That was months ago. My new library love is No Woman, No Cry: My Life with Bob Marley by Rita Marley. It’s lovely. It reads like your listening to her talk.  Not stuffy or literary, but musical like Jamaican English peppered with bits of patois. Makes me listen and hear her voice as I read. So often, the stories of women are smothered. The excuse is that they’re smothered in the mothering, the cleaning, the cooking, the chores that “we do best.” But it just ain’t so. Rita tells the story of her feisty quirkiness as a little girl. And it makes me remember that we all have that little girl inside of us. Full of ambition and sass and certainty. Everyone of us dreams big dreams about phenomenal things like being famous singers and animal doctors and painters, and even morticians. We want to do everything. And yes, we would like to be recognized for the spunk of our spirit as we do it. Rita tells her story with what could only be her voice. It moves like someone remembering, and it is replete with memories that make you listen to the “backup” singing of this one “little birdie” with a smile and a familiarity that can only come from hearing her tell her own story. For now, I’ll meet with Rita in the library when I can get there. We’ll sit for a while every time. I’ll listen and laugh at her humorous way of recalling people, sigh at her gritty descriptions of Kingston, and of course wonder at every detail and image she could not possibly have shared. I’ll want to ask her questions, and maybe one day, I will.

I was prepared for the first  three weeks because I planned in advance. The following seven weeks were filled with me always chewing the insides of my cheeks (more sanitary than biting nails, but just as anxiety induced) early in the morning and thinking of what class activities will be  enjoyable to four year olds and not terribly boring or uncool to twelve year olds (the 13-15 year olds were only there for two weeks). It wasn’t a matter of what to cover and how to cover it; fortunately I’ve been blessed with on-the-spot creativity and resourceful intellect. It was a matter of activity. Kids must be kept busy or they become destructive with their energy (destructive to furniture, eardrums, sanity…) and I always found myself scrapping at the last minute for activities.

Now, it may be that I am a novice, but most of the problem, I believe, is that I simply did not spend enough time planning for each class. I did not create lesson plans. I relied too heavily on the fact that I can quickly innovate ideas and simple activities, but it was not nearly enough. Yet, somehow this did not spur me into the action of taking more time to plan. Part of it came from the my subconscious excuse that it was a summer camp and not a real school year. But what a terrible excuse. And what a shortchange.

Now, I’m not saying that my kids didn’t get anything. Far from it. My kids learned about Bantu knots, djembe drums, spoken word, West African dance, basic theatre. We did freewrites to music; we meditated to Tibetan singing bowls; we listened to everything from Bob Marley to Soukous to Santana. We did a lot and they were incidentallyexposed to much culture. But I could have been so much more intentional. And this is what I have learned about teaching.

A good teacher is intentional. A good teacher uses unplanned moments to teach, but always has a plan of deliberate lessons and activities. This is what gives children the balance they need in education, the routine and the surprise. This is what I have learned. To say that I have learned it means that I must apply it.

I say this because I prepare for the next phase in career. I’ve considered being a substitute teacher because I desire flexibility of schedule while I finish my last year of grad school and work on my thesis. I wonder if/hope this is not a cop out. Part of me feels that this is a backward step in the plan. To go from a full time teacher to selling hot sauce to  teaching private Spanish lessons to summer camp program coordinator to substitute teaching. I mean, I realize that some back steps are necessary in any dance. Salsa would be impossible if there were no backsteps. There’d be no tango, no kuku, no samba, no swing. I realize that we must be willing to sacrifice the forward step at times in order to have a beautiful dance. So, am I to sub this year???

Finally, I’ve begun my thesis. WOOT! I’ve never been a fan of academia (ask for the details on my accidentally enrollment into a Master’s of English program). I love to read, absolutely. I love to think about and feel what I read. I enjoy discussing what I’ve read. But research has always felt like such a pain. I recognize in myself a tendency towards procrastination and, to be blunt, laziness. Research requires time. And time is something I can be so stingy with. I love to spend my time reading books for pleasure. Books that make me sigh and laugh out loud and turn the pages greedily. And then I like to lie across my bed and feel the characters. Then I might want to get up and straighten a corner of my room. I’ll probably be hungry by then, so it’s into the kitchen for a snack or dinner. The point is, I never like getting around to getting started on papers. I can imagine that many people are very like me in this aspect.

But I tell you what. I was in the library yesterday doing some reading for my review of literature (which I must turn in to my thesis committee soon). And boy did I come across some interesting information on one of my favorite poets, Lucille Clifton! I mean, I literally got giddy at the small cubicle at which I was sitting. I grinned and I couldn’t sit still and I “wowed” out loud. It was an exciting moment because I feel such a personal connection with Mrs. Clifton.

And that’s what it comes down to. Following my interests when it comes to academia. That’s what it’s always supposed to have been about, but it doesn’t seem like professors like to remind you of that. The passion somehow seems drained out of education. Certainly the excitement. I’ve only had one professor in the past year who has shown visible excitement about teaching. It’s not that visible excitment is the only kind that exists, but it makes a difference when you want your students to be excited about learning. Why is it that after the fourth grade most teachers feel it’s unecessary to use differentiated voices and accents when reading aloud? Why do they even stop reading aloud? Why does the classroom get quiet and dry and dull? Phooey.

When/if I teach college, I’ll make sure to be just as animated when I read Song of Solomon (Morrison) and Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck) as when I read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus (Willems). I am going to use accents like when I read Kallaloo: A Caribbean Tale (Gershator). My classroom will be colorful and the students who have jobs and car payments will be required to role play and use color and improvise and create things other than just words on paper. Otherwise, I will be bored, terribly bored. And I will quit or lose my job. No worries though.

For now, I am going to be a student. I’m going to be taking a class called Caribbean Literature, about which I am very, very excited. I think because I read an excerpt of Whole of a Morning Sky by Grace Nichols of Guyana and fell plum in love. But, also because there is such a rich and deep connection across the diaspora. It’s like meeting a cousin you’ve always heard about but never met. So soon I’ll be meeting my West Indian selves in books! Yay!

I remember.

My father and I used to share a room in my grandmother’s house when I was a little girl. He was single, and would sometimes make sure I was off to sleep before going out with friends or “lady friends” at night. I vividly recall waking up one night to an empty bed. I panicked. I began to page him immediately from the landline. I imagined all sorts of terrible things that could have snatched my daddy from me in the night. There was no telling what it might have been in such pitch blackness that likes to fall in rural Southeast Tennessee. I was terrified. I must have paged him twenty times, at least.

Finally, he called back. But, he sounded happy. There was even a laugh in his throat. Beyond baffled, I was enfuriated. There I sat in the bed, sweating from fear and anxiety because anything could have happened to him. And he was laughing. Hadn’t he known that I would be horrified to wake up alone with no inkling of where he might be? Not even a note on the pillow to let me know that he had thought of me before he traipsed into the night. I quickly stuffed my emotions into a tight-lipped farewell, and threw my body into the mattress. For all my sadness and loneliness, I could not manage to ask him to come back. I could not plead because I never learned to do so. All I could do was be alone and miserable.

Who, really, wants to wake up alone when you’ve gone to sleep in the comfort of certain arms? Is there any soul who does not suffer fright upon stretching in the sunlight and feeling only the billow of sheets? Not I.

I am weak, but I will never confess it. Not to you, who may one day leave. Whether you leave from whim or Divine Will, my acceptance will not come quickly. It is as slow as my will is strong.
Tonight, I”ll babysit my niece and when her mother comes in to get her, I will hold her, as usual, as insist that she be left with me for the night. And in the morning, we will wake up together. Happily in one another’s arms.

I yearned for a way of being and time and living that is unlike this one. Just for a moment, I wished, sadly and deeply, that I was back in Brazil.

Then I turned into my building and headed into class. There is a time for everything.

Ate logo, Bahia.

A hard lesson for a simple truth.

I am on a literacy push because since last summer I have been rekindling my love for reading that is not school related. Just reading for the sake of learning and feeling touched and enriched. It has made me recall simple things that first sparked my voracious reading as a child.

Mom would take me to the library. We would each pick books and sit down to read. Knowing I could read meant knowing that I could know. I read everything in the house. Sometimes this was because I had nothing else to do with my hands or mind being kept from playing in the Houston streets in a small apartment with no television. I read the cereal boxes at breakfast, the air freshener and the shampoo in the bathroom, everything.

Because there is always something to read, there is always something to learn. This lesson is not held dearly enough for many. For some, literacy is still foreign. Being illiterate does not imply ignorance, but it can be a true barrier to emotional, spiritual, physical, and economic liberation.

Read today. Read everyday. Read something that is not necessary to be read like street/highway signs or business emails. Read about a topic that interests and intrigues you. And then read some more about it.

Keep on thinking.

Suddenly, there was a loud crack, and an entire cabinet/microwave crashed onto the ground between us. Everyone was stunned. My sister ran to grab Haile and soon the two babies were crying. I was shocked. I could not believe how close we had been to that cabinet. I stared at the spot where Haile had stood a few moments before and I shook.

Surely God takes care of us. I have to acknowledge God’s goodness. That is all and everything.

Really good ideas take really great work to become valuable. Unless, of course, you plan to remain a theorizing intellectual all your life.

That’s fine for some.

Not me.

I got a great idea.

from The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman

Imagination is the powertool of my choice. I learned from an early age just what it could do. I learned that it took the ache out of sadness and the sting out of rage. It placed me in perfect control of myself and my situation. After all, if I could imagine it, it was necessarily so since I was only able to inabit my own mind.

Yet, as much as it saved me a lot of loneliness and boredom, it also removed me a great deal from the realities of social politics. There was a boy of whom I was terribly fond. His name was Matthew Boykin. We were both in the third grade. One night I dreamed that he lived in the same apartment complex as I did; I was elated. Finally, I did not have to be ashamed of poverty; he would understand! But I woke up. Rather than face his possible disdain – for he enjoyed J’s, brand names, and considerable popularity - I simply created our joy together. It remained successfully intact; I have no recollection of ever having spoken to Mr. Boykin.

Not much changed throughout adolescence. Even as I gained renown in my high school and small town (by then I had moved from Houston to rural Tennessee) for my active involvement and academics, I was never really popular. I was always a harsh element added to the social mix. The group liked talking about things, simply taking delight in one another, not requiring a deep consideration of the subject at hand. I always brought a serious side to the conversation, turning it into a debate, and quickly disbanding the entire lighthearted gathering.

I did not understand, but I did not rack my brain trying. I immersed myself into the Church, in which zeal was gladly welcomed (properly channeled of course). I spent study hall in the library surrounded by the only company I truly treasured, not simply tolerated. I spent my evenings after sport’s practice in my bedroom reading. I dreamed and wrote and danced and enjoyed myself by myself.

This all seems well and good, but I was forced to direct all praise and criticism inward. The criticism grew with time. I entered college and suddenly learned that my socialization, particularly amongst black youth, was severely lacking. I gobbled up Floetry and Too Short and the incredible diversity in which we existed, but I still spent most of my time alone and submerged in my sea of me.

My mother asked me when I was about seven or eight years old what I would do if I held a human baby in one hand and a dog in the other as I stood over a cliff and had to release one. I remember her asking the question. The absurdity of it never phased me. We were sitting in a vehicle of some sort. A bus or a car. I really could not see over the dashboard or side panels. I took in her question and weighed my choices. I remember the image I saw as she asked. I can still see it today how I saw it then. Standing over some serious sharp cliff holding a dog by the gruff of its neck and an infant in the same way. By that age, I felt a deep disgust with humans. I did not believe in their intrinsic honesty, strength, or goodness. Though I loved animals, I was not simply crazy about them. I figured that  due to the child’s age, it had some sense of innocence and deserved to live. My mother says she considered placing me in therapy after that long deliberation. 

It’s my standards, you see. I am most harshly with myself. Often, my first thoughts of the day are terribly grim and gray. I always seem to wake up later than I needed to. I go to sleep feeling like not enough was accomplished. Rarely am I satisfied with myself. 

This dissatisfaction often spills over into my relationships with people. I create the illusion of a divine reason for meeting that sanctions the formation of a friendship; I build and sustain the semblance of perfect and complementary balance that allows for steady communication and a sincere feeling of happiness, on my behalf; I, inevitably, create and entertain a displeasing thought about the divinity and/or productivity of the interactions that fosters a swiftly progressing distance on my part; I gradually become unable to recall previous thoughts of fate or feelings of balance, thus compelling and completing my exodus.

Bob Marley’s lyrics “Running Away”  never resonated more deeply within me than the other morning as I gruffily got up to walk Zeus because he was whining so annoyingly. I found myself projecting my irritation with his owner’s dishonesty and inconsistency onto him. Any previous or meaningful lesson he had taught me had vanished. I was just ready for him to be back with his owner. He felt this. I could see it in his eyes. His feelings were hurt. I could tell it and he could not say anything. He could only lie down and wait for me to get dressed. He jumped up happily, but cautiously, as I grabbed the leash. He could sense my frustration. And I was raging inside. At myself.

I knew exactly what I was doing. I could see it so clearly suddenly. I was sorry and I wanted Zeus to know, but I had not completely comprehended the lightening speed realizations that were coming to me. As we left the house, I could feel my throat tightening. By the time we got to 14th, I unhooked his leash to let him run and sniff the grassy field to his heart’s content. I sat down on one of the step pathways that stop after a few feet of path, evoking the memory of a house that someone used to inhabit, a home that used to exist. I watched Zeus trotting around and tears spilled over onto my cheeks and lips.

I have been so selfish. So immovable. So right all the time. I expected and expected and once my expectations were not met, I moved on my merrily indifferent way. I cried wanting to seek forgiveness. Wanting to reconcile. To rebuild a bridge or two. I cried wanting to be true to the woman I am, not inconsistent between belief and action. I have not carried burdens that I should have. I have escaped into the control of solitude rather than face the untameability of reality. I have put several names and philosophies to it.The truth is, I have not been complete. This is just me, wanting to be whole.