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Breathings From My Heart

Category Archives: Free Thinking

Gratitude – elusive emotion, especially in a high school classroom

30 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by BRomero in Free Thinking, Gratitudes, Retirement

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poetry test

84a534d852bc8fc544609bfd6961cd18(Written last week in a high school English class)

Sitting in the midst of teenagers reluctantly taking a poetry test, I watch them for the wrong turn of the head, a suspicious glance of an eye. Sitting ever vigilant, moving my own eyes across the room, hearing an errant complaint mumbled into the atmosphere, I guard the integrity of Room N103.

What am I doing here? I’m retired. I no longer help the not knowing to know any knowledge. I don’t quiet the talkative, hush the whisperer, correct the cheater, coerce the unwilling. I don’t calm classrooms, study students, or examine the examinees. Not now – not in this, the second year of my retirement. I don’t take a test on keeping the classroom quiet while students take a test on poetry.

I am wrong! I am substituting for a friend, a former colleague who had surgery, and I realize that old habits die hard.

These teenagers will take the test and take it honestly. Sitting in the back of the classroom (the better perch from which to observe), I still notice the tilt of a pony tail, any movement not in sync with test-taking. I’ve only known these students a few days, and yet I’ve known them for decades it seems, the practiced stretch, the distracting cough, the exaggerated head rolls. I have not forgotten the language of their bodies. I can still translate.

Ah! Poor babies! They think the word “substitute” on my name tag means “clueless”; they would never imagine it means “veteran.” They’ve been warned. They took no heed.

Suddenly, in spite of my frustration and fatigue, in spite of my wanting to be somewhere – almost anywhere – else, I feel a shocking rush of gratitude. From nowhere. Gratitude for this day has taken over this moment, gratitude for the opportunity to keep my skills honed, gratitude for the chance to help out a colleague, gratitude for the fact that I’m healthy and able to be here, even gratitude for the few students who appreciate what I’m doing when setting boundaries. I feel gratitude galore for the friendly faces of my friends on the faculty, my family from my teaching years whom I love to this day.

Suddenly, in spite of the nervous twitching around me, the efforts to slip something by me, the energy it takes me to stay vigilant……suddenly I’m reminded from a power so much greater than I that life is good. All really is, at this moment, right with the world.

That doesn’t mean I wasn’t grateful when the day was over!

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Constellations?

22 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by BRomero in Family, Free Thinking

≈ 2 Comments

dab0eae8c51934d3c59f394d179b3320Constellations, collections of stars, shine down on us each night. They remind me of our grandchildren. Scattered across the night sky, sprinkled near and far, the stars radiate a rare and beautiful light. So much like our grandchildren. They are scattered, our grandchildren, some closer to us geographically than others, but they all surely do radiate their own rare and beautiful light.

Mark and I have a blended family; we each had two daughters. Now we both have four. We are a blended family because of the children. Not many can say that. The two older daughters set us up. I think we have an Oprah-worthy story, but Oprah doesn’t have that show any more, and I wouldn’t want to be on it if she did.

Our four girls have happily presented us with 15 grandchildren. Not all at once, thank goodness. They did space them out, but there are years when we have more than one grandchild born into an age group. I think the prize goes to the fall of 2004 into the spring of 2005 when we had three grandbabies, Addison in September, Claire in January, and Jack in March. Our two oldest, both grandsons, were born the same year, one day apart. I guess it was fated then that we’d have other grandchildren with birthdays close together.

Bragging rights for being the oldest goes to Dylan; the next in the line by a day is Blake (cousins). Drew followed them two years later (Blake’s little brother), and then Allie (their little sister) joined our stars a year and a half after Drew. She was followed by Abigail (Dylan’s little sister) nine months later. Six months later came Josh (Allie’s little brother). Six grandchildren in five years! Olivia was here a year later (Abigail’s baby sis and the baby of their family). For three years we had no babies, something we weren’t accustomed to, and then Addison (a new family started) was born in September of 2004, followed by Claire (another new family started) in January 2005, followed by Jack (Josh’s brother, and the baby of that family) in March of the same year. Three years later Catherine was born (little sister to Claire) in January and Hadley in March (little sister to Addison). Three years later Claire and Catherine were given a little brother Sam (the baby of that family). He was followed by Maggie (little sister to Addison and Hadley), and she was followed 13 months later by Knox! He’s the baby of his family! Our grandchildren range in age from 19 to one. That, my friends, is a constellation. Fifteen stars in twelve years! That’s some twinkle, don’t ya think?

Each time I look up at a night sky (not as often as I’d like), I think of our own little constellation. Each of those children are stars. Now half of them wouldn’t like to know I am calling them children, but they are still sweet babies to us. May they always shine on and on and on. May they always radiate love and warmth. May they always be bright with happiness. Most of all, may they always know how important they are to us. They are the diamonds in the sky of our family.

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Malaysian Flight 370

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by BRomero in Free Thinking, News

≈ 2 Comments

The mysterious musings of what has happened to Malaysian Flight 370 has now consumed international aviation communities and governmental agencies. Together the people involved in all those combined have pooled their knowledge and experience to help find the missing aircraft. So far nothing concrete has surfaced anywhere, neither in ideas nor any signs of the plane.

Since Daughter #2 and her family live in Kuala Lumpur, this news story has kept my attention. They fly in and out of the same airport without a thought of something untoward happening. I’ve flown there and back home through the same airport twice myself. Thinking the planes they’ve traveled on would disappear as if in a dark magic act, or thinking anything beyond a routine flight seems almost unimaginable. It’s the same way any of us would think of any flight originating here in the USA.

On behalf of the passengers and their families, I hope there will soon be closure, that the agencies involved will come to an agreed upon conclusion, one that (although the bitterest of pills to swallow) will allow those waiting to have a chance to get past that moment of learning what we all most dread to hear, to take the next step – one before the other – and begin the long process back to normalcy, if it is ever to be reached.

These tragic moments know no point of origin, nor how many nationalities were represented on board, nor if they were all good, all bad, or somewhere in between. These results do not depend on what was eaten for breakfast or dinner, who was angry at whom, who was flying toward love or away from hate. We are all susceptible to being passengers on a plane such as Malaysian Flight 370. Therein lies the fear, the mystery. We want the answer to be inexplicable, something that could never happen to us.

We love our comfort, our fantasies. These are the very things that keep us going, make it possible to get up tomorrow, and – one day – board the next plane. Thoughts and prayers to all those touched in a personal way by that flight. God Bless.

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Child of My Blood

06 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by BRomero in Free Thinking, Poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Child of my heart, born of my blood,
When you are hurt, I feel pain.
No matter how far from home you roam,
When thunder you hear, I smell rain.

Though the winds may howl, and the trees may bend,
Or the rivers rage and flood,
No matter how far apart we be, you are always the
Child of my blood.

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Fearless

06 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by BRomero in Free Thinking

≈ 2 Comments

Today I was at school, substituting where I once taught. It was a math class, and I’m an English teacher, so there wasn’t much I could do but hand out the practice test. I watched them work. I watched the concentration on most of their faces, and the defeat on some of the others. I even saw disregard some of the time, but with my teaching background I knew that the disregard was a false bravado for fear of failure.

As I thought about that fear of failure, I began thinking about things that we fear at one time or another, and I thought about what would happen if we let fear stop us too many times. There would be fewer marriages and fewer children. There’d be fewer promises made and, of course, fewer kept. There would be fewer risks taken, so people might drive less, surely fly less, and what would we miss because of it? I know if I’d let my fear of traveling alone to half a world away rule me, I would never have seen where Daughter #2 and her family had made their (temporary) home in Malaysia. If I’d let the fear of homesickness stop me, I never would have moved halfway across our country long ago as a newlywed only married a month. Daughter #1 would be a Louisiana baby instead of a California girl, although to her it doesn’t matter. We moved home when she was still in diapers.

I’m sure we all have our own list of fears and triumphs over them. What opportunities are missed by fear of the unknown? It’s a question to be pondered. After all, fear isn’t going anywhere. There are fears coming that I will face. The future guarantees me I will be afraid some of the time. Fear comes in all forms and shapes, whether fear about our health or fear for our children. We all deal with fear. The question isn’t whether there will ever be something to make us fearful. The question is how will we face those fears.

I want to think that as I’ve aged, I’ve become more accepting of taking calculated risks, more accepting of trusting life, trusting myself. trusting God. I can only hope the next time something fearful comes my way, I can deal with it as a true veteran and put it in its place.

For the students with a fear of failure, stop letting the fear keep you from trying. Stop letting the fear win.

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Procrastination (a little something from 2008 when I was still teaching)

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by BRomero in Free Thinking

≈ 2 Comments

imageProcrastination

Years ago when I first started teaching, I read or heard somewhere that gifted people/children are great procrastinators, and that the smarter a person is, the more he/she procrastinates. Since then I’ve joked about it from time to time, but I wonder tonight as I sit here with deadlines to meet and deadlines that have come and gone un met, if that just might be true? It would be wonderful if I could think my procrastination was due to some supreme giftedness, some intelligence that I haven’t realized in myself, rather than inherent laziness. Lazy is such an ugly word, isn’t it? “Lazy” summons images of the unwashed, unzipped, unbrushed, and plain undone. “Procrastination”, on the other hand, brings a thought of laziness but with a purpose, a putting off while doing other things instead, a busyness that can’t be interrupted in order to do that thing I can’t bring myself to do. In procrastinating I’m not sitting idly by with my feet up eating bon bons. Oh no, I’m inventing things to do so that I won’t have to do the object of my avoidance. It’s quite tiring, really, all this busyness to keep from doing that one little (or not-so-little) task that has become the center of my universe for a little while as I scurry from hither to yon dodging the settling down and the sighing – lots of sighing – that will be necessary to complete it. A lazy person wouldn’t go to all this trouble to type all these words only to have a blog entry, would she? Even with dishes unstacked and bills unpaid and clothes unwashed and papers ungraded, laziness wouldn’t be thinking, processing, typing. . . surely that’s procrastination instead. Surely I’m smart enough to know the difference.

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Eyes Wide Open

Featured

Posted by BRomero in Free Thinking, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

imageIn that proverbial blink of
Your very own eye
Things happen before you
No use asking why
In the turn of a head
In one look away
A life can be changed
In the balance and sway
Of the spinning of globes
And the running of trains
In the swoosh of the air
The first roar of a plane

Sometimes no movement
At all is required
Sometimes situations simply grow tired
Or hearts cease to beat
And lungs cease to breathe
Before we can beg –
Someone will leave

On notice you be
The next time you blink
Things are more precious
Than you might now think
For the world keeps on spinning
Won’t stand still just for you
So in closing your eyes
There’s a risk you are due.

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Less is More?

02 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by BRomero in Free Thinking, Retirement

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When I retired, I pictured my days as scenes from a nineteenth century novel, relaxing as the lady of a British manor might. I pictured that I would sit most mornings and linger over my coffee, watching the birds feeding outside my window, until I could name them, each and every one. My coffee would stay hot, of course, no matter how long I lingered. I pictured my dogs and I taking long and lazy walks often. I pictured all the leisure time I’d spend pulling rascal weeds from around my innocent flowers, and that I’d croon over my plantings until they bloomed their biggest and brightest simply to make me happy. Of course, I’d wear a fashionable floppy hat with a hatband that matched my gardening gloves. In my retirement the weeds would never dare return. I’d be that vigilante. I pictured that my house would remain pleasantly in order so that it wouldn’t take all that much from me to keep it that way. I pictured laundry done and put away in a timely fashion. After all, I was retired now. I pictured nary a dirty dish in the sink- ever. I pictured that when my husband, lord of the manor, walked in the door each afternoon, he would return home to me, relaxed and serene, and a heart-healthy home-cooked meal. I pictured wrong.

Retirement can be those things, I suppose, but I’m no lady of a manor. I have no servants to do my bidding, and most of the time I don’t mind that fact. Here’s the rub. I am finding the longer I’m retired, much to my disappointment, the more I develop the nasty habit of overscheduling myself much worse than I ever did when working. Working gave me boundaries! What a discovery! When I was working, I knew my time was finite. I said no to certain invitations, denied myself some opportunities, and it seems knew my limitations. Here, in my new life of retirement, I’ve discovered I don’t do well without boundaries. How was I to know? I have forgotten how to say no. I’ve also forgotten a life without the Internet or cell phones. Time for a wake-up call to myself.

As if I’m some superwoman (choose your favorite character), I start each day with a list, either mental or written, of all the tasks I will accomplish, all the people I will call or visit, all the bills I will pay (online), all the cards I will send to those in need of cheering, having birthdays, etc., all the laundry I will fold, all the dishes I will unload from the dishwasher and load again, all the floors I will sweep or vacuum, all the surfaces I will dust, all the mail I will separate into tidy files, all the appointments I will make on time, all the drawers and closets I will straighten, all the toilets I will swish, all the meals I will cook for today and to freeze, and on and on and on. In my head, as I compose my list, I’m singing along to my favorite songs while performing these tasks, my version of whistling while I work. Oh, and what about those nasty, pesky weeds and things yet planted? What about my pet birds? squirrels? Let’s not forget the memorable moments I want to spend with my grandchildren and daughters. What about the treadmill upstairs, the one beckoning to me each time I enter its room and throw a garment across it? Throw in the occasional lunch with a friend, and I’m a goner.

What does my list do? Does it help me to stay on track? Maybe sometimes, but more often it causes endless angst when, every single day, it not only is unfinished…….it is hardly started. It causes GUILT.

Completing those tasks may have been possible – no, that much in one day would never have been possible – before the internet, before I had all my toys, before I knew how to log on. I find myself carrying my cell phone and either pad or laptop up the down staircase all day long. I don’t watch much television during the daytime hours, but how can I be far from my connections to the outside world? What if someone needs me? What if I rudely ignore a text on my phone, or a comment on Facebook, or (God forbid) an email. That isn’t me. I don’t ignore people, not me. Lately, I realize I’m just plain too much plugged in to ever accomplish much of anything. Lately I realize I’m reading less, much to my horror.

I’ve blamed telephone interruptions, unplanned drop-in visitors, my dogs, and whatever or whomever else I can think to blame. The plain truth is that if I remained unplugged longer, spent fewer hours texting, or typing, or surfing, maybe the unexpected phone call or visit (which I always enjoy) would be okay. Maybe going about my day without a list would be okay. Hard, but okay. It wouldn’t mean that nothing would ever be accomplished. It might mean less guilt, which is a good thing. A good compromise might be a shorter list? Truth be told, those interruptions are what make the day.

Here’s a realization. My way of dealing with the need to be less plugged in is to think about it, ponder it here, and sometimes to commiserate with my friends (on FB, of course). Close the laptop? Hardly.

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William Wordsworth

01 Saturday Mar 2014

Posted by BRomero in Free Thinking

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William Wordsworth once said, “Fill your page with the breathings from your heart”, so I – who once did fill pages in paper journals – am now filling my computer screen with a nod to the 21st century……and a nod to speed. I do miss pen to paper, and I still do that for some writing, but I can’t beat the speed with which I can put thoughts to “paper” using a keyboard rather than a pen. Surely Wordsworth understands.

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Breathingsfrommyheart

A blog about feelings that need expression.

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BRomero

BRomero

A wife, mother, and grandmother, I have a rich supply of family material from which to draw, but I also want to write about other things that weigh on my heart and mind. We'll see.

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