This Day

Dawn fades in,
or erupts-
but birds still chatter,
sounds will gather,
and the break of day
begins another chapter
of unnumbered pages,
even as the final morning star
waves goodbye.

Conversion Therapy

The assignment was for my seniors to read an article about the science of love as part of their unit on the theme of love and loss and then answer a few questions about some of the specific claims that were made. Zeinab sat alone at the table while the rest of her small, distracted class pretended to do their work on the couches that lined the center of the library and chatted about the election results. They all had chromebooks awkwardly perched in their laps as they pecked responses into a google doc.

The table was actually four tables pushed together around which fifteen students could sit, but Zeinab sat alone looking at the laptop screen, her hands gripping the edge of the table, her cheeks were red and she looked preoccupied. I knelt by her chair and asked if she needed any help then I saw that she was embarrassed as tears filled her eyes but hadn't yet run down her cheeks.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"What do you need, Zeinab?"

She just replied the usual, teenager speak.

"Nothing." But there was something so I gently pressed.

"Do you need to talk to somebody." This is my go-to line when a kid clearly is upset but not sure if it's in my league to handle. She just shook her head and wiped the tears that now ran down her cheeks.

"Do you want to go sit on the sofa in the hallway?" She agreed and I asked the librarian to watch my class. I grabbed some tissues and led her out into the hall, and sat down.

"What can I do for you?' I asked, but she just said nothing.

"What's on your mind?" I kept at it.

"It's so stupid." She said. "You'll think it's stupid."

"What is it?"

"It's the election," she said. It was Wednesday afternoon, so it was late at night in the states and Donald Trump had been declared the winner of the presidential election.

"My brother goes to college in the U.S. and I've wanted to go to college in the U.S. (University of Chicago) my whole life and now I'm not going to able to."

She was feeling every bit of the result of the election and had clearly been listening to the language of the campaigns. She was worried about her brother but also worried her opportunity to follow him had now disappeared. She went on to say that her family was from Syria and she had lived in Saudi Arabia her whole life.

I explained to her that I was surprised by the result, too, but, while I knew what was said during the campaign,  I reassured her that I didn't think she'd have anything to worry about. She went on to say that as someone who has lived in the middle east she'd witnessed some of the "shadiest" politicians around, but Trump "is fucking crazy."

We talked about the danger of getting too wrapped up in the news, especially facebook. She already knew this, though. She's a smart kid. I said politicians say a lot of things to get elected, some more than others, but in the U.S. the president doesn't control the government and he'll have advisors that would check the kind of rhetoric used in the campaign and he'll have to work with the Congress.

Then she asked me if it was true that Mike Pence supported conversion therapy for gay people. I said I didn't know, but that no matter what a politician thought about it, the country had already settled that issue.

We sat there together for a few more minutes and then the bell rang and class was over. I told her to try not to worry too much and I'd see her tomorrow.

Ripple River

A couple of years ago,  I was running on the path around Rippliside, a few blocks from our house. The loop circled the elementary school and the city park, baseball fields, hockey rink, skate park and picnic area. It's one mile length was a convenient marker to build up stamina, always knowing how little or how much my muscles ached at a point in comparison to the last time.

The Ripple River meandered along the edge of the park and provided a natural boundary along which the running path followed its contours before pulling away and turning back towards the baseball field and the elementary school. I always felt lucky living so close to the park and appreciated the city's maintenance of it.

Along the river's edge between the path and a dogleg that brought the river into the park was a bench that in the spring was in the middle of a pool of water as the river came over the bank and in the middle of summer was in a groomed area of grass.

On this day, as I ran out of breath and thought about supper or what I was going to watch on TV that evening I saw from across the park that someone was sitting on the bench looking out at the river as it made its slow turn inward. I still had some distance to go before I approached the place and as a runner of questionable commitment, I appreciated the change in scenery.

As I drew closer, I saw something white in the grass at her feet. She didn't turn to look at me but kept staring at the river passing in front of her. The profile of her face was calm but focused and while she was not a young woman, she wasn't old either. In her lap, she cradled a telephone--not a cell phone but the receiver of a landline phone with a short curly phone line attached to a white push button phone, which sat on the bench next to her. The cord that plugged into the wall trailed into the grass at her feet. I kept running around the circle to eventually complete another mile, but when I got back to this same bend in the river, she was gone.

I was tempted to make a joke of this and share the experience with others but there was something about the scene that held my tendency to joke in check and I never did tell anyone.

Recently, as I researched material for class, I read an essay by Courtney E. Martin about the benefits of keeping connections with lost loved ones. In her essay, she referenced a story about a man in Japan following the 2011 Tsunami which was later part of an episode of This American Life. I selected the essay for my seniors as we read material for our theme on love and loss. Before they read the essay, I told them the story of the woman I encountered in the city park. They all wanted to know what happened next like I was setting them up for some sort of revelation. I just asked them to read the essay.

I don't know what the woman I saw in the park that day was doing or why she had that phone in her lap. I don't need to know, but I'd like to think she was just doing what she needed to do.