A Milestone

My  child has reached a milestone today. 


I do not refer to a graduation, marriage, divorce, or even child bearing. 


I refer to the irreplaceable  loss of that sense of  the safety of immortality that only is allowed to those whose youth has not relinquished any of their peers to death.


Losing  parents, grandparents, and teachers  can be devastating to everyone, but it somehow doesn't change one's inner coil as much as does the loss of someone  with whom you have gone to school . 


 The loss of someone who you have shared so many hours  doing things for the first time at the same time creates a relationship that is neither sibling,  cousin, or even  best friend. It is simply the precious relationship one has with a classmate.  


The common memories compounded over  years  of tests, teachers, projects, sicknesses, jokes, and playmates forms a unique bond that can never be duplicated or ever repeated. When this relationship is too soon ended due to sickness or accident I think it alters us at the most basic level.


We realize that death is not for the aged, the strangers, the others.  We get an inkling that everything is not for ever and ever for everyone, and suspect not even  for ourselves.


We  come to  know instinctively and perhaps even unwittingly that life is just a little bit more precious, fragile, and unpredictable than we had previously thought in that heretofore time of when it had not happened and we had not yet heard.
  
Most of us who are older can recall the moment when we learned about the loss of one of our dear childhood classmates...where we were, who told us, and who we in turn told.  I bet most of us called another former classmate to inform and reflect on the loss. 


I know I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news on the radio that two sisters of my age had died from my hometown in a tragic car accident. 


Even now, forty years hence, whenever the victims' names are mentioned in the company of other classmates there is a subtle pause almost like  a quick little hiccup in the conversation which allows a bit of memory to slip quietly by and the conversation returns to the present.  


Other school friends  of my children will pass,  just as many of mine already have. 


Each time it will be a shock accompanied by a  unique sense of loss of that special relationship. 


Each time the shared memories with other former classmates will serve to comfort and console in the way only classmates are able. 

My Fog

I know fog causes lots of chaos with traffic.. although one rarely hears of roads becoming slippery due to fog as is with snow, ice,  and sleet.




For me, if a person has to go without sunlight, I think I would rather have fog instead of cloud and rain.




Fog seems soft and silky to me--like a pair of fresh delicate nylons as they slide over one's  legs covering skin unused to such gentleness.




Rain is often stinging little bits of hard wetness slamming pieces  of  water upon the earth  in loud anger or visible resentment with sharpness and grumbling.



Fog is like a cushioned quilt of spun sugar which wraps around and actually touches each part of the world completely--each crevasse, physical bend, and hidden depth.




Rain falls. Fog rises.




Rain taps  intrusively a thousand times over,  while the fog is silent--simply existing, still and soft as a sleeping kitten nestled against its mother and siblings.

FOG The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on. Carl Sandburg

Ducks and Dancing

The other day someone mentioned how embarrassed they were when about 20 years ago their Junior High School teacher had asked them to dance a waltz at one of the school dances. As she was describing her feelings of horror and embarrassment as the whole school watched , her companion  commented that they doubted that that would even be considered legal  and not  certainly not wise on any school teacher's part in today's world.

That got me to wondering about other pedagogical best practices that have had to be put by the wayside because of today's standards. 

One such practice that has not stood the test of time I suspect is the Girl's Basketball Coach playing alongside the players for a friendly game of tag ball.  Nor would his presence right inside the same  team's change room be deemed acceptable today as it was 40 years ago.

Another thing that would be considered an  'edgy' educational practice at best and even  risking a charge of an assault with a weapon is the tradition of tossing (winging?) of a piece of chalk towards a fatigued or wayward student. Sometimes hitting the aimed for student on or near the head, and sometimes hitting the student next to them instead.

I am also pretty certain that heads might fall if the teacher nowadays decided to pull out his/her very own cigarette rolling machine and roll a few during the noon hour break,  all the while smoking one of the products, and then dumping the ashes into the wastepaper basket by the desk at the end of the day. Windows closed, matches tossed into the top drawer, and ash tray out in the open on the desk.  
Those cigarette rolling machines were quite the fascinating inventions.

Yes classroom rules, social mores, and pedagogical methods have surely changed in an effort to reflect society's values and standards.  Some things that once were common practice and even expected such as the saying of the Lord's Prayer have fallen by the wayside to make way for  practices designed to create more and better educated citizens of the world.

 I would  bet any money that the teacher bringing his own double barrel shotgun along with a box of appropriate ammunition in his car to the school with the plan to walk down to the  creek during the fall noon hour break would probably be frowned  upon by school boards across the land.   Especially if he left  his sixteen  or so unsupervised students on the school  playground playing soccer while he slipped quietly down the path to shoot Mallards with only the blast of the gun giving away his location (if he was needed) and his purpose.

The natural history lesson in science that afternoon fifty years ago was a memorable one as the whole school was shown all the parts of the North American  Duck. All the students from Grades One to Eight were encouraged , albeit gloveless, to touch the webbed feet, the bill, the wings, and the varied coloured feathers. I remember looking at the tongue and feeling the inside ridges in the mouth . We were even shown where the  lead shot had entered and consequently rested in what would become the teacher's supper.

I  have never  since seen a Mallard duck in a pond that the vision of that teacher's bounty lying limp and still with eyes closed on the  grass beside  the school doesn't come to mind.

Probably because we lived in Canada, we were not shown the workings of the shotgun, although I do remember being allowed to smell the empty shell.