Ringing Like a Bell

I hope you have someone or more than one someone in your life that inspires you. I'm blessed in that sense. I am constantly surrounded by the most amazing, inspiring women. I often feel that these ladies are the unsung heroes of everyday life. You know the ones -- the ones who keep on keepin' on even in the toughest circumstances. The ones who manage to fill lunch table conversation with laughter and joy, who will cry with you, who will bake you a birthday cake, or tell you there's something gross stuck in your teeth. One is always smiling and laughing. I've never spoken to her without a hug or an "I love you," maybe even both. She teaches a tough science course and is always thinking of new and better ways to engage her students. She helps them find pumpkin DNA in the fall and is legendary for her homey holiday sweaters. She wears them with joy because she really does love Halloween, Thanksgiving, and especially Christmas. She is so dedicated to her stud...

I was a spy today. Sometimes that happens when you're teaching; you see and hear things you, as an adult, were not meant to see or hear. Most of the time I wish I could un-see or un-hear it. Use your imagination: obscene gestures, profanity, or just plain old meanness.    Here's a little background. It seems there are a few students who've moved into our little community over the summer, so they're just getting to know everyone, a daunting task when you're a self-conscious teen in a small town high school where everybody already knows everybody else. I'm not just making an assumption here. I teach writing classes, so I often have an open doorway into the hearts and minds of my students. In fact, just a few days ago a girl in one of my classes turned in a paper that made my heart a little tender. In it, she detailed all the times she's moved and how hard it can be to leave old  friends behind and make new ones.  Here's where the spying part comes...

Summer's nearly over. In just a few days, all the concerns about the new school year will rush in, and I'll be consumed by it completely. For now, I find myself languishing in a lovely middle ground. I have rested from all the demands of last year, and since the new year is still several days away, I'm in a good place. I'm a tiny bit bored in a pleasant sort of way, which is what led me to re-watch an old romantic comedy I already saw years ago -- New in Town .  I remember watching the movie when came out in 2009, but there's something about it I forgot. It slipped my mind that one of the characters in the movie is an uncomfortably exact reflection of me. Let's just say it isn't Renee Zellweger's character Lucy -- if only. As I saw the film again a few days ago, I was transported back to 2009. The first time I watched the movie I was transfixed -- not by the plot, the actors, or any kind of amazing special effects. On the whole the movie is just wha...

I woke up early on Friday to take my car to the dealer and have a couple of recalls fixed. On the way back, I had two choices. I could take Highway No.1 back to Youngsville, or I could wind my way home to Louisburg on old Highway 39. I decided on 39. The sun was bright and shone on an old graveyard, grass freshly mown and oddly beautiful. I passed houses with white sheets fluttering on the clothesline. I drove slowly listening to my favorite newgrass bands: The Vespers, The Wailin' Jennys, and Sarah Jarosz. I admired the lush tobacco with its pale pink blooms, waiting to be topped. It was one of those moments of joy, contentment, and awareness. I was right where I wanted to be. Somewhere along the way I realized something funny. I was, without realizing it, smack in the middle of one of my dad's car rides. When we were little, he'd round us all up on sweltering summer days and announce, "Come on kids, we're goin' for a car ride!" I hated it then. The ...

I embarrassed my brother. It wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last. He took us (my husband, our sister, and me) to eat at Big Bob Gibson's BBQ when we were in Decatur, AL. First, let me say that the place is a destination all by itself. If you're not from North Alabama and you've never had smoked chicken with white barbecue sauce, don't let yourself die without trying it. I think it is the next best thing to manna from heaven, but I also understand that's how most Southern people feel about their local barbecue flavors. Consequently, my own love of white barbecue sauce made eating at Big Bob's a highlight of my most recent trip home to see my family. Anyway, back to the story. My brother is one of those people that can make friends with anybody. It's a trait he surely inherited from my dad. You might come up on one of them engaged in the apparent conversation of his life and ask, "Who was that?" To which he will reply, ...

For weeks I've been on the lookout for the perfect summer bag. You know the one -- just right for the beach, pretty but not too fancy. I haven't been able to find the right one anywhere. Every time I've stepped into a store with purses for sale, I've browsed. Nothing. All the bags I've seen are either too fussy with lots of weird fringe or metal slugs attached to the sides. The longing for the right purse has been there buzzing in the back of my mind whenever I go out or pick up the purse I've been carrying (One I borrowed from a friend like seven years ago and still haven't returned. Sorry, Whit!). I am happy to report that today I received the bag I've been waiting for all this time. I have a theory that moms get tired after elementary and middle school, so all their eagerness, parent- teacher conference fuel, and gift energy are spent by the time their children get to high school. Consequently, teacher gifts are always pretty thin on the gro...

In full disclosure, I have drafted this post multiple times. That should help explain why it's been so long since I've posted anything. Every time I post to this blog, I've tried to be really honest about the lessons I'm learning and the issues that exist in my life -- to be authentic. Lately that thing has been forgiveness. I've been hurt. Friends of mine have been hurt. There's been a huge, gaping need for forgiveness in my life. I watched a movie recently that had a great scene in it that I think demonstrates what it means to forgive. It is called In My Country and is a fictional story that includes historical elements from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in post-apartheid South Africa. A small boy sits, stone-faced in a plastic chair while two adult men recount the way they killed his parents in front of him. One of the perpetrators stands up, then kneels in front of the boy. He's a grown man sobbing, begging to be allowed to do something...

I've written before about the quotes that motivate and sustain me each school year.  This year my focus has been on the fact that I belong to God twice over -- created and redeemed.  Interestingly, my students seem to have a unifying phrase this year too, very different from mine: That's it! I'm dropping out! Multiple students have said that to me this year half-jokingly, half-seriously. At first it was funny, and I laughed. Now when they say it, it makes me sad because I've realized that many of them do leave school instead of pushing forward to a future full of opportunities. What's more is that I think it exposes a certain mindset they have in general. If anything is difficult or challenging or painful, their first instinct is not to dig in deeper but to quit. Can you blame them? I can't. That's what I want to do too, all the time. My drive to work yesterday was a minute by minute struggle against turning around and going back home. For starters ...