In a Day

Yesterday I transversed many miles metaphorically in my realities. So then, if you will a day's journey.
That's not well put, none of this will be, but I went to bed not having caught up to myself- and I woke up thinking about this.
Yesterday early in the morning a teacher in K stopped me a second for a warm good morning, she was thinking about the importance to her of "structured play."
 I, perhaps, will return to that as a line of thought- truly return to it another day after this year is done,  because what she was talking about I do want to deconstruct. Then I taught my class of TK students filtering the fact I have just about finished a year with a class that "came a long way," and how present they were in all we did- during our three or so hours together- including sharing a music lesson with my husband ,and eating tropical Popsicles. Children that eat pops of ice are completely present as they down their treat-not wanting, not even needing, anything-their rolling emotions are parked in pleasant-it's quite a few moments of "be here now."


And then I was driving with my husband to a celebration of the career of Judith Green, his PHD prof and her colleague, to celebrate work she engaged in in Santa Barbara in her amazing time as an ethnographer that has profoundly affected her field. I'd say, as I said to Jack, it was her retirement dinner except that she says it is not a retirement. Perhaps it is a shift in focus. We followed this amazing ceremony- which included a video that came from a time we were in Warner Springs and work done with kids there and across the country, ( I had a few of my students in the video) -showing their many facets of this work-reviving memories, to a dinner for her broad and amazing network where I talked about women actually with a filmwriter....mostly to learning in my car looking at my phone- of my uncle's death. So by ten at night, as well as traveling back from Santa Barbara- I had covered a lot of the ground I lived tangentially and experientially in my life. I talked of developing the witness self, who took over for me yesterday allowing me to step back to see the day perhaps a bit reflectively, differently than I might have twenty years ago.

My father's brother, Garland McIntosh, died in Tennessee yesterday-on a day when when the Greatest- Muhammad Ali- also passed from this earth. On some level that really makes sense to me. Ali was my husband's hero. So in the day I felt certain shifts in terra firma. My Dad was the second son in a family of 7, and his older brother would be hard for me to describe. That they grew up in the Depression in abject poverty wouldn't really capture much, or that he never missed a day in forty some years in a fabric mill, or served in the Army, or Dad used his name to enter the service at 14, and obviously was called MAC over Garland until many years later he made the lie right, Garland- was who Dad must have answered to-on many levels. I would imagine Dad depended on this brother-and I bet my father will be absolutely devastated by his passing. I don't know, Dad has stopped talking to me really. I think of my Uncle sitting in a kitchen around a table next to a wife he adored, just talking. A loving Dad, enveloped in mountains, with the all of us being fed by his wife Eunice and my grandmother-eating what the family grew....sharing their tragedies and wisdom. It's a backwards journey into a time of their supreme independence, family, who I was very young when I knew. My cousin wrote a text to say he was in Heaven. And I read this text in Santa Barbara in the parking lot of a French restaurant (first time eating out in months) looking at the mountains, hearing the night, wondering about all we touch by our lives, what ways we affect one another, appreciating that when I got out of college Garland drove my grandmother over to see me and he gave me some advice. She did too.

I can't say I took that advice, because he gave it operating on false story my father was spewing to justify his divorces and remarriages and his own projections with even some malice in his heart then, which lead them to think I was wild. But I remember he cared enough to care.
I was really at the time caring for my mom through a stroke we thought was a breakdown, and her mom was  living with us- who would soon die of Alzheimer-the disease that would many years later stomp on Garland. He could tell I'm sure looking around that he hadn't gotten the real story from Dad who was lying to his family. And since my Dad entered service under Garland's name, because he helped minor rob his uncle's small family store in east Tenn in his early teens I think perhaps put into service as his punishment by my grandfather as Garland-he may have  sensed he didn't know what was really afoot. I think he grew quiet because he knew things are often not just what we feel, or hear, or say, or are told. There is much we can't truly know. Secrets we can't know. I didn't grow up daily knowing my uncle. What I saw was a Dad that cared deeply for his kids and wife. Who loved to fish and who came together with us when Dad went home and agreed we were a part of his family. Those days ended for me when I was about 14.

It's funny but yesterday jarred memories of things that happened in my life I forgot, or mis-placed. Students I taught-projects I had a tiny hand in, circles and points of contact with others. I met a woman that is a close friend of my immediate boss. I wouldn't have seen that coming, it's the end of the school year-I'm exhausted...it was a tiny thread of something hard to unwravel.Things cropping up, bits and pieces of meanings. That person expressed to me that we never know in life who we meet or know-how that might be a part of the next road we take.

Judith Green profoundly affected my life and my husband. I admire her so so greatly. Her work in the field of understanding learning is a testament to her understanding of community and commitment. She is an "advancer" -my word, and a "bad ass", my husband's words. She blew through barrier and ceilings and did something to construct her realities and thus constructed some part of mine. It was amazing to sit and listen to her students and colleagues and family talk about their experiences together. It was an honor to be invited. I always come away from being in her presence feeling just very good. She's a rare thing-those she touches seem to move forward-thus my term-advancer, there are not many on this earth....she is one that helped my life. I hope to the heavens she stays on top of her game for another thirty years at the least-this field of education needs her perspectives and bad assness.

Jack was driving our car...which probably describes the metaphor I experienced yesterday-making it more understandable. As I looked out the window I was shaping his thoughts and interacting, I knew that and I knew why he insisted I WAS going I kept asking we stop to eat mashed potatoes somewhere...I don't know why. He told me at some point that " play by definition is unstructured" end of discussion, he shared his thoughts about bad asses like Judith and how she is someone who took on social justice in an active lexicon, he reflected on each child in my room and their singing, he asked me a few things about my Uncle Garland, he drove us through the rock and geology units I insisted we start in Warner due to the majestic geology in the San Diego mountains that became the work of ethnographers within the contexts of something we revisited 13 years later, he drove me...and perhaps I read the directions as I did yesterday with him telling me he already knew and my at last second insisting on the left he was missing. And his jerking us left-while I closed my eyes.

Judith said to us that we construct our realities.
And I thought yesterday and this morning about how family, home, life, friends, situations, shape us into who we are. All of us more aware than ever that our time is short, and we do the best we can, because as Judith said, we are not a problem. It is just problematic.