jumpingfish

1. The Advice

I stood in the faculty work room making coffee. Day four of professional development was about to start, and my coffee cup was empty. He with the first empty cup makes the coffee. So there I was.

I am new to this place, and had not yet made coffee. I looked down at the coffee filter. It was huge, and one packet of coffee didn’t seem sufficient. I looked around to ask, but there was no one nearby. I reached for another packet.

Just that moment, two people who had been talking on the other side of the room said goodbye, and one of them was coming my way. 

“May I ask a question?” I asked before she rounded the corner.

“Sure,” she said.

When she stood next to me, I asked her about the number of packets.

“Looks like two to me,” she said. She smiled and walked away.

2. The Introduction

Later that morning, as we were sitting at tables during a break in the training, the woman walked up and introduced herself. I stood up to shake her hand.

“Hi,” she said. “I helped you make the coffee.”

“Right,” I said. “It’s good to meet you!”

Here’s why I tell you this… she is my principal, whom I had never met — that is, whom I had never met until I asked her for coffee-making advice.

Booyah. Awesome first impression!

Afterwards, a few of us stuck around and chatted: getting to know each other, sharing war stories, challenges, frustrations. I mostly smiled and listened, because although I was happy to meet them, I don’t have war stories or challenges or frustrations (yet). Then one of them said something that made me wonder.

“You can see who the real teachers are,” she said. The others nodded. 

The comment sounded a bit like one I heard from my teaching hero who once told me, “Just don’t hate the kids.”

It makes me wonder. Although I know what kind of teacher I want to be, and although I know what kind of teacher I am planning to be, I don’t know what kind of teacher I will be. And I don’t know if I will be a real teacher who others can see.

I’m working on it. 

Once in a while when he’s running thru the house, we’ll hear Charlie wipe out.

There will be the galloping sound of his feet on the flooring, a sliding sound, and then a crashing/wipe-out sound. It vaguely sounds like he took a corner too fast, except that often there is no corner involved. Sometimes he just collapses — his hind end legs just give up, splaying out perpendicular to his body as he tries to keep moving forward.

There’s nothing in his expressions when this happens to suggest that he hurts. He just stands up and goes on.

I was at the vet with him a couple weeks ago, for a different problem. They took an X-ray of his knee. The diagnosis was a luxated patella, something that Miss Izzy had when she was young.

“But you know,” the doctor said, and then she stopped for a moment. “You know, his back hips are both out of socket.”

My eyes went wide.

We adopted Charlie as a senior dog when he was approximately 10 years old. No one knew his history, but there must have been some kind of trauma in his life. On our first ride home and in every ride in the car for many months to follow, he would shake uncontrollably, clearly scared to death. And when there was a loud sound nearby (a dropped pencil or fireworks down the street or a thunderstorm), he would start shuddering unconsolably.

“Was there some kind of trauma with him?” the doctor asked.

I told her what I just told you.

So… we don’t know what happened to him.

My theory used to be that he was driven out into the country and abandoned in the middle of nowhere. But that theory doesn’t seem right, anymore. It’s pretty clear that there must have been some kind of accident (a car crash?) where he was banged up pretty bad. Something made his hips pop out of socket, and they never got put back. In the years that passed, his body just adapted, tendons and muscles holding on to his free-floating femurs, fibrous tissues building up.

The doctor said there’s nothing to do for it, now. And it’s a relief to us that he’s not in pain. It’s just the way it is: once in a while everything lets go, and Charlie’s back legs splay out.

1. Fallen Arches

Years ago on the streets of New York City, as the story goes, we were walking along the sidewalk, my brother, my mother, my aunt and I, and as was evidently par for the course, I was lagging behind. My mother used to call me the “Poky Little Puppy,” after the book, and on this day I was living up to that moniker.

Now, my mother and brother were used to this laggard nature of mine, but my aunt wasn’t. So she tried to get me to hurry up. I must have responded with some usual lament about my feet hurting.

“His feet hurt, Beverly,” she said to my mom. And as the story goes, she grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into a shoe store that was right there and got me some Dr. Scholl’s arch supports. 

I had fallen arches. With arch supports, my feet never hurt again. I never lagged behind again. I was no longer the Poky Little Puppy. And my mother, as she tells it, felt guilty for years.

2. Tenderfoot

Years ago, I was living in Houston, working, eating, sleeping and training for marathons. 

I had heard something about how running shoes have “spoiled” our feet, that our foot muscles have atrophied. So I decided to act.

I added a barefoot workout to my daily routine: one slow, no-shoes lap around the infield of a quarter mile track after my long run. At the end of a week, my ankles hurt — noticeably. 

“My ankles hurt when I run barefoot,” I told my sports physician brother.

“Stop running barefoot,” he said (instantly).

I did. And the pain went away (immediately).

Yet… in the back of my mind I still wondered about my feet. And my son, who was growing up barefoot much of the time, would tease me about being a tenderfoot. 

3. Barefoot Gardener

Last April, I quit my job. 

I had decided to become a teacher, and I was struggling to keep up with my (evening and weekends) alternative certification class. Furthermore, our company had just gone thru some changes, and my new boss (a terrific guy) was beginning to depend on me.

I needed more time for class. And I wasn’t comfortable pretending that I could own my assignments for the long term. So I submitted my resignation.

So I entered pseudo-retirement. I had days “off”, which I did use for classwork but also for springtime gardening. The yard had been neglected for a long time, and there was much to do before summer arrived. 

I decided to do my gardening barefoot.

4. Progress Report

Now, working barefoot in the garden was a challenge. I was indeed a tenderfoot, and stepping on sticks hurt. (Our yard is effectively nothing but sticks.) Also, my balance was lousy without shoes. Lacking support, when I bent over to pull up some Bermuda grass or a nascent Hackberry, I’d start wobbling and begin tipping over. Finally, I anticipated the pain of nails in my fallen arches.

Still, I kept at it. 

After a week, I was more sore than I can remember being in a long time. My feet were sore. My calves were sore. My thighs were sore. Even my toes were sore.

But I kept at it.

Week two. Week three. The soreness did not diminish. Trudy grew weary of my nightly lament. I found Advil to be a good friend.

But I kept at it.

Weeks. Months. And although today I still am moderately sore every night when I go to bed, I have progress to report.

First: I am no longer a tenderfoot. I am able to walk barefoot on sticks and on hot pavement in the summer sun. I barely notice the sticks, and I can cross the street barefoot at midday. Second: my balance is terrific. Whereas I used to teeter putting on my jeans in the morning, I now find myself almost jumping into them one leg at a time. And my calves and thighs no longer hurt at all. Third: I can go all day barefoot or in no-support sandals. The arch nail pain is gone. Fourth: I have a normal footprint again. Whereas my wet footprints used to be featureless ovals with no obvious arch, I noticed a few weeks ago after an afternoon rain that my footprints are normal with a full arch indentation.

I’ve been cured!

… just in the nick of time, too. My pseudo-retirement is over. Full time teacher training starts tomorrow!

0. Bird Baths

The Wrens and Chickadees are fluttering around the water I set out in the front yard, yesterday. Their approach is cautious, always cautious.

What a lot of work, looking around, hopping from branch to branch before finally satisfying themselves that it’s safe to drink, only to look around some more from the brink before they finally dip to take a sip, only to dash off after just that one sip.

… this makes me think of public libraries. 

1. A Card Carrying Member

30 minutes outside Austin…

“Can I help you?” the librarian asked. There were three librarians sitting at the desk (although one of them appeared to be an intern). Each of them was smiling.

I asked if I could get a card, even though I live out of town. I explained that I will be a teacher in town, and I thought it would be a good idea to get to know the library so I can talk to my students about it.

“Of course,” she said. “I can do it now.” And she handed me a form, which I filled out.

“Will you mail the card to me? How long does it usually take?”

“Oh no. I’ll do it now,” she said, as she reached into a drawer, pulled out a blank card, wrote my name on the back, scanned it into their system and handed it to me.

I am now a card-carrying member.

2. Making a Copy

While I was standing there, a woman walked up to the desk and asked a question. She had shoulder length white-gray hair, a wrinkled top, and looked to be in a hurry.

“Can I borrow $0.20,” she asked in a low voice. “I really need to make a copy, and I don’t have any money on me.”

“Of course!” one of the other librarians said with a smile and a go-ahead wave of her hand. “Pay us the next time you come in.”

For all the wonders of the new downtown Austin Central Library, this would never happen there. And I am a card-carrying member