ladder.”  The lower on the ladder your name moved, the less likely it was that you'd get to enjoy recess.  Consequences meant no kickball.  In high school health class, they began talking about a whole new set of consequences.  If you had unprotected sex, for example, there would be consequences that would be even more difficult to deal with than trying to keep an egg from cracking as you kept it with you for every waking hour of your spring vacation.  Yep, eggs were like babies, and if you had unprotected sex, your consequences would be of the squalling rather than the scrambled variety.  However, as an adult, I came to learn that consequences was a more neutral kind of word; consequences could be good or bad; consequences could be predictable (like when I got my first tattoo) or unpredictable (the result of a monarch butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon and me getting in a car accident) or even happy (like getting on eHarmony and meeting my husband and the love of my life).  Anyway, I suppose Ingersoll has it right.  I don't suppose nature can reward or punish us, unlike grandmothers or school officials; it just is.  But, like with global warming or climate change, too much hairspray can cause a natural disaster. 

Invent an Opposite (Journal 11)

Journal: The Pocket Muse, p. 15

Invent an Opposite

What is the opposite of a kiss?  a spurn

What is the opposite of green? brown / red

What is the opposite of a train? train station / mountain

What is the opposite of cake? pie / meatloaf

What is the opposite of a fence? expanse / wall / mountain / field

“The Opposite of a Fence”

Frost tells us that good fences make good neighbors

sarcastically,

so in the absence of a fence,

can you still be neighborly?

What if instead of a fence

there exists unbroken expanse:

a field,

a desert,

a frontier?

Who, then, will be your neighbor?

Anyone who can reach across the openness

stretching across the distance,

no boundaries

to break the divide.

Come closer....

Change in Your Pockets (Journal 10)

“A writer should know how much change a character has in his pockets.” ~James Joyce

Jingle.  Jingle.  The cheerful sound belied his stormy brow.  Eyes squinted, paltry defense against the brutal morning light, he strode purposelessly across the browning grasses of the common.  His intent glare made passersby believe he was following some internal compass; however, looks can certainly be deceiving.  Like Richard Cory, emotions and conundrums broiled beneath the well-coiffed surface.  Jingle.  Shoving a chapped hand into his pocket, its fit tight like a glove, he sought to stop the music.  Refusing to be cheered even by the sad notes that thirty-seven cents could offer, he clenched the coins in his fist until the flesh of his palms began to resemble our first president's noble visage.  Pausing only at the intersection's insistence, he continued, his long legs making the distance between pavement creases disappear quickly.  Where was he going?  A quarter and a few dimes and pennies would not take him very far.  He just kept moving in a way that let other fellows on the sidewalk believe he had a destination in mind, an important place to be.  His lips curled at his own trickery.

Letter to a Teacher (Journal 9)

Dear Deanna,

You are goddess, teacher, wise woman, mentor, friend.  I am blessed to have had the opportunity to work with you and learn from you.  I would not be the teacher I am today without your encouragement, your investment, and your willingness to challenge me to achieve tasks that I didn't know I could achieve.  You pushed me to find balance, both in the classroom and in my personal life.  You exuded excellence and quietly demanded it in return.  You always held me to high standards, expecting me to reach for and surpass them.  You knew me, knew my perfectionism, my drive, and my mistakes.  You had made many of the same mistakes yourself and allowed me to profit from your experience.  You were a sounding-board when I most needed it.  You were my best (and harshest) critic; I always knew you would tell me the truth – no matter how brutal.  But I also knew that if I had accomplished something that garnered your praise I truly deserved it.  Thank you so very much for being the teacher that showed me, more than graduate school ever could, how to truly be a teacher.  You continue to be an inspiration to me.  I miss you.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Hendrix

The Pocket Muse, Page 12 (Journal 8)

I wrote this poem in response to the prompt on page 12 of Monica Wood's The Pocket Muse:

Enter here:

Footfalls echo through darkened halls

whispering prayers

pale light leaks weakly through cathedral windows

dust clouds puff and settle

peeling paint chips drift and fall

scars on once-ornate curves and molding

now mouldering

a dark door looms, rusting on ancient hinges,

creakily giving way beneath my weight

furniture huddles,

ghostly beneath remnants of tattered sheets

four posters stand sentinel

dented pillows cradle impressions

of sleepers long-forgotten

iron-gray strands tangle in a tarnishing hairbrush

languishing in ages of powdery grit

the oval vanity mirror, grimy and flecked

reflects shadowy impressions lost to time.

A Worm in Horseradish (Journal 7)

To a worm in horseradish, the whole world is horseradish.

—An old Yiddish saying

Take 1: Pungent and bitter, the acrid scent stings.   Just because I breathe through my skin doesn't mean the stink can't get to me.  I suppose I should be grateful; after all, a worm like me can eat my own body weight in food on any given day.  Usually, though, my prostomium protects my mouth, only letting those delectable bits in.  Now, though, my diet and my world is limited to this tangy and spicy sliminess.  I suppose I shouldn't be one to judge; after all, I secrete slime, too.  This is somehow different, though. 

Take 2: I wonder if I would have approached this prompt differently if I actually liked horseradish.  As it is, the only time I eat the stuff is in the cocktail sauce that drips from shrimp.  Otherwise, I think it's grotesque.  My dad used to eat it on his hot dogs, and he always seemed to like it, but as I only eat tofu-pups, I suppose I may have a slightly different take on the subject.

Take 3: Our world is what we make of it.  For the worm in question, the world may be horseradish.  For others, the world may be similarly limited to Maine or New England or North America.  My world has been expanded through travel and technology; it is much bigger than I can actually see or perceive.  This saying seems predicated on the notion that your world limited by what you sense in your environment.  This seems like far too narrow and prohibitive a definition to me.