Legacy

For several years two colleagues and I included a project in our Senior English classes called "The Legacy Project." This was a wonderful project which required senior students to work together in groups of their choice to conceive, create, and execute a legacy of some kind - that is, they were to leave something of significance behind for the school or greater community. It was a complex procedure that utilized a variety of skills useful in the workplace and culminated in things such as a stained glass window, memorials of a tree and a marker for a fellow classmate who had died, a new club at school such as SADD, etc. This idea of leaving a legacy was important to them and to us.

Also in the Senior curriculum we would read "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller. In it, Willy Loman hopes to live a prosperous life as a salesman and then die the death of a salesman. That is to say, he hopes that his life has touched so many people and clients, that when he dies the church will be overflowing with mourners who speak fondly of him and how "well-liked" he was. (Those of you who know the play, also know the ending - I won't spoil it for the rest of you!)

Now, as I find myself one month away from leaving my school community of 17 years, I've begun wondering what my legacy to the community and the school is. While I don't have such grandiose hopes as Willy Loman I will say this: without going into detail, I have begun to realize that my mere presence actually DOES make a difference to all of the teachers and students there. I have learned this because by leaving it, I see the changes that are happening (some are fine and some are very disappointing). So, in a very odd way, I'm finding that I must have left a legacy.

What would I LIKE my legacy to be? I'd like to think that my passion, love, sweat and tears (I know it is cliche, but it is also true), that somehow these things have impacted the 2000+ students who I have encountered there over the years. To be sure, academic lessons have been a focus, but I hope that life lessons and work-related skills will be my legacy, as well. To my colleagues, I hope I have touched their lives with my optimism and energy, my passion for teaching and the IB. To those teachers I have mentored over the years, I hope their own teaching and perspectives have been influenced positively by me somehow. To the curriculum, I hope to leave behind a value for authentic learning (like portfolio assessment, goal setting, and reflection). I'd like my legacy to be that the school culture and community has changed for the better because I have walked the halls there.

Even more importantly than these things is the legacy left to me by those at my school. How have I been touched? I've come to value my faith as it interacts with my vocation. I've come to see how important searching for TRUTH is. I've come to see how important it is to give away some of the control to my students so they can grab it, run with it, take risks, be creative, and GROW. I've grown in my teaching practice, my leadership, my joy, my ability to appreciate all kinds of people, my understanding of different cultures and times and places. Mostly, I value the people and the place that has been my school family for the past 17 years. More than ever, I realize life is not about stuff but relationship. This is what I shall take with me to Korea.

I'm young yet, and hopefully have many more years to live. But when all is said and done, I hope my legacy reaches beyond the classroom and the walls of any PLACE. Perhaps my hopes are like that of Willy Loman, to have been "well-liked" AND to have made a difference.

Living in the Moment

I'm getting asked more and more if I'm excited about our upcoming adventure and move to Korea. I'm also asked if I'm "checking out" at work. The short answer is "no." A somewhat better answer is "not really." An even better answer calls for a longer explanation, so here it goes.

A few years ago I tuned in to a podcast with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle on his book A New Earth. I've not read the book, but the discussions on the podcast covered all of the chapters in great detail. The essence of the book seemed to be about changing our focus from being "inside our heads" to living in the moment. As a person who had often lived in my head or contemplated the future, I was quite interested in this concept. And so I began to work to live in the moment. It took several months, but I believe I made quite a bit of progress.

Now I find myself thinking JUST ONCE what I have to do today rather than dwelling on the mental list. Yes, sometimes this causes me to forget something, but not often. In the meantime I have LIVED.

This doesn't mean that I've given up keeping a calendar or lists of things to do, but I spend little time on them.

It DOES mean that when I walk my dog I now am aware of the air on my skin, the temperature, the birds singing, squirrels running, the new growth on the trees and bushes, the way the light hits the treetops, the look on my dog's face as he runs back to me, the smell of the undergrowth or car exhaust. In the past these things would have been bypassed for thoughts in my head. They all would have been still occurring, but I wouldn't have felt, seen, heard, or smelled them.

And this takes me to my point about our upcoming adventure. I'm excited that a change is coming, but I rarely dwell on it. (Today I spent a minute anticipating that I will maybe be in a faculty that primarily embraces change; what a difference! But after that moment I returned to simply doing what I was doing, which happened to be dodging cars in the parkinglot on my way to the front door.) And that's how the minutes and hours primarily pass. It means that I tend to experience the here and now more fully than I ever did before(be it a precious moment with my kids or a stressful moment at work). It means that I haven't checked out at work because the here and now demands my attention. It also means that Korea isn't very real to me yet - simply because I'm not living it yet!

I'm enjoying life this way quite a bit! I invite my readers to do the same. Need a quick way to put yourself back in the moment? Think about your breathing. It works!

I came to you on a whim and divine providence

I came to you on a whim and divine providence.

Maz had said, I think Notre Dame is hiring. Why not see?
Forty-eight hours later I smiled nervously as "TBA" at new teacher in-service.
In an innocent instant one life had passed and another began.

Seventeen years later I marvel at how time flies.
The familiar rhythms of a school
Familiar faces in colleagues and students
Familiar lessons all make it seem easy now.
Can it be I began with only two sentences to guide my lessons?
Can it be I've seen a dozen administrators come and go
And likely 5 times that of colleagues?
Can it be I've taught and been taught by 2000 adolescents?
Phase I and II of renovation, new tennis courts, teachers' parkinglot, new football field all mark physical changes in the grounds,
Though the institution remains unchanged.
How could I have known a simple job inquiry would turn vocation,
sustaining me for so long?
How could I have known a simple job inquiry would see me through
two adoptions and the death of my father-in-law?
How could I have forseen the support of fellow POETS
And the coming and going of so many dear friends?

We live in the moment - like infants who
think you only exist when you are present;
We are most present to the time and place of Now.
So while the places we've been go on without us, we often don't think of them.
Sure, every now and then we dream of that perfect beach
we reclined upon once long ago
or that friend we haven't seen in years, but
Mostly we live each day as it comes.
Life demands it be so-
And that is how it should be.

I came to you on a whim and divine providence.
I leave the same way-
Off to some new adventure
The next leg of my life's journey.
I'll continue to BE and you shall, too.
We shall exist simultaneously but separately.
Every now and then we shall dream of one another and check
FACEBOOK for a message or a word,
for some way to keep connected while worlds apart.
No doubt your prayers for me and my memories of you
shall keep me anchored through the awkward
Beginnings in my new land.
No doubt I will tell them-

I came to you on a whim and divine providence.

Preparations warming up

So. . . the preparations to leave for Korea are warming up a bit. The four of us now have our passports in hand. Just a few more things are needed before Brent and I can pursue our work visas. These past two days of my Spring Break, we have begun more seriously to consider our remaining "stuff" (specifically that which is housed in the basement) and have begun to sort: TAKE, SELL, GIVE, STORE. The piles are somewhat equal in their volume at the moment. I'm excited that we'll be able to contribute to a friend's garage sale in May, rather than having our own. Particularly difficult for me is going through the kids' books and deciding what to keep, give, take along, sell. How can you even consider getting rid of Dr. Seuss? You just can't! That is probably why my mother saved our Dr. Seuss collection for some three decades before passing it along to me!

Perhaps the most important "preparation" is that which has to do with friends. It seems we are entirely blessed with so many friends here - through work and church and neighborhood. More and more I hear, "We're going to miss you." "You're a fixture around here. How can you go?" and "We've got to get together before you leave for Korea." This is all true! We are going to miss YOU, TOO! And we HAVE been well-embedded around here (with God's grace). And we simply MUST get together with you - soon!

And so it is that I am beginning to get my priorities straight. I've always known that friends and family - RELATIONSHIP - is the most important thing. But daily life gets in the way, and sitting at home watching TV on a cold evening is so much more inviting than traveling across town to visit with friends. That it UNTIL one realizes that the option of visiting just won't always be there. So now that I find myself willing to drive the extra miles and take the time to see friends, I'm afraid the urgency may be mine alone. Life too often gets in the way of living, doesn't it?

To conclude, I'd like to invite us all to reconsider our priorities and ACT upon that intuition that says, "PEOPLE, NOT THINGS." Make that phone call. Get that calendar out. Make those "play dates." Schedule the babysitter. But do spend quality time IN PERSON with those you love and care about. I shall do the same. Carpe Diem!

PS For those who read this or other posts, please post a comment!

Family Ties

There's something about family.

After a 5-day trip covering several hundred miles to see family, I returned today to my family, my husband and kids. I'm the same person, but I've got these different lives and roles to play. For 5 days I left my role as mother and wife and re-entered my role as sister, daughter, cousin, neice, and granddaughter. In some ways that brings me back in touch with a different "me". While taking a short break from visiting my grandmother in a nursing home, I was able to walk a few blocks down to where she and Grandpa used to live. What fun to relive memories from my childhood. These are the kinds of memories that don't come to you when you're sitting at a computer screen at work or putting away dishes in your kitchen. These are the kinds of memories that can only happen when you are actually back at Grandma's House (even if it is only lurking around the outside).

Grandma's house looks smaller from the outside than I remembered it (even though subsequent owners put on an addition). Grandma's 4 o'clocks have been replaced by bushes and the once spotless and flawless driveway meticulously tended by Grandpa has cracks and decay. The clothelines in the back are gone; those are where Grandma would put out her sheets and underwear to dry on a nice day (the undies were always hidden on the inside lines by the sheets). Grandma and Grandpa once had a bicycle built for two and showed us kids how to ride it by demonstrating, just the two of them. I thought it was the funniest thing seeing these "old people" ride the bike together! Little did I know that roughly 35 years later Grandma would still be around at 98.5 years old! My walk took me past the municipal pool. While only about 6 blocks from Grandma and Grandpa's house, I know my sister and I would often convince Grandma that she should drive us. Once at the pool I would no doubt annoy her with constant Look-at-me's the way kids do. I was convinced she wanted nothing more to do than watch my every move in the pool!

Such memories can only come to one when prompted by the PLACE. I fear that I may never have reason to go back to that little town once Grandma is gone. I fear those memories will go, too, once the PLACE is gone from my life.

But then again, a conversation with my Dad may prove me wrong. While sitting at his cabin this morning, we somehow got on the subject of HIS father who has long since passed on. I was astonished by all Dad was able to recall about his own father's childhood and upbringing, interests and life. I urged him to write his father's life-story so that it doesn't get forgotten for good.

Perhaps Dad should begin a blog?

Adoption

Is it just coincidence that I attend "Annie," a musical about an orphaned little girl adopted by a very rich man in the 1930's, in the same weekend as I attend for the 8th year the OURS Through Adoption Conference? Seems like this weekend is focused on adoption, so it seems appropriate that my blog do the same.

Having two adopted children doesn't always mean that I'm aware of our family as being "different," but certainly sometimes that comes in to play. Most of the time it doesn't really enter my consciousness, but other times it does and has to. Only now are my kids getting a handle on the concept of "family." So, I'm sure the questions are beginning more than ever before. If you're an adoptive family, I highly encourage you to stay connected to the adoption community; your family IS different than other families sometimes, and having support from other families can be invaluable to you. Having experiences with other kids like themselves, can be invaluable to the children.

Our family has been formed through a domestic adoption and an international adoption. I feel blessed to have had both experiences, but it means the kids' experiences are quite different, too. Our son knows his birthmother as we have an ongoing relationship with her family. Our daughter, having come from a Russian orphanage, will likely never know much about her birth family. If she does, it will be years from now and after a search. These are two VERY different stories with different ramifications for our children. A presenter today said something that stuck with me. She said that if we/I ever have a questions about our past we can find out the answer instantly; all it takes is a phonecall and someone will have a ready answer, but not so for those with unknown origins. I know my grandparents, their stories of how they met and fell in love, how old they were when they had children, what they ate at family celebrations and holidays, what they looked like and what their jobs were. If I want to know more about them or their siblings I can consult my mother or a family tree that has been compiled.

My daughter will not have any of this. It is no wonder that they can feel lonely and sad and disconnected or out of place. Who am I? Where do I belong? How am I like my parents? How am I different from them? How am I like my birth parents? How am I different from them? So many questions for now and later.

Once an adoptee, always an adoptee. It never goes away, and neither does the pain and grief of what has been lost. No adoption starts from a happy story. Think about a significant loss you've had - it doesn't matter what it was - that feeling of loss never leaves you; your life will never be the same. You'll learn to cope with the new life you lead, but you won't forget. And neither will the adoptee.

And so, today I have been reminded of the joys of being an adoptive family AND the pain and grief. I've been challenged to parent in a way today that will provide tools for my children through rough times in the future. Although Annie's story may be a bit too idealistic, I too say "tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow. You're always a day away."

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