Adventures In Walking for Transportation

I had car troubles last Monday on my way to work, so I've been hoofing it, bussing it, or hitching a ride whenever I have to get anywhere.  Here are a few things I've learned or relearned since:

1.  Life is pretty pretty if you take the time to notice.  

When I'm driving (and I am, usually), I don't get to look around.  I get to watch for cyclists, pedestrians, other cars, red lights, parking stalls, rogue little children running after rogue bouncy balls.  But walking, I get to notice the unusual texture of the bark of a tree, fun Christmas lawn decorations, the view of Waikiki from the top of a steep hill.  I get to say hello to retirees walking dogs and practice ignoring the preaching man waving his hands in my face.  While walking, I can stare at a rainbow all the way home to see when it will disappear.

A trek to the the market with my kids on foot is nice, too.  We can talk more, we connect better, we enjoy the scenery together (or make fun of it) because I'm not stressing out about the movement of traffic or making the light or whether or not there will be parking when I get to our destination.  I worry about cars banging us when we cross the street or climb over that horrid bridge, but it's different.

2a.Walking for exercise is very different from walking for transportation.  

I thought walking for exercise was boring and unpleasant, walking for transportation is worse!  The walk is pretty, don't get me wrong, and even urban decay has its attraction, but sometimes I just don't want to walk up those bajillion steps.  Sometimes?  Most times!  If I have to trudge up that damn bridge one more time, I think I'll scream.  Or pee my pants.  

2b.  Walking for transportation is similar to and different from riding a bicycle.

Walking around your neighborhood is a good way to feel a part of the community, a lot like cycling does.  You can also totally tell when you're walking uphill, even just a little.  

3.  There's freedom in walking and bussing.

I love the feeling of having everything in my backpack, that I'm prepared for any eventuality, that I'm ready to go.  It reminds me of my youth (since I didn't own a car until I was 22).  It's nothing to walk into random stores on a given street, get off the bus wherever especially if you have a bus pass, or sit in a patch of sunshine to read.  Here's a few things I learned back then that I've to remember lately:

• Always pack napkins or tissues.  Boogers can suddenly creep up on you at any time.
• Use the bathroom before you leave because you just never know.
• Comfortable footwear.  Yes.
• Bring a book.
• Make sure your Walkman has batteries or bring extras.  Or you could just make sure your iPod/cell phone is charged.

4a.  Driving a big truck can make even the meek feel powerful.

I used my brother's truck for a few days, and for a few days I nobody wanted to fuck with me.  Very few people cut me off and I was never worried that people couldn't see me.  Big truck.

4b.  Your own vehicle can be your enemy.

The large hood of a big truck will blind you when it drizzles at sunrise.

5.  Walking makes you tired.

Did you know that?  

Like This

As a mom, I'm a repository for joy and woe.  Nothing and no one gets hurt, lost, broken, untangled, planned, or purchased without my knowledge.  As with everything, exceptions exist, but you can pretty much figure that whatever secrets they have today, I'll eventually find out on some tomorrow or another.  Likewise, there's pretty much nothing I do that they don't know about, which doesn't mean they aren't likely to forget.  Whenever they hear my keys jingle or see me dressed to leave, it's imperative that they know where I'm going and with whom.  Mom belongs to her family as much as they belong to her.  

I love that my kids call me when they receive an award or score a perfect grade on a test or bump into an old friend they haven't seen in a long time.  They want to share good news with someone who is going to understand their delight, and right now it's me.  I'm thrilled!  

So I have to learn to also take the woe. 

"Mom, I can't find my school ID."

"Mom, my phone won't turn on."

"Mom, I need a plain white shirt by 7:30 tomorrow morning."

"Mom, these are the things I have to take to school tomorrow."

"Mom, are ALL my workout clothes in the hamper?"

"Mom, I dropped your iPhone and it cracked BUT it still works!"

I hear some version of these sentences on a daily basis, and often more than once.  I must not be very reliable to my kids because I don't know how many times in one night I might hear, "K, mom, can we look for that book now?"  You might not know this about me: I'm not very patient and I'm more likely to snap than agree.

A night like this, though, I've heard most of those sentences.  A night like this, I wish for so many things, but most of all I wish for patience.  Because while my kids might know my every move, they don't know about my problems or my stress.  They don't know what my concerns about money are, they don't know how much homework I have to do in one night, they don't know how hard it is to manage school, work, family, and a household.  They shouldn't know any of those things, anyway, because they're just kids. 

It has only taken my fifteen years to realize that I bear the burdens of my children as well as my own.  It makes my shoulders strong, and sometimes it makes me very weary.  

Los The X Men

My Spanish class is the best.  I know you're supposed to act cool and nonchalant, maybe even pretend the opposite is true, but I've never been cool.  In fact, I'm usually the antithesis of cool, which is not even uncool, it's dorky.  Not only do I not play it cool, I call attention to the fact that I like something by laughing (inappropriately) loud at a funny thing, belching after eating something particularly delicious, or blabbering on about a gadget or idea I find fascinating.  Or I write a blog about it.

My Spanish class is the best.  As I've said before, I thought this was going to be my crap class, the one I fell asleep in, the one I begrudgingly attended, the one I'd try to avoid whenever possible, the one I'd just have to fight my way through.  I was beyond nervous because it was also the first face-to-face class I've taken since going back to school, and I hate it when teachers make you work in groups and no one wants you to be in their group unless you're good-looking or popular.  Pressure!  On top of that, I'm, you know, not in my late teens or twenties.  I'm not even in my early 30s.  Nor am I a pretty girl or popular, and by popular I mean, like, people not like me.

I digress.  I was nervous and I already expected to dislike the class.

What a surprise, then, that not only is it suck-less, it's my favorite!

If someone tries to tell you all teachers are created equal, then you have my permission to punch that asshole in the face.  It's not true.  Again, it's the antithesis of true.  I've worked with some bad teachers, my kids have each had at least one bad teacher (or long-term substitute teacher), and my husband has had a few very bad teachers at KCC who weren't even masters in their given subject.  An English teacher, for example, especially one teaching 100, should, I don't know, be able to properly use punctuation, and maybe should spell words correctly.  Perhaps an English 100 teacher should not randomly use quotation marks and should avoid tossing apostrophes at plural nouns.

Here's a free fun fact for you: being a "teacher" doesn't mean that a person knows how to teach.

My Spanish teacher is a good teacher.  Thus far, anyway.  I usually save these kinds of things for my ratemyprofessor.com reviews, but why wait?  He seems to care about his students and actually gets to know them.  From the very first day of class, he helped create an environment that fostered a sense of community among us, the students.  He didn't treat us like just another batch of dummies he has to endure for however many weeks-- we were individuals with unique personalities.  The other stuff-- the classroom management stuff-- is pretty tight, too.  Assignments are clear and relevant, tests are challenging but fair, grades are given back in a reasonable amount of time, and feedback is constant.  He is able to read his class, knows when to kick ass and when to make nice.  Yes, I still dread being called on sometimes, but mostly because my brain feels disorganized or I feel unprepared.

And because of the edifying classroom environment, we, the students, have greatly benefitted.  At least, I know I benefit from it.  My classmates are awesome!  We're all pretty different from each other and we're all kind of weird (though some of us are weirder than others, I think), but it works.  It feels like community or family or, as Jeff puts it, a gang of superheroes.  It took a little bit of time, but we eventually began having weekly study groups-- daily sessions during the week of our final-- and those study groups kind of opened the door to getting better acquainted.  I mean, we've already learned the most random details about each other because of the weird nature of language classes (what's your name?  how old are you?  where are you from?  what do you like to do in your free time? Rinse and repeat), so it was only natural that the process would continue outside of class.

Which can only benefit our Spanish-acquiring pursuits.  I feel more comfortable making dumb mistakes among my fellow superheroes than in front of strangers, after all.  We can easily reach out to each other when we come across a pain in the ass sentence in our homework.  We help each other, we support each other, we encourage each other.  And maybe that wouldn't happen if the climate of the classroom wasn't so warm and come-as-you-are.  Maybe that wouldn't happen if we didn't feel SEEN.  I feel seen.  And valued.

My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Abe, was the very first person I recall who taught me to take risks.  "Give me an answer," she would say, "even if you're not sure it's the right one."  It's a lesson that has shaped my life, no joke.  She was the first teacher I remember who encouraged her students to take chances and provided for them an environment in which they could feel safe to try.  It is something I try to bring to my own classes, and now that I find myself a student in a similar class, I can testify.  It works!

I'm not cool.  I like the subject, my teacher, my fellow superheroes.  I feel crazy lucky to be involved in this endeavor, this learning a foreign language with these guys and girls.  It's fun and fulfilling.  I feel like we are our own microcosm of awesomeness.  And that's a good thing since we spend two hours of every weekday afternoon together, conjugating verbs, memorizing vocabulary, and hoping profe doesn't call on us.

We've lost members of our gang along the way.  Some left us early, some at the end of the 101, but we've also gained new heroes at the onset of 102.  I miss them, for reals, and class isn't the same without them.  But for a thing to grow, it must also change, and I can embrace it or fight it.  I don't like fighting.

Here's to a growing gang of fledgling superhero dorks.

Exactly Where I'm At

Going back to school in my thirties has taught me a few things about myself.  I can be a good student.  High school taught me I can pull off being a mediocre student without lifting a finger, college out of high school taught me I can get good grades with my innate intelligence alone, but going to college as a 30-something year old woman has shown me I got study skills coming out of my butt and intelligence to spare.

Fs were commonplace for me in high school.  I loved not living up to my potential-- it was a lot of fun. I had friends who complete the square for me and who gave me notes for a book I didn't read but had to write a report on.  It's a wonder I passed at all, and I lived in perpetual fear that I was going to get kicked out.  No joke.  But it was fun.  I had fun.  And maybe that was short-sighted and myopic, and maybe I'm paying for that now.  I don't care.  I took classes I wanted and enjoyed them!  Novel idea, right?  I took drama twice, photography twice, and won an award at the LCC film festival for the PSA I wrote and edited in tv production.  I lay out in the middle of Konia field with my friends, ate sandwiches in Midkiff.

Since returning to college a couple years ago, I've been a model student with a 4.0 GPA.  That means I've earned As in all my classes, including the ones with which I have a rocky relationship, like Biology and Psychology.  I work hard, I push my way through classes like a bull, I wrestle difficult concepts and make them my bitch.  Because I get As and have a 4.0 GPA and this is what I've come to expect of myself.

This is my last semester at KCC, and I was all set with Ed classes, accelerated Spanish (101 and 102 in one semester!), and a geography lab.  Over the summer, I had a huge burst of confidence in the form of a superawesome English professor and decided I would stick my tongue out at Education and major instead in English.  I dropped my Ed classes and picked up Creative Writing.  I thought Spanish was going to be the problem child this semester, but I was wrong.  This English class is a tangled mess that I can't seem to navigate my way through, even though the assignments are straightforward and easily accomplished.  I spend hours working on a poem or short story, and by hours, I mean hours a day over a span of days, and still I get a grade I'm not happy with.  I bang my head repeatedly against the wall, and if you can believe it, have yet to attain an answer.  What's going on?

It's not so much that I expect to get all As on every assignment, but come on.  The mediocre grade I receive on a poem I put a lot of effort into really does not motivate me, especially when that grade is not accompanied by any notes.  There are no suggestions, no observations, just a number.  What does this number teach me?  That I can put a lot of effort into something, something I can kinda feel proud of, and then get shit on.

So, I'm lacking the ability to stick my middle finger at it today, and it's bumming me out.  It's not just the poem that I've received a weird grade on, but it's the most recent and right now, at the end of a long fucking week, I don't have the strength to protect my heart from the blow.  As an educator, I would never tell my students, "Hey, if you're having trouble reading now, you may as well give up.  You've tried to read this book three times already and you still don't know that word?  Loser."  And that's how this grade makes me feel right now.

Why am I telling you this?

Because I've decided I don't care.  I remember playing in the middle of Konia field with toys Lani Girl stole, people giving us confused looks because Konia field is only good for walking across.  I remember spending hours in Midkiff basement, sewing together our AIDS PSA.  I remember giving oral book reports to Dr. Whiting for Independent Reading and quoting poetry to Mr. Slagel in the halls of Konia.  School was fun!  Learning was fun! And I had teachers who also seemed to appreciate the fact that I enjoyed their subjects even if I didn't score the best grades or, you know, always complete the assignments.

I'm telling you this because instead of trying to write for my teacher so that I can get that fucking A, I'm going to keep writing for me.  Because I can't make him happy with my writing, and writing to try to suit him doesn't make me happy.  It's not that I don't think I can't learn anything from him-- there's much I can learn and I'm sure he's quite knowledgable and talented.  But it doesn't feel right to me.  I feel like I'm bending in uncomfortable ways simply to meet someone else's criteria only to fail at it.  It's depressing and ends with me hiding myself away in my dark room watching depressing movies about kids falling in love only to be torn apart by cancer.  And dying of cancer.  Because I don't necessarily want to be cheered up, I just need to remind myself that there are bigger problems out there.

I'm telling you this because I'm making a pledge to myself and to you.  From here on, I'll write to complete my assignments, but I'm going to do it my way.  I'm going to listen to my stomach and heart and whatever other body parts screaming at me.  I'm going to write for me.  And granted, that might not even be the best idea, I don't know, I'm no expert.  I just want to be happy and do what makes me happy.

It Takes a Village

I gave birth to my son over fifteen years ago and it was then that I became a full member in the "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child" club.  Not just because raising children is hard, but also because I realized that I can't give my kids the kind of well-rounded education that I want to.  Addition, subtraction, verbs, nouns, air, gas, water, yes, I can do.  How to tie shoelaces, cook an egg, wash dirty laundry, yes to those things, too.  But make a lei?  Fix a bike?  Play the guitar?  Pffft.  I can try, but maybe it would be better if someone more knowledgable would do that.  

I've been feeling particularly mushy about my friends and family lately.  I notice I feel happier on any given day if I get to connect with someone else.  Not just talk stories with, although that also has value, but what I'm talking about involves really looking at each other, speaking true words, sharing laughs and smiles, maybe touching each other-- a honi or a hug.  When we reach out to each other and help each other, we make burdens bearable, we invest a little more in the overall well-being of our community. 

Several people in my life selflessly give of themselves everyday in seemingly insignificant but powerful ways.  They give away smiles like they were going out of style, say hello to old friends and new acquaintances without expectation of a warm greeting in response.  Have you ever tried to do that?  It's fucking hard!  Saying hello to someone you barely know can be shame if that person doesn't acknowledge you, right?  But what do you really lose in that interaction?  What do you stand to gain?

Touching bases with so many of my old friends this past weekend filled up my tank.  I felt recharged.  My roots were nourished so that my branches could stretch and bear fruit.  In fact, I just realized that I probably got more hugs this weekend than usual, and I usually get a lot of hugging in on any given day.  I love hugs.

In addition to seeing so many old friends this past weekend, I had the privilege of having coffee with a new friend.  My intention had been to help share the heavy load she's been lugging around for months, but I found that she also helped share my load.  I left our date feeling excited for unknown possibilities. I also got to talk to some Spanish classmates who are having difficulty with the language.  Let's face it, we all are!  That small circle of people who are commiserating with me, who have similar language and academic challenges as I, helps me feel less alone, less adrift, less lost.  We can help each other.

We can't discount the importance of community, nor can we discount the value of creating new connections, expanding existing communities, and building new ones.  Nevermind that my kids are now fifteen and eleven.  I'm thirty-eight and I still need a village to help raise me.

Being Brave (or Fuck It)

Early this summer, at the persistent urging of one of my English professors, I audited my first college course, ever-- a creative writing class out of UH Mānoa. I was nervous as shit and came up with as many excuses as I have fingers and toes to get myself out of it.  My excuse-making had great timing.  I had just finished a particularly grueling Spring semester, one in which Iʻd taken two science classes (NOT my forte), linguistics (fun, but challenging), and an Ed class (which was not challenging at all).  I wanted to relax, and though I have always found writing to be cathartic, writing creatively for a class is not what Iʻd call stress free.  Itʻs not that writing is difficult, itʻs the creative part that scares me.  Why?

Iʻve been telling myself my whole adult life that Iʻm not creative.

When I write blogs, itʻs to release or vent or work through something.  When I make things with felt, Iʻm just fooling around, killing time.  When I paint and craft, it isnʻt anything special or worth saving.  When I plate dinner in a particularly pleasing fashion, I blush and marvel at this accidental outcome.  None of these things demonstrates any creativity on my part.  Theyʻre simply serendipitous.

Furthermore, I never bought into the idea that a person could become a good writer through practice.  I have known several good writers for most of my life, and they've always managed to make it look effortless.  This has lead me to believe that writing talent is innate.  So since I'm not as good as these other people and there's no way that I could ever become as good as they (because, let's face it, if I'm getting better, surely they are, too), why try?

This is all bullshit, of course. I was hiding behind my insecurities, not daring myself to try.  If I didn't try, I couldn't fail.  I would content myself with writing scholastic essays that wowed my teachers (whose standards these days are perilously low, I have to point out), relying instead on my firm grasp of grammar and diction.  The wonderful teachers at Kamehameha taught me the rules well, of course, and I do love to read.

But taking this class this summer pushed me out of my comfort zone and stripped away all the excuses. Charlie's unfailing encouragement and positive outlook and promises of support won the day.  And when I decided to commit to the class, I said, "Fuck it," and did it.  There's only so much hemming and hawing a person can do, and if I continued, my fears would come true and I would fail.  I had to try.  I had to see.  I grew more confident in my writing and I was astonished by what I produced.  Oh, I authored nothing amazing or astounding, but I was CREATIVE.  And it wasn't complete shit.  I even learned a thing or two from my supportive and caring teacher.

Other than rediscovering my creative voice, other than building my confidence as a writer, a big thing I took away from this class was a long-term goal.  Before this, I didn't know what I was going to do once I transferred to UH, and I assumed I would go into Education.  It's kind of the family business.  After working at a public school for over seven years, it was something I was familiar with.  It was something I knew I could do.  It was security.  But I'm not driven by the need to teach.  I'm not passionate about it.  It's just a job.  And make no mistake, it's a job I enjoy and I might still be a teacher.  But I love to read and write.  I just love stories and the unfolding of stories.  I love words.

I decided I would try to be brave.  I would pursue my passion.  If I fail, it will be at doing something I love.  Again, do not be mistaken.  This is not a bold statement I'm making right now.  It is frightening.  Failing at something I don't care about it is manageable.  It's not a big loss if I didn't really care about it, right?  But I care about this and I want to do it well.  I don't even know what It is.

People have said with great gusto that a person can't do anything with an English degree.  Sometimes they say it like it's a great secret and other times they say it like it's the most obvious thing in the world like the sun is hot.  People have congratulated me for making a decision, but then drop their voices and mutter, "Well, you probably can't do anything but teach with that, anyway."  I don't have one thing against teachers, but why do these folks have to dash my dreams before they're even fully formed?  Why should I be dissuaded simply because . . . I couldn't even tell you why!

I'm not angry.  Really, I'm not.  It's just something else I have to unlearn.  It's fuel for my fire.  I just want to do something I love and happen to be pretty good at and I want to be happy.  Because even now, after I've had this minor revelation, deciding to be a teacher would be my conscious choice and not merely a default.  And that might not make a big difference to you, but the intent changes everything for me.