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There is magic in a sleeping baby. My grandson is 3 months old, and I had the opportunity to spend part of my day yesterday with him. My daughter doesn’t ask me to babysit often, so when I do, I’m all in. That is all I do. When I arrived at her home, she said, “He’s sleepy, but he doesn’t want to be in his bed.”
So I took him in my arms and rocked him to sleep and just held him. Life stood still. There was no place I needed to be. Nothing that needed doing. I let go and felt the peace and warmth of a sleeping baby.
One of my friends is in the midst of a battle with cancer. She told me a few weeks ago that she wanted to hold a baby. The mother of four teenagers was aching for that calming simplicity of a newborn in her arms. Because I was off yesterday, I picked up Leo from his sitter and brought him over to see her. We marveled at how constant the work is with an infant. Changing, feeding, holding…
As I was talking to my daughter on the phone saying, “He’s fussy, but he won’t take the bottle.”
She responded, “He’s probably just tired.”
And I looked over at Amy who was gently rocking and patting him to sleep. Ah, the wonder of a sleeping baby. I secretly pray he has healing powers, too.
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Poetry Friday round-up is with Catherine at Reading to the Core.
Catherine Flynn is rounding up Poetry Friday with an invitation to write poems that honor women. A few years ago Georgia Heard published an anthology of poetry entitled The Woman in this Poem. For International Women’s Day, I wanted to honor all the women poets who have influenced and inspired me. In the end pages of the book, Georgia lists all the first lines. I used these lines to write an ode to women poets.
Ode to Women Poets
All the women in this poem
have written first lines
to draw me into their lives
offering me wafers of words
transcending deserts of time and place:
Idon’t remember how it began I must’ve looked like I’m confidant,
a reader all our life,
Woman to woman, poems lie in our hands in crystals.
me and you be sisters listening Who says a woman’s work isn’t high art?
We all sing the same song.
We know all the words.
We’ve sung them while rocking
As the divine sea rocks.
So much do we love.
We love and love and love.
Sometimes I hear the wind in the trees
and feel your presence
The people I love the best.
–Margaret Simon
First lines from these poets: Dorianne Laux, Patricia Kirkpatrick, Lisel Mueller, Lucille Clifton, Kate Farrell, Georgia Heard, Gabriela Mistral, Marge Piercy, Bronwen Wallace, Julia Alvarez, and Ruth Moose.
In searching for an image, I found this link to a lesson on women poets from Edutopia.
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Click the image to read Christie’s invitation.
Inspired by Christie Wyman at Wondering and Wandering, I decided to write a list of what is making me happy this week. I have a sinus infection, so that is not on my list, but otherwise, I have much to be happy about.
I have the week off for Mardi Gras break.
My dog is snuggled up next to me on his blanket.
I get daily texts from my daughter with pictures of my grandson, Leo, who is growing and getting cuter by the day. He’ll be 3 months old tomorrow.
The wood ducks have laid 5 eggs in the wood duck house. I wrote about setting up the house on this slice.
I had a wonderful time with family in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. Here are two of my daughters ready for Mardi Gras Day.
My husband is my best friend and lifelong dance partner.
The azaleas are blooming.
This sinus thing is giving me lie-on-the-sofa-reading-slices time.
If you are happy, join the party. Grab Christie’s graphic and join in!
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I subscribe to Choice Literacy’s Big Fresh newsletter. This month Brenda Power writes about ambition versus aspiration. She also opens with a Mary Oliver quote, “Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
Tricia Stohr-Hunt’s prompt on Laura Shovan’s February Poetry Project was a variety of birthday cakes. (This year we are writing about food.) I thought of a Facebook post I had seen of a baby eating his first birthday cake. This is apparently a thing, first birthday cake smash.
Smashing all of those things together made a poem that I am pleased with, if only for the pleasure it evokes.
Joy is not a crumb; it is the whole cake eaten by a child on his first birthday digging with his cake-filled hand bite by bite, grip by grip until the cake and icing cover every part of his head seeping up into his nostrils. That kind of joy is your Aspiration Go for it!
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EnneaThought® for the Day
Type Two EnneaThought® for March 4th
Everyone has positive qualities that they usually do not recognize in themselves. Today, can you see your own strength which is at the center of your love for others—and for yourself?
photo from Pixabay.com
I subscribe to EnneaThought for the Day from the Enneagram Institute. The small messages come daily to my inbox. It’s usually the first email I open expecting it to inform my day. I’ve used the messages for writing prompts in my notebook, and today when a little stuck about what to write, I copied and pasted the message into the blank page in WordPress.
I know that everyone has positive qualities, and especially in teaching, I look for those in others. But how often do I focus on my own positive qualities? This message reminds me that my strength is at the center of my love for others. Without it, I am useless.
Finding a sense of peace through forgiveness of myself is a daily exercise. Nobody is perfect, but I tend to stew on stuff, especially if I feel I have hurt someone or given a false impression of myself. Stewing is not productive. It keeps me from moving forward. It weakens rather than strengthens.
Writing helps me sort through the muck of my mind. I feel strong and productive when I write. When I wasn’t sure what to write this morning, I jumped into the page and just.did.it. Is this the best I’ve got? No. But here it is and that’s enough.
Monday should be Forgive Yourself Day because we all need to start our week off with a positive outlook, a show of strength, and a sense of self-love. Give that to yourself today.
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Carnival season in New Orleans is unique. Like other celebrations, families gather, food is abundant, and happiness abounds. But in New Orleans at Carnival time, there is something else in the air. Not something I can name exactly. It’s a mixture of decadence and absurdity. Sometimes the more absurd, the better. There is definitely too much drinking, especially from the “frat boys,” as my children call them. And the costumes run the gamut. But it’s the complete regard for absurdity that fascinates me.
I didn’t get a picture of myself, but I wore a pair of purple, gold, and green sparkly swirly sunglasses. I pinned a tiny top hat to my hair. My son-in-law had a pair of whacky sunglasses that he tried on Leo, my grandson.
Leo’s Mardi Gras shades. (photo by Katherine Simon Andry)
Here’s a picture of another baby we saw walking about. She didn’t seem to mind the wig.
Mardi Gras baby
You don’t quite know what you will see on the streets. Most people are kind and full of cheer. In my many years of attending New Orleans parades, I have never seen any violence. There are rampant rumors about it, but from my experience, Carnival is about having fun and the more absurd, the better.
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In addition to the Slice of Life Challenge, I am writing a poem each day with a Facebook group for Laura Shovan’s annual birthday project. This year we are writing about food. The prompt yesterday from Laura herself was sourdough bread. Not having much experience in sourdough bread, the baking or the eating of it, I took the option to write about any bread.
I am currently in New Orleans with my girls celebrating Mardi Gras. A staple pastry during the Mardi Gras season is King cake. King Cake is symbolic of Epiphany, the season of the church year following Christmas. On Epiphany, the three kings arrived to worship Jesus. The dough is baked in a circle symbolizing unity of faith. The frosting is colored sugar in purple, gold, and green. Gold represents power, green is associated with faith, and purple illustrates justice. (Southern Living)
Of the many Mardi Gras traditions, this is one of my favorite. In our small town of New Iberia, there is a donut bakery that makes King Cakes like a donut. My son-in-law brought one yesterday that he swears weighs more than his 2 month old. It’s infused with cream cheese and strawberry jam. There are two more on the kitchen counter each with its own flavoring and pastry recipe. The tradition is that a plastic baby is placed inside the King Cake to symbolize the search for baby Jesus. Whomever gets the baby in their piece is obligated to buy the next King Cake for the next celebration.
I’ve decided to forego my no carb diet just for this weekend. Let the good times roll!
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Today is the first day of March, so you know what that means: The annual March Slice of Life Challenge at the Two Writing Teachers! I will be writing a blog post every day and linking it up to Two Writing Teachers. What’s the point?
Writing every day is an important discipline for a writer and for a teacher of writing.
Connecting to other teacher-writers inspires and informs my teaching and writing, and I usually make new friends along the way.
I first met Jen Vincent through Kate Messner’s Teachers Write, a virtual summer camp for teachers who want to write. If I remember correctly, we did a Google Hangout with other writers and read a section of our work. I further connected with Jen through blogging and Twitter and met up with her at NCTE in 2014. These connections are invaluable to me as a teacher and a writer.
One day I saw that Jen was teaching a workshop. Silly me, I thought it was virtual, so I replied to her message on Facebook, “I want to come.” Since Chicago and South Louisiana are pretty far apart, that was not feasible, but Jen thought of a way. She created a virtual workshop.
We met one Saturday morning by Zoom meeting. She led me through an exercise from Teachers Write by Tracey Baptiste. We made a graphic organizer in our notebooks and labeled three places we had been recently. We then divided each column into two columns. On one side we wrote descriptions about the places and the other side we wrote emotions we felt about the places.
I chose school, dance lessons, and a restaurant where we go dancing. I decided to connect the three places with the thread of dancing.
Dancing Days
I dance through my days…
Halls of smiling teachers greet my wobbly walk weighed down with backpack, lunch bag and Yeti cup. Miss Marie says, Show me that grandbaby! After we view the latest pic on my phone, I dance down the hall to my classroom.
At Dance Around the World studio, bright purple walls of mirror on mirror reflect my partner and me. Miss Lou says, Right. Left. Back step. We follow along,
find our balance– weightless in a jitterbug twirl.
I dance my way to Friday night, Nouveau String Band at Joie de Vivre, wooden floors echo the sounds of greetings, giggles, and two-steps. Buck says, This waltz is for you. The weight of the week disappears to the beat of fiddle, mandolin, and drum.
(c) Margaret Simon
This workshop was a test run for Jen for her new Patreon page, Story Exploratory. If you’d like to find more ways to write, I highly recommend Jen as an instructor. You can view this workshop and others by visiting Jen’s patreon page, Story Exploratory.
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On Valentine’s Day last Thursday, I challenged my students to write a love poem without using the word love. On Facebook I had read Charles Ghinga’s poem for his wife Debra. I used it as a mentor text.
After we read this poem, we brainstormed a list of things in nature that could serve as a metaphor as moon does in Charles’ poem. I pushed my students to be specific. Some of the more interesting things they listed:
Page of word groups from Writing Poetry From the Inside Out by Sandford Lyne.
I used a poetry resource by Sandford Lyne called Writing Poetry from the Inside Out. In this book, Sandy writes about “Poem Sketching” with word groups. The back is full of pages of word groups. I photocopied one of these pages to give to my students. Each student chose a word group to write from.
Magic happened. Was it writing about love without using the word? the model poem from Charles? the word groups from Sandy? or the magic that happens when writing in a safe community?
We cut out construction paper hearts and wrote our poems on them to give to someone special. I gave mine to Madison because I used a quote of hers. Chloe gave hers to me, probably because I loved it. And Madison gave hers to Chloe. Poetry gifts from the heart.
She says, “Did you know the sea eagle
has a wingspan of eight feet?”
I write it down in my notebook
realizing that her knowledge
opens the surface
of our classroom
like the blossom of a tulip.
Digging into depths
of learning
makes everyday
as fascinating
as the sea eagle.
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 