MindSpinner

“I love your dress,”
the preschool teacher
told me this morning,
after admitting she’d
forgotten my name.
I don’t wear this dress often:
the bottom buttons,
modestly secured according to
the dress code for teachers,
impede purposeful strides,
the sort that get me to the copier
and back to the classroom
during the last five
minutes of lunch.

In the spring of 2000,
during the long beginning
of an ending,
I bought this dress
for a business trip to Hilton Head,
a planning meeting.
(Once upon a time
and for a little while,
I did freelance work
in Web design.)
I carried a suitcase
containing the dress
and other things new,
a laptop and a 10-pound cake
through three airports
to deboard a tiny plane
on the island, pausing on the way
to the rental house,
not alone, to walk along the docks
where people played in music and light
reflected on water.

Seven years later,
far from a shore I walked on for a day,
I have a dress
I sometimes wear to school,
a shell a little boy gave me
on a stroll down the beach,
a photograph of people at work,
ideas posted all over a pool house,
a memory of friends gathered
(these partners were friends),
the indelible surprise of a wrap offered
when I was cold, and gracious goodbyes.
I have songs.

According to MapQuest,
I am 633 miles (and seven years)
from Hilton Head today.
Funny that I was ever there,
in another world.
Funny that a dress is here
and a shell - artifacts.
Funny what remains.

Spread newspaper on table. Find good short paring knife and the first of several required bowls. Place laptop beside newspaper and turn on NPR because snapping an entire bucket of beans will take a while and could get a little dull. (After checking a bean for spots, it is possible to read a sentence or two online while breaking it.)
Grab a couple of handfuls of beans and put them on the newspaper beside bowl.
Trim each end off bean and snap beans into 1″ pieces.
Put Orange Stripey Dude down off the table.
Trim beans and snap.
Put Orange Stripey Dude down off the table.
Trim beans and snap. Grab another handful of beans from bucket.
Put Orange Stripey Dude down off the table.
Trim beans and snap. Hold Orange Stripey Dude for a few minutes and scratch under his chin before putting him back on the floor.
Trim beans and snap. Grab another handful of beans from bucket.
Put Orange Stripey Dude down off the table and give him his very own bean to play with.

Who knew how much fun a grean bean could be? Not me. Sounds of chasing and batting come from under the table.

Trim beans and snap. Get another bowl. Note that Orange Stripey Dude has grown weary at last and is falling asleep, lying with his back against the refrigerator, his left front paw resting atop his green bean.

1) I checked the beans yesterday and have a bucketful, so I’m pulling out the canner. I have enough tomatoes to make a small batch of sauce, too. I am happiest in the garden and least happy bumping about by myself in the house, ordering aimlessness with a to-do list. Today, however, it is steamy hot out. I’ll save the outdoors for evening.

2) I had thought that cats were loners of the animal world, that they preferred their own territory. Certainly Bobby, our five-year-old cat, has never liked other cats; he tolerates dogs better because he is more accustomed to them. Presented with a neighbor’s Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy (a creature bred for lion hunting), he will chase it around in the spirit of fun. Presented with a new cat, he will hiss and spit. And so he did at first with the orange kitten who has come to stay. Orange Stripey Dude, for his part, unabashedly expected to be loved and played with and would have no demurring. So now they play, they bathe each other with their tongues, and they often curl up together for a nap. So much for cats being solitary creatures.

3) The new academic year planners do me good. They have “November 2008″ printed right in front of me on physical pages, promising that the next presidential election really will come, and George Bush really will have to leave office.

4) My fifth period sophomore class of about 25 students has at least one precocious student who performs at college level, three who read at fourth grade level and one who reads at first grade level. One expects a range of abilities, but this mix is unusually challenging.

Whenever I run the water for my daily bath and step into the water, the kitten (AKA Orange Stripey Dude) insists on presiding. He wears a new expression on his face as he peeks over the top of the tub at me and down into the water. His eyes wide, the look is something between grave concern and mild alarm. He seems to be saying, “You aren’t going to drown, are you? Please tell me you are not suicidal. Don’t you know that it’s possible to drown in a mere two inches of water - I’ve never heard read this, of course, because I don’t read, but I know it because I am a cat, and cats don’t need to read things in order to know them. I’d say you’ve got four inches of water in there, not two, which likely doubles your chances of perishing. Be careful! Go easy with that sloshing about. Now, look what you’ve done.  Your ears are wet!”

The application of shampoo to my hair elicits even greater concern and two or three steps back. Orange Stripey Dude’s green eyes widen even farther and his back hunches a little. I don’t need a mirror to confirm that I’ve been transmogrified by suds. He is a question mark in striped pajamas. “Are you still you? Or are you becoming something else? Why does your head keep changing shape? Aaiyih, jump back! Part of your head just fell off, and it’s floating away there, in the water!”

This morning I read in the New England Journal of Medicine online about another cat, a cat named Oscar. Oscar assists patients, families, and medical staff on the third floor of Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island. If Oscar curls up beside a patient, it’s time to call the family.

Since I teach at a school that operates on a semi year-round schedule, summer break lasts, in practical terms, about six weeks. That six weeks has come to an end. With the first day of school just around the corner, I just want to tally and celebrate the best of summer.

• Taking four girls to see the mewithoutYou concert and inadvertently meeting one of the band members beforehand, a feat which, for one brief shining moment, made me a way-cool mom .
• Taking Dark-haired Daughter and Catapult Kid whitewater rafting. Hearing “No guide! No guide!” all the way down the country until we saw the river and then hearing “We’re going to die!” instead.
• Watching them paddle all over the lake at my mother’s home in our big canoe.
• Spending time with extended family, including my brother and his family. Helping my mother stake anasazi beans.
• Paying attention to the wild upstarts I’ve called weeds for years and years and learning what they actually are.
• Waking up to rain that ends a dry spell and waters everything at once.
• Driving down to see a not-so-far-away college to learn about its commitment to sustainable living and sustainable agriculture. Seeing how a straw bale house is built. Learning about permaculture techniques that make a lot of sense.
• Going to see Wild Hogs with Catapult Kid one night when his sister was working. (Catapult Kid is doing the inner work of leaving home and declaring his independence - rather overdoing it - which means that good mother-son time is a big deal when it happens.)
• Getting on the Interstate going south with Catapult Kid when we should have gone north. We ended up turning around one exit down and pulling into gas station/fast food joint where Catapult Kid bought food for a homeless guy who had almost the same last name and I bought a handmade basket from an Amish couple.
• Noting how many high school students showed up at Open House at school when they really don’t need to, just to see everybody and to say hello. It really will be OK for school to start next week - these are lovable kids.