Alan

Jessica just posted a poem she got published in second grade.  She doesn’t like hers, she says, but I’m still really fond of a poem that I got published in first grade.  The publication wasn’t as prestegious as the one Jessica’s poem ended up in — mine was Riverside Creates, our elementary school’s annual literary magazine — but getting it published changed my life.  I mean, like, I was published!  I ended up publishing in high school, college, and graduate school, too.

So, are you ready for some awesome, first-grade writing?  Here it is!

My Kite

One day I was flying my kite.
My kite was lifting me up,
and I was flying!

Please hold the applause.  Really, calm down.   But, seriously, a poem this great deserves a little literary anaysis, don’t you think?  So here goes:

First of all, the poem goes somewhere. In three short lines, I move from my everyday world into another world. I accomplish what poet Billy Collins says poetry is all about: “Poetry for me is a kind of travel writing – travel writing of the highest order because it provides not only a change of scenery, but a change of consciousness.”

Second, I go somewhere without really leaving my world. Indeed, the change of consciousness in “My Kite” was there all along, even in the mundane and matter-of-fact first line. The poem demonstrates this idea two ways: repetition and verb forms. The third line is a repetition of part of the first line. In fact, the entire third line is really only a stripped-down version of the first line, as if the transcendent world lives and lurks in the prosaic world all along, like a seed waiting for its husk to split open.

The poem’s verb forms also support this “extraordinary in the ordinary” theme. The verb in the first and third lines stays the same, but its form changes. The poem uses the present participle of the verb “to fly” in both the first and third lines to express what’s happening both before and after my change of consciousness. I’m airborne by the end of the poem, but within the poem I move only from a transitive form to an intransitive form of “flying.” Nothing has really changed; I’m still flying my kite. I’m just flying with it, that’s all. Just… flying.  The extraordinary in the ordinary.

It may be embarrassing to say this, but I think it’s one of the best poems I’ve ever written!

I'm not sure what this sign said. Probably some rule the snow ignored.

I couldn’t see, partly because everything was white and partly because the wind stung my eyes with snowflakes.  I had forgotten was it was like to walk in a blizzard.

I got home, got out of my wet clothes, and ate a warm meal.  I had forgotten what it was like to warm up by a fireplace after playing in the snow.  The decorations seem more alive, the fireplace more warm when it snows.

The storm was too alluring.  I actually didn’t mind returning to it, this time to shovel the driveway and clear out the car.  I knew we’d get several more inches, but I figured it would be easier to shovel twice than once.  It almost felt like an honor to shovel: the storm brought one of the lightest, fluffiest snows I’ve seen.  And there was so much of it . . .

Then back inside for more warmth and a big meal my wife had time to make now that the storm made her grading and lesson planning less urgent.

What’s better on a snow day: inside or out?  It’s funny how a big snow makes me like my dog was growing up: fun loving and seemingly always on the wrong side of a closed door.

This scene in my neighborhood today reminded me that it's still fall.

This is the earliest that it has snowed — really snowed — in our town since I can remember.

Snow acts like forgiveness, covering up some pretty scarred-up landscape and making it beautiful.  It gives sharp things soft, rounded edges; it makes dirty things clean again.  The more it falls, the more it erases.

Snow transforms the way we use things.  Hills become sledding slopes.  Backyards become battlefields with white ramparts and missiles.  New York spent millions to make Times Square pedestrian only, but snow can make any street more pedestrian friendly in just a few hours and for free.  The street doesn’t have to look as good as Times Square to begin with, either, but it ends up looking magical.  It didn’t snow enough to stop cars today, but there weren’t many of them on the streets where I live.

It was so early for a snow this year that many of the tree limbs sagging with the weight of a wet snow still sported red and gold leaves, and a few green ones, too.  The snow was even covering the season, burying fall — prematurely, perhaps.

I hope this is the first of a lot of snow this fall and winter.  We need to see our world in the playful, forgiving way snow leaves it.

“The drought, you know.  Pumpkins grew only to the size of grapefruit this year.”

The coaster-sized pumpkin pie I put on the trivet this past Thursday didn’t fool Jack, my twelve-year-old.  My wife didn’t stand for it, either. “I’ll save you from your father,” she announced as she brought in the real pie.

Counting the diminutive pie, I made three pies over Thanksgiving.  I brought my A-game crust for them, too: the crust that has me cutting four sticks of butter into small cubes and scooping out half a tub of Crisco shortening.  If I had had to stick those federal labels on the pies, they would have said, “Parts made in Edgarton” (where I live) and “Assembled in Tidewater, Virginia.”  It was labor in two kitchens, but it was a labor of love.

“Over the river and through the woods.”  I drove the long way to my parents’ home in Tidewater because it takes us through a park filled with orange- and yellow-leafed trees.  I felt myself react inside: couldn’t I be getting there faster?

Once we got to my parents’ place, we really slowed down.  Life moves slowly in Tidewater (compared to Edgarton, anyway), but it crawls Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I had time to do things for no reason.  I read for hours to my two kids there.  My parents and we had long stretches of telling stories and laughing.  For a few days, I ceased to be “purpose-driven.”  In fact, for a few days, I felt myself not being driven at all.

“Baking without reason.”  Item seven in a blog post I recently read entitled, “Ten Reasons Why I Love the Holidays,” made me think. Does everything have to be done for a reason?  Baking without reason reminds me of random acts of kindness we heard about at a school assembly a while back.  Goals are great – even necessary for many things – but sometimes they choke out the part of life that just needs to happen.

So Jack grinned and pulled the grapefruit-sized pie to himself across my parents’ large, mahogany table.  The food isn’t as good, the dinners aren’t nearly as long, and Dad isn’t always as funny back in Edgarton.

Holidays are a nice break.  But I think the holidays also remind us of how the rest of the year could be.

When I was sixteen, a dental hygienist changed my life.  She yelled at me for not flossing.  I wasn’t used to being called down by adults – I was well behaved at school, and my parents seldom raised their voices at me – and I didn’t know I was doing anything horrible or immoral by not flossing.

Maybe it was the psychological advantage she had, leaning over me while I was on my back with her fingers in my mouth.  Maybe it was the fact that she and the doctor had just discovered three fresh cavities there.

But it changed me.  I’ve flossed every day since.  (Well, I’m not sure I haven’t forgotten every once in a while.  And I’ve run out of floss on occasion.  But I’ve never deliberately skipped, I don’t think, since she yelled at me.)  Maybe that’s not a big life change, but I think most life-changing decisions are small decisions that become habits.  And someone really has to get my attention to start me on the road to a new habit.

Two days ago, another dental hygienist taught me how to brush my teeth.   I thought I had already learned how to brush my teeth; I’ve been brushing them twice a day for almost half a century.   But I’ve been doing it wrong all those years, I learned.  And my poor brushing style was the cause of all of the plaque buildup she found.

This hygienist was much sweeter than the hygienist who saw me when I was sixteen.  She pulled out a set of model teeth and quietly demonstrated the different brushing techniques for molars and for my front teeth.

I reacted differently than I did during that earlier opprobrium, too.  Something inside me said, “I’m fifty-two, and this lady’s teaching me how to brush my teeth?”

But I remembered an old Jewish proverb that says something like, “Better is a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no longer be admonished.”

One must grow old – I’ve never cared much for the alternative – but I guess there’s no sense in being foolish, too.  I’ve been very excited about brushing my teeth with my new techniques since Thursday.

Time will tell if Tooth-brushing 2.0 becomes as much of a habit as flossing.

Why did I sign up to play volleyball tomorrow morning in front of 1,960 students?  I haven’t played volleyball in, like, fifty years.  I don’t even own tennis shoes.  All my “tennis” shoes are running shoes that are too old to run in, and they offer no lateral support.  I can’t move the way I used to, either, so I guess my shoes fit me fine.  I mean, I go to the gym four times a week, but that’s not the same as playing volleyball.

I could look like a fool.  I could let down the team.  I can just see me sending a ball sailing into the stands or spiking a ball into the net.

How can I get out of this?  “Mrs. X, I know I said I’d play, but my first duty is to my class.  Three or four of them may wish to stay and study, and I should stay back with them.  Duty calls.”

No.  I must steel myself and go through with this.  Besides, a lot of teachers signed up for this, so maybe I’ll play for, like, five minutes.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so self-conscious.  So what if I mess up some?  It’ll be fun.

What do you do with pizza crust?  A lot of people throw it away: it’s kind of dry, tasteless, and hard, especially compared with the rest of the pizza.  I used to throw mine away, too, but then I discovered dipping oil.

My family was at an Italian restaurant a couple of years ago, and the waitress brought us a small bowl of olive oil to dip our bread in.  The oil had a small brick of cheeses and spices that you could break up and spread around in it with the bread.  I loved it.

A few weeks later, it occurred to me that I could do that with my pizza crust.  I’ve experimented with lots of mixtures, and here’s the best I’ve found:

Three ounces of olive oil

Equal amounts of these spices:

black pepper

cumin

dill

chili powder

garlic powder

Spread it around with your crust, and make anyone else who wants to share yours mix his own instead.  Too many germs, otherwise.  Enjoy!

My mother has spent five minutes of an 82-year lifetime on a computer.

For years I’ve gotten my old man books.  My mother, too.  Everyone kind of expects books from me each Christmas.

Not this year, though.  I bought a gizmo to rock my parents’ world.  It’s called a “printing mailbox.”  It receives email and prints it.  There’s no screen, no computer.  Picture a one-way fax machine.  Picture an ugly one.

This thing wouldn’t rock your world or mine.  I wouldn’t own one, myself, but then I’m not in my eighties.  My parents have never owned a computer, and taken together, they have not spent more than five minutes on one in their collective lives.  That’s five minutes over the course of 167 years.

So I don’t think they’re going to buy a computer anytime soon.  The odds get longer the longer they live, too, I reckon.

I, however, love email.  It’s more fun for me than picking up the phone.  And I get tired of mailing my parents all of my blog posts and poems and interviews and things.  Mailing all that stuff is expensive and time-consuming.

That’s where the gizmo comes in.  They’ll have more of my writing and photographs, and I’ll send it as easily as I send email.  My parents have always been some of the biggest fans of my writing.  My mom likes most everything I write.  That’s a mom’s job, I figure.  And then when my old man kicks in with some compliments, I know it’s a special piece.

But I can’t just mail the machine to them.  It would never come out of its box.  I’ll have to sneak the gizmo in and install it when they’re not looking.  I’ll present it as a fait accompli.  I’ll also describe how much easier it will be for all of their children and grandchildren to communicate with them in the way they’ve become accustomed to communicate with everyone else on the planet.  I’ll point out to my pop how lawyers would now be able to fax him their pleadings and briefs. (He’s 85, and he still sits on the state court bench.  He’s amazing!)

But they’ll know that my whole motivation for the gift is selfish.  I just want to have more of my favorite, most faithful audience.  It’s like I’m back to giving my parents my ceramic masterpieces and my writing and my artwork for their refrigerator – all of the stuff I gave them when I was in elementary school.

They’ll know it’s selfish, but they won’t care.  I’m in my fifties and they’re in their eighties, but they’re still my parents.