Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
I considered not writing today, taking a sick day because I am sick. I’ve had a cold and cough (Covid negative) for a week. This morning I decided to go to Urgent Care, and they have fixed me up with a steroid, cough medicine, and antibiotic. Excuse me while I cough.
I hate being sick. Does anyone really like feeling bad? No. But I can still be grateful.
For a cup of tea, and my dog next to me.
A soft place to lay, a comfortable place to stay.
Gratitude still owns my heart when all else seems to fall apart.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
Every first Thursday I join a group of bloggers writing around a spiritual topic. Today, Ruth is the host, and she chose ashes as the topic. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday. I am Episcopalian and attend an old historical church that was built by slaves in the mid 1800’s. I’ve attended this church for close to 40 years. In the last year, my friend Annie has taken the position of priest in charge. She is the first female priest in the history of our parish. Annie’s compassion and her ability to be present in the moment comforts me, even when she was marking my forehead with a smudge of ash and saying, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”
Impermanence. We are not here forever. It’s not the most joyful thing to embrace. But in understanding and accepting my impermanence, I can be present in the moment. I can feel the soot on my forehead and touch the bread of life and know that I am loved.
The sign of the cross in ashes is the same gesture the priest makes with oil at baptism, saying “You are marked as Christ’s own forever.” No one can take away my belonging to God. Some days, especially during Lent, I need to sit with this belonging and be okay with who I am. I am enough.
Today’s Round-up for Spiritual Thursday posts is at Linda Mitchell’s site, A Word Edgewise.
I like to buy flowers. When I go to the grocery store, I often put a bouquet of flowers in my basket. I consider it rescuing them from certain death. Sometimes I find someone to give them to and other times, I cut them and place them in a vase for my husband and me to enjoy. Flowers just make life better.
Colorful roses from Walmart
The other day my neighbor shouted from her doorway, “Don’t go! I want to show you something.”
She brought out the amaryllis bulb I had place on her doorstep around Christmas time. It was blooming, a beautiful white double blossom.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she cried. “Do you want it back?”
“Of course not. It’s meant for you to enjoy.”
“I do love flowers, you know.”
Heart card collage by Margaret Simon
What is in your heart today? Love, gratitude, grief? It’s all there. Take time today to hold your own heart with compassion. Buy yourself flowers.
To end this post, I want to share Avalyn’s heart poem. This was not my doing. She saw it in a book (Sharon Creech’s Love That Dog) that you can make a poem into a shape, so she wanted to try it. I showed her a quick YouTube video, and she created her own.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
I filled the last page of my notebook, the one I use every day as I write alongside my students. We use marbleized composition books. With decorative paper, magazines, and other things, we collage covers for our notebooks. The last few days I have been stealing a few minutes here or there to work on my new notebook. Here are my completed covers. I tend to be pretty critical of my own collage work, but I like these.
My new writing notebook for 2022
One of the elements on the front cover came from an ArtSpark postcard exchange with Jone MacCulloch and Amy Souza. I cut the quotes on the back from a 2021 calendar.
May the space between where I am and where I want to be inspire me.
Tracee Ellis Ross
This week I am sharing videos from Margaret Alvarez about gratitude art journaling that I discovered in an email from The Network for Grateful Living. We’ve enjoying playing with these easy, yet creative ideas in my classroom. Day one was “Life is a gift” using watercolor shapes and sharpie designs. Day two we did string art. My students have been highly motivated by art journaling. These ideas are simple enough for my second graders while creative enough for my 6th graders. And it’s fun!
This month’s Inkling challenge comes from Heidi. She invited us to “use the form” of the poem, The Lost Lagoon, by Emily Pauline Johnson (d. 1913) to build a “poem for children about a treasured place that you return to again and again.”
Most of our group had tackled this challenge early on. I thought I might not make it. After Christmas and a family trip, I had been away from writing for a few weeks. Often when I take a break like this, I feel I’ll never write another poem. I decided to take my head out of the sand and face it. On Sunday I opened The Lost Lagoon. I copied it into a document and went to work writing beside it. I didn’t follow the form exactly, but in many ways the exercise led me to say what I wanted to say.
One of my favorite photos from our family trip to North Carolina became my muse. The guys enjoyed making nightly fires in the fire pit outside our mountain house. The toddler boys enjoyed participating (at a safe distance) in blowing on the fire. My daughters captured the scene in two photographs.
Over Blue Mountain
See Sun set over blue mountain; Dada builds fire to light the way beneath a cloud-shining golden ray. I twirl in steam of an ending day and blow flames for a sparkling fountain.
In the dark, a song begins to bloom and follows a cow’s mooing tune, a howl of dogs under rising moon, the logs of the fire crackle and croon and gone is the nighttime gloom.
Oh, why can’t I stay out all night to watch Cow jump over the moon and feel the dawning sky too soon? I dream I’m lifted like a balloon– in Dada’s arms I’m safe and right.
We are gathering again for the first Thursday of each month. This is an open invitation to any blogger who would like to join us. We post on the first Thursday of the month. Each month is hosted by a different blogger. We do not adhere to any specific religious affiliation. We are here to express our thoughts about how our spiritual lives are going. Let me know in the comments or by email if you’d like to be on the list of participants.
Blessings, Margaret
I’ve been choosing a One Little Word to guide my year for many years now. I have a collection of MudLove bracelets that express my different words. I’ve even begun a practice of gifting little words to some of my friends. It’s probably against the OLW policy to assign someone a word, but the friends who receive one seem to like the idea. At an NCTE conference sometime around 2014, I was given a MudLove bracelet. I love wearing my word.
Enough, 2022
My word came to me while I was reading Jess Keating’s Epic Email.
Everything you need is inside you. The tough stuff alchemizes to create the good stuff. Your story is enough. What you value is enough. Your desire is enough.
Today I listened to Glennon Doyle’s podcast We Can Do Hard Things. She said that January branding has got it all wrong with New year, New you. “It suggests we hate ourselves. It’s insulting.”
At our core, in our soul, we are who we are. And to quote Popeye, “I yam what I yam.” Who I am is enough. I do not need to change myself. Of course, I could exercise more or cook more often or get more involved in social activism. But who I am at 60 is the same me as I was at 50, 40, 30, 20, 10… Embracing my inner self gives me safety to open up for new experiences that enrich me. And if a challenge comes along, I am ready. I am enough.
The whole room smells of graham crackers and icing, sweet-scented as Christmas should be, marked by twinkle lights and fingers dipped in icing or glitter glue.
Santa’s in the hallway listening to every child’s wish. Teachers are tired, overwhelmed by lists and sugary treats. Too much time spent on planning, cooking, decorating.
But there’s the child with bright eyes who opens her arms and says “I love you”.
You must open your little gingerbread house to all of it.
Margaret Simon, draft
I started my day listening to Ada Limón and The Slowdown. She talked about her grandmother’s kitchen and read the poem little tree by ee cummings. I played this episode for my students, and we wrote together. My poem above is true. I took the plunge and did gingerbread houses made out of graham crackers for the first (and most likely last) time. The success on Avalyn’s face and her insistence on telling me she loved me comforted my weary soul. She wrote a sweet story about her little gingerbread house on Fanschool here. (Spoiler alert: it includes a true story about a lizard rescue.)
Chloe wrote a poem side-by-side to ee cummings.
(after ee cummings little tree)
bright star bright little North Star you are so bright you are more like a light
who found you behind Mars and were you sad to lose hide and seek? see I will comfort you because you light up my Christmas tree.
i will hug your prickly sides and swing you gently as your mother would so don’t run away
and my father and i will lift you up and look at your shining stem we’ll skip and sing “Behold that Star”
Chloe Willis, 6th grade
This is the time of year for the Winter Poetry Swap. I exchanged with Karen Eastlund. She sent me the following poem (how cool that it’s in the shape of a Christmas tree) along with some delicious goodies and a hand sewn mini bin. Thanks, Karen.
Thank you to Two Writing Teachers for creating an amazing community of writers and a safe, welcoming space to write and share.
He sat on the bench near the door eyeing the white hard hats on the other side of the bench. The next thing I knew, he announced, proudly wearing the hat with the strap over his forehead that he was a “fighter fighter”.
“Who are you?”
“A fighter fighter!”
“A firefighter?”
“I a fighter, fighter.”
“I a fighter fighter” Leo (3)
This weekend I accompanied my daughter and her husband as we drove with Leo (3) to the Louisiana Children’s Museum in New Orleans for his special birthday weekend. We met up with my younger two daughters, son-in-law, and cousin Thomas (2). The Children’s Museum is full of pretend play areas, water, music, grocery shopping, etc. I climbed into a huge bubble-making contraption with both boys. Leo was interested in the pulleys that hoist the bubble up while Thomas whispered, “Bubble.” Then we all squealed when it popped.
“Cold” Thomas (2)
Pretend play with toddler boys is fun. I could watch and listen all day. As they bounce from one thing to another, a cup becomes a gas can, a handle becomes a sword, and a puzzle becomes building blocks. At the end of the day, Mamère becomes a storyteller and lullaby singer, and that’s the best job in the whole world.
Today is another gratitude post. I am so grateful to be a part of a wider world of poetry for children. Pomelo Books with NCTE Excellence in Poetry Winner Janet Wong along with her always enthusiastic poetry partner Sylvia Vardell were awarded Every Child a Reader Children’s Book Award for Hop to It. My poem Zen Tree is one of the 100 poems in this book. The award was for the best book of facts. For every poem, there is a side bar with factual information. I love that the facts next to Zen Tree include how trees communicate with each other through their root system. Congratulations to Janet and Sylvia and all of us jumping for Joy!
We are continuing daily gratitude poems in my classrooms. This week at both schools, there is a “Santa Store” set up in the library. Students can buy gifts for their families. There is such joy around buying gifts for others. My students and I expressed that joy in our poems this week.
As we quickly approach Christmas, I hope you are finding much to be grateful for. I am also grateful for you, my underground root system. Your support helps me to keep standing (and writing).
Margaret Simon lives on the Bayou Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. She is a retired elementary gifted teacher who writes poetry and children's books. Welcome to a space of peace, poetry, and personal reflection. Walk in kindness.
Reflections on the Teche 