The Goodbye Season

It's that time of year. We say goodbye. We get excited for hellos. We count down days until we're leaving and ignore days until we return. OG's countdown is on two hands. How will we sleep?

This year, I am blessed to say goodbye to someone pretty darn special:

I'm only leaving him for two floors up and a few hallways down, but when you plan daily, teach together often, and pop in and out of each others' classrooms forty times a day, it's a loss. 16 years ago, I was blessed to team with an amazing woman. She raised llamas. She danced at the salmon festival. She taught me about Terry Tempest Williams and Mary Karr and not being so scared all the time. I loved that lady and our accordian wall we'd push to the side so we could face all fifty of those rowdies at once. Since then, I've grieved losing that relationship. And this miraculous year, I had it again. Thanks, Bri.

Brian taught me to let kids see my love of words in all its embarrassing glory. Every birthday, we give each student a poem and read it aloud with gusto. It's not his birthday, but I'm going to read him some William Stafford:

I've never been comfortable with ceremony or spotlight. I don't like to talk about myself. But, I'm learning--slowly--that there's a place for ritual, for honor, and for public moments to celebrate a season. 

And of course, since I can't take anything too seriously without getting red-faced, I'll probably have to come home and make a list of what we'll do ten days from now when we sit on the hill, in Washington State, looking at Mount Cashmere: Legos. Slow Coffee. Legos. Fat Tires. Legos. Hike. Repeat.

Two hands!

Magic Babushka: She's back!

In places I used to live, May was the month where we all started wearing our summer clothes too early. Glaring white legs held firm in shorts and outdoor seating was used even when teeth were chattering. I waited for those lilacs and goldenrods to show themselves, so I could abandon leggings and freeze my way to June.

Not in Singapore. Singapore May is a cooker. It's a cruel month after three uncomfortable ones that's leading right into an even hotter June. It's the end of school, the end of any hope of a bearable cool-ish morning, and the end of deodorant by 9:00am. There are a lot of reasons to be fragile in Singapore Mays: Grade reports need written, dear friends are moving, families are worried about transcripts, students are tired, teachers are tired, people are bracing for six weeks of visiting families they rarely see (and by people---all you dear readers---I don't mean us. We're EMbracing!), and well...everyone is really really hot. Things can get kind of passive aggressive or just outright aggressive at work. I can always rely on one or two truly bonkers days and out-of-character outbursts. I pass out a lot of chocolate macaroons to my co-workers. It's May and it's getting weird.

Last week, I made a slide in my daily slide shows that had a lot of sad pugs on it. It seemed like a good weapon at the time for battling student angst, the heat, and my encroaching feeling of May doom:

The results of my pug warfare have yet to be seen (secretly hoping for a pug in a school uniform to show up in my classroom as the Best Teacher Gift Ever).

This week I tried something new and probably equally unhelpful. Long ago, as a comfort to my strange self, I started doodling Magic Babushka. She's so wise. May needs lots and lots of Magic Babushkas. For a date with two dear friends tomorrow, I have two tucked in my purse with back-up signs for them to hold, proclaiming very encouraging phrases:

I'm learning about Adobe Illustrator as I go, and mostly I'm learning that I don't know much. She started black and white:

And then I played:

If you're thinking that having two of these in my purse is proof of the May Bonkers, then I might concur. However, with any luck, they will laugh...and we will be seated somewhere under the air conditioning.