Author: mmtbagladyintraining

Art is down.  Kids are gone.  Rooms are clean.  Shoes are off.  Sundress is on.  Immediately, I start to thing of ways to keep myself busy.  Should I go to grad school?  Get a job?  Paint the fence?  Clean the garage?  Take a breath. Relax for a minute.  Because even if I am excited about school being over, I have had a bad run of summers for a long time.  For the first time in a long time, my son is in a good place, I’m starting to be able to think about my parents without feeling like I’m about to fall into a pit of despair, and my body seems to be healing.  But this place of no impending trauma is so foreign for me that I’m having a hard time trusting it.

So instead of thinking about all the things that have colored my summers for the last years–Shayne’s streak of summer low points, my parents’ accident, my illness, I am trying to focus on the things that have made summer great in the past.  I’ve made a list.

The top item is riding my bike.  The best summer of my life was when I was getting up every morning at 5:00 and putting 20-30 miles on my odometer by 7:00.  I saw some amazing things–a sleek mink in the creek on the way up to Red Canyon, a coyote family hunting out by the airport on the highway, a bear drinking from the river.  I rode to Penrose, Florence, Rockvale, Coledale, Pueblo West, and Alamosa.  I remember riding to Cripple Creek and feeling like the hills were a piece of cake.  I was strong and fit.

Music is another good highlight of summer.  Hanging out at B Street Bash with my girlfriends is  always so fun, or bringing lawn chairs and margaritas to the park for the free concerts.  I love going to karaoke with friends and family.  And some of my favorite memories with James are concerts during Fibark and watching Rock Creek Road band at Whitewater.

Gardening used to be something I enjoyed.  When I was a kid, I spent hours in the yard, mostly to be with dad.  I would sit with him as he weeded.  I would pick beans and peas and strawberries.  I would follow him around while he watered and mowed and trimmed.  When I got my own house, I tended the grass, and pulled weeds and planted flowers and tomatoes and raspberries.  I’d have people over for backyard barbecues, proud of my yard.  Somehow, I came to this place of benign neglect about all that stuff. Last summer, I started to reclaim the yard with painting the fence and planting a rose garden.  There is more to do this summer.

My girlfriends have stepped up for sure during all my bad times.  They’ve brought me meals and cleaned my house and my car and listened to me during my tears and my despair, but we used to have fun.  Some of my best summer memories are of hanging out at the pool with Christie and Jill, riding with Maria, watching the cooking channel with Pam, or having lunch with Lora, or Karen, or Tracy.  I hope this summer, I can have more of those moments and no one has to come hug me because they don’t even know what to say.

James has been a rock through all my trauma, but I remember our summers that we hiked to places with crystal clear lakes, night walks with wine and moonlight, waking up slowly, afternoons with nowhere to be.  So much has changed, but not how I feel about him.  I’d like to get back to a place where I can be a partner instead of a damn damsel in distress.

Darian has been robbed of a lot.  Even before my parents died, I spent a few summers trying to keep Shayne alive.  She either was along for the ride, or left alone.  Darian has dealt with all the same things that I have without age or maturity on her side.  There was a time when she and I would go to Farmer’s Market, and hang out at the pool, and paint rocks in the backyard, and read books together.  I hope that this summer, I can have fun with her again.  My time is short, before she graduates and moves away as she so desperately wants.  I don’t want to clip her wings, but I want to make sure she has a reason to want to return, even if it’s only to visit.

My best summer memories are of spending time with my family in the Valley–San Luis, Alamosa, Antonito. I loved hanging in the mountains, eating food cooked over the fire, walking in the streams, fishing in the rivers, listening to the radio at ball games, or sitting around the table until late in the night, laughing and telling stories.  There is something magical about the Dunes at dusk.  I love how the air cools and the sand slips through my fingers while watching the sun go down.  l want to go back and walk the places my father grew up and listen to my uncles tell their stories and let my cousins mother me with their warmth and their love, and their amazing food that brings back my childhood.

My list actually could be go on infinitely.  I haven’t even mentioned my brothers, traveling, my nieces, spending time with James’s family in Wyoming, or afternoon naps.  It’s a good reminder that there are so many amazing things in my life.  I’ve spent a lot of time with the bad.  It’s hard not to not be on guard waiting for the next thing.  But it’s also draining and unhealthy and unproductive.  So even though my go to survival mode is to jump right to busy, to not think, to not feel, to not remember; I’m going to work really hard this summer on taking care of myself and becoming whole and healthy again.  Bring on the peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My daughter periodically has meltdowns over how much she hates Canon City, accompanied by tears and insults about how racist, small-minded, and oppressive this town is.  She doesn’t believe that once upon a time, I felt the same way.  I was just like her.  I couldn’t wait to move away and never come back.  I did the big city thing—Boulder, Denver.  I did the East Coast thing—Boston and the Cape.  I did the  South for graduate school—Virginia.  I did a thousand acre ranch in the middle of nowhere.  I did a stretch in Alamosa, which I realize was coming home without coming home.  And a short stint in the mountains, which was as close to Deliverance as I ever want to get.  No matter where I went, I always came back to Canon.  I didn’t call it home, just the place my parents were.  So in 2001, when I found myself in an impossible situation as a single mom of a seven year old and expecting a baby under unbelievable circumstances, I returned to Canon, because mom and dad were always my salvation.   I took a job at Canon City Middle School, which brought irony to a full circle.  I was back in the town I wasn’t crazy about, working at school that I had bypassed by going to Catholic school, and about to be a poor, single mother of two.  Not how I pictured my life turning out when I left town in my hot little Mustang at eighteen.

I started at Canon City Middle School (CCMS) when I was six months pregnant. I was one of the younger staff members at the time, which is saying something considering I was in my thirties.  Most of the staff was seasoned and solid in their lives and careers and they took me in like orphaned puppy.  No one asked questions; they just made me feel warm and welcome.  Inwardly, I was freaking out about all the chaos in my personal life, but I could forget about it at work, because I was having so much fun.  The kids were okay, but my colleagues were a blast.  They were always coming up with ways to play pranks on each other. Lunch time in the lounge could sometimes be so loud and boisterous that someone would have to shut the door.  I met or reconnected with some women that fall that have become life long friends, mentors, and inspirations.  Maria was with me the night Darian was born.  Karen offered me her gentle spirit.  Glenda fed me every day and had a giant baby shower for me.  Kathy brought me a giant gift of laughter every day.  And Carol sent me flowers on the behalf of the entire staff while I was in the hospital.

After Darian was born, she became a fixture in the building.  Everyone held her and looked out after her from the custodian to the principal.  By the time Darian was two, she was wandering all over the building because she knew who had candy or toys or who would read books to her.  CCMS became my family and for the first time I started to appreciate Canon City for more than just being a place where my parents lived.  I started hiking and biking the trails around town with Maria.  I started shopping and eating locally and met some great business owners and waitresses.  I learned about running into my students and their families at the grocery store and always being prepared to be friendly and courteous.   I met James at CCMS; even though our relationship began much later, the seeds of our friendship were sown that year working together, sharing laughter and frustration over eighth grade trials, tribulations, and triumphs.  And I teamed with Jill, Deanna, and Christie.  It was the first time in my life that I felt like I had sisters.  Christie was the organized one; the level headed one; that one that could handle it all.  Deanna was like having a little sister, but a smart little sister who could make me smile and inspire me with her passion.  And Jill was flat out funny, and crazy and kept everything real.  The four of us were juggling careers, motherhood, dating, marriage, and managing to teach middle school kids, but we gelled and had a blast for a few years.

Leaving CCMS in 2010 was a choice and not a choice.  Our district was facing cuts and I expressed an interest in teaching art at one point.  I pretty much had been told no, because I wasn’t elementary endorsed and the existing secondary art  teachers weren’t going anywhere, anytime soon.  However, when the restructuring came down, the HR director pulled me out of my classroom and took me into the auditorium to have a private conversation and let me know I was moving to elementary art.  At that point it didn’t feel like a choice, but I was excited about a chance at something new.  I loved the elementary kids right away.  They were so adorable and said funny things, but working in an elementary building as an elementary teacher was a culture shock.  First off, as an art teacher I was kind of on my own.  I didn’t have my team to hang with in the mornings, or eat lunch with.  There were no pranks or inside jokes.  And my janitors didn’t call me “kid,” and come tell me jokes.  And one of the secretaries was flat out mean.  I called Sheri, the CCMS secretary in tears one of my first weeks, because the elementary school secretary told me not to ask her any questions, and that I should figure things out by myself.  And staff meetings were so professional and boring.  The chairs were in neat little rows, and no one made jokes, or said WTH, or WTF when the principal said something asinine.  There were no big, raucous parties at each others’ houses with dancing and DJ’s and I didn’t have my girls anymore.  However, art and elementary kids were a much better fit for me.  And I’ve grown to love and appreciate the buildings I work in now.

I didn’t realize until my parents died how my school family has grown.  Almost every single person at both my elementary schools did something for me in the days, weeks, and months after the car accident and while my son was missing and in crisis.  And as the trauma has continued through my cancer, my school family continues to be supportive and caring and nurturing and a driving force in getting me through all my personal challenges.  This week one of my students wrapped a piece of string around his neck, really tightly.  I looked over and he was turning blue.  I ran over and grabbed a pair of scissors, but the string was too tight, but I realized that it was just wrapped, not tied, so I started unraveling it and was able to loosen it quickly and the color started returning to his face immediately and he was okay.  Me, not so much.  I mean, seriously. I signed up to teach art, not save someone’s life.  How in the hell did that even happen?  Of all the things I’ve experienced, that might have rattled me more than anything.

So I ended up at my old teammate, Jill’s, retirement party last night.  I thought about drinking because it’s been hard to get the image of that little boy’s blue face out of my head, but I’m still recovering from my damn colon infection and I’m not much of a drinker anyway.  When I got out of my truck, someone shouted my name from the house.  His voice carried all the way down the long driveway, to the road.  It was sort of like being on Cheers.  James and I laughed.  Jill was celebrating it big, as she should, and most of the old crowd was there, even if there were a few missing.  There were new people too, who have become part of my life since leaving CCMS.   The party was like coming to a place where everybody knows me and loves me.  It reminded me of coming home.

Canon is my home, even if Mom and Dad aren’t here anymore.  Darian is right—this town can be racist, and small-minded, and oppressive.  But so can anywhere else in the world.  It’s really about attitude and choosing how to fill your life that makes the difference.  Seventeen years ago, I might not have wanted to be back, but I found refuge here.  I am so grateful that I live in a place where so many people have touched my life and shown me love and warmth and acceptance.  I’m grateful for my school friends, past and present, every day.  They build me up and help me face all my challenges and remind me what love really is.

I was going to write about Mother’s Day yesterday, but it was so damn depressing that I couldn’t bring myself to post about it.  Not that this blog will be much better; it’s probably going to alienate all my readers.  It’s three am and I’m wide awake.  Why?  Because I am so hot.  I swear the minute my ovaries were taken out, the hot flashes started.

Maybe it shouldn’t be so surprising.  When I was nursing my kids, I had hot flashes.  I remember one time when I was teaching, for what ever unknown strange twist of fate, my milk let down in my classroom full of eighth grade boys.  And I was also instantly on fire and not just from embarrassment.  This kid named Stuart, who was possibly the most unaware boy on the planet for the most part, noticed immediately and said, “OMG, what’s happening, Ms.  T.  Are you dying?”  I think I said something like, “Keep reading.  I’m fine, ” as sweat and milk were pouring from my body.

So anyway, tonight I got out of bed to get myself a popsicle and the box was empty.  The dark chocolate raspberry ice cream was also empty.  Seriously?  It took all my will power not to wake the kids up and go all Joan Crawford on them.  Instead, I drank some water and stood in the doorway for a few minutes, completely waking myself up and confusing Blue and Charlie.  Blue is pacing around, his nails clicking on the bare floorboards.  Charlie is chasing around something only he can see.  It just went behind the bookshelf and now he is crying.  So there will be no more sleeping.

There are a bunch of things that people recommend for hot flashes.  Peppermint oil is the first thing I tried.  I bought a microscopic bottle for a small fortune and tried drops on all the places I heard you put them–neck, forehead, belly button.  Once I got it in my eye; that was very helpful.  I didn’t notice a big difference.  And I hate peppermint.  It reminds me of the time when my son was a baby and he ate a whole box of Girl Scout cookies when I was in the shower.  Thin mint diapers changed my entire outlook on that particular delicacy.  I have also tried black cohash tea, sage, red clover, and flaxseed oil.  I read one article about colon and liver cleanses helping to reduce hot flashes.  I know that I’ve promised not to write about my colon inflammation, but trust me colon cleanses haven’t helped me at all.  There are things I haven’t tried yet; I’m working my way through the list.  Maybe the magic is still to come.

The one thing that does help is exercise.  Ice skating is wonderful.  The rink is cool  and I’d give anything to be allowed to sleep on the ice.  Biking is great because the air moving over my skin feels amazing.  Even running is okay, probably because it is so torturous that I can’t think of anything else.  So maybe what I need to do is workout when I wake up in the middle of the night.  Hell, I’m already sweating anyway.  Tonight, I’m writing my blog, but one night I might open up my own gym for women who can’t sleep because of internal heat.  I’ll call it Crossfire.  I’m already working on the t-shirts.

I’m sure like everything else this will pass, but this might be a long, hot summer…..

 

 

It was teacher appreciation day yesterday.  I went to work.  I saw around 150 students in my classroom.  I trimmed and matted and hung up over 300 pieces of art.  I folded paper for six year olds who wanted to make snowflakes.  I didn’t remind them that it was eighty degrees outside and snowflakes are long gone.  I cut clay for a boy who lost his last project in an unfortunate smashing. I drew a turtle for a boy and a pony for a girl.  I hugged a kid who lost her tooth in her desk.  I hugged another kid who scrapped her knee on a table.  I said, “please don’t,”  “hush,” and “pick up that marker” around two million times.  I gleefully announced to my colleagues that it was my last Tuesday of teaching this year, because trust me, I am counting.  At the end of the day when I finally had a moment to look at my email, I found a handmade card on my desk from my fourth graders telling me that they loved me and appreciated me and hoped that I would have a great summer and be back for them next year.  It made me smile and I pinned it up on the bulletin board, even though I’m not sure I deserved it.

Teaching wasn’t my first choice of profession.  I’ve written about that before.  I had some vague idea that I’d be some sort of artist or writer and I fell into teaching because I needed a job and I was always good at school. This year teaching has been the hardest school year I have ever had.  Mostly I think it was the cancer.  I started out the year so exhausted from radiation and I just never really got my energy back and there were some things I just didn’t do that I ALWAYS do.  My first graders didn’t do their rainbow unit because I just couldn’t bear to sort through the crayons and pull out all the indigos.  My second graders didn’t completely finish their Mondrian style paintings because I couldn’t bear the chaos.  A bunch of the second graders didn’t get wind chimes and I can’t even begin to retell the saga of what went down with that story.  And for the first time in eight years my fifth graders didn’t make paper masks.  The thought of dragging out all the supplies for that project was so exhausting.  The surgery in February didn’t help, because I was gone for several weeks and my body just hasn’t fully recovered from all the trauma.  There are kids that came while I was gone that I don’t even really know.  And I was looking through the final stuff, all I could think was, wow, there is so much we didn’t get to this year.

To complicate things, ever since, my son got sick, I’ve questioned everything I ever thought about education.   I always told him to go to school and work hard and get good grades and go to college to have a successful job later down the road.  Shayne  did those things, even though he hated school to almost phobic proportions.  He tried to tell me, make me understand, but I didn’t get it.  School is what I know.  It’s what everyone has to do.  My response to him was, come on, suck it up and do it.   And he ended up homeless in LA, carrying around a backpack with an Allen wrench and a sweet potato afraid that the government was infiltrating his toothpaste.  I never saw that coming.  So now I watch kids line up in the halls like little robots and I wonder why we make them do that.  No where else in life do we walk in a single file procession.  I watch them air write words and read nonsense words and raise their hands to speak and I kind of think, really?  Is this what’s best for kids?  I show kids how to make a bowl out of a lump of clay and teach them about color and I think in my head the whole time.   Why am I doing this?  Does it matter?  Who cares if yellow is a primary color?  Is knowing any of this going to be of any value?   I think we lie to kids about what is important every damn day.  But I’m not really sure myself what is important or what really matters.

I saw my first grade teacher a few weeks ago.  She gave me a hug and told me that she was so sorry to hear that I’d been struggling with my health.  She is the teacher that taught me the difference between to, too, and two, and how to read contractions like don’t and can’t.  She’s the teacher that taught me to love school.  I also saw my high school math teacher’s obituary on Facebook.  It really hit me hard.    I can’t say I learned much in his class, but that was on me.  In my arrogant teenage years, I’d already decided that trig wasn’t going to be useful to me when I was painting sets on Broadway and I spent a lot of class time daydreaming and drawing flowers on my graphs.  But  a decade later, I got a chance to work as his colleague and I sat in on the same math class I’d blown off as a teenager.  I found him to be engaging and I got a ninety two on my final.  I’d sit with him at lunch and we’d exchange glances when someone at the lunch table said something asinine and sometimes I’d hang out with him and we’d watch a baseball game on tv.   I knew he moved back to Illinois to be with his family, but I never got in touch, even though I thought about it all the time.  My high school English teacher lives a block or so away.  I waved at her when I saw her getting her mail a few days ago and I realized that she is moving slowly and is sort of stooped now.  If I’m nearly fifty, she’s probably nearly seventy.  How did that happen?  She’s the one that encouraged me to write, made me believe that I could do anything I wanted with words.  And next month, I’m going to Chicago with my girlfriends and I keep wondering how I’m going to make it out to the convent to see the nuns.  The only nun left that really knows me is Sister Amy and she is nearly 100 years old.  She never was my teacher, but I learned so much from her.  She lost her mother when she was a young child, and was sent to St. Scholastica when she was just a little girl.  The nuns taught her everything she knew and she is kind and gentle and smart as hell.  She always remembers my birthday and asks about my family.  I will never forget how she used to take Shayne to breakfast with her and cut up his French toast, even though he was perfectly capable of cutting his own toast.   I can’t not see her, because what if she doesn’t make it till my next visit?  I’ll never forgive myself.

With all the strong teachers in my life I guess it’s no surprise that’s the direction I headed in my own life, even if it wasn’t my initial plan.  I have the utmost confidence in my artistic abilities and the ability to string words together to deliver a message, but feel sort of shaky about leading hundreds of children to unlock possibilities and encourage them to find their voices.  Teachers have to be self-sacrificing and patient and dedicated.  Children are strong and resilient, but fragile and impressionable.  I don’t ever really know the impact I’m having.  If I’m in the classroom touching hundreds of lives, I want to do it well, better than I did this year.  Part of me wishes that I could have a do over.  But I think do overs are one of those lies we offer up to kids.  Maybe because we want to still believe in them ourselves.  I have made a promise to myself to take this summer as a time to find peace and let my body heal and get strong again.  In the fall, I get a fresh start.  That’s about as close to a do-over as I get.  There’s a lot to appreciate about new beginnings.  I appreciate the opportunity to be able to have one.  And I hope next year, when we reach teacher appreciation day, I’m saying, “Bring on the swag.”

 

I had a colonoscopy today after two months of on -going pain and other issues that I promise not to write about.  I thought having an invasive medical procedure  would distract me from thinking about my dad.  Today would have been his birthday.  I largely ignored social media because I wasn’t sure I could handle seeing my memories of birthday pasts popping up.  Thank goodness for anesthesia because it mostly made me sleep through the day.  But I’m awake now, and I can’t quite turn off my sadness.

I did come out of my grogginess in the late afternoon and took Blue for a short walk and sat out in the sun for a bit.  My roses are leafing out nicely.  I found out about the breast cancer last year around this time and I had an urgent need to get some things done around the yard.  One was to make a rose garden.  At the house I grew up in my dad had roses of all varieties growing against the garden fence, along the side of the house, in front of the house, and near the patio.  I spent hours standing next to him telling him dumb stories, reading to him out of my library books, as he hand watered each and every bush.  I think he had an internal timer for knowing when the buds would open to a perfect blossom because he would clip a couple and bring them to my mom in the house.  He almost always brought her pink buds, not red for love, but pink because that was her favorite color.  When they sold that house, mom went around and took pictures of all the rose bushes.  One of the first things Dad did in their new house was to plant rose bushes at the edge of the lawn.  I was living in Denver then, but I remember being home when Dad was digging the holes with his post hole digger.  His crazy cat was hiding in one of the holes next to the bird feeder.  Dad got a kick out of that and left her, her foxhole.  She wore a bell, so usually the birds got a clean get away.  And when they moved to their last home, Dad once again planted rose bushes.  One of the last things I did at that house was to photograph one of the roses in bloom.

When I was working at St. Scholastica, I met Sister Jean who also had a profound love of roses.  She tended the roses near the front entrance much like my father.  She hand watered them daily and snipped the dead petals, so more would flourish.  I will never forget Dad coming by the school and getting out of his car in the circle drive and clipping one of the roses just ready to bloom with his pocket knife.  “It’s for Madre,” he told me.  I didn’t think much of it, because that’s what he did, but the next morning, Sister Jean announced during morning assembly that someone had stolen one of her roses on the brink of bloom and she was very sad and troubled by this sin.  I came to her later and told her that my father had taken the rose to give to my mother.  Sister Jean laughed and said, “Oh, well, if it was for love, then that’s a noble reason.”

I wanted my own roses, to water and tend and honor my memories of my father and mother.  So today while I was sitting out in my rose garden taking stock of work that needs to be done in the yard and trying not to think of my father, and trying not to think about what my swollen colon means,  a hummingbird flew over my head and hovered near the climbing rose.  I’m not sure what attracted it, because there isn’t anything blooming really, and it only stayed a moment and took off.  And I instantly remembered being a tiny child camping with my family in Aspen Glade near Antonito.  Dad came rushing to the campsite, excited to show Kevin  and me something.  He took us to the truck. A hummingbird had somehow flown in one of the cracked open side windows and was going crazy trying to escape.  Dad opened the door and very carefully caught the bird in his hands.  He held it so Kevin and I could see it up close.  I will never forget how tiny it was and how fast its heart was beating.   Dad set it free.  I can’t see a hummingbird without thinking of my dad’s big hands, gently releasing that creature into the morning mountain air.  I’m not super spiritual and I don’t look for signs and stuff like that, but I went back into the house with a sense of peace.

If I’ve learned anything in the last three years, it’s that really none of us know what the future holds.  I guess it’s best to be positive.  As much as I try to hold my pain at bay, my dad is always, always close to my heart.  I just need to remember that my memories are good and give me strength.  So happy birthday, Dad.

 

 

 

 

 

My first word was horse, except it really was a word I made up that meant horse.  Doi-Doi’s.  My brother, Mike, is probably the only one that remembers that.   My mom really could never let it go.  I remember saying to her once, “Mom.  I’m forty-three.  I call them horses now.  My point is that I’ve always loved horses.  One of my earliest memories, is my dad picking me up out of bed when we were staying with our aunts in San Luis.  He put on my pink furry coat over my pajamas and took me out on a frosty fall morning  to the big old sky blue Ford 150 we had back in the day.  I was little enough for a car seat, but that wasn’t a thing when I was growing up, instead I stood on the seat next to him, kind of tucked behind his shoulder, with my arms around his neck.  He drove me for what seemed miles over rutted dirt roads out to see wild horses that have been between San Luis and Manassa, Colorado for four hundred years.  I’ll never forget dad standing me on the tailgate of the pickup and handing me his binoculars (he called them field glasses) so I could see the horses in the distance.  They weren’t running, but kind of milling about a stream–all colors and so graceful and beautiful.  Even though I was so little, they took my breath away.

Everyone knows what a daddy’s girl I was.  To me, he was always everything.  I sometimes try to write about him but the tears just stream down my face until I can’t even see the screen.  For some reason, it’s easier to accept mom’s death.  Maybe because I was there when she asked for the machines to be turned off.  Maybe because I got to hold her hand during her last moments.  But dad died alone.  I try not think, “what if,” but my mind goes there anyway. What if I answered the phone call when the accident happened, instead of not letting it disrupt my bike ride?  What if I got to the hospital before they took dad in for surgery?  What if I told the surgeon about dad’s low blood pressure and past history during anesthesia?  Would I have been able to help save his life?  Would I have been able to say I love you one more time?  So everyone reading this knows my truth now.  These are the questions I live with every day. Add the fact that I loved my dad more than anyone on the planet and the result is living  in this crazy place of pain that I don’t even know how to face.

When my parents died, I waited for them to come to me in a dream.  Not that I was sleeping much.  Shayne was going through his first full blown psychosis and he was pacing around at night, talking to himself and I was alert and tense, because I just didn’t know what to expect from him anymore.  And when I did close my eyes, I’d see images of my mom being squeezed by the compression cuffs, or dad wrapped up in white blankets, already cold and that’s not the kind of dreams I wanted.   I was afraid to sleep.  But when the dream did come, Mom and Dad were on an island and they were happy, walking on the beach, hand in hand. There were wild horses standing around in the sea foam.  And I felt peace.  That made sense to me.  Mom grew up by the ocean.  My dad loved to fish.  Maybe that’s a funny vision of heaven, but I’m not one for angels and harps.

A few months after their death, I left everything behind for a few days, Darian in her sorrow, Shayne in his insanity, the dogs, my job, the mounting medical bills, and calls from the insurance agents and lawyers and flew to the East coast to meet with my brother, Kevin.  We sat in his hotel room until late remembering our childhood and then the next day, I drove to the beach.  It was rainy and cold and the hurricane of 2015 was already on the radar.  I walked for hours on the frothy edge of the sea, letting the spray and foam soak my skin.  I watched a boy cast his line off the pier, sinking it deep in the water.  He was tiny, but strong.  I stayed long enough to learn his name–Bobby– and he showed me a blue crab in his bucket. We shared a smile and it made me think of dad.  He would have loved to fish like that.  I flew back to Colorado, renewed, ready to face the challenges again.

When I found out that I had cancer, I kept thinking that I needed to get to the beach again, get back to that place of peace one more time.  So after my surgery, but before radiation, I took the kids to Chincoteague Island in Maryland.  Wild horses roam the shores.  It’s kind of a miracle that the horses can thrive on brackish water and rough sea grass, but they do.  They are tough and resilient because that’s what it takes to survive.   Sitting in the middle of the horses on the beach, I watched the kids diving in the water.  In many ways, it’s a miracle the three of us have made it this far, intact.  As much as I miss my parents, there are things I’m glad they have missed.  And I am super grateful that my dad didn’t have to watch me face cancer.  My pain would have been a lot for him.

The big horn sheep sculpture is for my father.  It’s a tribute to the land he loved and the beauty he found in wild things. Wild horses symbolize freedom, but also limitless possibilities.  And if I learned anything from my father, it was to work hard for your dreams.  I know he wouldn’t want me to feel guilty over his death.  He died the way he would have wanted, fast and without a lot of fuss. He was brave and kind and crazy strong.  I hope one day that I’ll be strong enough to brave the pain of losing him and be able to write and talk and laugh about all my memories.  But for now he’s in my heart every moment, getting me through…

 

 

A long time ago, a friend of mine got a free massage as a door prize.  He gave it to me, because he wasn’t into massages.  I was trying to be a single mom to a toddler and working forty hours a week, and I was awake a lot of hours in the night wondering how I was going to juggle all my bills.  A massage was supposed to be a special treat, but I remember being a little manic out about finding someone to watch Shayne, and driving in a rainstorm to get to the massage on time and thinking the whole time, that it was supposed to be relaxing, not causing more stress.  I was all keyed up when I got on the table, but the tension just left my body as soon as the massage person touched my skin.  I think I even fell asleep.  I remember feeling like I had so much energy afterward, like I could go for a run.  That was back when I didn’t need to exercise and I felt that running was only something you should do if you were on fire  or being chased by a tiger.  And on second thought, stop, drop and roll is the preferred way to deal with flames and hiding might be a better choice against a tiger, so really there was no good reason to run.  Even as much as I enjoyed the massage experience,  I never had another massage again.  But I never forgot how it made me feel.

My problems with my arm started way before breast cancer.  They probably started the night I tripped over Darian’s pet rock and fell onto my subwoofer and dislocated my shoulder and tore my rotator cuff.  And because I don’t like doctors and didn’t want to pay for surgery, I dealt with the pain for weeks.  Then years.  When I started teaching art, my arm often ached from wedging clay or painting, but I just thought that’s how life went, so I was willing to accept on-going pain from the breast cancer surgery.  A small price to pay for removal of a few tumors and a diseased nipple.

Here’s the thing about doctors when you have cancer.  You don’t just have one doctor, but a team.  There is the general practitioner, and the breast cancer surgeon, and the plastic surgeon, and the radiation oncologist and medical oncologist, and just for fun I added a gynecologist and gastrointestinal doctor to my team.  Add in nurses and medical assistants and technicians, someone was bound to figure out that I was in pain.  In this case it was my radiation oncologist.  He is a funny guy, about my age.  He likes ice cream and doesn’t understand how in the hell I could just free paint bricks across a dinosaur.  He is the one that referred me to specialist when he tried to give me an exam and I shrank from his touch.  He said, “It’s that bad?”  And I said, “Yeah.  It’s like a ten if you touch it, but like a four if you don’t, so I just don’t touch it. You shouldn’t either.”

It took a while for me to get into a physical therapist who specializes in treating breast cancer patients.  Now I am sure other therapists could do what this woman does, but she works with breast cancer patients exclusively.  She commented on how nice my scars had healed–this is a weird thing that I’ve heard enough that I don’t find it weird anymore.  Just like the next thing that always follows–a conversation about getting a nipple tattoo.  That’s a thing that some women do.  Not this woman though.  I don’t have a problem with ink, and I have tattoos, but I got all my tattoos when I was super young and I would definitely reconsider that decision if I could rewind the clock.  And I had a tattoo on that breast.  It was my first–an iris that I’d drawn myself.  It was kinda small and discreet, but then some genius boy talked me into getting tribal marking around it and I hated it immediately.  It was big and gaudy and went from my collar bone to my nipple.  When mom offered to spring for getting it laser removed, I let her think I was doing her a favor, but I was pretty ecstatic to get it off.  And I’ve wondered a bunch if that tattoo gave me cancer.  There was evidence of the tattoo ink on the MRI report.  I have also wondered if the laser removal gave me cancer.  It’s impossible to know. And radiation brought the shadow of that tattoo back which is super bizarre.  Even the breast cancer doctor said she’d never seen that before.  Writing about this makes me realize how normal it has become for me to talk about my breasts.  Almost as normal as it is for me to take off my shirt and let people examine the carnage.

So after all that, the physical therapist completely felt all over my right side and told me that my problems stemmed from guarding my pain.  She said that often when people experience chronic pain, their bodies try to shield the area from more pain and then there is constant tension which can lead to frozen muscles.  She said she felt that she could get me back on track with some deep tissue massage and a few exercises.  She has a pretty cool arm bicycle and gave me a band for arm stretches.  I joked that it was sort of like Crossfit without the sweating and squats.  Then comes the massage table part.  I’ve spent SO much time lying on tables this year with people rubbing my breast.  And I still don’t know if I’m supposed to lie there with my eyes closed.  Or entertain the feeler with stories about how my fifth grade boys make penises with clay in art.  At least in this situation the decision is easier because I have to concentrate on relaxing through the pain because it hurts like hell.   But by the end, not so much.  And I can lift my arm over my head, and at night, I can roll over without waking myself up with pain, and I’m not holding my arm pit all the time because it’s on fire.  I wish I’d done this months ago.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the guarding my pain thing.  It’s become a pretty big metaphor for how I’ve survived the last few years.  Be cheerful.  Be optimistic.  Be busy.  Get out of bed.  You can do this.  I keep thinking about the day of my parents’ funeral and riding up front with the limo driver on the way to the cemetery.  She told me that she was on marriage number three and I made some joke about three times a charm and we laughed.  On the way to the cemetery with my parents’ urn.  I was laughing during one of the darkest moments of my life.  Sometimes my jokes are just bravado though.  It’s way easier for me to laugh, than cry.  But I am realizing that it’s okay to feel the pain.  And maybe working through the pain is the only way to find the peace.

 

People ask me all the time about the sculptures downtown.  It’s confusing, because there hasn’t been much press and no one really gets why there are dinosaurs and big horn sheep.  I don’t get why there are dinosaurs and big horn sheep either.  The best I can answer is that Canon City suffers from a bit of an identity crises.  We aren’t exactly sure what our thing is.  Florence has the antique shops and Salida has the art galleries.  Canon City has prisons and dinosaurs and mining and rafting and the Royal Gorge and climbing and biking and pot.  (Every town in Colorado has pot, please let’s not let that be our thing.) But it seems like we are still trying to come up with that one thing, that we can draw people in for.  Personally, I think it could be dinosaurs.  We do have the Marsh quarry close by, and the Dinosaur Park on the other side of town, (even if the T-rex did explode). How cool would it be to drive through town and see twenty brightly painted sculptures of awesome dinosaurs?  It would be like the cows in Chicago. Or the hearts in San Fransisco.  But as with all identity issues, things get a little confused, so soon we will have sixteen dinosaurs and four big horn sheep scattered in locations all around town–some of the locations are great, and some just kind of make me shake my head.  For example, there is a dinosaur in front of the social service building.  I understand there is a lot of traffic there because the justice system is there and the police department.  But we really want tourists to come to our crime and welfare complex?  Because really, that should definitely not be our “thing.”  Despite all that, the sculptures are a great idea because it is art for our town, by people who live in our town, to celebrate the history and culture of our town.  How cool is that?

I was really excited when I saw the call for design proposals for the sculptures.  I love large scale art.  My big dream in life was always to move to New York and paint sets on Broadway, but you know I got pregnant right out of college and had to get a real job, real quick, so that just never happened.  But I still love painting and I have wanted to do a large sculpture my whole life.   However, my breast cancer diagnosis came around the same time the sculptures were announced.  I had the idea of submitting a proposal in the back of my head, but I was also preparing for death.  I mean realistically, I knew I wasn’t going to die, but you hear the C word and your mind immediately goes there.  So I was busy fixing up the house, and making sure Shayne was safe in Maryland, and pushing the damn lawyers to finish up the final steps of my parents’ estate before my surgery.  I decided just turning in a design was the goal, and if I got selected, great, but if not I had met my goal of at least trying.

At two in the morning, on the day of the deadline, I made myself get up and sketch a stegosaurus and color a design on it.  I drew sunflowers and put a brick background on it.  This design has become a bit of a motif for me.  (I’m using art words in this blog). I love bricks–the different colors and textures.  I love architecture and the stories and histories buildings hold.  We have a lot of brick and stone work in our town and I thought the brick dinosaur would compliment those attributes.  Sunflowers are my favorite flowers.  I know they are kind of weedy, but I love how they grow in the summer and fall, so bright and happy.  (Yellow would be my favorite color, but I don’t want red and orange to be jealous).   I also love how sunflowers can grow anywhere; they’re so tough and resilient.  As I colored the stegosaurus, I got to thinking how it also represents my journey over the last years.  I keep coming up against these “brick walls,” yet there is always enough light and hope to get me through to the other side.  Strength against adversity.  That kind of thing.  I made the deadline.

I was super happy to get chosen, but it wasn’t great timing.  School had just started and I was in the middle of radiation.  The dinosaur was delivered and sat in my living room for weeks.  Radiation isn’t really any big deal at first.  You go to the radiation place, strip down, lie completely still while a beam of light hits you for a few seconds, then you get dressed and go on your way.  The effects come later, itchy, blistery, burnt rashes, and bone crushing fatigue.  All you can really do is give in to the sleep.  It’s what your body needs to heal.  So as I worked through the fatigue, I painted the stegosaurus.  I started with the foreground first–the flowers.  I wanted the yellow to be vibrant.  So when I did the brickwork, I had to go around the flowers.  Plus I used a modified form of pointillism.  Each brick has four different shades of red, and I tried to make sure that no brick was like the one next to it.  Seraut, the father of pointillism went blind painting dots.  I totally get why.  I don’t know how many hours it took to paint that dinosaur, but I was proud to do it.  It was a symbol of my survival and a gift to my community–to all my friends and family who love me and support me.

I’m not going to lie, I was a little disappointed that the dinosaurs have been installed with little fanfare.  So when the next round of installations were announced, I was excited.  This was a chance to make the display bigger and better.  I didn’t know if I would get picked twice, but I hoped so.  This time, I also introduced the sculpture proposals to a couple of my classes at school.  I have some great little artists and I thought it would be fun for a team of kids to paint one of the dinosaurs.  But again, the proposal came out at the same time I was struggling with health concerns.  The date of my hysterectomy was the same week as the deadline for designs.  Again, I found myself pushing aside the sculpture plan as I prepared my 650 students for a guest teacher.  I had a tight kiln schedule to get all the clay projects fired, I was painting a backdrop for a music show, and getting ready for the district art show.  In addition, I was having panic attacks over losing my ovaries.  I got this crazy idea that estrogen might be my superpower and I was freaking out that I might be losing my strength.  However, I did manage to turn in my design, choosing the big horn sheep as my canvas (even though, I still think the sculptures should all be dinosaurs).  I arranged for someone else to turn in the student designs, and I checked into the hospital for my surgery.  I figured if I was chosen or one of the kids was, at least I’d have time to paint while I recovered and there was spring break.

Well, I was chosen again.  And so was one of my students.  Wow.  Two sculptures.  The problem was that even though my surgery had gone well, I developed some sort of intestinal infection that knocked me to the ground.  I considered writing about it, but no one needs to hear about my shit.  Literally.  But I’m more or less back on my feet and I’ve started working on my big horn sheep.  This time I started with the background first, a lesson well learned last time.  The foreground is a surprise, but it does tie in with the history of our community. It is also a homage to memories of my childhood, especially with my father and brother, Michael. And of course, a symbol of strength and resilience.  And I have a plan in place with my students to complete another stegosaurus.  I don’t know the story behind my student’s design, but I am sure as we paint, the story will unfold.  I hope that I am able to make the experience fun and foster a sense of community and pride during the process.

Please take time to admire the sculptures.  Share my blog, so others learn about them too.  Canon City may not be the perfect paradise.  But we wake up almost every morning to blue skies, stunning ridge lines, and a rippling river.  People are connected and our history is rich.  Each sculpture represents pride and dedication.  Each sculpture shares a story about our community.  These are the stories that need to be told, shouted and celebrated.  Please help me do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my first blogs was about my mother, but I am writing about her again because it would have been her birthday this week, and I can’t stop thinking about her.  I miss her so, so much.  I can’t speak for everyone, but it does seem like when people close to you die, all of a sudden only the good stuff remains.  Maybe you remember the bad stuff, but it doesn’t matter as much, because you would give anything for just one more minute, one more phone call, one more hug, one more memory, no matter what it is, just one more anything.  At least that’s how I feel, even though I’m first to admit that sometimes my mom made me CRAZY.

When I saw her in the hospital after the accident, she was stripped of all her make-up and jewelry and her wig was gone.  All these machines were attached to her and giant compression cuffs were keeping her circulation going.  I took her hand, noting that every piece of skin that I could see was bruised or shredded off her body, but her nails were perfect–a dusty pink color.  Mom loved her pink and she would have been so pissed that people were gawking at her without make-up and her hair done, because THAT is not how you leave the bedroom, let alone the house.  She was always after me for wearing ripped jeans and ratty sweatshirts and no make-up.  And she’d say shit like, “You’d be so pretty if you would just brush your hair and put on a little lipstick.”

When I was young, I used to argue with her over lipstick.  Like the night, Shayne was born, my parents were with me in Northglenn when my water broke around 10:30 pm.  I was in bed, and they were watching a double header of the Rockies on the couch bed in the living room.  (One they bought, so they’d have a place to sleep when they visited. Although, I was perfectly happy giving up my bed for them).  The first contraction hit about two minutes after my water broke and we all knew it was showtime.  Mom put on make-up.  She was fast about it, but the whole enchilada–foundation, powder, blush, eyeliner, mascara, shadow.  Then she tried to chase me around with some bright pink stuff to give my cheeks some color.  “Don’t you need a little lipstick?”  Dad intervened, like he frequently did, “Rosa, we need to vamanos.  Put it in your purse.  She can put it on after the baby gets here.”

My mom was an amazing cook, as I may have mentioned two million times, but food was sometimes about control for her.  You ate, even if you weren’t hungry, because she went to the effort.  I’m the first to say, that I’ll probably eat anything, but I wasn’t always like that.  I grew up in house that had an abundance of food.  There was a large garden, and berry bushes, and fruit trees, and a green house.  At any given season, I could have a snack of peas, or fresh strawberries, or a juicy apricot, fresh roasted pine nuts, or warm sugar cookies.   The pantry was stuffed with pretty much anything, anyone wanted and there was always ice cream and my favorite cereal and a million cartons of yogurt.  Because I’ve literally had yogurt everyday of my life, since I was like four.  I could be picky, because I was allowed to be and mom liked to brag that she catered to all of us.  And she did, sometimes she made three different meals.  Granted she was a bit of a drama queen martyr about it, but she WAS Catholic.

Going back to the night Shayne was born, Mom made Dad and I cheeseburgers.  Hamburger is something I used to be kind of picky about.  Okay, I still am.  I like grass fed meat, and if it’s hamburger, I want it bison and the leanest possible cut.  I also like meat rare.  Even hamburger, or in my case, bison, and I don’t care if rare ground meat can possibly bring me to death’s door.  I’ve been known to eat it raw and I pretty much always take a taste raw if I’m cooking it myself.  (I haven’t died yet, although with this lingering intestinal infection, I’m sort of wondering if I’ve had raw meat lately?  I don’t think so…..)But mom and I argued about the way my meat was cooked for decades.  So on that night, she thoroughly cooked my burger, so it was basically on the fringe of being burnt.  I ate it becase she told me that I was ungrateful and pulled out the waterworks.  No one told me that puking sometimes comes with labor, so I thought I was just sick from eating overcooked meat.  I threw up for a couple of hours after dinner.  Mom took pictures.  There’s one in Shayne’s baby album.  I wasn’t wearing lipstick, but she made me hold my hair back. So, so Mom–“Smile for the camera, even if you are throwing up.”

As I got older, I quit arguing with mom about all that stuff and just kind of accepted that’s who she was.  (It only took a little therapy;). )And I’d give anything to just have one more minute with her.  I’d put on lipstick and nylons and blow dry my hair and get a full set of nails;  I’d eat well done meat and wear uncomfortable shoes.  I would even iron my underwear and wear it, if it would bring her back to me for a single second.  Because when it comes right down to it, all the good, generous, kind, loving, self-sacrificing things are what I miss about mom.  Right now, while I’ve been so sick, she’d have been over here everyday, polishing up the silver, scrubbing the tub, boiling up every recipe she could think of to settle my stomach.  She’d probably have loved my blog and printed off every entry and laminated them to stick on the refrigerator.  She loved me, even if I didn’t always do the things the way she thought they should be done.  And yeah, sometimes she did make me crazy, but she made me a lot more that just that.  Because of her, I learned to be thoughtful, kind, generous, and tolerant.  So instead of being sad about her being gone, I’m going to try to remember her by doing something she would have done–maybe I’ll get the kids some shoes, or give a homeless dude twenty dollars, or light a candle at church for the recent school shooting or the storms in the East, or maybe all of those things.  Most of all, I’m going to think back on her with love and laughter and remember how beautiful she was on the inside as well as the out.  Happy Birthday, Mamacita.

 

When I was a kid, I remember sitting next to my mom and dad in the crowded gymnasium of my elementary school listening to adults argue how to spend PTO dollars. Lots of people wanted to replace the drab, and dusty stage curtains.  I will never forget this man standing up and saying, “If we spend the money on curtains, in ten years we will have curtains that look just like the drab and dirty ones, we have now.  If we bring an art program to our school, our kids will have that learning for the rest of their lives.”  People stood up and clapped and cheered, so we got visiting artists, instead of new curtains.  I got to go outside with my class, sketch book in hand and sit in the dirt on a bright spring day and try to bring something to life on the page.  I sketched a mailbox made of wood.  The visiting artist looked over my shoulder and said, “You are doing very well, I can see the texture and the shadows.”  I didn’t know that I could draw until that moment.  That man literally changed my life.  I was nine years old.

I let art slip from my life in my twenties.  I was working way too hard to survive.  And it’s super hard to paint or draw with a toddler crawling over the canvas, so I just gradually quit doing art.  I took a job as a English teacher because I’ve always liked to write and read and it seemed like a good, grown up job.  But I never really liked teaching English much.  When I’d pack 100 essays to read over the weekend, I felt like that’s exactly what hell might be like.   And I’d look at the writing kids did and I wouldn’t even know where to start.  They all thought they were e. e. cummings, with their punctuation all eschew.  And I’d seriously, think, “How do you not know this shit?”

My breaking point was after teaching The Diary of Anne Frank for the twenty-ninth time.  We read the play and watched the movie and I snapped off the video and started plopping the test down on the desks and I realized some of the kids were crying.  I’d gotten so desensitized to the power of the story that I forgotten that kids had just witnessed a girl their own age perish in a senseless slaughter.  I needed to do something else.

I went to my HR director and said, “Is there something else I can teach, because I can’t do this for one more day.”

He said, “Well, you have a lot of art credits.There will be art openings.”

I didn’t know if that would be any better,  but I thought I’d give it a try.  I took a college art class, just to refresh my skills.  Our teacher had us do a self portrait.  She took mine and pinned it up on the board.  It was hands down an exact replica of myself and I remembered suddenly that I could draw.  It was like an epiphany and I remembered that I’d actually wanted to be an artist once upon a time and move to New York and paint sets on Broadway.  Maybe being an art teacher wouldn’t be so bad.

Being an artist and being an art teacher are not the SAME thing at all.  Most kids aren’t natural artists, but they think they are and I think my job is to build them up, not break their spirits.  So my philosophy is that it’s about the process, not the product.  Although I provide lots of steps that make the product attainable for most kids.  And I am brave and crazy enough to bring it all out—glue, scissors, paint, clay, glaze, yarn, magazines, and even glitter.  My room is messy and chaotic and kids take risks.  The noise is deafening at times.  They pound their clay on the tables and exclaim over new colors they make with paint and just make noises because they’re kids and happy.  And the incessant questions– Miss Taylor, can you look at this?  Am I doing this right?  How do you make elephants have wrinkles?  Can you show me how to make things look far away?  How do I make things look close up?  Are zebras black with white stripes or white with black stripes.  Miss Taylor, are you married?  (What?  How does that have to do with anything?).   And I think the only way to retain my sanity is to run away a to silent retreat in the hills of Tibet.   But the kids see me in the hall and say–WE HAVE ART TODAY!  They hug me and high five me.  They write me letters and bring me drawings and drag their parents over to me in the grocery store.   They build me up.

On the best of days, I’m exhausted.  But this year has been harder than usual.  There was the immense fatigue of radiation, and some other health issues.  Truth be told, I’ve probably never properly grieved all the losses I’ve experienced in the last few years, and sometimes I think I might be mildly depressed.  Mostly, I try to employ an attitude that if I fake being happy enough, I will be, but it’s been harder this year.  And more and more I wonder why the kids can’t just shut up.  And I wonder if what I do even matters.  Is knowing primary colors important?  Is learning how to glaze a pot gonna change the world?  Why am I doing what I’m doing if it doesn’t ever matter in the big scheme of life?  So not only was the break for my health, but also to rekindle my passion for the work that I am doing.

When my substitute texted me about the incessant talking and that two boys made play doh penises, I just laughed.  Yep.  Kids do stuff like that.  Every damn day.  I thought about myself, sitting crossed legged in the dirt, my feet asleep underneath me, as I drew the mailbox with great detail. I’m not ready to go back to work yet, physically or mentally.  But I will be. There will always be days when I’m going to wish the kids would just sit down and color quietly.  But more often, there will be days when the kids are buzzing with the noise of wonder and excitement.  I know they won’t all grow up to be artists; but  with a little help, and a little guidance, I hope their discoveries and creativity will bring them joy for the rest of their lives.

Daily Prompt: Noise