Summer Edition: The "Bay Side" of Life in Week 5

    This blog comes to you all the way from California. I actually wrote a good portion before I left, but finished it up here. I miss my cozy kitchen at home where I listen to music and write. Writing from a hotel room did not inspire much creativity in me. My husband tells me it makes me a "real" writer to write the way I am, in the confines of a hotel room, but we're all "real" writers; some of us just choose to write more often than others. Regardless, here are my thoughts for Week 5 of the summer...
  
 I remember the day this picture was taken. I was six. We were at the bay.

                                                   Tobay Beach, 1981

Growing up on Long Island, we went to the Tobay Beach regularly. Only, when my mom took us by herself, we only went to the "bay" side because she didn't know how to swim. There were no waves at the bay, just endless sand and water that maybe created some kind of movement if a boat came close enough to shore. We safely played in the sand, making a "bakery" of cakes, pies, and cookies out of sand. (Why build an ordinary sandcastle when you can create an entire bakery of sandy sweetness?)  So, on the weekends when we went to the "ocean side" when my dad was with us, it was a thrilling experience, like that roller coaster you're nervous to go on but muster up enough courage to do so anyway. I remember holding my dad's hand, petrified of the waves crashing on the shore. They were fierce mouths of fire in my six year-old eyes that could swallow me up whole. My dad would try to let go, forcing me to embrace the ocean that I feared, and I remember my brother, sister, and I singing the Beatles song, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to him as loudly as we could. I often wanted to bail on those waves and run straight to the bay side. While the waves drowned out our voices as we were singing, they never drowned out our fear of the thunderous ocean because of our rare exposure to it. This dichotomy the beach created for me as a kid--the safe bay side and the fearful ocean side--left me with a mixture of emotions and serves as a perfect metaphor for life. So when my daughter Katie uttered two words in the car on Tuesday of this week, it brought me back to the moment of the safe bay and the fearful ocean all over again.

  They were just two words--two words sounding from my nine year-old daughter's lips this week that got me thinking. As she sat in the back seat of the car, Katie sighed deeply and said, "Life's hard."

     "What did you say?" I asked, afraid I had heard those two words correctly.

     "Life's hard. Why does life have to get harder as I get older?"

     "What do you mean by that?" I asked increduously.

      "I mean last year I didn't have to worry about stuff. Life is harder this year."

I felt as if I had failed as a parent. No child should have to grow up thinking life is hard. And she couldn't really explain why she felt the way she did as we talked the rest of the ride home. It was a great conversation, though--one that you end by saying "Good talk" and mean it, and one that easily ends in a hug. Yet, I left feeling unsettled. I struggle with this idea of life being hard, especially for a nine year-old. Life is hard, of course, at least from my 42 year-old eyes. And I really didn't have an answer for Katie as to why it is that way.

     As I thought more about this, I was reminded of the difference between the ocean and the bay I experienced as a kid. When we were at the bay, my mother didn't worry about us. Everything was easy. When we went to the ocean on the weekends with my mom and dad, there was that fear--both from my perspective and that of my mom who didn't know how to swim. Life suddenly became more difficult.  Perhaps my initial thought of failing as a parent is all wrong, though. For, if life is totally easy for kids, how are they ever to learn? I would never know how to swim in the ocean if my dad didn't bring us there to experience it. Today, the ocean is one of my favorite places on Earth. But would it be if my dad never brought me there to face my fears? Maybe life needs to be a combination of both--always--the hard and the easy, the yin and the yang, the bay side and the ocean. For, our hardships help us appreciate the easier parts of life.

     So as I was sitting in Richmond airport this Wednesday, just watching the people as I was waiting to board my plane to California, I couldn't help but think about the stories of the people before me. There are so many people with stories that I just don't know. Why can't we talk to each other anymore? Most people looked straight at their phones without even making eye contact. We don't talk and we don't listen to one another enough. We need to talk to one another. We need to be honest and say, this is what I have going on in my life. This is not easy. Yes, life's hard. Instead, we tend to hide behind Facebook posts and Tweets and sometimes even text messages.

     Whenever I travel, I do end up sitting next to someone on a plane who talks to me. Most people are annoyed by that, but not me. I like listening to people's stories. I'm not always the one to initiate that conversation, and this time was no different. Before I could place my bag underneath the seat in front of me, the man next to me peered in it and said, "That looks like a lot of work in there (I had a laptop and 4 books in my bag). You must be a teacher." I laughed and told him that I was, indeed, a teacher and that most of what was in my bag were books I wanted to read. The conversation that ensued was brief, but I had the chance to tell him about all of you--the students who I taught this past year. I always am grateful for any chance I have at telling someone else about what I get to do for a living. The man on the other side of me actually removed his headphones as I started talking about teaching, asking all sorts of questions. I had both men fully engaged in conversation at 6:45 in the morning. It's so important to talk to one another.

     As a teacher, I am faced with those two words Katie said to me this week--life's hard--on so many occasions. I've had students tell me their struggles in emails, in conversations, in things they've written. Recently, several of you have been through some pretty difficult moments; I can't even begin to express how hard it is to see my students struggle. Two of you in particular lost your dads recently, and I truly am so sorry for this loss you are going through. More than anything, I wish I could change things for you. I never believe teachers should have all of the answers, yet in these situations, I wish I did have an answer for you as to why life has to be so hard, as to why things happen the way they do.

     What I do know is this. Life is a series of moments where we are forced to let go. In a memoir I read on the plane over to California, Hannah Brencher perfectly explained this: "You just start to get comfortable with a place, or a person, or a job, and then everything shifts and you have to find new balance again It happens over and over again..It almost feels like at some point life whacks you on top of the head and hands you a list of all the things you can keep. The list is surprisingly long. You can keep letters. You can keep trying. You can keep secrets and you can try your hardest to keep promises. You can keep your eyes on the road. You can keep photos and you can keep the memories. But you cannot keep people. People are not things-- you can't keep them"  (48). I wish I could hold onto everyone I have met and known--even the people who have treated me badly. I really wish I never had to let anyone go. Life's hard.

     So where do we go from here? We continue to talk to one another. We don't make assumptions that the people we know--even the ones we feel we know well--are okay. Relationships are everything in life. Hardships are inevitable, but the fact of the matter is, we need each other to get through them. As a teacher, the most important thing I can do is build a relationship with my students. That matters far more than a test score or whether or not you've mastered literary analysis or how to write a knowledge question. I used to hold my thoughts and ideas close to my heart. When I first started teaching, I was afraid to tell my students how I felt. Veteran teachers would warn me to distance myself from students, to not smile until Christmas. How truly wrong they were.  So many things in our lives we hold onto tightly instead of spilling them out in front of us for others to hear and know. We need to talk to one another, we need to tell one another how we feel, we need to help others balance the bay side and the ocean side. Remember, people are not things. Sadly, we can't hold onto one another forever no matter how much we want to.

      That is what I've thought about since I've arrived in California. I've spent time seeing Monterey Bay. It was peaceful as the water quietly brushed against the rocks.

 I also spent time on the Pacific Ocean (my first time in the Pacific) at Monterey Beach and Carmel Beach watching the waves roar against the sand. My feet immersed in that cold water, and I felt the same thrill I felt when I was six years old at the beach with my dad. I may no longer be afraid of the ocean, but I am in awe of its size, power, and intensity.

                                                                                         First time in the Pacific Ocean

 Life is messy, but it's how to handle the mess that matters, not how fast we clean it up. It's how we balance the bay side of things and the ocean side. What I've realized on this trip more than anything is that everyone in life has hardships. Everyone has those moments where they experience fear in the power of the ocean, where life is far more challenging than the tranquility of the bay side. I wish I could grant you only "bay side" moments, but seeing the Pacific Ocean the past two days has made me realize how powerful life is in those "ocean side" moments as well.

     Ultimatley, I want to end this blog by taking my own advice and telling you how I feel. What this week has taught me more than anything is how fragile life can be and how we need to tell the people in our lives what we think of them. So, I feel compelled to tell you, my former students, right now how much you are valued...how proud I am of you....how much I loved teaching you....how much I respect the human beings you've become...how creative and smart and so very funny you are. I am lucky to have the relationship I do with you and hope I hold onto that relationship for a long time. May you always have many more "bay side" moments in life, but when you do find yourself on that "ocean side" of life that is hard and challenging and makes you feel like giving up or fearful of what's ahead, remember I'm always here.  That's what I ended up telling my daughter Katie when she uttered those words "life's hard" this week. I'm always here. Remember, I'm always here.