I made the school lunches today. The food was so-so (sandwich, Cheez-Its®, apple), but I also added a treat: little notes.
My mother occasionally packed one of these in my sack lunch when I was in elementary school. Finding the note, which I kept to myself, made the afternoon at school glow.
The semester has ended.
Well, almost.
The part of the semester that involves students has ended. I’m still sitting at my desk, calculating grades. The tally must be done — it’s part of the job — but this task is pretty dry.
There’s always a letdown at this point, when the real reasons for late nights, bags stuffed with paper, sharpened pencils, furrowed brows, last-minute prep, beautiful handouts, and teacher’s sighs pack up and go home.
Students. I miss them when they go, even just for winter break.
In the past few days, since a culminating evening of student presentations in one course I teach in, I find myself wanting to turn to my colleagues (other staff on the same course) and sing to them a random song that my sister Sally and I used to sing to each other on occasion and at random. Here’s how I (mis)recall the lyrics, and what I would sing: “The party’s over… take off your makeup… wake up, my friend…” The sound and the words linger on what has passed and will never happen, in just this way, again.
It’s a Nat King Cole song, yet Sally and I probably listened to the Johnny Mathis version on our parents’ phonograph player.
I can’t find a video of a live performance by either NKC or JM, but there’s a good one by Shirley Bassey. Check out the arm flutters when she sings, “The candles flicker and dim.”
Where was the scrap of paper on which I had written down the date and time for a long overdue haircut? I remembered inserting that scrap between some others I’ve accumulated in my school bag.
I couldn’t find it. I took my wallet, notebook, pencil case, and glucose monitor kit out of my bag, and I peered into the morass. I stirred the papers and other items resting on the bottom. The scrap I had in mind did not float up.
I dumped out the bag onto the floor in the hall. Although I didn’t find what I was looking for, I did find all this: the evidence of an autumn that has flown by.
the things she carried, 12.9.2008
Yes, I did style the pile a bit to make the contents distinctly visible and composed.
Here’s the list. Make of it what you will.
Not junk, not junk at all. Really, artifacts.
And now I’m going to start something from this. Let’s call it the School Bag Meme. I tag my blogging and college teaching friends Alex, Dr. Poppy, James, Jan, and Rosemary. What’s in yours, at this very moment? And how or why did it get there?
It’s a few minutes before the girls have to leave for school, and Grace is gathering her accoutrement: ponytail holder, socks, a tattered bag of yarn. She also plunks down a pile of books. I wonder how she’ll get all this into her pouch and up the hill to school.
big. books.
I ask, “Why so many books? Is it library day?”
Without pausing (as though she has been waiting for this question), she tunefully replies, “Nope. I like big books and I cannot lie.”
Which seems to me a much better use of that song than the song itself.
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P.S. Dear Mom and Dad, you might not want to click through to the song video, in the line above. (Or now you might, because I’ve activated your curiosity.) The things your grandchildren are exposed to, on the tv and radio? Well, more than I was at their ages. Yes, times have changed.
You could buy this from soleilgirl’s Etsy shop:
Or make something like it. A little felt, a bit of thread, a steady hand to cut and sew.
Link via whipup.
I wasn’t intending to buy baby bok choy. In fact, I had never bought the leafy green before.
But it caught my eye as I strolled the produce display, looking for a red pepper, in my recently re-arranged supermarket. I saw it and my brain leaped to the idea of “Soup!”
Attention-getting label on baby bok choy
When I got home and unloaded the bags, I realized that some other shopper, or maybe even a produce clerk, had put back the bok choy and mistakenly turned the recipe-labeled side of the package so that it was facing the shoppers. On the other side, there is a small label on the big product window, as is normal for packaged greens. I wouldn’t have bought it (or all the other soup ingredients, which I did), probably, if all I had seen was the usual view.
Perhaps words or information about the leaf persuaded me more than the leaf itself.
In any event, keep reading for my version of the recipe for the soup, which was easy and good. My variations are in purple. Continue reading
leaf stitch word 