On helping ...

Tina decided we were going to be in the Uff Da Mud Run in Grand Forks, ND.  I'm not quite sure how she talked me into it - but she did.

I'm not sure I knew what I was in for until I paid the registration fee and starting reading about the different obstacles. I was scared to death.

Caron, Tina, and I trained.  We ran. And then, we ran some more.  We army crawled.  We swam.

Eventually...   they put the course map out.


View UFF DA mud run (public) in a larger map


In the back of my mind, I figured I would do some of the obstacles and support Tina and Caron as they managed the course.




 Every Thursday, we met at the park and ran the hills of Red Lake Falls.  I always knew they were faster than I was, but I plugged away.  I did what I could.

Friday night, Caron and Tina picked me up.  We registered for the race and went for supper.  We scanned the course took a big gulp went home and tried to sleep.

Jason brought  me and the girls to the starting line the next morning.  Natalie and I stood at the riverbank looking at the final swim when she turned to me and said "Mom, it's just sad."

"What?"

"I wonder how many people will drown today."

 IF that didn't comfort my anxiety for the day, I'm not sure what would.

Tina, Caron, and I started at the finish line pumped and ready to go!

We started over the first few obstacles of muddy rocks, hay bales, and increasing wall heights, and looked at each other and knew we were going to try them all.

I wasn't the fastest runner, but I had heart and determination, and I did things that day that I never thought I'd do.

What sticks in my mind the most is when I stood in line to climb a cliff and thinking that there was no way I'd do that.  In the back of my mind, I wondered how I was going to get out of it.  I watched Tina go, and then, Caron.  I decided that if they could do it, I could do it too.  I grabbed the rope and wrapped the rope around my wrist.  I climbed up  about 4/5 of the way and looked down.  I did not want to fall. I was so tired.  I looked up - it seemed so far.  I looked down.  I didn't want to go down either.  And, at the top my friends yelled "You can do it. You can do it."  And I went a bit further.. and then, arms hugged on to me, and they lifted me up the rest of the way.  I did it. 

In every day's struggles, I think of  reaching the top with someone's help.  I think of helping kids get to the top.  I'm more determined. 

Rockstars

I'm in awe.  We did it.  We swam. We crawled.  We jumped. We balanced.  We climbed. We laughed.  I'm in awe at what my friends helped me do.


There were a few times that I wondered if I would quit, but they pushed me through to the end.  After this, I think I can do anything. 

On Summer

The past few weeks we've been busy enjoying summer.  August brought the beginning of summer for Allie Ann as her neck brace came off.



We spent every spare minute at the pool enjoying the freedom of being young and healthy.  We even got Allison's bike fixed up only to realize that she is too tall for her small bike.

 I saw that my youngest daughter has grown up.  When I looked to my oldest, I realized that she is a hair to be being half way to twenty.

I'm reminded of the Robert Frost poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay. 

As summer turns to fall, I see the girls age a year.  The growth always astounds me in the Fall, when nature is the most golden.

 

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19977#sthash.XiFHu3wv.dpuf

Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19977#sthash.XiFHu3wv.dpuf

Uff Da - Mud Run?

Tina talked me and our friend Caron to do a Mud Run next month.

We've been running.  We've been walking.  We've been cutting wood.



We've been hanging from monkey bars wondering if... perhaps we could swing from one bar to the next.  So far, for me, the answer has been no.

I'm not sure why I agreed to do this.  Maybe it's because I'm going through a mid-life crisis?  I'll be forty in 10 months you see.

But yes.  I decided to do something that scares me.


View UFF DA mud run (public) in a larger map


Maybe I realized life is to short to sit on a couch?  Maybe life is too short to be scared? Maybe I need an adventure.  It looks like I got an adventure.

Hiroshima

This spring, I requisitioned 30 copies of Hiroshima by John Hersey. Personally, I had never heard of the book until five years ago when I assigned a journal asking students what book they would recommend for me to read.  At the end of class, one of my students went to my book shelf and came back with the classroom copy.

Japan has always pulled at my heartstrings.  There were a few exchange students from Japan in my high school, and I was always drawn to be their friend.  I even took a year of Japanese in high school.

 I read the book within a few weeks of the recommendation.

I decided we would read Hiroshima this Spring. As I researched the book, I learned the the book was originally published within The New Yorker published a year after the bombing of Hiroshima.  What fascinates me is the cover.

Never would a reader suspect what the story enfolded within the magazine. The irony of the cover floors me.  I wonder if I could make this bigger and make it a book cover to give students the effect that readers had had 67 years ago.  They would get the book thinking it was entitled The New Yorker with a picture of Americans in Central Park having the time of their lives, but when they read, they would realize what the Japanese were encountering at the same time.

We'll see what happens here - I'd like to have students look at many opinions and try to grasp an opinion of their own.  Personally, it's awesome when an junior high student picks it up and places it in his teacher's hand.  Then, that teacher takes that book and passes it out five years later to a Senior High English class. 

Macbeth

I'm here to tell you I have never read Macbeth.

And bam!  Here it is in next year's book for my eleventh and twelfth graders.

I'm liking it.  I've never taught Shakespeare.

In five years of teaching, I've never had a Shakespeare play put in my curriculum.

In five years of teaching, I've had to renew my license without ever teaching Shakespeare....

So, my palms are a little sweaty.  I'm looking down at the dirt and tilting one foot.  I'm a little shy on the idea.

So, I take out my text and read.  I find resources online and consider which resources are useful to the kids and which resources sound like a thirty-nine year old chubby lady trying to make Shakespeare cool and hip. Maybe I'll go for the meaningful.

And I take out my text and read again.

And I remember my Shakespeare 314 and Brit Lit 200.  This is why I became an English teacher.  I remember sitting across from Tina Mar and Kurt in our tiny classroom and trying to figure it out while Dr. Drake asked just the right questions.  

And even so, this is the first time I've ever read Macbeth.  But alas, it will be the second time I read Macbeth when I read it with my senior high this fall!

Vision

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.
Helen Keller

 My mom's dad died when she was thirteen.  Her favorite memories of her dad is when they traveled.  My dad's dad died when dad was fifteen.  And so, mom and dad decided when Missi and I were young that we would travel.  We would make memories to last a lifetime.

Mom and dad took Missi and I to Disney World, Michigan, Washington D.C., Hawaii, South Dakota, and the Wisconsin Dells.  Eventually, Nathan joined us on our travels.  We made memories.

Mom and dad wanted to make a impression.  They wanted us to realize that the world was bigger than Red Lake Falls.  There was more to the world than our seventh grade classes.  There were more people in the world to embrace.  

The truth of the situation is that Missi got to see these things before losing her sight.  Missi will forever remember seeing the mountains.  She will  forever remember seeing the ocean.