Oklahoma Dreaming: Ups and Downs
by Donna Schoenkopf
I am old enough to realize that nothing is all good or all bad. Yeah, some of you say instantly, “What about God and The Debbil?” But I don’t go there. I am not an adherent to that/those beliefs.
This week has been an example of Ups and Downs. (As all things are).
Substitute Teaching
I substituted for the 8th grade teacher at my favorite school this past week. That means English and Math classes for the 8th, 7th, and 6th grades.
It was a mixed bag.
I seem to have the most trouble with some of the boys. I think it’s all about individuation. (Thank you, sister Annie, for this information.)
I like the Jungian metaphor for this phenomenon. I tend to think of it in fairytale terms. The widow mother of her coming-of-age son, bids him adieu on the steps of their little cottage at the edge of the woods. The son slings the bag of his worldly possessions—his talents—over his shoulder and begins his journey to seek his fortune. He enters the woods, facing the unknown, but hopeful and confident. He MUST leave his mother to find out how to be a man, conquer the unknown, survive by his wits and what he has in his bag.
And so these lovely young men in the 6th, 7th and 8th grades see me as the mother they must leave. Everything I tell them to do irritates them. They want to prove themselves to show the girls, to show me, to show the world, how strong and manly they are.
This leads to a struggle. So I adapt. I am nonchalant, unchallenging, as unemotional as possible when they challenge me. I laugh at their jokes, I admire their skills, I praise. But sometimes, when they come crashing into the room, punching and yelling, laughing with exuberance at the top of their lungs, messin’ with the girls who love it, sometimes, SOMETIMES, I just can’t take it any longer—the noise, the challenge to me, their authority figure, the chaos—and I react by intervening in their fun and I pick up the gauntlet of the challenge and that’s when the trouble starts.
They are humiliated because their “Mama” is telling them what to do.
Yes. I know. I must talk to them privately, so as not to embarrass them. But sometimes I am not perfect and say to them as they tussle through the door, that they need to cool it.
Big mistake.
A very smart boy, who has complaints about most of the world, calls himself a Druid here in the land Christianity, hates all the books in the library, does not eat the cafeteria lunch EVER, who combs his curly blond hair flat against his head leaving a curly halo around his face and neck like a Renaissance painting, this boy who has his bag of talents over his shoulder and his foot off the front step of his mother’s cottage, has, in the past, asserted his individuality by actually LIKING me when I teach his class. He bucks tradition, always, always, always.
But this day, no. He stands against me at every intersection of our power. He bucks and bucks and complains and argues about EVERYTHING. Once an ally, he regards me now as the enemy, the challenge to his manhood.
Toward the end of the day we talk in the hallway and he tells me why he has been challenging all day. He says he doesn’t like my attitude. That I’ve just been mad all day and what he does when somebody is mad all day is to buck them.
And in a flash I realize this is true.
I will remember to NOT let the natural, normal development of young men who NEED to prove themselves seem like a personal attack against me.
The good side of this day is the genuine delight I see in the faces of most of the kids. They like me and they like the things we do. “Mrs. Schoenkopf!” they squeal.
And they pull me through the day, lighting my path through the woods.
Angela Davis
I’ve been feeding a neighbor’s dog. I have named her Angela Davis. The neighbor doesn’t want her, considers her to be a big headache, and consequently doesn’t feed her, at least not enough to fill out the bony ribs and haunches that protrude from her frail body. Not only that, but he probably beats her. Or kicks her.
She has been coming to my house every day, twice a day, and I have been feeding her and kinda thinking I would adopt her, carefully weighing my monthly pittance against things like spaying (she’s currently in heat), vet bills for the unknown maladies that WILL arise, and more food. She is an unattractive dog. Her fur is dry and unattractively colored. Her eyes are far apart, like a child with fetal alcohol syndrome. She writhes on the ground, squirming an apology for existing and wanting to be petted. Her very unattractiveness appeals to me. She has won my heart ... that is until three days ago, when she spied Rosie the Cat.
Poor Rosie the Cat has been chased by every living thing that has ever seen her. Angela Davis TORE after her, with blood lust in her veins. Rosie streaked across the open space below the hill and made it to an ash tree.
But it was close. Damn close. All the hollering and yelling to get Angela Davis to stop was useless. Rosie almost died. Again.
Rosie the Cat in a tree
Now, I love Rosie. She and I go way back. She is timid and has a right to be timid. (How would YOU like to be chased by someone who was bent on killing you, not once, nor twice, but a bunch of times. In fact, OFTEN.) And I will protect her against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to the best of my ability. So help me “God.”
So here I am, balanced once again on the scales of Up and Down. On the one hand I have poor Angela Davis. God knows what will become of her without my help. And on the other hand I have dear Rosie, who can’t catch a break.
Rosie’s been gone for three days now. I don’t know where she is. I am not as distraught as I’ve been the last three times she’s disappeared, one time for THREE WEEKS, but still I call and listen for her. Part of me says, “If she’s dead, she’s dead and there’s nothing I can do about it.” And I feel sad, but in some way accepting of her death.
Angela Davis is gone, too. I wonder if her owner shot her or if she has been killed out on Killer Highway 177. (There is a squashed, REALLY squashed, coyote puppy in the middle of the highway now, the cutest little thing. Among the other road kill this week are a possum, a raccoon, a big old blond golden retriever with its head smashed in, and a full-sized coyote. This is all in the four mile stretch from my country road turn-off to the town of Tecumseh.)
Part of me says, “If she’s dead, she’s dead and there’s nothing I can do about it.” And I feel relieved. And after the relief, guilt for feeling relieved.
Killer Highway 177
Weather
It’s Indian Summer around here. The fact that there are actual seasons still amazes me. Having grown up in Hawaii and then 42 in Southern California, I regard seasons as being almost miraculous. Impossibly, the whole world changes ... vegetation, temperature, light, my mood.
I love the changes. But today (as Scott Harrison would say), “KILL me!”
It is the horrible weather of El Niño. Hot, dry. My skin is turning into paper. My throat is raw. My nose runs continually down the back of my throat. My eyes bulge out of my head from sinus pressure which I’ve never had before. My hair is electrified and stuck to my head. Diego the Dog comes home after an hour so he can lie on the cool, cool concrete floor. Che the Cat has gone off to his “secret” place in the dark shed for his four hour nap. Son John is off on a bike ride to Shawnee, a 20 mile round trip.
And I sit here suffering.
That is until this very moment, when a light breeze comes out of nowhere, carrying coolness and relief. The grasses wave their hello, brown oak leaves are shaken off their branches and dance to the ground, little ripples in the pond smile.
Weather. When she is good, she is very, very good. But when she is bad, she is HORRID.
Ups and Downs. Good and Bad.
All in one.
Hey. Maybe I’m Hindu and don’t know it.
donna@fourstory.org
Comments
Ah, bless the young warriors, with the sack of skills, trailing Joseph Campbell behind them. It’s not easy being 13. A few years back I ordered some Tangee lipstick from the Vermont Country Store catalogue (they have weird OLD stuff for sale, like “Evening in Paris” perfume, Walnettos (???) Beemans and Blackjack chewing gum (!). Anyway, Tangee was the first lipstick we were allowed to wear in the 7th grade and so it came and I opened it up and sniffed it and instantly was transported via a total body sensory awareness flashback to Jr. High. Total flashback. And let me tell you, it wasn’t pleasant. We forget how scary that time was, all the time, a sort of background nose of unsettled fear and confusing. So bless your young charges
Is the photo of the highway some interstate? If it’s simply a country/county road, Boy, Oklahoma must be rich! Pretty fancy road.
Think El Nino signals the start of a wet season here in CA. (La Nina means a drought year) Think maybe you meant the Santanas? Those fierce winds that heat up as they roar off the desert, drying everything, electrifying everything, frizzing nerves and hair, and, as Ramony Chandler (I think) famously put it, set everyone’s nerves on edge and had wives feeling behind them in the cutlery drawer, fingering the edges of knives and eyeing their husband’s necks.
2009-11-05 by Ann Calhoun