Double life

I drive to work in the sunrise. At 7:30am, Jiovanna tells me, "Ms. Gernes, I'm going to grow up like that" as she snaps her fingers and shakes her five pigtails. Roderick has his first temper tantrum at 7:45. Arlisha writes in her journal about "friends haveing hot love with ea chotherse." I give a "not okay in school, not okay till you're older" talk to a 6-year-old. I teach until I'm hoarse and clenched, listen to Kerrianna finally sound out "Hop on Pop" for the first time, convince Demetric that he really should go home instead of living at school and playing Legos all night, drive home.

In Cleveland after work, John goes to Wal-Mart, picks up the last two remaining cartons of tofu. The Wal-Mart associate standing next to him says, "Shoo, you mean you really eat that stuff??" He can hear the double question mark. "It's actually really good." "Man, you crazy." He goes to the self-check to avoid further condemnation.

I come home and do yoga, read prose that flows like a meditation, pick six-petaled flowers while walking on the banks of a creek, eat that tofu with a venegance.


***
To begin writing from our pain eventually engenders compassion for our small and groping lives. Out of this broken state there comes a tenderness for the cement below our feet, the dried grass cracking in a terrible wind. We can touch the things around us we once thought ugly and see their special detail, the peeling paint and gray of shadows as they are -- simply what they are: not bad, just part of the life around us-- and love this life because it is ours and in the moment there is nothing better.

~Natalie Goldberg, "Writing Down the Bones"