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How might you use writing to tap into your personal passions? Are you writing a piece that makes you "ache with caring"? And in a chock-full, busy-every-minute life, how can educators find time for writing that is deeply meaningful, with the lens of replicating this experience for students?

What can we say to ourselves to affirm the power of writing? What words will help us move forward when the going gets tough? Thinking about class writing mantras...

Every summer I dream of my classroom. When considering my third grade writers, what do they need to grow and how can I provide classroom spaces for that?

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What did you dream about last night?

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What’s your next big thing?

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What’s the one thing you HAVE to have?

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What are you dreaming about right now?

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What will your life look like 5 years from today?

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Who do you have to thank today?

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Can you dare to believe one “impossible” thing today?

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Some Fourth of July’s are more memorable than others. And as it’s harder and harder for us to even find a fireworks display in these lean years, I appreciate more and more the ones with truly great fireworks shows. But there’s always something more than the great fire in the sky that makes those nights memorable. Always something unexpected that happened. And it was on one such Fourth of July that I set out with my newborn daughter for the very first time after we came home from the hospital, along with my entire family.

We all piled into the car with lawn chairs and diapers and drove down our newly poured driveway, technically permitted as a sidewalk it was so steep. The technological marvel enabled me to make the trip out as we had one hundred steps to our front door and which, pre-driveway and after my first C-Section, landed me in the house for two solid months before I was physically up to the daily challenge of the descent and ascent.

So the freedom of the drive was excitement enough. But it was the venue too that made the evening even that much sweeter. We drove to my school, The Art Center College of Design, in the foothills surrounding The Rose Bowl. There was a small group of teachers and students gathered there in what used to be a sculpture park and is now the General Motors Computer Lab. We set out our chairs and I had one daughter running around the sculptures and the other in my arms. And I’ll never forget Joe, the shop guy, melting at the sight of my baby. He was a task master at school. The one who eyed the craftsmanship of the models we would create of the products we designed in the Industrial Design program, but a big softie in front of babies. I’d never seen him smile like that.

I’d left school to have another baby because that was the most important thing to me. And everyone at school was so supportive. In the twilight I caught up with my friends on how life was in their fifth term and how mine was in the early days of being a mother of two. Then the show began. One after another the rockets flared and the music played and it was pure magic sitting there, watching fireworks shoot from the Rose Bowl and explode at our level in the foothills. My mom was there too which was an extra special treat, since she’d come all the way from Chicago to help with the baby.

And with my baby in my arms and in the rockets red glare, sitting next to my former classmates and around a few of my teachers so many emotions exploded inside of me. Yes, this wasn’t the typical way a woman goes through college, but it was my way. And it felt so right.

Do you remember a time when you cracked open a fortune cookie and read a fortune that would soon come true for you?

Fact or Fiction? Where were you the last time you saw a shooting star and what did you wish for?

I kick my feet in the air and they land solid on my board. My right hand skims the water as I drop into the tube. Sea spray mists my face, salty and sweet. I think about all the surfers who have ever ridden this water. All the boats that ever sailed it too. I think about the ocean and the timelessness of it. That the sound of the surf, sea pounding sand, must be the oldest sound on Earth.

I love knowing the sea, something ancient, so intimately. Being right about a wave. Taking it. Touching the water as I carve, leaving a bit of me behind.

I glide into the soup. Hop off, grab my board and walk along the water’s edge. My feet sink into the wet sand. Whistles greet me on my stroll down the beach. Not knowing why, I smile and hunt for Sean in the waves. Feet slapping wet sand behind me makes my heart race and I turn around.

“Had to be the sweetest wave ever! You rode it like a pro,” Sean says, giving me a sideways hug. He takes the towel off his head.

“Let’s celebrate, Ash. Where to?” Sean unzips his wetsuit to just below his belly button and has a Tommy-Burger look in his eye. He frees his arms of  neoprene, shakes his blonde hair. It freezes in the-I’ve-just-been-surfing-and-its-my-life look. He towels off his guns first, works his way to his six-pack, wraps the towel around his waist and slips out of his wet suit.

He’s hot, but best friends aren’t supposed to notice that. I absolutely love watching Sean dry off almost as much as much as watching him pull on his butt-sculpting jeans.

I look to the sea. The sunset casts an orange-purple glow to the sand and the beach sparkles in spots. “This’ll do.” The waves blown out now, everyone’s on shore.

The towel drapes over Sean’s head now. He peeks out from under it and says, “But we don’t have anything to celebrate with.”

“We have each other.” That came out wrong. Or, did it. He’s so smoking hot backlit by the setting sun.

Sean takes the towel off his head. He holds my hand. “Let’s go find a spot on the beach.”

A queasy kind of sickly feeling comes over me on our walk down the beach.

We sit in the sand for a long time without saying a word. Awkward. How is it people stay friends after they’ve done it? Never happened to me before Sean. Sand grinds between Sean’s hand and my thigh. “Come on Ash, for old times sake,” he whispers.

Sean leans toward me, pressing his body against mine. I lay down in the sand. It grinds into my hair when he kisses me, easy, slowly. I want to do it. Remember this time. Like a do-over. But I don’t want to be that girl any more. He plunges his tongue into my mouth. We kiss like old lovers. Perfect and sweet.

I wonder if I’ll ever know who I am after being who everyone else wants me to be. Do I even know how to be me?
A shooting star fades before falling into the Pacific. My alien Dear Abby says yes. I do. She believes in me. The stars save me again, from another mistake.

0 Comments on Answer: Shooting Star [Fact or Ficton?] as of 5/10/2010 9:21:00 AM

Imagine

Where were you the last time you saw a shooting star and what did you wish for?

Behind the question

Endless Possibilities

When was the last time you did something out of your comfort zone?

Behind the question

Fun with friends

When was the last time you let serendipity help you make a decision?

Behind the question.

When was the last time you went on a treasure hunt?

I’ve noticed that a post I wrote last June, about letters I have my students write to me at the end of each school year, has been getting a lot of clicks lately. Since it seems like a lot of people are looking for ideas with how to end the school year with the same fanfare [...]

“Most people search high and wide for the key to success. If they only knew, the key to their dreams lies within.” –George Washington Carver Interpretation of the Quote: I don’t think I was always able to determine what made me successful (at what I do). In fact, when I was younger, I thought success equaled making [...]