Things I Forgot I Knew :: Winter Nights

We went to Traverse City this past weekend to visit parents. I took the dog outside to wait for my parents to arrive at the in-laws - a pre-holiday get-together, since we won't be there for Christmas.

It was only six o'clock, but it was dark already. The ground was covered with several feet of snow that had been dumped the week before, and teensy cystals were sifting down from the night sky - a step more frozen than the drizzle it would be if it were warmer. I stood and looked into the dizzying swirl of snow; in the street lights, it sparkled like glitter.

As I stood there, in that moment of silence and nature, I remembered how much I loved being outdoors on winter nights. I was run through with a feeling of comfort, like being wrapped up in a cozy blanket. It seems contradictory, I know, to be out in the cold and say it felt like that, but the winter nights have always had that affect on me. With no traffic around, there is such a deep silence in a night where people are all indoors, having shoveled and salted their walks earlier, no one comes out at night unless they have to. No one is barbequing on back porches, no kids riding their bikes up and down the streets, no late night walkers - or at least very few - and their crunching steps become swallowed up into the night air as soon as they pass by. The blanket of snow upon the earth must act like some kind of giant sound absorber, but it's also what gives me that sense of being wrapped up inside of it all, comforted by its thickness, regardless of the fact that it's as cold as a popsicle.

Not something you'd want to wrap yourself up in, you might say, but as a child, I loved to dead-drop onto my back into a fresh fall of snow, watch the plumes of cold crystals swirl above me and settle back onto my bare face. I would sit unbreathingly still and watch the icy flakes rest and then melt on my lashes, feel the trickling transformation of ice to water on my cheeks. I loved that moment of stillness, of quiet comfort wrapped up in the snowfall, just before my arms and legs would swing robotically back and forth and I would try as gracefully as possible to rise and step out of the angelic impression I had created.

When I was older, I walked the snow lit streets late at night, especially around Christmas. Even during my I-loathe-Christmas phase, I still enjoyed walking alone at night (usually sneaking smokes) and seeing the holiday lights. There is no other time of year those lights are more beautiful than in the winter, and never as beautiful as when seen against and through the feet of snow that inevitably will fall each season.

Three blocks from our house was the local skate rink - the Thirteenth Street rink - right next to Thirlby Field - the high school sports area. It was a grass lot that, thanks to days of carefully channeled water, transformed into a large oval rink each winter. A rickety wooden warming house sat at the nearest end, with outside benches where we could change out of our boots into our skates. The warming house had an "In" door on the right, worn wooden floors, benches along the wall, and an "Out" door on the left, so we could enter, walk through and exit in an orderly fashion. A black iron wood stove sat in the center with a worn wooden rail being all that separated children walking unsteadily on their skated feet from falling in and becoming a sizzling ice cube against the hot metal. There was also a very fat man who tended the fire, harrassed you a bit if you sat too long, and joked around with the parents and older kids who weren't afraid of his largeness.

While I loved going to the rink during the day, I also loved to go at night, when the warming house was closed, and the rink lights were off. Even with the traffic of Thirteenth Street just over the snow bank, there was a vast silence in the night sky, which seemed to hover black and starry so close to earth. I would skate for hours, until my feet and fingers and thighs and butt were all completely numb. Only then, reluctantly, would I fumbly unlace the skates and slip back into my ice-cold boots. I would have to shuffle-walk all the way home, the circulation never quite returning to my extremities until I had been inside for at least a good half-hour. And still, I would wish I could have stayed longer.

I practice creative visualization with my students - especially my developmental writers - as I try to help them find ways to relax when faced with writing assignments or exams. It also helps them work on their descriptive writing, as I have them "go to a place" where they feel totally comfortable and safe. One of the places I visualize is a skating rink out in the middle of a wooded grove. There are snow banks pushed up all around it, but I can see pine trees surrounding the area. It's night. It's quiet. There's a gentle snow falling and all is dimly lit by the light of the moon. I am skating, effortlessly gliding around on the glassy smooth surface. And while I feel the cold on my face and in my lungs, I am warm. Through and through, I feel a sense of security, of comfort, of calm and of belonging.

Casey Tells Me

Casey says I should blog at least once a week here. Casey tells me meditation is good for me and I should do it every day. Casey tells me I should watch this or that yoga video. Casey tells me I should eat broccoli/fish/beans/squash. Casey tells me I should plant flowers. Casey tells me I should pull up the hosta that has gotten overgrown. Casey tells me I should do more work for NewPages. Casey tells me I do too much.

You Can't Tell, You Just Can't Tell

I wanted to see the house where the old woman died. Two blocks over and four blocks down. Past the park. I didn’t know her. I was out walking the dog and decided I wanted to see the house. I told myself it would be like paying respects to walk past it, from across the street. Stop a moment, bow my head as though I am saying a prayer to the god she believed in.

That’s what I read. That she was very involved with the church. Went to mass every day. Helped out with church events. It reminded me of my own mother who does the same. At least I think she still does, the mass every day part. The other I know she does, the helping with events and such. Only this woman was 82 years old. That’s ten years older than my mother. Only ten years. Now that I think about it, it’s not that much.

I walk one block past and think it will be okay to go back and circle the block with the terrace on my right. That way, the dog won’t be peeing on trees or pooping on the terrace lawn while I am doing the paying respects thing. The funeral service is at ten today, and I imagine there will be a lot of people there who didn’t even know the woman, but are so upset by her having been murdered in their quiet little town that they will show up. They will want to show their support for her having been alive, or to show how upset they are about her being murdered, or maybe it’s just because it’s something to do when you don’t know how else to respond to something as totally out of control as two teenage boys breaking into her home and murdering her.

I look around the neighborhood as I walk. I would say it’s no different than my neighborhood, being only a few blocks away, but it is. It’s more run-down. The houses are smaller and not as neatly kept. There are more crappy cars in driveways and on the streets. It’s a little bit different, but not much.

I hit the street corner and I can see her house from where I stand. It’s 402, so it’s only the second house in. I don’t stop walking. It’s a simple little bungalow style. It’s tan. It’s close to its neighbors on either side. Someone from inside the house called 911. That’s how the police knew to come. The boys were still in the house, with credit cards, cash, jewelry. She must have been dead then. They were still there while she was dead on the floor, or wherever they left her.

I don’t turn down the street. I don’t want to walk past. I turn and go the other way, cross the street, and realize I’m right in the neighborhood where a woman was murdered. It’s a murder neighborhood now. I won’t tell my husband I’ve been here. He didn’t want to ride past on our bikes the other night. He didn’t really want to read about it in the paper. He can turn off that morbid fascination and honestly not want to know. But still, I think he wouldn’t be happy to know I had walked through the neighborhood. He gets upset when he looks at the weekly crimestoppers map in the paper and sees that there have been street assaults where I go running every morning. “It could be two drunks fighting over the last beer at a party,” I say, “not muggers attacking strangers.” He wants to see police reports to be sure.

There’s no way you can tell that a neighborhood has had a murder. Or a rape. Or houses a child molester. Not just by looking at it. There’s no way. How can a person know? Maybe that’s why I came here. Just to see if I could tell. If I could be the one to say, “Oh yeah, right there. Right there you should have known this could have happened in your neighborhood.” But there’s no way.

The sky is grey and sunny at the same time, which means the rain will move in after sunrise. The morning birds are singing and flitting from one green leafy branch among the canopy of trees to the next. Children are shuffling their way to the final days of school. And I am here, a woman out walking her dog, so that anyone driving by can see me and know what we all don’t know, just how something like this could have happened here and why we didn’t see it coming.

Promotion: Step One

Winter Semester 2007. No snow. I'm okay with that. There are enough other things to have to worry about on a daily basis that not having to deal with icy, slippery roads is quite the bonus. Still, I am holding out hope for a snow day this year...

Back in the classroom, focusing on teaching and my students. I'm in my second year here, and I realize now, my fifteenth year of teaching. Yow. I was really excited to think that now I could finally just bury myself in the pedagogy (uh, I guess that would be the theory of how I actually teach and why) and caring nothing more about how to make myself a better teacher so my students can all have better learning experiences. But, nooooo.... I find out it's time for me to start putting together a committee for my promotion.

Promotion. Yes. Committe. Yes. I have to go around and ask people - my colleagues, who are already overburdened with their own work and pedagogy, to sit on a committee to review all my materials and make a recommendation for me (or not) for promotion.

Okay, so step one shouldn't be so bad. Just ask people, right?

No.

Come to find out, I have to be careful about who I ask, what kind of credibility they will have in the department, and whether or not they would even consider doing it at all. Because this is my first promotion, to Assistant Professor, I'm told not to pick people who are full professors. What? Why? Too heavy-handed for my first promotion. Huh? Okay, well, too late. I already asked two people who are full professors, and I didn't even care that that's what they were. I asked them because I thought they would be the best people to evaluate me and give me feedback that would help in certain areas of my continued professional development.

Excuse my practicality. It's been trumped by politics.

Then there's the "third." This has to be a person outside of the department. Well, good luck knowing a whole lot of people outside of your department after only being here a year and a half! Lucky for me, I guess, I do, but then as I mention their names, I hear, "Not much credibility in our dept." "Nobody knows that person." "He won't do it; he never sits on these things." Etc.

So, as per usual, I didn't listen. I have gone ahead and done what I wanted to do for my own reasons, the politics be screwed. If what I have done isn't good enough, what difference does it make if it's presented by a full professor or an associate, by someone known in our department or not known. Cripes, it's maddening. And at the same time, I want to do it. I want to participate in the process.

Everyone says it's for the money. There's a pay raise for every promotion. But that's not why I would do it.

Money is nice, sure. But what matters more to me is just simple recognition. I feel like I do a lot both at the school for my students and outside of the school for my community. I don't do it thinking it's going to help me get promoted or help me get tenure. I do it because it's just what I do. I came from a school with no system of recognition - no promotion, no tenure. No matter how much I did, or how much someone else didn't do, it didn't matter to the school. They never recognized us for it. No pay raise. No titles. All I'm asking for is recognition. A pat on the back. Something that says, we appreciate what you're doing and recognize it's integral for your continued growth as an educator, and as such, here's a title that recognizes that growth.

I will do this thing. I will ask people. I will put together a portfolio of my work. I will half listen to the political advice. But in the end, it should really come down to whether or not they will recognize me for what I have done, since I have no doubts I have done all they would require of a person to advance, and more. The recognition here, while it seems like it is them looking at me, is just as much me looking at them and saying, "What kind of school are you? Are you earnest in what you will recognize, or is this a game of politics?" I would like to think this school is worth all that, and more. I guess we'll both find out.