This is all you need today – the sudden beauty of a simple poem.
After Frank O’Hara / After Roger Reeves
Ocean, don’t be afraid.
The end of the road is so far ahead
it is already behind us.
Don’t worry. Your father is only your father
until one of you forgets. Like how the spine
won’t remember its wings
no matter how many times our knees
kiss the pavement. Ocean,
are you listening? The most beautiful part
of your body is wherever
your mother’s shadow falls.
Here’s the house with childhood
whittled down to a single red tripwire.
Don’t worry. Just call it horizon
& you’ll never reach it.
Here’s today. Jump. I promise it’s not
a lifeboat. Here’s the man
whose arms are wide enough to gather
your leaving. & here the moment,
just after the lights go out, when you can still see
the faint torch between his legs.
How you use it again & again
to find your own hands.
You asked for a second chance
& are given a mouth to empty into.
Don’t be afraid, the gunfire
is only the sound of people
trying to live a little longer. Ocean. Ocean,
get up. The most beautiful part of your body
is where it’s headed. & remember,
loneliness is still time spent
with the world. Here’s
the room with everyone in it.
Your dead friends passing
through you like wind
through a wind chime. Here’s a desk
with the gimp leg & a brick
to make it last. Yes, here’s a room
so warm & blood-close,
I swear, you will wake—
& mistake these walls
for skin.
Sicily and I sitting in the house she designed and we built together as her school project. School doesn’t need to look like “school.”Links in this caption tell the story behind the picture.
The school was a lot like homeschooling in the sense that The Child and I padded down the hall to the living room four days a week and welcomed paying students into our house to work on designing and building projects that ranged from a go-cart to a tiny house (above) to a hydroponic greenhouse to a chicken coop (with a DIY-incubator that hatched exactly one rooster – but it worked).
So here’s today’s message, aimed squarely at those who suddenly find themselves at home with grade-school kid(s) who are confronted with the sudden “freedom” that doesn’t feel free and a caregiver who is nothing like their regular teacher and not normally the academic boss of them:
DO NOT TRY TO RE-CREATE SCHOOL AT HOME.
This is crucial for several reasons. First, you have no idea what you are doing. It’s ok. Teaching is an art and a skill and requires training to do for 30 kids in a classroom. That’s how the majority of us experienced school, and so we would naturally think that our kids need this at home also, but they totally don’t and will resist. They may find it fun or mildly amusing for a bit, but we are in this for the rest of the school year (at least), so you might as well just throw that particular bathwater out right now.
So what the hell are you supposed to do, especially if you are also working at home for the first time, and you already want to strangle your miserable children?
Breathe. That’s the first step.
Next, if your kids are old enough, sit down with them and see if you can come up with a loose schedule of sorts. Think about what your non-negotiables are (e.g., set conference calls or meetings that require your full attention and silence), ask them for theirs, and see what you come up with. Maybe they negotiate some daily screen time that can occur at this time, or perhaps you have readers who can use this as set, daily reading.
Your schedule does not have to look like anyone else’s. Maybe you have kids who like to stay up late and sleep in. Why would you try to wake them at their normal school time? Give yourself permission to abandon that daily struggle. You can use this time to do work that requires peace and quiet. Learn your family’s rhythm, and follow it.
And what should you teach?
In my personal opinion, probably 80% of what your kid’s teachers sent home is garbage. That’s not the teachers’ fault. It’s just that you cannot replace such a connected practice as teaching with a worksheet or online course. The only subject I would say to follow if at all possible is math. This is also negotiable, and math is everywhere.
Take this time as an opportunity for your kids to really explore something they are interested in. Have a conversation about what they love and let them go full HAM. How many times have you had to pry your kid away from something (other than a screen) so you could leave the house? Maybe it’s drawing, building with LEGO, music, juggling a soccer ball. Whatever it is, DIVE DEEP. Let them explore, and then let them tell you what they know.
Otherwise? Read. Read out loud, to each other, and talk about what you’ve read. Read comic books, novels, non-fiction, magazines, the back of cereal boxes. Read plays out loud, as they are meant to be read, or let your kids write their own and read those out loud.
Kids can’t read yet? Let them illustrate a story, dictate it to you, and then you read it to them.
Don’t worry about sight words, phonics, worksheets, spelling tests.
Throw out comprehension worksheets and ask them questions about what they have read that you actually want to know the answer to. Have them point out what made them think their thoughts about the reading. Let them write alternative endings, fan fiction.
Have your kids write letters to family members currently in quarantine or just far away. Let them start a journal or design a blog, or both. Consider adding morning pages to your routine (modify the suggested number of pages as needed, of course).
As much as possible, involve your kids in your daily activities. Teach them how to cook and bake (baking is real chemistry, BTW), or learn with them if you are clueless in the kitchen.
If you have projects around the house, let your kids help. Who cares if it takes longer? Where are you going? NOWHERE, friends. You are going NOWHERE.
So slow down, live into where you are RIGHT NOW.
Finally, don’t ignore your health. We may be getting close to a time where we find ourselves actually confined to our houses (or maybe you are already there). There are a variety of practices that can keep you connected to your body and ease your mind during this time.
Shameless plug: the studio where I teach yoga (Yoga Tree in Baltimore) is offering classes online, at an introductory price of $39 for two weeks. Sure, you could get yoga free online, but if you want to support a small business and practice with me online, check it out. My first class is tomorrow night – Sunday the 22nd – from 5:30 – 6:45.
Bottom line: your kids don’t need you to be their teacher.
They need you to be connected, present, and healthy.
You can do it. If you take the time to slow down and figure out first what makes sense for your family instead of forcing something that just doesn’t work, you will be surprised by what everyone learns.
If you are a parent, what has helped in these early stages of our new normal? Please comment below or on Instagram @charmcityedibles.
Today Khristian Weeks and I went for a long walk at Lake Roland. Which was great, except it seemed that many other people had the same idea for a long walk before the rain comes tonight.
And then halfway through our walk it struck me that our bodies have become weaponized with this virus. I didn’t really want to be close to people out walking, and any time anyone sneezed it felt dangerous.
Another walker passing by commented that it sure is a shitty time to have allergies. #heard
But then there is the other side of this, the positive things that are beginning to emerge from this ongoing (and much longer than we think, IMVHO) crisis. The U.S. has figured out that yes, we can help everyone, from the poor to the elderly to the uninsured, if we put our mind (and our priorities) to it.
Maybe we are even beginning to appreciate some of the things we have taken for granted. Freedom of movement. Comfort. Toilet paper.
Calm the fuck down on that last one, people. Good lord.
Anyway.
Towards the end of our walk, I spied a little spiky plant next to the path – stinging nettle. Long reviled as an evil weed, this plant is arguably one of the most nutrient-dense plant foods available in the wild. Not only is stinging nettle delicious as food, cooked to remove the sting, but the root extract also helps to relieve allergy symptoms. There is not a ton of research on this, but some studies have been promising. Proceed with caution, as it can also, ironically, cause allergy symptoms.
So this little plant seems to sum up our current global crisis. Yes, there are barbs that must be dealt with, preferably gently and with great care, but in the end there may be innumerable benefits if we can just bring ourselves to look past the prickly outside (and since the virus itself looks spiky, this is also a skillful metaphor. I had the phrase “very skillful metaphor,” but decided it was more obvious than skillful and so eliminated the “very”).
And there we are. Today’s missive, literally from the field.
Wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and cough into your elbow. And take an allergy pill before you go for a walk.
How you know it’s serious: boxed wine stores are low at The Wine Source
It’s March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day if you care about that sort of thing. The sun is shining, mostly, and Khristian and I are practicing social distancing from everyone but each other.
I have taken the cat for a walk (which is funny), and we have gone to my house for a re-stock on books and supplies for gluten-free scones. I am about to crack a pineapple cider (Austin Eastciders) and maybe will continue to read aloud from Michael Pollan’s book A Place of My Own, dreaming of a day when Canada opens its borders back to people in the U.S. and we can start building our little shack.
It’s strange times, these, and I have to have some sort of plan for myself to keep anxiety at bay. So far I am not great at doing the right things (e.g., staying off social media and not compulsively checking the news), but I am writing this instead of doing those things. Perhaps I will do this daily, write a dispatch, so to speak, and send it into the void as everyone learns how to work at home and crowds onto the internet like the train platforms they used to stand on for their daily commute. I have a few recipes to work on from recent travels, and those will happen in the next week or so.
How will you spend this time of quietly reflected madness where we try not to peer too deeply into the darkness of what might be?
Wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and cough into your elbow.
