Observations from the Invisibility Cloak

When I was 28 and writing poetry, I wrote a poem lamenting the feeling that I was invisible because I was no longer the youngest, cutest thing on the block --- and I had become a mother. Now I'm in my sixties and really invisible. And I like it!

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Three Years and Counting

It takes awhile to get perspective on anything. It has now been three years since I officially retired from my teaching job. This morning, I found my journal from that time and read it, from September 2010 right through the breakdown that put me on medical leave in January 2011, then into retirement. Trouble was brewing throughout, and I was staring down that deep well of depression long before the day I walked out. I put up a valiant fight. I nearly lost myself in the effort.

What is most striking for me is the language I used to describe my situation at school. It was a battle and I was in the trenches. I was responsible for my company of 21 students and felt like I was failing them. There were too many casualities. I also used a prison metaphor. At that time, I intended to work until I turned 62, two more school years. I saw it as a sentence. I would be paroled on my 62nd birthday, and would return to civilian life, the world outside, the real world.

I had developed many coping mechanisms and strategies for getting from one day to the next. Over and over, the saving grace was time with the kids. I journaled my delight in them, described them as precious, worried over them and celebrated their successes. I sought refuge and support in my network of colleagues, foxhole friends who struggled along beside me.

Perhaps the strangest bit I came across was the account of a day when I couldn't stop crying, felt hopeless and defeated at school, and one of the people who held some power told me that "Depression is from Satan, and Satan has you right where he wants you." I was stunned speechless. I did feel like I was living in hell, but would never have characterized it like that. Way outside of my belief structure!

What made me think of this today was talking to a friend who escaped from the public school insanity into a more balanced teaching position. Spring break has just passed, and I remember spring breaks and Sundays back when I was working. They were not times of rest and relaxation. Every Sunday was a marathon of work: writing lesson plans, making materials, researching ideas, checking work, bookkeeping, and devising strategies and lessons for individual students who needed particular attention. It was also the day of dread, knowing that 5:15 would come on Monday morning and it would be on again, 10-12 hour workdays, faculty and committee meetings, conferences, phone calls, emails, assessments, and oh yes, maybe even some teaching.

I thought about this today while lying on the guest bed upstairs, petting the dog and doing nothing except enjoying the experience of a peaceful Sunday afternoon. I know what my friends are likely doing today, I know what tomorrow morning will be like, and the pace of the work week, and the feeling that whatever you do it is never enough, and there's no way to catch up. I'm immensely grateful to be out of it.

I wish teaching was truly about education. I wish it was more about discovery and delight, and less about measurement and regulation. I wish children were not being conditioned to think of learning in the negative context of testing, competition, inadequacy and, far too often, failure. It's not like that for everyone, but too often that is the reality of school for students, teachers and administrators alike. 

I still miss my kids. I still think of them. I no longer feel like I failed them, for the most part. I know I did what I could to bring human kindness and love into those groups of 6 and 7 and 8 year olds. They were still curious, excited, and motivated to explore their world. I like to think I helped guide them in those important ways, at least a little bit ---- and let them know that I believed in them. Those are qualities they can carry forward much better than scores on a test or grades on a report card. And that's why I wanted to be a teacher in the first place.

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Value vs Values

A news story I found this morning about stolen art brings me back to a subject I find endlessly fascinating. How do we value the things around us?

A Gaugin painting, stolen and later sold at auction for a miniscule price, with other lost or abandoned items, hung in a man's home for over 40 years and nobody noticed. Had it been in a museum, it would have been seen and admired (or criticized) by thousands of people over that same time span. It would have been guarded and insured and protected from the elements. It would have been curated and maintained, listed in brochures, validated by experts to establish its provenance. As it was, it hung in the dining room because it was a picture of food.

So what is its true value? Is it the money it could fetch if sold at auction now? Is it the pleasure the man's family and friends derived from having a fine still life on the wall? The article says he also bought another painting of lesser value at the same auction. Its value must have been so much less that the artist didn't even deserve to be mentioned. So does the value lie in the artist's name and reputation? It might be that the "lesser value" painting was more appealing to its owner than the Gaugin. Who knows?

I find this topic interesting because I'm so surrounded by stuff in our house. Also because I've hung around with museum people and historians for so much of my life. I have a lot of family antiques which have been passed down for several generations. As to their monetary value, I have no clear idea. I know the family provenance for many pieces ----- Aunt Lou did the needlework on these chair covers, this doll came into Iowa territory in the covered wagon, this marble-topped table with the crack stood in Mimi and Grandaddy's parlor, the cobalt blue teapot with the abalone stork on the front and the broken spout were Mabel's. But if all this stuff was bundled up and shunted to the auction house, stripped of all ID except the physical descriptions, where would the value lie? For me, much of the value is in knowing the stories, identifying pieces in old photos, having heard the voices of great-grandparents who owned this collection of hatpins, those old postcards, this inscribed book. 

I could sell them at auction and carry home the money, but it wouldn't represent their value to me, nor would the new owners have the same appreciation as I have. They might love the lines of this chair, be ecstatic about completing a set of china,or feel they made out like a bandit on this old mahogany secretary ----- those are values, too. But not the same as knowing who sat in those chairs one hundred years ago. 

We all get caught up in worth and value. It underlies most decisions, whether we're aware of it or not. We exercise value and worth whether comparing prices on paper towels at the grocery store or deciding between the house with five acres in the country or the one in town with a two car garage and a hot tub. Our values show up in everything we do and so often it has little to do with the inherent value of something. Remember those commercials for whatever the product was ---- popcorn and ice cream $10, helium balloons $20, smiles of a birthday kid, Priceless? That's the deal.

There have long been admonitions and sayings about value and worth, reminders that "The best things in life aren't things" or "You can't take it with you." Perhaps it is human nature to want to hoard and store up things to pass along, or hedge against future uncertainty. One of my oldest friends, who along with her husband and sons had built their dream house, doing much of the work themselves, lost it all in a fire. Nobody was home. It was a complete loss, but they were all ok. Later she told me that the things she missed the most were the mementos, the baby pictures, saved letters, things that were personal and irreplaceable. Things related to people and their stories, to love.

I ask myself frequently what it is that I love, what matters the most? In the way of my ancestors, I won't have any money to leave my children, but there will be stuff ---- stories and things that won't last forever, may or may not have monetary value, and will present them with the necessity of making decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. That will be my legacy of material wealth, but I don't believe it's all that I leave. The most valuable things I leave my kids have nothing to do with stuff, and everything to do with worth. And values. And love.