Love About Life

Every year, I have my ninth grade students make lists of what they love about their lives...the more specific, the better.

This is my week:

I love my room when it is raining hard outside, gold light inside, and everyone is working on an assignment that takes some serious thought to do, but not to grade. The room hums.

I love walking to work in the morning and seeing Christmas lights gleaming through the dawn mist on the other side of the park.

I love sitting in the (very warm) balcony of our old movie theater, surrounded by people wearing Santa Hats, all watching "It's a Wonderful Life" and hissing at Mr Potter and cheering at the bank bailout and amazing speech.

I love watching the elk herd watch us while we all listen t the geese settle in for the night on the marsh. Twilight.

I love having a second pot of tea while visiting old friends.

I love stollen, baked on Christmas Eve. I also love the idea that, although four or five of us started with the same recipe, it has evolved in all of our houses.

I love the silence that falls when everyone at the table has a full plate.

I love fuzzy pants in the evening.

Latkes

                It was the fifth night of Hanukkah. We’re not Jewish—Mark attends Quaker meeting and I am a lapsed Catholic Transcendentalist, but I love Hanukkah—and latkes. It was latke night tonight.

                When I first moved to Oregon, my roommate was a Jewish guy. He was a great roommate; we agreed on food, politics, and music. We kept the kitchen kosher by simply not eating meat—not a great sacrifice on my part, because the cat’s food did not count. The first year out, I went home for late December, but, the second year, I was broke. The transition across the country had been hard. I was not used to the unrelentingly grey days and nights; winter in New England was bright. I struggled to find a decent paying job. I really missed my old job, where the weeks before Christmas were packed with prep, laughter, and hard work. My holiday rituals, which I had carefully considered and sorted a few years before,  felt out of place and had to be negotiated with my roommate. On Christmas Eve, I was pretty depressed and sprawled on my bed when my roommate stuck his head in the door.

                “Do you want to come with me to Hanukah?” he asked. He had been “adopted” by a Jewish clan on the other side of Portland and often visited on Friday nights.  I hesitated.  “You’ll feel better,” he added. I agreed, changed my shirt, and put on my Santa Claus earrings.

                The house was packed. Children ran everywhere. Adults talked. Holiday  music blared over the conversations. Candles were shining in the windows. The kitchen was steamy and smelled of frying oily potatoes. Everyone was glad to see my roommate—and me. One little kid skidded up to me, looked at the Santa faces and asked “Are you Christian??”   “Kind of,” I replied and he ran off. It was lovely.

                So, every year, we eat latkes for at least one night during Hanukkah. It has become another acknowledgement of the returning light in darkness, as that evening was for me.   I slice half an onion as thinly as I can, run an apronful of russet potatoes from the back yard through the cuisinart, toss in two fresh eggs, a handful of flour, salt, and pepper, and mix it all up. We bring up applesauce from the basement and make a green salad. I find the blue and white Chinese bowls for sauce and sour cream and fry the latkes in safflower oil, using my big cast iron pan. And we feast by candlelight— as many candles and holders as there have been nights. This year, we had five small silver stars floating in a blue bowl.  Their light shone long after dinner was over.

Monday Morning

Monday morning. 

The school building is quiet. Outside, fog hides the hills, the road is wet, the tree branches that dance outside of my winter window are finally bare. Cars come and go, a constant parade of parents, employees, late students, the occasional police vehicle….Inside, the building is warm. It smells of lunch and breakfast, showered and sweaty kids,  cheap perfume. Right now, it is still. Everyone is tucked in classrooms; far away, the Lunch Ladies’ voices echo up the stairs . For once, there are no beeps and warning whistles, no upset students shouting. My neighbor walks by quickly, heading to the copy machine before the next class begins.  In my room, the new strands of white lights hang under the plant shelf; beans sprout on windowsills; the painted chairs are still up on the desks; Becca’s Thousand Cranes spin softly for a paperclip hanger in the ceiling.

It is Monday morning—peace, warmth, and routine surround us.