The Listening Walk

Each fall, the first grade teachers in the school where I work usually take their students for a listening walk. The walk usually coincides with a unit on the five senses. They don't go far -- around the perimeter of the school grounds or, if the teacher is feeling adventurous, perhaps all the way around the block. When you have twenty or so six year olds to keep track of, even a short distance can seem like a long way. Sometimes it's a lot like herding sheep. The idea is to get the kids to stop talking long enough to listen to the world around them. When they get back to class, the kids, with the help of their teacher, make a list of the things they heard and write sentences about them.

Most of the time, their observations are pretty mundane. "I heard some crickets. I heard the wind blowing the branches. I heard a dog barking. I heard a car. I heard a fire truck." Now and then, though, some real gems crop up. "Today I heard Mr. B. saying some bad words to the slide." Mr B. was the custodian and he'd had to clean some graffiti off the playground equipment.Occasionally, when the teacher isn't looking, some peculiar things also find their into a few pockets.

Last year, a teacher found one of her student's desk filled with wads of cotton. Upon further investigation, she learned the cotton came from a couple of tampons (unused, I should point out) three boys had found during the listening walk. At first they thought they were bullets of some kind. After taking them apart and finding nothing but boring cotton, they'd concluded they weren't bullets at all. In fact, they weren't sure what the heck they were. In previous years, kids have pocketed other things - lipstick cases, condoms, a rock somebody thought was a fossil but, in fact, was a dried out dog turd. This was the first time for tampons, however. There's been a debate about whether or they should put an end to the listening walk. But, as somebody pointed out, you can't stop kids from exploring their world. That's part of being a kid.

Exploring the world is also part of the writer's job. If something catches my attention, I stop to look and listen. I want to know more about it. If we lose our curiosity about the world, how can we ever hope to write about it? Last year during the holiday season, I was in Lord and Taylor's when I heard a child crying and screaming. Soon I saw a kid about 10 years old or so being led out of the store by two adults. Wondering what all the noise was about, of course I stopped and stared. One of the adults holding the boy's arm glared at me. "Hasn't anybody ever taught you it's impolite to stare? He's autistic! Get a life!"

Well, I do have a life and much of it involves examining things closely. Besides, I had no way of knowing he was autistic.

Don't Eat the Still Life

My art instructor has been after me for ages to work on a still life at home. I go to my painting class once every Saturday almost without fail and I love it. But, if I want to improve markedly, I need to spend more time painting. Same goes for writing or any other creative endeavor.

Last week I finally set up a still life at home -- a simple bowl of summer peaches. I think peaches are gorgeous. I love their fuzzy nap and the way the pinks and reds fade into the yellows. For me, they are the most beautiful of all summer fruit. Anyhow, I did a drawing, then a grisaille underpainting using raw umber. After my underpainting dried, I spent a few days laying in my first skin of paint on the peaches. Since I had to work last week, I set the bowl of peaches in the fridge to prevent them from going bad.

This weekend I took the bowl out of the fridge to resume work on my painting. Alas, only one peach was left in the bowl! Grrrrrr. "Who ate my still life?"

Husband raises his hand. "I did. Weren't you finished with them?"

"No. I only painted the first skin."

"Oh. Sorry. I really thought you were done with them. They were going to go bad."

Well, fortunately, peaches are still in season so I can use replacements. It's just that they'll look a little different. Next time I guess I'd better post a note. "Don't eat the still life."

Remembering September 11th

An anniversary is coming up, a sad one that's hard to think about. It's a day when I'll always remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard the news. I teach on Long Island and I was at work that day, organizing my card trays. My friend Barbara, came down to my room. "A plane flew into the World Trade Center!" she announced.

We turned on the television in the library to see a burning tail piece sticking out of one of the towers. A shocking sight, to say the least, but we figured it was probably a bizarre accident. What we witnessed next, though , was even more horrifying -- another plane flying into the second tower. Clearly, this was no accident. For the rest of the day, our school was in lockdown, meaning nobody could enter or leave the building. The teachers whispered to each other in the halls. "What's wrong?" the kids asked. "What happened?" How could we tell them? Would they understand? What if somebody's mom or dad worked there? No, we couldn't tell them -- not yet.

For weeks after the attack, an eerie silence settled the parkways and streets of Long Island. The roads that were usually jammed bumper to bumper with traffic were almost empty. Homemade signs dangled from the overpasses -- Pray for the missing EMTs, David come home, Pray for the missing firefighters.

A figure model from my drawing class lost both of his daughters in the World Trade Center. They worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, on the top floor of one of the towers.

A young woman who babysat for our boys when they were small lost her husband. He didn't even work in the WTC. She talked to him on the phone as smoke engulfed the conference room where he was trapped. "I love you," he told her before she lost contact with him forever. He had been there for a one day meeting.

A newlywed music teacher my husband worked with lost her husband. She was in denial about it for weeks, claiming he was probably lost and disoriented but, sadly, nobody ever found him.

A friend of ours had just stepped off the subway when the second plane hit. He worked across the street from the WTC. He immediately got back on the subway and took the train home. Later he found he'd lost 10 of his colleagues, including his golf partner. For a year afterward he had trouble sleeping and suffered from depression.

Almost everybody on Long Island lost somebody that day -- a soccer coach, a fire fighter, a police officer, a cook. A friend of my husband's niece -- a Suffolk Co. Police officer -- was on the site with her cadaver dogs in the weeks following, looking for bodies. She can't even talk about what she found. Let's just say, she didn't find any bodies in tact.

For some strange reason I still think of the time we took a plane from Islip Airport on Long Island to Newark, the first leg of a longer flight out west to ski. It was a small, twin engine plane with about 40 passangers aboard. The pilot decided to give us a thrill and fly a few loops around the WTC. We could see people sitting at their desks working, people standing and talking while drinking their morning coffee. It was strange but thrilling at the same time. Now I often wonder how many of those people later lost their lives and, if they survived, what their lives are like now. I know that ours will never be the same.

We lost more than lives that day. We lost our innocence and the feeling of security we had always enjoyed.