When did reading become a guilty pleasure?

Since when did reading become a guilty pleasure? When I was a kid, summertime, to me, meant two things: visiting my grandparents in Southern Virginia, and lots and lots of reading. Of course, at that time, I also read throughout the rest of the year, but come summer, I would fill my backpack up with a whole stack of books (even then my greatest fear was running out of reading supplies), visit libraries in two separate states on opposite coastlines, and settle in for a couple months of real, unadulterated reading. Reading was my summer pastime and the places I read were their own small adventures: in a tree; in Granny’s rock garden, laid out on one of the flat, sun-kissed stones; by the creek; on the deck with a lap full of fuzzy new kittens; in the Green room closet-turned-library; on the antique couch in the living room; in the car on the way to some other delightful summer excursion. It wasn’t s filler, something I snuck in between other important and fun activities when there wasn’t enough time to do anything else. It was a thing in and of itself. It was the important and fun activity. Nothing said I’ve earned this rest like settling in and reading a whole book, start to finish, without budging, except maybe to give your learning elbow a rest, or brush a tiny beetle off your ankle.

            Even when I got older, and our family trips to Roanoke became less frequent, Summer still meant reading, on the beach, then, or in Bogart’s coffee shop, or in my yellow bedroom with Bingo (the bird) perched on my shoulder, sometimes with some studying thrown in, maybe, once standardized tests became a way of getting somewhere, but still more reading than studying. Which brings me to yesterday, on my couch in Kansas City, older still, now, and still reading, but, it struck me suddenly, in a very different way. I had two and a half hours from the time I got home from my first scheduled event to the time I had to leave for my second scheduled event. (Scheduled events, I have found, are a thing that adults presumably created in order to enrich their lives and make easier the bondages of adulthood responsibilities, but they have actually, from what I can tell, greatly reduced our existence to droll appointment keeping, like we are secretaries, instead of masters, of our own lives.) Anyway, I had two and a half hours to – I don’t know – address wedding invitations, or clean the kitchen, do laundry, study for the PRAXIS (the standardized test that, due to a technicality, has reentered my life, cost me one hundred forty six dollars, and wasted hour of my time), make more appointments, plan dinner, or – well, you know the list; you likely have one of your own. But I sat down, instead, to read. Guiltily. And it was the guilt that surprised me. My summer break began nearly a week ago and I had not once in that time sat down to read a book for longer than thirty minutes. So when my book-absorption hit forty five minutes, I began to feel anxious, not because I was sick of reading, but because I felt a responsibility to be doing something else. And by an hour in, I had reached a full on state of guilt. Like entire cities were crumbling around me while I did nothing. Like I could have been saving the lives of innocent babies, but was instead lolling about on my sofa engaged in a mere story. An hour of reading and I felt as though I had squandered any productivity the day had to offer. No wonder people don’t read anymore. If I, a reader by trade, a person who believes stories are innately essential to meaningful human existence, can’t make it through an hour of reading without feeling extravagantly lazy, then who does?

            I hate to admit it, but I watch The Bachelor. I have a perfectly valid justification for doing so, if anyone wants to hear it (which no one ever does; evidently nobody really cares why – or that – I choose to waste an hour of my life once a week indulging in scripted fantasies of spontaneous love). So I don’t talk about it much. I’m a little embarrassed by it and so I prefer to indulge in that embarrassment alone – or with select people who expressly wish to join in it with me. And yet, when I sit down to watch The Bachelor, I generally watch it all the way through, on my couch, with a snack and a blanket, dinner and grading papers be damned. So why is this real guilty pleasure an easy hour spent and the reading of a great book unjustifiable to my conscience?

            Most of what I remember of elementary school is recess and reading (except Kindergarten during which I vividly remember using staples, tape, and stickers to make extraordinary pieces of useless art; and a few distinct memories of writing compositions too long for anybody to read; and, of course, my first poem in second grade which set me on the path to becoming a writer.) In elementary school, reading was also an adventure. We read in our seats and on the carpet. We read alone to ourselves, we read to each other, we read in reading groups, and we were read to. Daily. Reading was the thing. It was (at least part of) the lesson for the day. Education theory will tell you that around third grade, we shift from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Certainly, by high school, reading is no longer the thing anymore; it is instead a means to an end. By high school, we have also stopped reading together, for the most part. (Interestingly, the excerpts from novels my high school English teachers reread aloud to us still stand out distinctly in my mind – the teacher’s reading mannerisms, their voices, the discovery of something in the story I had not heard before. Even then, being read to was a sacred affair.) By high school, reading is homework. Writing that word recalls to mind Mark Twain’s wise observation that, “Work and play are two words used to describe the same thing under different circumstances.” By the time I was in high school, reading, regardless of whether it was homework or not, was a joy to me, but I don’t think the same is true for most people. By high school, we have taken all the play out of reading, and along with it, the indulgence, the relaxation, the intrigue, the sense of self-gain. We have relegated it to work.

            And now I work in a school, assigning reading work to my students each night. I also have a bad tendency to be a hover teacher. At times when students are supposed to be working and thinking independently or with each other, I have a strong urge to hover. To circulate the room, butting in, prompting, answering questions they should be answering on their own. They will tell you that hovering is good teacher practice, but I have learned from experience that that is only partially true. Equally as important is providing space between. Students will take anything you will give them to try to come up with your thoughts instead of their own. And most of them are practiced in this luring of other peoples’ ideas because they have found it to be easier and less scary than coming up with their own. If you refuse to say words, they will read your face instead, and your body language, and will snatch answers – rightly or wrongly – anyway from what you are not saying, without thinking about them at all. But if you remove yourself from their direct access, make yourself small and unobtrusive in the corner, both inertia and social stigma will encourage them to use their own minds and each others’ to develop new thoughts, instead of the teacher’s old ones. Hover teachers get answers, but usually they are merely their own – or a perversion of their own – spoken back to them.

            So what do I do in the spaces that I try to force myself to allow my students? I work. I do the innumerable tasks that come up unpredictably in the daily life of a teacher, and I do the more routine ones, like taking role and grading papers. And every once in a blue moon, I find myself caught up – momentarily – on all of those things and I take out a book to read. And inevitably, I feel guilty. Maybe I should hover more, I think to myself (though it has only been thirty seconds since I last hovered). Maybe I should check my email again, or lesson plan for next month. Maybe I should reorganize, or regrade, or make a new seating chart. What part of a reading, a well-read, high school English teacher is detrimental to students? What part of my job description delegates that I don’t waste time reading? When has a reference to something I have read ever diminished a conversation I have had, with students or other people? Not only that, but when has a happy and fulfilled person ever been worse at her job, as a teacher or a citizen of society? And yet, reading during class, as an English teacher, makes me feel guilty.

            Adulthood is not easy, but it’s also, sometimes, not wise. And I’d like to see what would happen to our society if we took a little more extended time to book read and a little less to rant, or cell phone, or hurry around. It’s hard to imagine that things would take a turn for the worse. If delving into a story is wasted time, then so, it seems, by extension, is taking the time to think divergently, to grow in compassion, to build new ambitions. If laundry is a more important adult task than reading a book, what happens to greatness and community and innovation?

          I fought the guilt. I finished my book. And it was great. It made me feel proud and patriotic and hopeful over things and times I will never experience myself. I didn’t even notice the unclean laundry. Neither did Jason. Neither did the world. Maybe laundry should be the guilty pleasure. As in: why am I wasting time folding clothes that I’m about to unfold again when I could be reading a book; expanding my worldview; building something with my hands; dancing with a forlorn child; creating a feet of engineering genius; painting a reflection of God’s greatness; helping the impoverished; or sitting by a campfire watching for shooting stars, just because that kind of faith and soul-renewing is what makes living life worthwhile. What kind of adult wisdom makes reading, of all things, a guilty pleasure? 

-R.E.A.

I rush.

            I rush. No, it’s not the latest Apple product. It’s what I do. Have always done, really, I think. For all that I am a lover of nature and simple pleasures, the magic and beauty of the universe, the little things, in my daily life, I rush. Always. Even when I’m not actually in a rush and have nowhere to go. It’s a habit that I’m not even aware of. It’s also a problem.

I remember Jason coming home one time and saying, “I saw you driving by the park when I was on my run.” I was probably, I thought to myself with that self-consciousness that comes from finding out that you were being watched when you hadn’t known it, singing loudly and atrociously. “You looked like this,” he said, simulating a tense race car driver, hands gripping the wheel at two and ten, head pressed forward toward the windshield, shoulders tense. We laughed. I realized that is how I drive all the time. Tensely, though I am not, overall, a nervous driver. Even when I am on my way home to relax after a long day of work. I rush.

A few weekends ago, I got miserably sick. I didn’t know it until the following Tuesday because my mom was visiting and everything always feels all right when she’s around. Also, it’s my first spring in Kansas and I can actually see the foreign pollens floating around in the air and up my nose, so I figured I was likely just fighting with Midwestern allergies. But on Tuesday, after Mom had left and I had to face, be in charge of, and teach a hundred forty squirrely, needy adolescents, I knew that I was miserably sick. The sick was entirely in my head (literally, not figuratively), but also thoroughly entrenched there, giving no indication that it ever planned to leave. I couldn’t inhale. I couldn’t exhale. I couldn’t swallow or open my mouth without coughing. I wheezed. I slept sitting at a ninety degree angle, on the floor, with my couch propping me up (so that I also acquired severe muscle cramps.) My ears hurt and my head hurt and sound traveled to my brain as though it were first traveling through a long and windy tunnel. When I spoke, I was pretty sure sound came out, but it, too sounded more like a gusty breeze than actual language. I wasn’t sure my ears would ever be unplugged again. And somehow, without begin able to sleep, and without being able to hear, I stopped rushing.

You know when you go outside after the first snow, or maybe even when there’s still a little dusting coming down, and the cloud cover is low and the birds are tucked away and there’s this peaceful silence over the world that is both startling and stunningly beautiful? Rest, it whispers. Be warm and still, it says. The world is waiting, it hums, you can wait too. Well, in a much less beautiful, much more mucusey way, that is exactly what my head cold told me. I stopped rushing because, like being stuck at home on a snow day, I couldn’t rush. I had neither the energy nor the self-awareness that a fully breathing, fully hearing human being has and so my pace just slowed to a state of social survival. I was miserable, physically. But emotionally, I actually felt calm. My head, though far from clear, cleared. I felt like I was better at my job because I was only able to focus on one thing at a time instead of the mad multitasking of my usual day. I had time to laugh even when I had forty papers to grade by Friday. When I asked or answered questions, I didn’t race through them because my tired brain needed an extra second to process. I paused to breath (through my mouth). It was an awakening for me. I rush; but not (it seems) when that oh-so-fragile blessing of health demands my humility.

Two Sundays ago, I was stuck in the airports of the state of Texas for a total of twenty travel hours in an effort to get back to Kansas City before work on Monday. As we roamed around the airport in Houston, walking between gates, grabbing dinner, finding places to charge our cell phones, getting cups of coffee, it struck me how slowly I was willing and able to roam inside the airport. Sure, it was due, in part, to the fact that I had a major case of boredom and a mild case of airport depression, but after some thought, what I realized was most poignantly missing was not the stress (lightning storms in Dallas are definitely stressful), or the lack of a destination or job to get done (we had both), but rather, my to-do lists. I didn’t have any, there, in the airport. My intention had been to fly home that morning and make my to-dos for the rest of the day and the new week. That had been part of the purpose, really, in leaving Texas so early on Sunday, to have time to prepare ourselves for the upcoming week. But there I was in Houston at about five hours past when I should have been home and, obviously, I wouldn’t have time to make the lists, let alone to accomplish anything on them that night. And not having an inkling about when I would actually get home (along with that mild depression) left list-making in the airport a futile and fruitless endeavor. I literally had nothing on my plate besides listening for Dallas weather updates (which weren’t really changing anyway) and the mediocre burger from Chili’s Too (yes, it’s actually called that) in the airport rotunda. So I walked slower. I mean, it’s strange to say, but that was really the most direct result of my being list-less. I walked more slowly. (Suddenly, the word listless has taken on a whole new meaning…or has it always been that way and I just never noticed?)

I rush; but not (apparently) in the airport, where the state of affairs is so out of my control as to be utterly immune to pre-planning. The length of the security line, the helpfulness of the attendants, the weather in Dallas, all dramatically important to my trip and entirely unpredictable, with or without my list making.

In “real life” outside the confines of crazy weather patterns and crazier airline policies, I am always planning ahead. Always. Minutes, hours, days, months. At five A.M., in the shower, I am deciding in what order to make lunch, do my makeup, and feed the pig, trying to formulaically determine which will be the most efficient. (I don’t even sing in the shower anymore, I find. I don’t have the time.) When I am eating lunch, I am deciding what errands to run after school, and how long they will take, and how much time that will leave me to do the things that I need to do once I get home, and what those will be. Part of this may have been nurtured by the teaching profession. Preempting student issues can take up half of my in-class attention at any given time, at least. But also I can remember being obsessive about organized planning since high school. I am sure that this is, in some ways, a good quality. I have frequently witnessed the struggles of people who can’t organize their time or plan ahead to save their lives, and therein lies a different kind of stress and insanity and failure. But what is happening to my mind when it is planning my upcoming time to the tenth of a second? For one thing, it is missing the experience it is in at the moment. This planning, which is meant to make the future, when it comes, more manageable, is obscuring the present. So if it’s not, ultimately, affecting the present positively, is it not self-defeating? Pointless?

This has been a rough year. Everyone knows that I’m good at adventures, but bad at transitions. I like to be spontaneous, but I like to make a list before I go. And I’ve been a California gal for the past 28 years. Moving to Kansas has been exciting, but breathe taking, sometimes like standing on the edge of a windy mountain at sunset, and other times like a plain old asthma attack in the urgent care office at one in the morning. I have to admit, as this school year comes to a close, that I’m a little bit haggard, not just professionally, but also spiritually. And I am thoroughly sick of rushing. If there’s one thing my head cold and Dallas have taught me it’s that there’s something to be said for throwing urgency to the wind and telling the uncontrollably spinning world that you’re just not going to keep up all the time. It also taught me that slowing down is possible. After all, if it happened twice in two weeks and the world didn’t implode, it seems chances are that it could continue in a similar vein. As I’ve sat here, pondering why this lesson is so hard for me to learn, I am reminded of dozens of times that I have discovered this truth before, including:

• Have you ever seen a line of cars on a busy street, silently and patiently stopped? No red lights, no honking. Just brake lights. And you look up ahead and there goes a family of ducks, crossing the street with the faith of a mustard seed? The busy, flustered, late-for-work world stops short for the whole vulnerable lot of them. And most of them probably smile as their running-on-empty cars slow to a sudden stop.
• You know how really old people do everything slowly? And at first you think it’s because their bodies are tired and painful and arthritic and they just don’t have the energy they once had. But then you realize that it’s also because they just don’t give a damn. They talk slowly, they move slowly, they think slowly, they wait patiently, they observe, and it’s because they’ve learned that rushing life doesn’t make it any better or more lasting than taking your time in it.
• There was a quote written on the wall of the Starbuck’s in the Barnes and Noble at the Marina Pacifica in Long Beach. I wrote it down on a slip of napkin and I have carried it with me, on multiple pieces of paper, in notebooks, and in my mind ever since. It struck me like a blow when I first read it. I was already rushing by then. It said, “Speak softly; the world will listen. Take your time; the world will wait.”
• Ms. Gayer, my twelfth grade U.S. Government teacher had more poise than anyone I have ever met. In the face of unruly adolescent boys and our general ignorance about the country from which we came, she never lost her cool, her patience, or the slight smile on her face that belied any power we believed our rebelliousness might have over her authority. I have always wanted that kind of carriage.
• Southern drawls. Have you ever noticed that they still get everything said that they need to say?

            And now the head cold. And the lists. I’m writing fewer of them. My list-less, post Texas week made me aware of another flaw in my methods. There are so many things to write down and so many different types of lists that no amount of cataloguing, electronically or on paper, seems to organize them adequately anyway. Perhaps that is what adulthood is, having too much to do to even make lists about. It’s irritating to forget things, which I sometimes do, now that everything is not written down minute by minute. But it’s not as irritating – or disheartening – as losing a list because I can’t remember which organizational device I have stored it in, or spending hours writing the list and then finding that I cannot possibly do all of it when I’m supposed to, or, even more stressful, finding that the list is so complex that it actually needs to be divided down into multiple little list babies. It is not as irritating as finding myself overwhelmed and exhausted at the end of the day and knowing that I have not crossed off enough items, that the triage needs have changed, and that I’m going to do the same. damn. thing. tomorrow. It seems, at the end of the day, that I have finally become bored with rushing. And while it seems I am willing to allow myself to be miserable, I adamantly draw the line at boredom. It’s so nothing. Now my list is short and immediate and everything else has to just fly around, willy nilly, hoping to either smack me upside the head and grab my attention, or waiting until it, too, is short and immediate and makes the list cut. My life is a disorganized, chaotic, mess. And yet, I feel, myself, like the eye of the storm. Here are the results so far:

• I spend less money (mainly because I forget to buy all the things I need when I go the store, but also because forgetting has shown me that I need fewer things than I actually think I do. And because I try to do fewer things [and go fewer places] within a day.)
• I wake up with a clearer head. In the shower, when all the thoughts come rushing back. I ignore them by instead asking myself these two questions: “What will I do to make today exciting and new? How will I avoid boring myself to death?” It’s a more interesting question to mull over than whether I should put my grocery list in my phone or in my planner.
• I use more coupons (this sort of goes back to my first point). I used to find the lists quite unruly enough to have the energy to also organize and carry along coupons. Now, they’re just tucked neatly in an envelope in my glove box, ready to grab wherever I go. They also sometimes (ironically and delightfully) remind me what I am supposed to buy.
• I spend my time actually doing things instead of thinking about doing things.
• Those most obnoxious and distasteful and emergent tasks that always seem to pop up and harangue the edges of your mind, those items which I used to write down on a long list in order to put them off as long as possible, but then worry over incessantly, those things, I just take care of them now. Because I’m afraid to forget them and realize that they take so much longer to do when I wait until the problem is complicated.
• I notice people more. Their emotions, their conversations, their needs. And because I notice more, I take the time to connect more.
•  I pray more.
• My house is messier. But it stresses me out less.
•  I feel less like a middle school nerd bomber. It’s probably superficial and ridiculous to even bring it up, but I have always been a small person with a big load. I am a collector, a reader, a writer, and a resource hoarder, so I have always bogged myself down like a pack mule in daily life. With my wide load and my short, sharp, quick steps, I have never stopped feeling like that undersized kid at school who everyone either feels sorry for or mocks. But it’s amazing how much a slower stride can make my wide load more manageable, give me a sense of competence and power, allow me an awareness of my posture and my intentions.

            Random factoid about Keith Urban from the days when I used to like to watch him rock the electric guitar singing “These are the days we will remember”: He has a tattoo on his arm that says, “Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.” My interest in Keith Urban’s music has waned, but my appreciation for that tattoo has not. I have, I am coming to believe, in my adult life, held on too tightly to illusions of what it means to be fulfilled and successful. Have held on too tightly to things that are true in high school, but not in its aftermath, to a personal strictness and self-discipline that, though it has served me, has also at times inhibited my growth as a person. It is time to let some things go. I have also, it seems, let go of some things, inadvertently, that are dearly important to me, in exchange for succumbing to the demands of the world in which I live. Lost them like change out of a hole in my pocket, noticing them gone only later when they are much harder to track down, but when I need them the most. I want to hold those things again. In my hand. See that they can truly be tangible, even in this world, like Ethan Hawley’s glowing stone in Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent. The fact of the matter is that my scale needs rebalancing in the holding on and letting go department. And it starts with slowing down a little, both in action and in thought. So I can at least think and observe again. I would like to live without continuing to make the exhausting and futile mistake of trying to do too much in a day and the other related and truly tragic mistake of failing to do enough in a lifetime. To rush it all away. 

-R.E.A.

A Willing and Searching Mind

The other day, at a department meeting, we were told about a teacher – somewhere in our district – an English teacher, no less – who was giving students the entire class period to just read. Read. No other requirements. Whatever they wanted. Whatever they had. Books, articles, emails. It was just an entire hour to read. The teacher who was purposelessly giving his students entire class periods to just read, was introduced (under a pseudonym) at our department meeting to remind us of the types of teachers we don’t want to be. The gravest evidence brought against the poor fool was that there were no listed objectives for the reading task. People in education today seem far less concerned about the gradual mushification of adolescent brains than they are about the necessity that all teachers everywhere have clear and explicit objectives listed all the time for everything they do. From California to Kansas, I have been interrogated about my objectives. What is the purpose of this day in your classroom? We are asked. Now, quantify that. “Learn” is not a specific enough objective. Neither is “Think,” although it remains alarmingly absent in the public school classroom.

Neither, apparently, is “Read.” Maybe, we were informed, had there been objectives, or some kind of assessment or learning targets, the activity could have been justified. Maybe had guidelines been more specific; maybe if there had been some explicit purpose to the reading, it would not have been such a point of contention. But this teacher is instead under grave suspicion of parceling out nonsense activities to avoid the rigors of teaching. Now, I don’t know the character of the accused. It might be that he is an indolent shirker, an overseer, rather than a teacher. Even I’ll admit that checking (and presumably responding to) emails hardly counts for creative or analytical mental development. But what shocks me about this particular scenario is the way in which the issue was presented to us – along with a handy little handout – a handout! – highlighting just exactly what constitutes an adequate justification for reading (in an English classroom) during class time – those things like objectives and assessments and the endless list of other buzzwords that the system substitutes for actual teaching and actual learning.

            I shouldn’t have been shocked, though. That’s the sad truth. Because only four years in the classroom has confirmed to me that we are in the middle of an attack on reading – not just by our schools, but by our society as a whole. Why have writing skills declined severely (even by entire grade levels) over the past decade? Because students read less. Why do we have an uninformed general public? Because adults read less. Why are native English speakers unable to speak standard English or advance their vocabularies? Because society reads less. Author and teacher Kelly Gallagher wrote a book entitled Readicide, which discusses in detail the part that schools are playing in murdering reading for students. And every day, I am reminded of the unfortunate fact in a hundred different ways. My experience with high schools involves three particular schools – the one that I attended and the two at which I have taught. All three schools have had similar socioeconomic and education level demographics. But it continues to shock me how few English teachers in my students’ generation have classroom libraries. My English teachers in high school had shelves and stacks of books all over the place. Time-worn and mistreated, we had access to these books any time, all the time. I can name only two English teachers at my last school and none at my current school who have more than a half bookshelf of books for students to access. This seems to me like a grave and foreboding situation. How do kids ever learn to want to read if we do not surround them with all kinds of curious titles to choose from?

            Furthermore, I have been told my several administrators, every district representative I’ve come across, and many teachers, that the most important thing I can teach my students in the modern classroom is how to speak publically and work in effective collaborative groups. The most important thing. People really believe this is true. Do they realize the implications this has on the reading of a book? Reading is an independent, soft, and silent endeavor and that is one of the things that is so beautiful about it – it is a world at your fingertips that lets you reflect and wonder and inspect without the impatience and loudness of the real world interrupting you just when your mind is grasping new understanding. It is the opportunity to fly without having to buy the ticket, or go through security, or wait at the gate, so that you can do it anytime and anywhere and feel the exhilaration of new adventure. It is lonely expressly so that you can make friends with characters who are unlike any people you will ever have the opportunity to meet. – And so that you can take the time to think about how you would react if you really were to meet them and how you can become the person you want to be. I look at how severely my ninth graders struggle with reading comprehension and I often wonder how, after all these years of knowing how to read, they still cannot decipher what they are reading. Then I wonder if perhaps nobody has ever just let them be quiet for long enough.

            The idea that books are only useful in so far as they can be analyzed or discussed or tested on – or on the other side of the spectrum – in so far as they can entertain us before the next episode of Survivor comes on, is not only completely inaccurate, but also drastically dangerous to the individual and to society. Books expand us. They provide us with insight, but also demand insightfulness. And they do this even without accompanying study questions or formal discussion. If they are read. If. And so they say that interacting with peers will make students ready for a global economy without realizing that reading – and caring about the story being told – will prepare them too, in other, and valuable ways. See, it’s not just my ninth graders who think that reading novels and entering the real world are two mutually exclusive things. I was told today that students must have “real world” connections in order to find relevance in the novels they are reading. Really? I thought. So the story has no implicit value in and of itself? No richness? No vibrancy, no meaning, no truth, no depth, without being connected to Hillary Clinton or global warming or a business degree? So relevance is measured solely in how closely it gets us to career goals or positions of power? The effect it has on our souls and minds and characters and levels of wonder is only a lucky side effect for people who already, for some obscure, probably genetic, reason, enjoy reading? That outside of people who want to grow up to be professional readers (there’s no such thing, by the way, I’ve checked) or journalists or English teachers, there is no purpose in knowing how to breathe in a story and let it speak to you?  Because this is the message that our children are being sent.

            But if we believe this is true, then there is no need for literature classes at all. Reading – the act of. I mean, literacy itself – can be reinforced in science textbooks and history articles, and writing can be taught as a solely technical skill. In fact, I have come across more than one teacher of English who believes that the message of the Common Core Standards is that literature does not matter and should largely be replaced by nonfiction texts (like those children will see, presumably, in the “real world”). I have an article written by Pam Belluck about a study published in Science magazine. According to Belluck, the study “found that after reading literary fiction, as opposed to popular fiction or serious nonfiction, people performed better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence – skills that come in especially handy when you are trying to read someone’s body language or gauge what they might be thinking. The researchers say the reason is that literary fiction often leaves more to the imagination, encouraging readers to make inferences about characters and be sensitive to emotional nuance and complexity.” So say that again, imagination (also an activity conducted best by an independent mind, though it can be expanded on and added to by more minds) provides us with real world skills that will enhance our abilities to interact with others and to be successful? I find this so fascinating not only for what it says, but also because these are the exact skills that the education system argues are so necessary, the skills that supposedly must be taught through collaborative learning where students complete all of their thinking and working in teams.

            But I do not hear anything from the education community about the power of reading skills, besides the vague agreement that kids should learn how to have them. More disturbingly, it seems it is constantly being reinforced to my students, that the value in books lies somewhere outside of the books, the stories, themselves. So reading in class is a waste of time. It is not a part of our development itself, but merely a tool for learning “relevance.” Because of course, relevance must mean the same thing for all of us: keeping up in a global economy by interacting with our peers.

            I have ninth graders – and have had ninth graders like this every year of my career – who cannot read. I mean, they can read the words on the page, but they cannot understand them and they cannot summarize them and they cannot think about them or determine why they are important. These students are not in the minority. And they cannot do these things, in part or full, because they do not like reading. It is difficult for them, or it is boring for them, or both, and so they stopped doing it a while ago and made the decision to eek by without it. And at this point, even if they got some inexplicable urge to do it well, they have so much catching up to do that the process will be inevitably painful. Our mantra in the school system is to “teach every student to meet the highest academic standards,” so we are determined to make these students – the ones who for all intents and purposes cannot read – as successful in the classroom as all their peers. They will pass the same tests with the same score averages, they will lead discussions and keep up with the readings and get into groups to analyze the text with everyone else. But they can’t read, you’re thinking. And you’re right. So they do all of these things as wallflowers, covering up their inabilities with aloofness and averted eyes. But to backtrack with them, to meet them where they are instead of where we want them to be, would be to admit that we are holding them to a different standard than the other students in their grade. Would be to admit – to ourselves and to them – that they do not know things that people their age are supposed to know. So instead, we just keep hurtling them along; dazed and confused and hurt they struggle through the same rituals as everyone else without developing in any way except maybe to find themselves feeling increasingly dumber and more blindsided by a world full of symbols that they cannot understand. Talk about being unable to find relevance!

            So if we should really be meeting these students where they are, we must be able to answer the question: where are they? I’ll tell you. They’re back at the beginning. Through a series of unfortunate events, they don’t like reading. And they are not going to get anything useful – emotionally or technically or intellectually – out of it until they can be captured by it in some way. Which is why I proclaim that we must capture students with reading before we try to use it as a tool with which to teach them. Otherwise, it will be like forcing a wrench into their hands and instructing them to pluck out their own teeth.

            There is a magic in stories. And I know it by the looks on my cynical sixteen year old students’ faces when I say I am going to read to them. Before my eyes, they transform into small, hopeful, eager second graders again, sitting cross legged on a faded indoor/outdoor carpet, begging to see what’s on the inside cover. Their eyes sparkle. They lean in. They listen with a focus that they never possess when I am merely talking to them. No one ever reads to them anymore. And for the ones for whom reading has become a school-appointed sentence, the reading aloud of a story reminds them of just that – the story – and the purpose of the story in and of itself: to reveal, to reflect, to judge, to captivate.

            The value of reading stories has been (intentionally or unintentionally),  I believe, systematically undermined by the education system for a range of reasons. These reasons include, among others:

• An uncertainty about how to respond to the advancement of technology and access to information
• A desire to  ensure that high school graduates succeed in an ever more demanding economy
• An increased emphasis on collaboration over the individual mind (This is the one that I find to be the most dangerous and the most misguided.)
• An overzealous desire to excel at standardized tests
• An unprecedented concern for keeping up with the education systems of other countries (despite the fact that other countries that excel in education have dramatically different demographics and school systems from America’s own)
• A belief that traditional education has little use in our current climate
• A related belief that teachers should be teaching in a standardized way
• A belief that stories are not closely connected to real life

            Ironically, in all ways, the diminishment of fictional reading in the classroom is counterproductive to the goals represented by these reasons. I find it interesting that nearly everybody is worried about the critical thinking skills of our teenagers, yet all they ever want them to do in class is collaborate ideas through group discussion. How, I wonder, are they supposed to gather new and critical ideas if they are merely bouncing the same underdeveloped ones at each other day after day? From whence should wisdom come, particularly in a suburban classroom where world experience is likely fairly limited? One cannot merely stand at the front of the room and yell “Think harder,” at the top of one’s lungs when students get stuck on a question because they don’t have enough ideas on which to build an answer. One could offer them a book, but what should happen if an administrator walked in just at the moment when students were reading?

            What if, instead of asking teachers to do less reading in the classroom, we had every teacher, in every subject area, and every grade level, give students something to read for an entire class period each week. (On different days of the week, even, if that would lighten the burden.)  Something related to the subject area. Or not. Something selected by the teacher. Or not. What might happen to our students’ brains if they were so opened to brilliant and divergent thoughts and ideas that they were deeply inspired to create some of their own? What might happen to their ability to focus? To write? To form an argument? To work with others and to invent alone? To connect to things outside of themselves? What if students knew that for one period a week, in every class, their only objective was to be curious about what someone else had to say. I suspect that their own minds would begin to desire to make others curious as well.

            The other day, as I agonized over my 9th graders’ low test scores in reading, I realized I’ve been doing something very wrong. I’ve been assuming that reading the story would equate to loving the story. I figured if I gave the reluctant readers an incentive to read (a reading quiz upon their return to class) the story would eventually draw them in enough for other magical things to happen. But I underestimated the systematic destruction of reading within whose confines they have lived their entire lives. How could they possibly be bored by Atticus’ speech in defense of Tom Robinson in a small courthouse in rural Alabama? Because they don’t understand a word he is saying. They do not understand the nuances. They cannot grasp his tone. His language, even sometimes his syntax, is over their heads. The humor is lost on them. The irony is lost on them. The brilliance is lost on them. To them he is just a man rambling on in a courthouse. “I like books with more action,” more than one student has told me. More action?! I think. More action than the greatest human struggle of all time: to refuse to relinquish your convictions in the face of close-minded people and an unjust society? They don’t get it. When they said “action,” they were thinking more along the lines of someone blowing up Gotham City. When they said “action,” they were thinking external conflict, not internal conflict, which makes perfect sense. Because they have never been told or taught to be introspective. They have been taught to be extroverted. Because they have only watched and never read. Because someone else is always doing the imaginative work for them.

            So I’m setting out to change my ways. To teach a love of reading to students who feel no urgency to read and to students who are no good at it. Because as I sit down at the end of the day and contemplate the purpose of my job as an English teacher, I realize that one of the most important things I am doing on a daily basis is combatting a new kind of functional illiteracy. Sadly, I am fairly certain that “Learn to love reading” will not be an acceptable objective to write on my classroom board. People would tell me that the objective has no measurable outcome. But I assure you that it does. The outcome can be measured in good citizenship and strong character and meaningful peer interactions; in sense of humor, and argumentation skills, and the ability to think critically and to judge credibility; in passing state assessments, in passing not only English classes, but also science classes, and history classes; in nailing college interviews, and building high GPAs; in developing entrepreneurship; in success, not only in professional, but also in personal life; in a more competent society of free but rational thinkers. Not one of these measurable outcomes will not be positively affected by reading stories. Indeed, to succeed in all of these things, a person must love stories outside of their own, true or fantastical hardly matters. A person must be fascinated and invested in people and places and the way they all interact. That is the real world, my friends. And it is reflected in every story you will ever read, if you will only read it with a willing and searching mind.

-R.E.A. 

Prairie Dust*

            It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m an ocean girl. Indeed, it’s not a secret, very long, to anybody. Each passing year finds me more enamored with the coastlines of my childhood. Never do I feel happier, more contented, or more myself than with my feet buried in the sand, and the sun on my shoulders, and the crashing, rolling, foaming surf at my toes, and the seagulls calling in my ears. There, like nowhere else, I am complete.

            Summer and winter vacations, as a child, were spent in southern Virginia with my grandparents. Though it was only a couple months out of each year that I spent there, half of my childhood memories stem from those visits and, in that way, I feel like I was partly raised there. The life I led and the things I learned on my grandparents’ five beautiful acres were different from anything else in my life, then or now, and so they shaped me in ways that nothing else could. My aunt and uncle were the first people to take me hiking in the mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains were my first mountain love. It wasn’t until late college and, later, my move up to Sacramento, that I fell deeply in love with the steep, craggy, majesty of our California mountains. I feel like all the habitats of my life have nurtured in me an ardent love of mountain wilderness.

            Here in Kansas, we are famous for many things, including our flatness and our honorable position at the center of the United States. The list of awesome things about the great state of Kansas is extensive, including our prairies, our rivers, our bird migrations, our sunflower fields, our jazz music, and our tried and true Midwestern values. Still, we are two thousand miles from the nearest ocean. And the state’s altitude statistics are, to someone like me, both endearing and alarming: 

• The highest point in Kansas is Mount Sunflower, a site whose Wikipedia page leaves one inevitably dubious about the honesty of its title. For one thing, it’s practically in Colorado: “less than half a mile from the Colorado border and close to the lowest point in Colorado.” Wikipedia also tells us that “Mount Sunflower, while the highest point in the state in terms of elevation, is indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain.”
• The nearest mountain range to Kansas City is the Ozark Mountains, which “represent the only large area of rugged topography between the Appalachians and the Rockies.” The highest peaks in the Ozarks are just over 2,500 feet.
• In comparison, the highest peak in the Blue Ridge Monutains is Mount Mitchell, at 6,684 feet, and the highest peak in the Sierra Nevadas is Mount Whitney, at 14,494 feet.  

            It’s hard not to respect Kansas for its stolid flatness. It has provided a landscape for flora and fauna that nowhere else could sustain. It has provided America and many places in the world with the wheat on which we are so reliant. Kansas, for all its landlocked flatness has no shortage of breathtakingly beautiful views and a Kansas sky is as stunning as any I’ve seen.

            Still, you can see how a girl like me, who bases her sense of direction solely on the location of the nearest coastline, might find herself a little disoriented in a state like this. My wild affinity for coastlines and mountain ranges on both sides of the country had no sense of direction when my feet first hit the fly over states, a place I had only read about before.

            But Kansas City certainly took us under its wing. To begin with, there are bits and pieces of this town that are every bit as hipster as our Sacramento home. Our little neighborhood on the outskirts of the city welcomed us with the true Midwestern warmth that you hear about in stories, as did the people in our new jobs. We loved the fountains. We loved the humidity (so long forgotten now in the middle of gloomy winter). We loved the fireflies and the smell in the air and the lush greenness of the trees. We discovered that, despite the lack of confidence that Mount Sunflower instills, northeastern Kansas lays claim to some delightfully rolling hills.

            We came to Kansas City in the middle of baseball season and the Royals – as they have been – were looking fine. There’s a little restaurant down the street from our house and it only took us about two trips there to feel the electricity coming out of the bar area where a half dozen tv screens played every Royals game. We donned Royals baseball hats and made ourselves at home. At first, maybe, that’s all we were trying to do: make ourselves at home in a foreign land. Anytime I came across someone who knew I was new to the area, I got asked the same question: “So, what do you think about them Royals?” At first I’d smile and nod politely, thinking only to myself, well, nothing, really. But the fever caught me quickly. The neighborhoods around town had banners waving on every possible street pole. Royal blue was everywhere. So, one night, because I wanted a martini, I started watching. And suddenly the 95 mile per hour balls and the strike zone didn’t seem so boring anymore…especially when Cain was stealing bases. Boy, oh boy, if Heinz Ward made me a lifelong football fan, Cain has made me believe in baseball. Cain is always up to something and my favorite part of watching the Royals is wondering what he’s going to try next. I started being able to tell a ball from a strike. And when it was going to be an amazing run even before the ball hit the ground. I started knowing when to cheer. And I started feeling proud of our players. I started not wanting to miss a game. And delighting in the fact that anything could happen after the seventh inning stretch. I started appreciating the possibility of a 15 inning game and the shoulder strength of a pitcher. Something – or maybe everything – about watching the Royals made me finally get the game of baseball.

            But the real thing is that somehow the World Series hysteria did make me feel at home here. Maybe I have my Pittsburgh sports roots to thank. I know how to rally behind a sports team. And it’s something I have in common with the Midwesterners who are my new neighbors. It’s probably the reason I got myself stuck in a two hour traffic jam trying to catch a glimpse of history at the victory rally. As blue and white confetti fell from the sky, I made my way through stampedes of blue-clad Royals fans the day of the parade – because work, yes, the entire school day, had been cancelled for the celebration. And here’s what I learned when I finally got home:

            Of an anticipated 250,000 people, 800,000 showed up to the parade, which is twice the number of people who actually live in Kansas City. What’s more, there were many people – who can count how many? – who couldn’t make it in to the city – though they tried – because there just wasn’t enough public transportation available. Of all those 800,000 people, the police made only three arrests. (Not to hate on my old friend San Francisco, but I have heard statistics that say that of the one million people who went to their World Series Victory Parade last year, there were 400 arrests.) The Kansas City Chief of Police described the crowds at the rally as “happy and civil.” Here, it seems to me, is indication that groupthink is merely a bunch of individuals, thinking, and not innately a beast of inexplicable and unavoidable destruction and chaos. If the individuals who make up a mob have “happy and civil” characters, so too, it seems, will the mob. If we are the sum of our parts, then Kansas Citians the Tuesday after the World Series come out about as classy as you can get.

            I have been a citizen of Kansas City for a mere five months and already, I want to call it my own. Already am proud to be a part of it. I have heard it called a big city (don’t laugh New Yorkers; it’s bigger than Topeka) with a small town feel, which by all local accounts, is kind of a Midwest thing. I like how proud people around here are of how “happy and civil” we are. One of my coworkers moved to Kansas City from Southern California expressly because he wanted to raise his children in this kind of environment. Many of my students – from various countries – have said that their parents did the same thing.  They say that God is in the details. And I believe that (perhaps synonymously) goodness is too. The best and truest people that I know are undemonstrative in their goodness, positively exacting change not in any grandiose way – as evil often presents itself – but by building many small, good things on top of each other until they are noticeable and strong. Goodness in a casserole for a sick neighbor. Goodness in a compost pile. Goodness in a child raised in love and strength of character. Goodness in a family farm. In a warm fire on a cold night. In a warm meal for a hungry child or a homeless stranger. In a town rallying behind a baseball team. Pride. Patriotism. Self-worth. Integrity. These qualities seem unaccidently interwoven. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

            I’ve written before about the joys of feeling companionship in aloneness. Watching the World Series at the restaurant down the street, felt, to me, like another side of that same die: feeling companionship in a room full of complete strangers. Feeling safe. Which could sort of describe what it’s like to land in the Midwest for the first time.

            Right now, looking out at the snow, beautifully but icily dusting my neighborhood, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the thing I want most is to be salty, sun-kissed in the icy sea waters of home. And I’m sure, if I could plop myself down on a mountaintop somewhere and look out over the prairies of this middle state, I’d see everything from a much better perspective. Seas and mountains speak my language, there’s no doubt. But I saw a bald eagle for the first time at Kaw Point the other day. And I’m learning, slowly, but surely, about the native plants and where exactly it is that I can tramp around in the Kansas wilderness. And I have my eye out for a 60,000 acre horse property in Louisburg or Eudora. And I love baseball now.

            Kansas City has been genuinely welcoming these past months, as though it cares about making a good impression, and has the substance to back it up. Not because of its baseball team, per se, but because of its soul, and its steadfastness, and its competence, and its people, and their values. Because it’s not in a rush and not self-conscious about being too kind or too proud. Because it loves itself and it loves others. Because it doesn’t make strangers of strangers.

            I am away from home and the places my heart knows best, but in this city, I have found warmth and companionship, nonetheless. This last day of the year finds me enthused about the Kansas year ahead of me. There are secrets here to be learned. Secrets that, though foreign to me right now, must be as delightful as the secrets the Pacific Ocean whispers when you sit bundled on her shore on a spring evening. Secrets Brewster Higley must have known when he wrote, “Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam / … / I love these wild flowers in this bright land of our; / I love, too, the curlew’s wild scream.” I am beginning to get it. Happy New Year, Kansas. Happy New Year home and the many homes I’ve seemed to acquire along the way. Here’s to a new year rich with the secrets of the Heartland and a new home away from home.

-R.E.A.

*“Somehow, the prairie dust gets in your blood, and it flows through your veins until it becomes a part of you. The vast stretches of empty fields, the flat horizons of treeless plains. The simplicity of the people—good, earnest people. The way they talk and the way they live. The lack of occurrence, lack of attention, lack of everything. All that—it’s etched into your soul and it colors the way you see everything and it becomes a part of you. Eventually, Ms. Harper, when you leave, everything you experience outside of Kansas will be measured against all you know here. And none of it will make any sense.”  -P.S. Baber Cassie Draws the Universe

Ode to Autumn

            My feet are numb. I am neither at the summit of Mount Everest, nor dangling my legs off the side of a boat dock in the Great Blue Pacific, but I cannot feel my toes. I am, in fact, perched on my couch with a cup of tea and a blanket, wearing a pair of wool socks and my Woolrich boot slippers (possibly the shoe world’s greatest contribution to mankind, just before or after Rainbow sandals). But when I wiggle them, my toes, there is only a vague tingling of remembrance, blood flow a faint, silver memory that has faded into the lost summer, along with fireflies and late sunsets. This is my next eight months, October through May. Cold toes. And it seems as though, each year, at the onset of fall, it’s the only thing I can remember about them.

            I feel guilty saying it, but I hate fall. You remember that episode of Friends where Chandler doesn’t like dogs? And Joey warns him not to admit it to anyone. It’s socially unacceptable to dislike dogs. Dogs and fall.

            I try to be a grateful person. The fact is, as Zac Brown puts it, that “I’ve got everything I need, and nothing that I don’t.” Still, I can’t help but think this time of year that I could do without October. Fall is like the two weeks leading up to the first day of school as a child. You can’t help but be excited about something new. The world feels different and that’s exhilarating. There are some delightful things about it: new school supplies, for one. Writing implements and endless supplies of paper. And the thought that this time you’ll get the organization down just right. And the wondering about the faceless people whose last names appear on your class schedule, and who will soon become a regular part of your Monday through Friday. But the thing with back to school season, as with fall, is that even while it’s coming on, you know that in just a few short weeks, you will be utterly sick of it. You will be knee deep in work and stress and cold, and summer (oh, sweet summer) will be a distant memory and you will kick yourself for the hours you wasted being excited about something that would lose its flavor so quickly, like a hardened gob of Hubba Bubba whose smell is so much better than its flavor ever turns out to be. Such is fall. Sometime long before winter, I realize that I will not feel like a normal, thawed out person until June comes around again, and that is quite a disheartening truth to face.

            Certainly, the changing leaves of fall are a beautiful thing. But are they really so beautiful as waves lapping on sun-soaked sand, or fireflies dancing under the trees at dusk? (Neither of which leave behind a pile of yard produce that pleasant company considers unattractive trash. I live in a neighborhood with a homeowner’s association and I don’t know how my neighbors – or my fiancé – will take to my organic [read hippy, hipster, or whatever else you may blame me for being] philosophy of letting leaves lie – to fertilize the ground and delight the young at heart who need piles to jump in.) I have to admit it that, though I love the genuine sentiment of all the good people who say it, I am increasingly nauseated by the comment that, “we get the four seasons,” as though feeling cold all the way through your bones for six months out of the year is something to look forward to, simply because it reflects a necessary cycle of life. For me, imagining a world with fourteen hours of warm sunlight a day is what really makes the universe seem lovely. I’ll take my diversity in land formations instead of weather patterns. I get, of course, that this is a state of mind that others do not share. I’m a libertarian and I respect everyone’s right to enjoy their diversity as they see fit. Everyone knows God is better than I am at everything, anyway. And maybe it’s just my heightened concern with being found dead under a ten foot pile of Kansas snow this winter that’s making me seem so ridiculously bitter. But here are my cases against fall

1. My toes. (I already told you about those. They are shivering as we speak.)
2. Sweaters. I think sweaters are adorable…on other people. But they always make me feel bunchy. I get headaches from them bunching at the nape of my neck. And turtlenecks make me nauseatingly claustrophobic. I’m 5 foot 3, wearing ten pounds of worsted weight yarn. Don’t tell me I don’t look bulky too.
3. The most comfortable outfit known to womankind – shorts and a tank top – are no longer reasonable daily attire.
4.  My hands get clammy. I know it seems contradictory, but when my feet are cold, my palms sweat. True fact.
5. The entire rest of the school year, I’ll have to layer – and get up an hour earlier, even though everything’s an hour darker. (Thank you daylight savings!)
6. Yosemite – and other high tops – are inaccessible. It’s not like I go to Yosemite on a regular basis, but it makes me feel sad and imprisoned just knowing that I couldn’t if I wanted to.
7. The only thing I yearn for is a seat by the fire and a warm drink – but those things all day for nine months out of the year are not conducive to real life as we know it.
8.  I get antsy to be crafty – which I am terrible at. In the summer, I have no need to be crafty. I am running around outside and planning bonfires and taking in the world. But when cool weather hits, and the only warm activities involve hunkering down at home, I get the urge to make stuff. This inevitably leads to frustration and disappointment because I am neither as creative as my mother, nor as artistic as my sister. And while I can stick with Moby Dick for a dozen hours straight, I have neither the patience nor focus to stick to a Pinterest project long enough to get really good at anything. I should just quit trying. But every year, yarn calls to me from the shelves of the craft store like a creepy Wizard of Oz, echoing down the yellow brick road of the season.*
9.  Getting out of bed in the morning is actually physically painful. And the world no longer smells delightfully grassy.
10. People blow at you all day long with heaters that dry out your skin and stuff up your nose and make you dizzy for fresh air, which you cannot enjoy because the only available fresh air gives you an asthma attack.
11. I can’t realistically daydream about pitching a tent and sleeping under the stars in the middle of a random field at a moment’s notice.
12. And to all you crazy boot people, I’m on your side! But do you know how delightfully good a pair of cowboy boots with some denim shorts really feels?

*What if I made at least one random and unnecessary Wizard of Oz reference in every single blog post for the duration of my life in Kansas? At least I’d one up all the people who told me Wizard of Oz jokes when they found out I was moving to Kansas.

            People say you can’t appreciate the sunshine until you’ve seen the rain, but I do not believe that’s true – at least not at a literal level. I mean, maybe once. Once in your life, maybe, you have to see the winter to know how awesome the summer is. But then, you know! I would, at least. “Winter, fine for some, not for me.” That’s what my memory would tell me as I basked each month in the perfection of 80 degree weather. I wouldn’t need to be reminded annually of how good I had it. Once would be just enough.

            I thought this was an ode to fall, you might be thinking, right about now, if you’ve actually made it all the way through my futile rant against something that has come around for each of the 28 years of my life and all the ones before it and to come. She uses that word, ode, you may be thinking, but I do no’ think it means what she thinks it means. But I do. And I’m getting there. Have gotten there, really. Because here’s what I discovered as I sat down to make my case against fall. I don’t quite hate it. It started with pumpkins. I am definitely on board with the whole pumpkin craze. Pumpkin candles, pumpkin lattes, especially, more than anything else, pumpkin pie! I got a recipe the other day for pumpkin granola bars. And another for crockpot pumpkin butter.

            Of course, if I were really in charge of the universe, apples would dominate the autumn world, even higher on the crop totem pole than the plump, orange pumpkin. If Northern California doesn’t turn you on to apples in the fall, I don’t know what will. Between apple cider doughnuts at Apple Hill and the juiciest Pink Ladies I’ve ever crunched into at the Sacramento Farmer’s Market (Lord, I miss my apple guy!), a love affair has sprung up between the apple and me. Have you ever noticed how hardy apples are? How you can carry them around in a lunchbox or hiking pack for days and they are still crisp and juicy and delicious whenever you get to them? Neither heat nor cold bothers them too much in comparison to the other fruits. Have you ever tasted my mother’s apple butter spread over a slice of toast with cottage cheese? Or eaten apple seeds? (They taste – I learned from my parents’ neighbor who eats the core and all, a practice which I have admittedly taken up – like almonds.) In Kansas, there are varieties of apple that I have never met before. One I am particularly infatuated with has a craggy, rough, yellowish, brownish skin and both the most tart and sweet flavor I have ever known in an apple. I love that it is – like so many of the best things in life – plain on the outside, but surprising and beautiful within.

            I like the tingling the air gets in the fall. Things are changing and the whole universe knows it. The squirrels are about to lose it over the busy venture of moving nuts to and fro. I love them more in the fall than in any other time of year, even when they are uprooting my potted plants and replacing them with walnuts.

            Fall brings out a sadness in me. It always makes me miss terribly all the people that I love. And yet, it also signals the beginnings of the holiday season when I will see many of them again; so there is an excitement in it too. Fall is the nostalgia in me and it makes me cry, but I don’t mind. I appreciate paradox – in life and in emotion. It reminds me that I am real.

            Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Because I get to cook in a crowded kitchen with the people that I love most. And I remember how it feels to be a kid again. And Baba jokes a lot. (If you have never heard English puns spoken delightedly in a Persian accent, you may not have laughed hard enough.) And then we get to eat what has to be the most delicious meal of the year (on account of the stuffing and pickled beets, of course). And I always pick out a Thanksgiving outfit that is all fall-y and cute, and MUCH too warm for my inevitable task of cooking the candied sweet potatoes, and then I get to shed it for something that is much more akin to summer wear and for one, chilly fall day, I am warm. And football. And the Macy’s day parade. And the beginning of Christmas music. And Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life and White Christmas and Charlie Brown.

            Fall is also the time when the tourists become more sparse in my hometown and the beach becomes a place of secrets and solitude. Oh, how I adore the beach on a brisk, uncrowded day, when the sound of the waves, and the seagulls, and the ferry horn consume all other noise and my soul is alone and free!

            The cycling of the seasons is good for putting one’s small, wonderful life into perspective. And it turns out that, even as I hate it, I love it. Because it’s God’s. And mine. And proof that I’m still alive and part of the grand scheme of things, which is an overwhelming, astounding, and awesome truth, no matter how your toes feel. The squirrels are helping, and so are the pumpkin lattes and apple butter. And the fact that my mom and sister adore autumn as much as I do not. I’m happy for all you crazy, wonderful fall people. Who are bubbling over – on Facebook, and Pinterest, and in coffee shops around the world – with your delighted (albeit sometimes excessive) posts about leg warmers and scarves and cinnamon, vanilla, pumpkin, spiced candles. I’m cold, but I am happy for you. Besides, I’ll know exactly how you feel – come June.

-R.E.A.