the missing teacher

Hello!

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:38:00 +0000

This blog is currently under construction. I'm editing (again!) and I will have a shorter and cleaner version of my experience as a Waldorf teacher.

If you are new to the site, welcome! On the right side there are links to the chapters and if you are looking for specific information on Waldorf, there are tags for such information under About Waldorf Education. The Reading List is another place where you can search.

Thanks for stopping by ~
Lani

postscript

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 04:16:00 +0000

Most especially with a memoir, I wondered how I would end this blog of a book. Then when I was having dinner with a friend at Chiang Mai Gate, I started talking about the missing teacher and how I'm the kind of person who likes to solve a mystery.

He in turn mentioned the Rilke quote about living with the questions. This intrigued me. At least enough to look it up and think about it.

I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

I'd like to think that I have done just that, lived my way to an answer. The answer though was a slippery fish, and I caught many with my bare hands. Some I tossed into my boat and others back into the water.

And as I receive more and more emails and comments about your stories and how our stories relate to each other, I feel I can only say this: I hope you find the answers and live with the questions too. Because by living with them I have grown into a better person.

I like myself more for having forgiven people who I have felt wronged me. Not in an arrogant or conceited way but in a gentler and softer way.

There are also so many more questions that I continue to live with that don't have to do with my Waldorf past but bigger questions about the direction of education today. What will our role be? And how can we better provide our children.

Then there are the smaller questions. At least they are smaller to others but for me it is a very big question, the question of romantic love.

As some of my readers have already discovered through reading my other blog, boy toy and I didn't work out. And that's another story, since love is another kind of education all together.

paying respect

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Wed, 25 May 2011 12:15:00 +0000

I attended the TEDxDoiSuthep conference this weekend. The keynote speaker, at least in my mind was female Buddhist monk Dhammananda Bikkun.

She talked about nourishing roots. The four elements: earth, water, fire and air. Nourishing our selves. Specifically, about the aspect of Buddhism that deals with paying respect to our elders and past. Thich Nhat Hanh said it this way, we are the extension of our parents.

As an Asian American, paying respect to my parents had been engrained in me. Hence my tribute to them in my writing. I'm endlessly fascinated by their stories and continueously chasing down who my father was. I suppose it could have gone the other way though, I could have felt a great distain towards my family because respect had been preached to me almost every day.

But it didn't go the other way. And when I thought about paying respect to the past, I thought about how I needed to do so in order to be more fully in the present. It sounds like an oxymoron but I assure you life is blooming with them and it doesn't make it any less true.

Suddenly all of this rehashing of my Waldorf/educational history was validated in a slightly different context. Another layer of fabric had been laid down to rest over the now dead body of my past existence. And I felt the joy that comes from knowning you were right to listen to your intuition.

I also focused on Dhammananda Bikkun's words “roots” and “nourishing”. I sensed something clicking into place. Whatever you pay attention to is what you are nourishing. A seeming quite simple statement but how often do we forget to pay attention to our health, our husband or our heart's desires.

I mean I feel like I neglect parts of my life all the time. But instead of focusing on the neglect, like so many do with the crucifixion of Christ, I'd rather remember to focus on the resurrection. I think it makes a sharp difference to focus on what you want rather than what you don't want. It's the not so subtle difference between rejection and release.

In other words, when a door closes are you bitter over the closed door or do you see another possibility? Do you go looking for the door that opens?

In the past, I made the choice to feel rejected from Trembling Trees. I knew the release was part of the program but I didn't feel good about it. Why did I want to be part of a school that kicked me out? Why do I want to be liked by a guy who doesn't like me? Or why do I want to be loved by those who don't love me back? I don't know but it's a very annoying human emotion.

Instead of feeling rejected and holding on to those all too frequent no moments, why don't I chose to feel like I've been given permission to do something else?

There is an eurythmy play that we performed at the end of our teacher training year. I guess all this thinking about nourishing roots made me think of trees and well, this play called, The Little Fir Tree by Friedrich Ruckert. Maybe it was a coincidence that I was casted as the little fir tree. Then again, maybe not.

***

The Little Tree Who Wanted Different Leaves by Friedrich Ruckert

The play opens with a little fir tree center stage surrounded by tall trees and an old maple. There was not much for the little fir tree to see being the small french fry of the forest but if it looked straight up it could see a patch of sky and a bright star.

In the fall the leaves from the other trees would cover its bare branches and this would make the tree very happy but this did not last.

In the winter the snow would cover the little fir tree and it would be very pleased but this too did not last.

Then in the spring, the little fir tree noticed the maple tree sprouting new leaves. At night the tree gazed longingly at the bright star and cried, “Oh, I wish, how I wish I could have fresh green leaves!”

When the little fir tree woke up in the morning and saw it was covered with brand new leaves, it was excited and shouted, “Look at me!”

The other trees stared down and wondered what the fuss was all about.

As the little fir tree proudly displayed its new leaves a farmer and his goat spied the fresh new leaves on the little tree and the goat nibbled all of its leaves.

Once again the little tree was bare and thin and very sad. When night fell it looked up at the star and prayed, “Oh, I wish, how I wish I had leaves of glass. No one could eat those.” Then the tree fell asleep.

Much to the surprise of the little fir tree it woke up to find that it had little leaves of glass!

“Look at me!” The little fir tree proudly displayed and shook its glass leaves which made a pleasing tinkling sound.

“Look at me!” The tree shouted.

The other trees looked down and wondered what that tinkling sound is?

When night fell a storm blew in and all of the little fir tree’s glass leaves fell down and broke on the ground. The little tree was once again bare and very, very sad.

The next evening the little fir tree stared up at that bright shinning star and said, “Oh, I wish, how I wish I had leaves of gold. Gold leaves won’t break and no one will eat them.”

In the morning the little fir tree woke up to find it had gold leaves! Gold leaves!

“Look at me!” The tree shouted with glee, “Look at me!”

The rest of the trees looked down and wondered. One of them said, “I thought we always had a little fir tree down there.”

The maple looked at the tree’s gleaming gold leaves and checked its own leaves but they were still leafy green.

All day the little fir tree stood proud and pleased, so happy it was until a salesman walked by and said, “What’s this?”

He walked closer to the tree, plucked a leaf and bit into it, “Gold? I can’t believe it!” Laughing at his amazing luck, he quickly looked around then started to grab as many leaves as his hands could hold stuffing them into his pockets and suitcase until all of the little fir tree’s gold leaves were gone.

The little fir tree was bare and sad. When night fell and the tree saw the bright star it quietly said, “Oh I wish, how I wish I had my fir needles back. That’s all I wish.” Then the tree cried itself to sleep.

The next morning, there was a little fir tree growing in the shelter of the big, tall trees.

“Look at me!” The tree shouted, laughing with joy. “Look at me.”

The tall fir trees and the maple tree looked down and wondered – for all they could see was a little fir tree.

enemy number one

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Wed, 04 May 2011 12:36:00 +0000

Self doubt is my enemy Number One. I know that but just because I do doesn't make it any easier to deal with inner critics and voices that tell me I'm not good enough for someone or something. And the ironic thing is, the more you fight with it, the more insane you feel.

So when the kind folks at Trembling Trees became my inner voices I felt like I was fighting with my sanity. It was a dream in which everyone was an extension of my fears and shortcomings. Therapy that I had no idea that I was going into, a sanitarium of lazured walls and an upside down fairy tale.

Because let's face it, we all want to be liked and I was and am no different. The only reason why I excude confidence is because I chose to. It's easy to feel average and when you look around your thoughts are confirmed. What's not easy is to rise above the drama, the illusions, the mirrors and self-levitate your ass into a calmer existence.

I feel like I survived the stone ages. The stones they threw at me are all too familiar:

You're not good enough.

You don't belong.

What's wrong with you?

You don't have children.

You're too young.

You can't teach.

One day you'll be good.

I became a battered woman. Like so many who let what others say send her down. But bruises heal and I knew that I would have to stand up straighter and utter a few swear words along the way. Humans take a kind of nibbling pleasure at someone else's suffering. We're relating in a twister sister kind of way. Why else would hazing be considered part of any initiation process?

Does this make us adults? I don't know. For me it helped. Not trusting people as naively as I did may seem sad because we want to trust in the goodness of others but being selective is trusting too. Trusting in yourself and your intuition.

Compassion I've learned can grow in any soil. I think making mud pies is wonderful game and digging to China is simply another pastime to help us investigate and makeover childhood dreams. For a time, I let the outside voices dictate my dream to teach, convincing myself that I didn't even want to do it. But then I had another go at it.

I mean I had false starts but now that I've finished a lap or two I know I can do it. Could I be a Waldorf teacher again? Nah. I could but I don't feel like I belong there. It wasn't my clan. Now I could do a better job of pretending to fit in but I'd rather not pretend. If there is such a clan, it's the living freedom clan. Away from politics, parents, and pedantics.

Right now I'm teaching English in Thailand. I blog about it at the Tell Thai Heart. I feel fully recovered. Sounds odd to say, like I was an addict of some sort of self pity drug but it took me time to process.

***

We need time to process. This is not to be confused with time to procrastinate. But stalling can be a form of thinking, don't you think?

Perhaps when life hands a doggy bag full of poo we need a moment to decide what to do with it. Perhaps the warmth of the contents of said bag distract us from the task at hand. (pun intended) In other words, we are too close to the situation.

I've heard that the human brain has the same 60,000 thoughts every day. Can you imagine rewinding and playing the same tape over and over again? Of course you can, apparently you're doing it now. It's like your favorite song or mixed cassette tape.

When I was processing the posturing, the pedantics and the Trembling Trees playbook, I was essentially transitioning so I could reset my system clock. This isn't the same as erasing my hard drive because you can't, not completely. I mean there is a small section that holds the memory of your former operating system.

***

I never thought I'd say this but I look back and read what I've wrote and think I was part of some strange cult. Now this might be insulting to the Waldorf community and people I know who are assoicated with it but how else can you describe it?

Waldorf is like an organized religion. And this is not a bad thing but let's be honest about it. School is an organized religion. Atlhough the cynic in me wants to put “organized” in extreme air quotes.

We're indoctrinating children into a system of beliefs and the reason why education is such a political campaign and hotly contested is because it is like a religion. I used to say I felt like a woman accused of being a witch and my firing was the crackling burning at the 'ol stake.

I also used the word excommunicated. I wasn't trying to be dramatic either. Oh, no. I had enough drama. I enjoyed a good flogging of drama. Instead I was trying to put into words this sensation, this puzzle that I was constantly living with that no one seemed to care to understand.

I'm not entirely sure why it is so important to be understood. Must be this animal communication thing. This need to reach out and reach in and pull a rabbit out of your hat and have folks applaud or at the very least acknowledge what you've done.

Dave Chapelle said it best, to be called crazy is dismissive. It's such an backhanded blow to be dismissed. You're not given the decency of individual, free, independent thought. Rather it's a shaking of heads and clicks of tongues.

I was embarassed when I thought it did any good, when I thought this is how I'm supposed to feel about being fired. Now I'm embarrassed that I thought it was embarrasing.

***

Recently I was talking to a friend about her own “is it me or is it the school?”/ “what the hell happened?” teaching experience. As I listened to her talk and watched her drive through Chiang Mai traffic, I wondered how many more dedicated teachers find themselves in very similar situations.

Because I've stopped being surprised when I hear that someone has a story that sounds like mine. At first I thought what I had to say might be a bit of an anomaly and I would be able to relate to people who had been fired in the most general sense of the word.

But then former Waldorf teachers, parents, and children stepped out of the woods, and then I thought maybe there is more to this story than I originally thought. It seems teachers everywhere and anywhere are caught in the world wide web of education's mis-administrations.

As I type it, it sounds as cold as print, and can be easily sallied off like the closing of a newspaper. Then again these are the people who are educating our children and pretending to know what's best for them. So I don't know how to think.

My friend is a good teacher and so is her husband (and he's got his own story). He's in another country teaching and she's not teaching, opting for more education like Mrs. Rabbit did. Her experience happened about a year ago, maybe less, so the hurts are more easily accessible.

You don't need to know the details of her story because you hear it in her voice. I've heard it in many voices. The bewildered tone, the scarred speech, the timbre of trust washed away. And I think, my friend, I understand. Unfortunately that is the best I can do.

She's not reopening a wound so much as reminding me that I had a wound. Like when someone points to an old scratch and asks, “How'd that happen?” My friend mentions rather embarrassingly how her first reaction upon seeing a former co-worker is to hide. I told her, well, I did too, on several occasions.

I realized how much we were not hiding from these people but from the reminder of our pasts, the circumstances and the situations that we wished we never lived through. We were playing victim from our own decisions and decisions that were made before us.

***

There is an antipathy that I feel towards the whole experience. I can't say that I feel bitterness or regret. My time with the children, my ability to do things that I never thought I could do like sing and play music and paint or draw give me such a sense of accomplishment.

There is also a kind of accomplishment that comes from living life at both ends. Not in a Hey you should try this way but in a Hey I lived through some shit kind of way. I was never supposed to be a failure, you see. I was never supposed to be the one who couldn't hang my hat next to others. I was raised a certain way, to be good, follow the rules and be kind and generous.

But I discovered folks were drinking a different kind of Pepsi and I've learned that what I prefer tastes good to me too.

crushed hats

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 01:32:00 +0000

A few years ago, my brother wrote to me, “Sorry I missed your birthday. I hope you had a good day. You always seem to make the best of any situation.” I was surprised by his words. It's always enlightening to learn how others view you, isn't it? Especially those who have known you for a long time. One of my first thoughts was I hope he doesn’t think this comes easy to me.

I’ve had to struggle to maintain a sense of peace, groundedness and forgiveness. But it does become easier. I think. Everyone has been waist deep in the sewage that is their lives but those who have seemed to wade through it have always fascinated me. After awhile I began to notice a difference between the complainers and those who shrug it off.

There was a cartoon strip that I once saw in reference to the different temperaments: choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. It showed a guy who had accidentally sat on his hat on a park bench. One reaction was of the guy getting angry, another was tears, the other reaction was laughter and finally there was a picture of him completely indifferent to the crushed hat. I tried to think what my reaction would be in that situation. I wanted to be the guy who laughed.

When I was a teacher I watched my children, a lot, probably more than I realized. I think this has made me a better teacher because it is a habit I still practice today. As a result I saw behavior that made me take two sometimes three, on a number of occasions. In particular, I watched one of the more volatile boys accidentally brush, push, and plow his way against everyone in the classroom. (acorn #8)

There was another acorn (I'm sure you can guess), that had the most amazing temperament when it came to #8's lack of situational awareness. Her face got a little scrunched up when he jolted her, and then the lines went away as quickly as it had arrived.

Not too long after that I watched #8 in his carelessness to finish his assignment come close to hitting another girl – arms flailing recklesslessly. This girl immediately looked up at me and complained, “Number eight hit me!”

Another time, this same acorn, who every adult saw as a sweetheart on a bed of daisys, bumped into him and then she immediately started crying, “Hey! Watch where you are going!”

I was shocked. Not like Peter Jennings shocked, but like when you discover you've been wrong in your assumptions. She deliberately bumped into him! Was anyone else watching? Witnessing? I don’t think she liked it when I called her bluff either. I mean I caught her doing it – on more than one occasion. She looked very guilty when her eyes met mine.

According to Freakonomics what makes a good parent is already determined, for the most part, before a child is even born. In other words it's genetic. I'm thinking this smells awfully like karma.

How could one girl be so nonchalant about a boy who had run into her while the other one was ready to scream, God save the Queen? Was she just born that way? Or did her parents raise her this way?

We’ve all seen a child fall down. (and snickered) But how a mother reacts is what I watch. Some will simply brush off the child, give them a hug and basically send them off to play. Then we’ve all seen the opposite – the parent who does make a big to-do about it, “Oh! You poor thing! Are you okay? Did you fall down and hurt yourself? Does it hurt? Where does it hurt?” The child not so surprisingly starts crying harder and she picks him up and scoops him away.

Of course it is vital that we do not get into extreme thinking but what then are parents supposed to do? If what they do makes little difference in a child's personality, should they be relieved? Is this one of those philosophical life lessons in just going with the undertow? Or an opportunty for pre-natal books to make some serious money?

I'd like to think I have some say in the kind of person I am. Although I think we are made towards a certain tendency and parenting can exacerbate or quell traits and quirks. I think studies in happiness have also found that we tend to hover around the same range of happiness.

For the classroom, this just made me think that maybe, just maybe, we take things entirely too seriously. I started to realize that the kids were going to be just fine. In spite of what we did to them. I started to think about my childhood and education (or lack thereof) and how I turned out.

I think I turned out okay. Anyone could take a look at my upbringing and easily conclude I was now some sort of sorry muck up with an xyz addiction problem. Raised by a single immigrant mom with an average of 5 years primary education, dad dead at a young age, very little adult supervision, mom's passing through military boyfriends, abuse, bad grades, whatever. Really, I have a myrid of excuses to play and tamper with and I've said no thank you to them all.

denial goodie bag

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 13:30:00 +0000

I recently read an article on unbrave girl about how she didn't want to be anyone's inspiration anymore. I was also given an article called Rebel Yoga. Both of these women reminded me of the lifestyle design phenomenon (so 2007, I know) and what I have been writing about. Everyone is a teacher. Everyone. Even if you don't think anyone is watching or even if you don't want to be.

Once you arrive on Planet Earth you are given a gift bag of goodies and one of the things in said baggie is a card that says: Teacher, lifetime member. If you lose the card, it just means you have forgotten about your membership. Sorry there is no unsubscribe option.

I realize unbrave girl was saying she's just an average girl who doesn't do anything spectacular but obviously she has a following. You don't have to be on a magazine cover to be someone's hero. You don't have to have saved lives to give another wings. I mean, c'mon, when someone says their mom or dad is their hero, there is a collective Awww. We get it.

Inspiration comes from the smallest or seemingly smallest things and the most ordinary. The Rebel Yoga teacher is an inspiration because she takes something esoteric and intimidating and downward dogs it down to the New York masses. We live in the world wide web and the Big Apple is no longer the best known city that never sleeps.

***

It took me a long time to understand why I had to write a letter asking someone who I had never met to please clean up their dog poo. That was my job at a company that managed homeowner’s associations. We underling assistants were asked to write these form letters on behalf of the people who lived behind community acceptable colored walls.

I found it extremely insulting to my small intelligence to do what I considered classic paper pushing exercises. I could never live behind the cream curtains of a homeowner’s association. I have a hard time letting someone do something that I can do myself. In the most debilitating cases, we had to tell folks to call the fire department in case of a fire.

Although I think we get used to the idea of having someone do things for us and even tell us what to do. You know? What the rules and regulations of the community are and such. Sometimes I wonder how a different person would have reacted to the Trembling Trees thing. Then again, since I was one of three that was fired I do have two other reactions to go by.

All of us jumped right back into teaching. Mrs. Bear opened her own school, and Mrs. Rabbit (eventually) went to graduate school and into teaching at an Indian Reservation. I took the jumped-in-and-out-again route. Talk about indecisive.

I think from the start I took the long way around because I needed to know the answers. I needed to know why things happened the way that they did. Obviously I can't be that vigilant with all things in life but with my career, I had to be.

***

In high school I took a psychology class. During which I remember learning about how people react to death. This was young(er) Lani. This was an early Ah-Ha! This was teenage me bending toward my textbook. I felt like I was finally able to understand why my mom acted the way that she did after my dad died.

Denial.

When you are six years of age and you watch your mother go out and party for what seemed like every night and leave you at home with your younger brother, you're wondering what is going on with mom. You don't know if this is right or wrong you just wish she'd stay home sometimes.

Sometimes we had a babysitter though. I remember telling her I was scared to be alone at night but she reassured me that a locked door was a secure door. Then I got used to it. Judge my mother all you like, I didn't have the capacity to do so and when I did it, I felt compassion.

I felt a rush of sympathy and love for my mother. Which was important because in high school I felt very distant and unrelated to her. I felt the cultural differences between her Thailand upbringing and my American one as pungent as a shot of fish sauce.

But with this insight, well, I had received my first spoonful of “getting it”. It was like children's medicine that had been dissolved in water. It tasted like love. And I loved her differently.

Because if we think about it, what is a normal way to grieve? If my mom had cried all the time, or was chronically depressed would that have helped or made a better difference? I don't think you really know how you are going to react to something so devestating until it happens to you.

success is a highway

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 01:50:00 +0000

By withdrawing from the world I became more fully in it.

When I first started to write down this story I never thought I would throw it up as a blog; because I wanted to be pure and have it in print, in a book, on a shelf, in some over-air conditioned store. And that is not to say that still isn’t my dream, it’s just as I’ve done it, I’ve gotten feedback.

I'm not talking about writer's group feedback either. I'm talking about world wide web feedback. A difference kind of sound altogether.

The feedback validated what I felt all along, that other teachers have gone through the same crap. Unfortunately. It didn't matter where I received the email from, teachers from every kind of school and country had experienced the same kind of shit-in-the-pants sensation. We’ve had the same parents, kids and co-workers too, and every comment just continued to cheer me on.

Now I’m looking forward to it being done. As the years rolled its red carpet out I doubted continuing. I lost interest in this back end story of my life. It was old and I got over it. E-people thought it was current and sent me words of wisdom and advice as if I was still grieving.

I guess if this was a performance I had convinced my audience. I did feel this way and once you’ve had this kind of experience it’s easy to relate to others and understand and be compassionate. But, but, but I got over it. This is important.

Most bloggers get a lot of comments and attention from being controversial and crying over cyber space. I never wanted to be that way. Positive attention is boring for some people, as is talk about forgiveness and moving on with your life. It’s just I had decided a long time ago that I wasn’t going to drag all this hate around.

I found a piece of peace that I could cover myself and snuggle down with. Sometimes my toes were cold or my neck felt a chill but overall I was comfortable. I was letting go. Time helped erase the stronger memories and enjoying life allowed me to be in the present moment.

Then one day, out of the kaleidoscope blue, I found those answers. The ones I thought I would never find.

We were driving from Alabama to Tennessee. And because of the distances and empty landscapes and because Brad and I enjoyed books on tape (yes, I am showing my age), we were listening to one. We liked Malcolm Gladwell’s the Tipping Point so Brad managed to get his hands on Outliers: The Story of Success.

Gladwell had me hooked from the start with his story about Canadian ice hockey players, and as the road continued to slide underneath us, I settled back into the seat of my Nissan Sentra and felt enlightened.

By the time Gladwell had moved on to discussing the case of geniuses Oppenheimer and Langan, I felt really good about listening to the book. Because now we were at the part of the book I could relate to. I just didn't know it until Gladwell brought up Annette Lareau's study on social class and childhood.

I sat up bristled with the sense that this was something important.

Immediately I was transported back to my Waldorf days, my difficulty with the parents, faculty and children. My mind raced between my own childhood and what Lareau’s findings were. The car suddenly felt like it was taking me in every direction. I was a popcorn kernel that finally popped.

“This is it! This is why I was fired. This is why we didn’t get along. This is the ending I've been looking for!”

In usual Brad style he didn’t say a thing. He seemed pleased though but his experience with this whole situation had been watching me struggle with my past. I sank back into the seat and sighed and smiled and felt all those wonderful things that you are supposed to feel when you’ve reached the top of the mountain.

If you haven’t read the book, the subtitle the Story of Success basically sums it up. Gladwell presents case studies of how people reach exceptional success but there was also stories of failure or what didn't work and what we could learn from it. And what didn't work for Chris Langan, didn't work for me. Just in a slightly different context.

But back to Annette Lareau since Gladwell used her study to explain why Langan didn't reach the “success” that Oppenheimer did. Lareau's study involved focusing on parenting types. She and her staff followed a group of families around to observe different child rearing styles. She expected to find a variety since she was studying a variety of families but instead found only two. The rich and the poor.

The working class/poor parents allowed their children freedom but were intimidated by authority. The rich parents, on the other hand, cultivated their children's interests earnestly, and negotiated and challenged authority. Sound familiar?

I was a raised by a woman who had a 4th or 5th grade education level in rural Thailand, whose birth wasn't even recorded. One of her boyfriends who had helped raised my brother and I dropped out of high school in the 9th grade. He too came from an impoverished background.

My mother was the woman who when asked by my 6th grade homeroom teacher, “Are these your signatures?” Replied, yes. She indirectly taught me how to switch price tags, steal a pineapple, and lie to customs at Honolulu International Airport. This is also the woman who said Yes your highness when called upon by a judge in the jury duty courtroom.

When Lareau said poor parents are intimated by authority figures my mother pop tarted into my mind. If rich kids are taught to question, challenge and speak up around authority, poor kids are taught to keep their mouths shut tight and to throw away the key. It's seen as a form of respect.

Many times I watched my dynamic mother turn into a submissive female around other adults in the English speaking world and subconsciously I ingested her behavior. I always thought it was the language barrier but there are plenty of people who speak English as a second language who challenge the agent, the teacher and the managers of the world.

Please don't get me wrong though. I love my mom more than you love yours.

It's just I was teaching children who were raised by the Bold and the Beautiful, the Young and the Restless, As the World Turns. And I don't care how many tuition wavers and scholarships Trembling Trees offered, Waldorf schools are schools for the privileged.

This was the disaster that no one saw coming, the disaster that no one could put their proverbial finger on.

In graduate school we talked about cultural issues as this Death Star forcefield preventing us teachers from getting our storm trooper students. But when we think culturally, we think racially and I knew there was nothing like that going on. That didn't fit, you know what I mean? This wasn't the droid I was looking for.

So instead I was labeled too young and immature. I was told I needed to be a mother to understand the children. Basically I was told I needed to be someone else. I was misdiagnosed and that was why I felt like I was a woman wronged, sentenced to wandering the earth. I wanted to clear up my name.

You know, I thought the parents were entirely too involved in their children's education at Trembling Trees. I thought they were overbearing and neurotic. I thought the teachers did the teaching and the parents did the parenting. My mom never stepped in or spoke up on my behalf over classroom issues. She couldn't even help me with my homework. Heck I never even told my mom most of the stuff that was going on anyway. That was kid's stuff. I was raised under the unspoken kid code that you just don't share that kind of stuff with the adults.

But after listening to Gladwell I realized this is just the way rich parents and their children acted. This was that sense of Entitlement that Lareau discovered. There was nothing wrong, overbearing or neurotic about being involved in their children's education. Sure, sometimes it was too much but I understood their point of view now. And this wasn't just an eye opener this was a mind bender.

four stages of forgiveness

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:57:00 +0000

Life is timely, isn’t it?

I’ve been reading Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. It’s a book that I think came out in the 90s when I was too young to fully appreciate it but I remember seeing and hearing about it.

So when I saw it in a used bookstore, last year, I grabbed it knowing this was exactly the kind of book I would be interested in. Today I am at the Four Stages of Forgiveness on page 401 and I am struck by how much the stages have coincided with what I went through with Waldorf.

The Stages are as follows: 1) to forego, 2) to forebear, 3) to forget and 4) to forgive. Estes talks about during the first stage how you need to take a vacation from the event. And that is exactly what I did when I moved back to Hawaii. Seemed perfect, home is Hawaii, the quintessential holiday for Japanese and Americans and for a woman who just went through a lot of growing up.

I wanted to escape and I recognized that I needed to be with my mother, people I loved and new start. But this is not the same as running away because my memories were in the things I brought back and still banging about in my heart.

To forebear is to practice patience. And as my issues with Waldorf education and education in general, trust and paranoia resurfaced, I needed to wait. I played peek-a-boo with the past during this time. But I had to wait for the moment when I was ready to let go, wait for my emotions to subside, and wait for new clarity.

I wanted everything to just be over with, I wanted to be strong and move past it. I wanted to feel normal again. Life forced me though to endure when I really didn’t want to. These were messy stages where I ran back and forth in my mind declaring peace and serenity one minute and chaos and war the next.

Forgetting is never really forgetting. Just because you drop a coin in to a well doesn’t mean the coin isn’t there anymore. It’s added to the pool of knowledge. But instead of constantly fishing around for that damn coin and flipping it and looking over it again and again, you simply let the memory settle down and sit.

Talk about a messy stage. I thought I was going insane over the mental movie and projector I was constantly playing. Torture truly is self-induced. If anyone took a look into my room during these finer moments they would see a woman talking to herself. I might as well have been a bag lady collecting shoes and plastic artifacts, rocking back and forth like a retarded monkey or something.

I love Estés quote on the last stage, “forgiveness is an act of creation.” Through the forgetting, patience, and moving around the country, I found my passion, writing. I found books that suddenly had more meat between the thin slices of bread which I devoured with the hunger that comes from a bitten experience.

I saw the world through all my senses. When you’ve clenched and hugged the earth through your sorrow, walking again, stretching again, exploring and breathing again feels so momentously good. To me freedom isn’t a political agenda or a geographical boundary so much as the rapture that comes from letting go of the past.

intermission: a word about myths

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:53:00 +0000

Language as life, life as myth

Language can put you in a powerful frame of mind and depending on how you use it you can see your life with new eyes. We certainly look at our children differently when they start to speak.

Jim Rohn, a motivational speaker brilliantly explains the power of language by asking his audiences, “What if you meant to say, “What’s troubling you?” but instead you said, “What’s wrong with you?’”

The right words land us the job; the wrong ones keep the search going. The right words display our intelligence and the wrong ones hide it. The right words bridge, heal and connect us while the wrong ones isolate, destroy and haunt like the Ghost of Christmas Past.

The language of our life is the language of our stories. There is the story of our parents meeting, our birth, our childhood and teenage years, our relationships and their endings, first jobs, first apartment, house, car, etc. Our stories become books, movies, plays and stand up comedy routines.

A story has life when we can pull something out of it. When we connect to the storyteller’s tale, when we recognize the validity, the humor, irony, the whatever. We are friends with people with similar stories and perhaps attracted to those wildly different than our own. There is a story for everyone and everyone has a story.

Myths, legends, folklore and fairy tales derive from real life but not unlike the game telephone that has been carried across the school yard, we don’t believe in sandbox stories anymore. They seem exaggerated and unrealistic, just the product of an overactive imagination and made mostly, for entertainment.

But seemingly fictional stories come from real life. The sandcastles of our imagination were created by a person who saw something in the world that gave them the idea. I think we’ve been bullied into the believing that the hero and heroine, talking animals, nature helping spirits, magic and symbols are relegated to fantasy on high.

Not unlike our culture’s fascination with superheroes and legends, our stories have embedded in them meaning, moral substance and metaphor. We love to hear about the memoirs of the rich and famous, artists, musicians, kings and queens. And the very stuff of fairy tales possesses kings and queens, princes and princesses and everyday people too.

The figure of speech, “life is a journey” is well and worn out for good reason. It’s a metaphor that we physically, mentally and spiritually walk on a day by day basis. Cross-culturally we understand the meaning of climbing the mountains, hitting the peaks and valleys, running through the trails in the forest and maneuvering our boats through the vast ocean of seas.

The only thing that has changed throughout the years is the setting. Modern landscapes seem devoid of substance but there are many movies that depict and draw from fairy tale themes. Urban and suburban life has the same challenges of the hero getting lost, fighting for truth and finding love. There are just as many illusions in “real” life as there are in myths and legends too.

Sometimes these illusions greet us through the cast of characters that enter stage left. I’ve decided they are fortune cookies that need cracking open. The hidden message inside changes with each person they meet. And I cannot help but wonder what my fortune says to the people I meet throughout my life.

Intuitively we sense how our lives are stories with transitions, phases and rites of passage. Intuitively we understand that there is an underlying structure, birthdays, weddings, divorces, deaths, children, new jobs and new cities are all part of stories within a grander story.

Many writers and academic types, the obvious being Joseph Campbell, have urged us to learn from myths, legends and fairy tales from around the world. He believed these stories carried similar storylines and seeds of knowledge within them like an acorn, a tree. Myths are said to be roadmaps and guides to our own life journey.

In The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell sifts out the archetypical elements of myths. He recognized the patterns within fairy tales, myths and legends. The hero or heroine in these stories go through what Campbell sees are these stages: call to adventure, road of trials, acquiring self-knowledge (gifts), return to the so-called ordinary world and then finally the sharing of gifts. It is immediately striking how the stages of mythical warriors are the same stages that everyday people go through during the course of their lives.

And while not all myths carry each of these stages they carry the key elements, just as our lives do. We each have our own call to adventure whether it is great or small. We face many trials along the road of life. And just like the hero, we too fall victim to its many obstacles and seductions and find our way back home.

It makes sense that we could find lessons and nourishment within fairy tales and legends but how many of us go through life living this way? How many of us perceive the great stories of Krishna, Buddha and Christ as blueprints to living our own lives? Why do we ignore, neglect and belittle the magic and wonder of the stories of the saints and fables?

It comes down to perception.

theatre monologue (or the makings of a genius)

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:47:00 +0000

I remember our first and only writing assignment in high school theatre. Mrs. A told us to write and perform a monologue. I was elated, excited and extremely terrified by the prospect. I did however love any moment to be creative. My heart takes a spin on the merry-go-round, and the world looks bigger and smaller, brighter and cleaner – smells better too.

I could feel my classmates’ energy as all our high school minds went to work trying to conjure up the monologue and performance that would make the rest of us (and most of all) Mrs. A stand up and applaud vigorously, “Bravo! Bravo!”

They would say:
“I really liked your ending – it was such a cliff hanger.”
“That performance was the best I’ve seen all year.”
“Absolutely genius.”

The gushing compliments would never end and every one of us was imagining how graciously we would handle the situation.
“Oh, stop it.”
“Really, you’re too kind.”
“I don’t know – it just came to me, in a flash of brilliance, I guess.”

Mrs. A gave us some class time to begin writing. Since class was held in the cafeteria so some students plopped themselves on the stage in various positions. Others sat on the table or on the floor – we were thespians for cryin’ out loud – we were creative in where we sat and how we sat.

Now I really do not know what possessed me to write what I did. I thought I was being daring and edgy. I decided to write about a woman who comes home from work to find her husband cheating on her. I couldn’t decide if she should shoot her husband or the other woman. I thought about shooting them both. It was such an artistic dilemma.

I had a hard time figuring what the word was for scope or cross-hairs – you know the thingy you look into when you are aiming a rifle. It had to be a big gun, a long gun. I wasn’t about to shoot my imaginary husband with a pocket gun. That’s not very dramatic. I didn’t want to irritate him. My intent was to kill.

On the day we were to perform our monologues we were all agitated and apprehensive. I eagerly looked forward to my classmates’ performance just as much as I wanted to do mine.

Mrs. A’s star pupil did a montage of all of the musicals we had done. It was both a cop out and clever. I couldn’t decide but Tom was, as always, entertaining and energetic.

Mrs. A playfully yelled at him, “Get off the stage!”

I remember Maile’s performance was about her father. It was visibly difficult for her to say the words that she had written. Half way through her performance she ran out of the cafeteria unable to hold back the tears. It was hard to understand what she was saying although everyone in the audience tried hard to listen and encourage her when she faltered.

Her father was a Vietnam veteran. I remember walking into their kitchen and seeing all the bottles and bottles of prescription medication on the table. I’d never seen so many pills except at the pharmacy. I couldn’t believe he had to take all of it. I born around the time when the Vietnam War ended but I recognized the consequences of the war in my youth. My best friend generally kept things to her self so this monologue was a surprise. I think it was painful for her to see the struggles he went through. She told me he never talked about the war and never watched any movies or TV shows about it.

“Stop,” Mrs. A said when a couple of students started to get up to go after her. We waited in uncomfortable silence. Finally I got up and nobody stopped me.

She was crying by the front of the building. I immediately went to the bathroom to get her some toilet paper. I didn’t know about tissue back then. I thought rich people used tissue. I always grabbed toilet paper.

“Thanks.” She said quietly.

I just stood there and leaned against the cool building.

“I feel like such an idiot.”

“Well, you shouldn’t.” I replied. “I was surprised you decided to write about your father. That took guts. You should be proud of yourself.”

“Thanks.” She sniffled and wadded up the toilet paper.

We headed back in to the cafeteria after a few more minutes. I wasn’t about to rush this. I knew the class would understand.

Mrs. A might have put her arm around Maile. I can’t recall. Despite Mrs. A’s toughness, she was a big softie too.

I know people realize how emotional writing can be and even performance. It’s therapeutic. Theatre was my high school therapy. Hmm, I dare say it was all of ours.

When it was finally my turn I felt jittery and strangely calm. I walked up the stairs onto the stage then begun but it was a shaky performance:

I had just gotten home from work. It had been a fantastic day at the office. I was feeling quite full of myself as I put the groceries on the counter. I started walking down the hallway in to our bedroom, that’s when I heard the noises. It was laughing, and heavy breathing. I thought he was playing with the kids. Wait a minute, we don’t have any kids. So I started for the living room, I opened the cabinet and took out the shotgun. My feet were cold.

“Lani!” Mrs. A yelled with a snorting laugh.

I looked at her.

“Oh, c’mon. Why aren’t you taking this seriously?” She was trying to hold back her smile.

The class started to giggle.

“I am taking this seriously!” I yelled back trying to keep my composure.

She no longer could hold back her grin. “You’re going to shoot him!”

“You don’t know that,” I replied a little too innocently.

Her hands went into the air, “Okay.” She started to laugh. “Carry on!”

I opened the cabinet and took out the shotgun. My feet were cold. I was in our room. The bastard. The bitch. They started screaming, so did I. I felt every hair on my body stand on its end. He kept repeating, “Please baby, please don’t.” I couldn’t take it anymore. So I lifted the gun (I followed my character’s words by holding an imaginary shotgun), and positioned it like he showed me. I felt all my blood rushing to my left hand. I looked into the cross-hairs, smiled and squeezed the trigger. Bang.

The class applauded and I stepped off the stage laughing. I could barely hold it together to finish my monologue because everyone else was laughing too. I wasn’t expecting this reaction. I don’t know what kind of reaction I was expecting. I never understood why Mrs. A interrupted me. I guess she felt as an adult that she needed to be the ‘voice of reasoning’ – that shooting a cheating spouse was not be tolerated or even talked about. But in the end we all laughed about it.

I am glad that I kept that torn out page from my notebook. I’m grateful that I didn’t throw away this silly monologue from high school. I wish I would have kept more of my writing. The novels I started in junior high, the play I wrote in college. All that bad writing. I knew it was horrendous and that is exactly why they ended up in the trash.

But now that I’m older and wiser, I miss seeing what I wrote. I miss reading all those pages of work that I produced simply because I wanted to. No one pushed me. There are no literary geniuses in my family. At least none that I’m aware of.

theatre & the mean girls

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:57:00 +0000

When I was in high school I discovered a love for theatre. (It started with my Moses presentation or speech.) So by the time I enrolled in my freshman year I decided to try a theatre class at Barstow High School.

My first day of high school was overwhelming because I went from a small private school to a large public school where the freshmen lockers was a good 10 minute hike away from the all my classes. And I had 10 minutes between each class. I felt intimidated and lost in the classrooms. Sometimes I felt like I had no idea what the teacher was talking about and that scared me. I wanted to do well in school but I felt myself sliding down the academia ladder.

Like a good teenager I chose what I was going to wear on my first day carefully. I wore a cute acid wash demin skirt and matching tank top. And I was weaving in and out of the students when I fell down and skinned my knee.

“Are you okay?” someone asked.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I mumbled, too embarrassed to look up at the person.

I went to science class with blood trickling down my leg. I wanted to die the death of pubescent embarrassment. But class had just begun. I sat in the front row trying to ignore my knee until a student next to me said, “Uh. Did you know your leg is bleeding?”

I looked down at it, “I do. Thanks.” Then I stared straight ahead willing myself to be strong like a cat or a dog or something.

That class (thank you Jesus) turned out to be one of the worst I had because of a couple of girls that sat behind me. They sat next to one another. One girl sat directly behind me in her own desk and her friend in the next row over.

I could feel my chair being pushed out of the row by the girl behind me. She used her foot. (As oppose to her teeth or nose. . .) I heard them both stifle giggles. I scooted my chair with the connecting table arm back into the row. After a few days of enduring this girl’s mischief I finally told the teacher.

It didn’t matter. She pushed my desk forward every day. It’s a humiliating feeling being bullied. Sometimes I braced myself in the chair trying to force it to stay still but she was one of those big boned white girls (and I just a mere dainty Asian built like a 12 year old boy), so she could easily muscle my desk chair out of the row. One time I just let her continue to push my chair further and further until I was practically kissing the chalkboard. Then I scooted my desk back doing my best to ignore their gleeful snickering.

I never said a word to them so I have no idea why they didn’t like me. I might have been asked, “Are you Japanese?” on the first day of class but I don’t remember. I did try to stand up for myself, turned around and said, “Stop it.” But the she-beast ignored me. So I really did explore all of my options.

When they did stop bothering me it was after they met my mom’s boyfriend. It was the strangest thing too. He took me to the school’s football game and I saw the two girls looking over at us. The next day one of them asked, “Was that your boyfriend we saw you with at the game?”

I turned around in my seat. “No. That was my mom’s boyfriend.” I was appalled that they thought that of him but he was much younger than my mom.

“Oh. We were just curious.”

After that, they magically stopped terrorizing me. But at that point I was being equally terrorized by a kid in my lab group who everyone called Poindexter. I have no idea what his real name was. He was lanky, had braces, and wore button down shirts tucked into his pants. Poindexter’s sandy brown hair always seemed to be combed down inadequately.

For some reason Poindexter liked to talk to me during lab work. I realize we were in a group so he probably didn’t have any choice but I found him disgustingly vile. I would stare at his braces – his mouth looked like he hadn’t seen a glass of water or toothbrush in days. His breath could have very easily slain dragons and turned away the coldest of vampires. I would count how many pieces of food I saw stuck between his braces and teeth. I tried to look away, back up and discourage Poindexter from talking to me but it seemed to have the reverse effect.

Theatre class was the only thing I enjoyed when I attended Barstow High. My good friend Jamie who was a sophomore didn’t talk to me like she did when we were both in junior high. It was clear to me that she had moved on, made other friends and so I stopped trying to hang out with her.

When I was in theatre I felt wanted, creative and vivacious. Everyone in the class was open to getting to know one another. Our teacher was young and spirited, you know like a horse. And she encouraged me to develop as an actress. And I laughed. I laughed so much because I was such a goof ball and class clown. I love to make people laugh, especially in a classroom setting – I like an audience.

When my family moved back to Hawaii it was hard to say goodbye to my drama class. My teacher wanted me to meet up with the class in Los Angeles to go to a conference of sorts but I knew I would never talk my mom into letting me go. I was flattered nonetheless. She told me that I had talent. I was fearless back then.

Leilehua High school did not have a dramatics department so my love for performing took a back seat in the old Nissan pickup until I was transferred to Mililani High School. I didn’t find the after school theater program until the end of my sophomore year but I was still excited when I did. I could tell I was going to be a bottom feeder in a big pond and that intimidated me. Especially after I saw their performance of Pippin – the students did a wonderful job.

On my first day, I entered the cafeteria where the stage was located and immediately could tell who the “superstars” were – they held themselves differently. These students laughed and played around while the rest of us stood awkwardly waiting for the teacher to arrive. I spied an attractive girl from one of my science classes.

“Hi. I’m Lani. You’re in my science class, right?”

She smiled warmly. “Yes, I remember you. My name is Maile.”

And a friendship was formed.

Drama class provided me with an adventure in working and socializing with obnoxious (just kidding) people. This was Theatre after all. We had all kinds of students and even students from nearby high schools. Our teacher Mrs. A was quite the hard-headed taskmaster. You either liked her or you didn’t. She made some of my friends cry but not me. Mrs. A was a no-bull kind of woman and I appreciated how hard she made us work and the sense of teamwork that she help to create among us rowdy teenagers.

We did everything: set construction, costumes and of course, the performance. Parents came in to help from time to time with the set construction and the costumes but we did the majority of the work and it was quality work. Mrs. A did not want us doing “high school theatre” she wanted us to do Theatre that was worth watching and paying for. She was serious about it so we were too.

If you did something stupid she would shake her head and make a big show of it. Her face would scrunch up if she found your behavior perplexing. Mrs. A knew how to make you feel small and I saw nothing wrong with that. If you acted like an idiot why shouldn’t there be consequences? Perhaps if more people shook her heads disapprovingly people would think twice about what their actions. Then again, maybe not.

When she yelled at how poor our rehearsals were going I wondered what more I could have done. I felt like an idiot just like all my other classmates. (Twas good fun!) I was usually in a supporting role if I was in the show at all. I’m sure that is how I escaped a lot her wrath. It helped that I was one of the class clowns.

Theatre was my life in high school, my escape from teenage rebellion and angst. But I knew that I wasn’t going to pursue it in college. I knew that I wasn’t beautiful enough to make it as an actress and quite frankly I didn’t think I could stand the abuse of constant rejection. (And now I am a writer – oh the irony of it all.)

This is not to say that I thought my friends who were going on to pursue a degree in theatre were vain. It just wasn’t for me. I couldn’t see myself doing it. I didn’t feel like I was great at it anyway. I knew I was entertaining in a group but I couldn’t imagine acting as a career.

painting faith

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 01:26:00 +0000

There was a painting I bought to celebrate my independence. Actually I simply fell in love with it. Leo Klein was visiting Trembling Trees. I had met him through teacher training and was excited that he was visiting our little school. He is an amazing artist and a kind old man.

He did classroom observations, gave a lecture or two and hung his artwork in the eurthymy room. (Why yes, he did visit my classroom but he had nothing damning to say. But like a lot of positive things we hear in life, it was deemed insignificant and was ignored. But, oh, how I hung to his words. How I pressed him, “Did you see anything in my teaching to give you concern?” “No, Lani.” And then he would share with me different ways to be imaginative!)

I remember how Mrs. Blue jay sighed as she watched me get out my checkbook, “I wish I could be impulsive. I can’t purchase anything substantial without my husband’s consent. Enjoy it dear, cause when you get married you’ll have to talk about these things first.”

As Leo removed his canvas from the wall and carefully rolled it up, I felt excited, nervous and mature. Here I was purchasing Art.

The painting is called Guiding Angels. It’s a picture of a sailing ship in the middle of a storm. The sky is magenta; the sea deep blue, black and purple. Behind the tempest tossed boat is a splash, a burst, a song of white and cream and hints of other colors. If you stare at the painting long enough you begin to notice that a piece of the ship is in the water and the shapes in the sky are angelic.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, I needed the reminder the painting portrayed. Perhaps by owning the painting I would feel closer to controlling my life, perhaps I could feel closer to God, my guardian angel, my higher self. I was desperate to maintain, or at the very least, outlast this tempest of criticism I was receiving as a Waldorf teacher.

I don’t know how I did it. How I managed to rise each day and foolishly hope and pray that this day would be different. I certainly didn’t feel as though I had much of a choice and to be honest I started to wonder if I was being punished for my past life transgressions. Seriously.

The thing about Waldorf and this belief in karma is that anything that happened was the way it was supposed to be. This bothered me a great deal because I felt karma was complicated and to say if something bad happens to someone then that is their karma seemed incredibly insensitive and foolish.

But I knew or I felt I knew that this was what was being said behind my back. It seemed to justify the actions of the folks who were involved in the firing. I felt trapped in a belief system that I believed in. How could I believe in karma and not feel as though this firing was my karmic retribution?

My head knew that leaving this insane asylum was the right thing but I kept thinking why couldn’t I have left on my own terms? Why did this happen like this? I could have been simply relieved to be leaving the nut house and spared the agonizing decision to quit but instead I was stuck on how I was exiting the building, how the straitjacket was being pulled off.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then a painting is worth a thousand emotions because every time I saw a Waldorf-y painting I was struck by the loss this educational philosophy claimed on my life. To believe in something, an ideology, a relationship, an organization and to have that reflection shattered feels like something has been pulled out of you.

We invest so much of our time, love and efforts into whatever we believe in. And whenever that trust or good faith is violated, it feels like a friend stole from you. It’s not a random act of violence, it’s a person you knew and who knew you. Those are the saltiest wounds.

I think this is how the bitter root grows inside of folks. Someone who loved me, who knew me, who worked with me, etc, did this to me. After all we’ve been through, after all I’ve done, etc. It’s the current in the river of life that keeps you tossed, twisted and drowning for air.

Each time I moved from state to state or city to city and I did this a lot, I carried my favorite watercolors from the students and myself, and I’m not a sentimental person. I have no former love letters or anything like that because I find it silly. I can’t be bothered reminiscing. I can’t be bothered carrying a lot of junk.

Over the years though, with each move, I’d purge what I owned and my Waldorf paintings and pictures were no different. I’m surprised by how long I kept my former students' work with me. I’m surprised by how long I lugged and moved across the country, across the Pacific my old Waldorf materials and even letters from the parents who wrote on my behalf. Talk about baggage.

I guess I carried this hope in the back of my mind that all this material that I had acquired might be useful again someday. But all it did was weigh me down and serve as a reminder of what left me behind.

I kept the Leo Klein painting though. It remains rolled up because I could never afford to get it framed. And I never lived in a place where it seem to fit. One day it would be nice to see it hanging like something I purchased during my world travels to remind me of where I had been because it was the gift I gave myself to celebrate my independence. And a reminder to keep going.

me, pharaoh and i

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 00:03:00 +0000

Although I did not have success creating my own novels, I did find some success in writing for performance. I was creative. I had a flair for the dramatics. I just didn’t realize it.

In the 7th grade, I attended Barstow Christian School where we were instructed to write a paper on Moses and the Hebrews crossing the Red Sea.

If you are not familiar with this story, after many years of being oppressed by the Egyptians the Hebrews found their savior in the form of Moses who served as a mouthpiece of God. Moses performed miracles in the eyes of the Pharaoh to prove that his God was greater than the Egyptians’ many (and therefore flawed) gods. The Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by these so-called miracles, he thought they were just magic tricks and he would not let the Hebrews out of bondage. So after the Egyptians endured plagues of all kinds, the Pharaoh finally let the Hebrews go having suffered the biggest plague of all – the death of his only son.

The Hebrews were thrilled and terrified after 40 years of bondage as they left Egypt but just before they crossed the Red Sea the Pharaoh told his army to bring the Hebrews back. Here is where the famous parting of the Red Sea occurs – the Hebrews are in a panic but Moses is instructed by the Almighty to raise his staff and the Red Sea waters part for them to run across safely to the other side. (There mom, I learned plenty at private school.)

Not only did we have to rewrite this famous Biblical story we had to present it to the class. My classmates groaned at the prospect while I found the assignment exciting. When I got home I went to my mom’s bedroom to think. (I don’t know why, I had a perfectly decent bedroom myself.) With pen in mouth and paper on bed, I enjoyed the idea of having to do something creative.

I decided to retell the story as if I was a news reporter witnessing the action in a Jane-on-the-spot kind of way. I’d throw in interviews with perhaps Joshua (because I imagined him to be good looking), catching him just before he ran into the Red Sea. It seemed like a fun idea but I was nervous. And the idea seemed - obvious. And so I became petrified that someone else would use the news reporter idea, go first and then I would be stuck looking like a copy-cat, one of the worst sins known to kids. But I liked the idea too much not to go through with it so I went to work writing my paper and practicing my performance.

The next day as the class presented their retelling of the parting of the Red Sea, I sat giddy in my seat barely able to contain myself because no one else had thought of my idea.

When it was my turn, I took a deep breath, grabbed one of my pens and stood in front of the class. Taking another deep breath I pretended my pen was a microphone and said in my brightest news anchorwoman voice, “Good afternoon everyone. This is Lani Cox for Eyewitness News.”

My classmates sat up straighter. This wasn’t going to be another typical presentation.

“And I’m here LIVE as the Hebrews attempt to leave Egypt after 40 years of slavery! This is such a historical moment!”

Then I looked behind me as if the camera was capturing the people fleeing. Then I looked back again at the camera, smiling.

“As you can see behind me, the Hebrews are leaving the only home they’ve known with Moses and Aaron leading the way. Let’s see if we can get someone to talk to us. . .”

“Oh there’s Joshua! Joshua!” I waved him over and I pretended to interview him, shamelessly flirting as we discussed his feelings about this momentous occasion waving my pen back and forth from him to me.

But then he had to go because on the horizon we noticed (ta-dum!) the Pharaoh’s army.

“Oh, no. It appears as though the Pharaoh has had a change of heart, he’s sent his army to attack the people.”

I paused as I pretended to watch the scene unfold.

“But what’s this? It appears that the Red Sea is parting! I can’t believe it? Can you believe what you are seeing? Moses has just parted the Red Sea!” I went on, continuing to look back and forth between the camera, my audience and parting of the Red Sea, the chalkboard.

“I don’t believe it! I can’t believe it. Moses is urging the Hebrews to walk across it. But here comes Pharaoh’s army! Will the Hebrews make it out in time?” Dramatic pause, “Yes! Now the Red Sea is crashing down on the army. It’s too late for them to get out now! The Hebrews have escaped have 40 years of slavery!”

“Wow. We have truly witnessed a momentous occasion. And we caught it all on camera.” I sighed, shook my head and smiled, “This is Lani Cox reporting for Eyewitness News, back to you Gloria.”

The class burst into applause. After I sat back down in my seat, high from my performance, my classmates called out accolades and patted me on the back. My teacher who I was convinced despised me said that I had also done a good job. I slunk down in my seat flushed with excitement.

lost in books

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 10:11:00 +0000

In the 8th grade I remember sitting in class - horribly bored by what the teacher was reading. I wanted to wave my arms and yell, “Stop. Just please, stop! I can’t take it anymore.” Instead I discreetly reached into my jelly bag (all the rage in the 80s) and pulled out a Sweet Valley High paperback. It doesn’t take too long to drown out her voice and soon I am blissfully transported to the town of Sweet Valley, California reading about the adventures of Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, beautiful blond twins.

Since I was holding the book in my lap behind my desk, occasionally looking up at the teacher for effect, my neck began to get uncomfortable. It wasn’t long before the book was on my desk since I was completely engrossed. Then I held it in one hand with my elbow resting on the desk, my head looking up at it.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Does this book bore you?” My teacher angrily asked.

Uh oh. I put the book down shaken out of my world of teenage drama. Stupidly realizing that I had forgotten to hide the book and that I was practically waving it in the air.

My teacher was a tall black woman who specialized in making her students feel guilty. My Japanese teachers back in Hawaii specialized in making you feel stupid. Different but equally effective methods in humiliation in conjunction with heavy doses of yelling.

“Would you like to read Lani? Perhaps you’d like to read your book to the class instead.”

“No.” I looked down afraid she would take the book away from me. Afraid I would have to read out it loud to the class.

“I can stop reading.” She barked to no one in particular. She closed the book for dramatic effect. “We can just sit here. Does anyone else find this story boring?”

A few spineless turds shook their heads.

“Would you like me to continue reading?”

I continued to look down but I noticed out of the corner of my eye that some of the students nodded. There were a few whispered yeses.

My teacher studied us for a few seconds before opening the book again and began reading.

Stubbornly I tried not to listen to the story. I tried to look bored. Then I tried to catch on to what was going on. The ending of the story got better. But I was lost having not paid attention for most of it. I felt bad so I apologized at recess. It was one of the rare times that I did since we had disagreements more often than I care to remember.

***

As I've said, I got into the bad habit of reading and eating out in Barstow Land, the Milton Bradley game where you want to stick a fork in your neck and wish you were back in Hawaii.

My quest for carbs while reading sessions involved reaching (ideally) for a bucket of Dryers Neapolitan ice cream. The lid made a slight sucking noise whenever I popped it off. When I peered into it I wondered why my mom insisted on buying this flavor.

Neapolitan combines vanilla, strawberry and chocolate but not in a Ben and Jerry’s kind of way but in an Italian flag kind of way. I would scoop from the vanilla and chocolate sides leaving an untouched tower of strawberry in the middle. I’d continue reading one of my books then started to think the unthinkable. “I can totally do this. I should write a book.”

Conveniently, a manual typewriter appeared in our home around this time. It was very heavy and lived in a hard-shelled home of a greenish hue. I think my mom’s boyfriend had designs to write. It looked like something from WWI. I asked if I could use it. He said yes. I didn’t know how to type yet so I used the two finger method. Tak. Tak. Tak. How I loved the sound of the typewriter keys. After awhile I began to hit the keys with the eraser end of a pencil. It was easier on my 14-year-old hands.

I started writing two books almost simultaneously, which I find interesting because it is a style or preference that I have carried with me. What I mean is when I get marooned or bored I have something else to work on. It is a miracle that I seek monogamy.

The first story was a Sweet Valley High copycat. I dreamed up a fictional high school with much effort. I think it was Highland High School or something. But I threw it away because I am not a sentimental person and because I am an idiot. The best part of creating the story was thinking of character names and descriptions.

But then I was like totally lost. Totally. Plots seemed simple by design; there needed to be an antagonist, some sort of conflict and then resolution. But simple turned into simply stuck and I didn’t know how to get unstuck.

My second attempt at fiction was a mystery. I enjoyed the Nancy Drew series and then hungrily searched for another mystery writer. Naturally I found Agatha Christie. So I created a story about a young woman who was unknowingly invited into a haunted house. Soon she discovers she is trapped, along with other creepy guests. The title was going to be “Trapped!” And I had higher hopes for this one. But I couldn’t figure out how to get her out of the dang house or what the big mystery was all about. My character was trapped and so was I.

the trouble with writing

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:03:00 +0000

After Thailand, closure with my father’s death, after the shoe box experiment and after the burgers and root beer epiphany, I went through about a year of quiet nothingness. No new insights visited me day or night. I started to settle into the idea that all I was going to know or needed to know about the whole Waldorf fiasco was finished.

I pursued writing though. I pursued it like never before.

***

Whenever I was asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I said whatever I felt like at the time: a nurse, a teacher, a model, an actress, a lawyer. You could say I had no idea what I wanted, my compass couldn’t find north, or you could say, I wanted to try it all.

I’ve worked in warehouses, fast food, at a children's summer camp, computer help desk, as an archaeologist and all the office roles under the cubical sun: receptionist, bookkeeper, office manager; and temp positions in real estate management, “planned parenthood”, income tax prep, for a purveyor of wild game and meats, and a transportation company for large (living) animals. And I’ve done some teaching.

After I sent out my Portland Oregon holiday email I received “you should be a writer” responses, enough to make me think about it. So I started to think about my life through the lens of a writer. Because believe me, after you’ve been fired there is no shortage of packaged books to tell you that this is the best time to pursue what you always wanted to do. And this is a great idea if you know what you’ve always wanted to do.

In the meantime, I considered ways to use my education background since it seemed a waste not to use it. But every career choice that interested me like high school counselor required more schooling and more money. I considered nursing because of the need and the money but I am in no way meant to be in a hospital. I considered even learning code so I could be a computer programmer. Ye-ah.

So I took those “you should be a writer” comments and took a long look back on my childhood. Was there anything there? I started to go back through the memory archives and then I began to wonder how I could have missed that I have been writing all my life. Ye-ah.

It was ironic really. I would bang my head against the internet trying to figure out what I was put on this green and blue planet to do and I was doing it. I was writing: What should I do? What do I always do? What do I love? What is my passion? What am I doing when I lose track of time? It was the proverbial, where my glasses question and they're on top of your head.

***

I was yelled at by Mrs. E for my horrible penmanship. I was in the 6th grade and she was my “English” teacher. I don’t remember much from my school days but I remember her calling me up to her desk which was at the front of the classroom. I remember her telling me how bad my handwriting was. And then she started yelling. Perhaps she noticed my lack of concern or maybe she hadn’t had her morning cup of coffee or failed to achieve orgasm last night with her partner. I don't know because she really let me have it until she was screaming at me to look at my work.

I started crying. Sobbing really – I was a complete mess and my classmates were watching. Then I went back to my desk with the offending paperwork in hand. What the hell was up her butt?

So my best friend Janet and I started to write notes. I suddenly developed an acute syndrome of Kiss My Ass. I also think Janet and I were in an unspoken writing contest in who could include more cuss words per sentence because, hot dog with mustard the notes were profane.

Janet won. She could add that extra expletive where you didn’t even think an expletive could go. She even made me gasp. This blond 12 year old would have had Eddie Murphy taking notes from her. But I started it. So I suppose this was the beginning of my creative writing career.

***

The 6th grade was also pinnacle in that this was the year we moved from Mililani Hawaii, my hometown which loosely translates to a million heavens to Barstow California which loosely translates to the armpit of America. We had traded the sandy beaches of Aloha nui nui for the gritty sands of the Mojave freakin' Desert.

Larry and I used to play outside when we lived in Hawaii. In fact my mom rarely saw us and we rarely saw her. We were climbing walls, trees, riding our bikes, catching lizards, geckos and bunnies that had escaped from their cages. We were hanging out with our friends, terrorizing smaller children, fighting, playing Dungeons & Dragons, Atari, Lego and all things wonderful and imaginary.

In Barstow, we were in the middle of nothing. My mom’s current boyfriend had rented a house in a developing neighborhood. So we were surrounded by a skeleton crew of houses in various stages of becoming. There were no kids to play with here, no friends with Lego sets or say, the first Atari in the neighborhood. Just the desert and an abundance of tumbleweeds. Yeah just like in the movies.

Being of the exploratory type, Larry and I combed the sinking hills walking side by side. We looked out at the rolling hills of sand and scrub brush of beige on beige, where we once had been surrounded by the greenness of tropical living and fruit dropping off trees, and continued on to the next set of hills hoping to find something different. We didn’t. Occasionally we saw a jackrabbit. We flipped over rocks searching for scorpions. We attempted to be careful of the cacti. We were cautious not to stray too far from home. We spent a lot of time at home.

Larry watched a lot cable television. But he watched shows like Nature and other PBS programs. He soon became the subject matter expert on the habitats and feeding practice of all living things. You see one of the talents of my dear younger brother, is his sponge-like ability to absorb information. Larry can recollect dates, times and seemingly minuscule facts to the great annoyance of other family members. His ability to recall has been used as incriminating “evidence” for all wrongdoing against him. While I got stuck with the amnesiac flux gene that plagued me long before I ever inhaled, Larry was boy genius wonder.

If Hawaii was our eternal summer then Barstow was our eternal hell - I mean winter. We withdrew from the world outside. And while Larry could find solace in front of the TV I had to find something else or go out of my mind from complete and utter boredom. So when we drove to the town of Victorville to go to the mall I wandered into the bookstore out of desperation. And this kind of desperation was the beginning of a lovely relationship.

I grew up in a household where reading took place. No my mom didn’t read Larry and I bedtime stories. We didn’t grow up with a house filled with picture books or visits to the library together or anything like that. Any picture book we acquired was from grandma’s Bible stories. Mom’s mastery of the English language is passable but she couldn’t help us with our homework. In fact I was pissed whenever a teacher said, “Ask your parents for help.” Right after Peter Pan flies through my window, I’ll be sure to do that.

But despite the fact that my mom only went to school until the 5th grade, she read for information and enjoyment. And Larry and I saw this. We would come home to see her sitting on the floor with a Thai newspaper spread out before her. I can still hear her turning the page. The room would be silent. Sometimes I would ask her what was going on in Thailand.

She read a lot of magazines too. I could not read Thai but I flipped through these magazines and looked at the pictures. I would point to the cover and ask her who the woman was. “A movie star,” she would explain or “a soap opera star.” I recognized some of them because I was forced to watch Thai movies at the Varsity Theatre in Hawaii.

At the back of every kind of these magazines were a series of lifelike drawings with a beautiful woman looking off at the distance, perhaps another smaller drawing of her kissing a man or being topless looking half asleep. At first I had no idea what I was looking at, and then I realized these were on-going romance stories. I thought it was clever to have them continue every issue. And it made me slightly uncomfortable to think my mom was reading these racy vignettes.

At the bookstore I didn’t reach for the Encyclopedia Britannicas or books on Quantum Physics like all the other Asian kids, instead I reached for Sweet Valley High. I read the Sunfire (still have them) series, Couples, Cheerleaders, Sugar and Spice, Chose Your Own Adventures, Dragonlance, Seniors, Sweet Dreams and Nancy Drew series. They were the best books. And because they were series I started to pay attention to who wrote them. Some author's styles I liked better than others.

I wish I could pick up one of those Sunfire romances right now and dig in and read about a heroine in a historic setting. She’s bold, strong, and has to choose between two men. There’s kissing (no tongue) and that is the extent of it. There was nothing edgy about what I read. I read to escape not learn anything but of course I did learn.

I devoured reading. I amassed a large collection of books. I reread my favorites. Like a good teenager I locked myself in my room and only came out during feeding times. Mom thought I was doing drugs. I acquired the excellent habit of eating and reading. Unfortunately I have not been able to rid myself of this weight gaining pleasure. When I did sit down at the dinner table my mom’s boyfriend would tell me to put the book away. Completely annoyed I played the game, I have nothing to say.

on burgers & root beer

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 08:16:00 +0000

It’s rather hip to say I’m a lifelong student. But you never hear I’m a lifelong teacher unless you got tenure or nothing better to do. Many folks move through life claiming that they are here to learn and we find it oh, so profound and humbling to articulate that we don’t know it all.

Yet, we forget, for as much as we don’t know, there are things that we do know and we inevitably pass them along.

I was at a burger joint with my friend. We sat down in a booth and I was facing the counter where people order and pick up their food. I watched a father pick up his tray of food for his son, fill up the frosty mugs with root beer and head to a table. But before he reached the table his mug spilled all over the floor right in front of the condiment station. I waited for the father to turn around and let someone at the counter know about the accident. Instead both of them looked down at the mess then the father urged the son to keep going.

“Did you just see that?” I said.

“No, what?”

“That dad just spilled his drink all over the floor and didn’t tell anyone. His son was watching. That’s real nice. Now his son will think its okay to make a mess and not clean it up or get someone else to do it! So now it’s just sitting there – waiting for an accident.”

When I thought about this seemingly little incident I realized that that father just taught his son a lesson. He didn’t think he was though. He thought: I don’t feel like dealing with this. But he was teaching him something. And his son learned. This is how information is spread like the spilled root beer on the tiled floor. We learn through copying. And ironically the father was wearing a Waldorf school tee shirt. Seriously.

When I accepted the position as the new first grade teacher at Trembling Trees I did so with the lofty ideals of academia in mind. I foolishly thought that everyone engaged in Waldorf education would have the same life philosophy as me because of Rudolf Steiner.

I thought we were all striving towards the same goal: we’re here to be the best people we can be. I know, you’re thinking: how could you be so naïve? But it’s a little like going to a new church, you’re expecting a few differences but also some similarities and familiarities too.

When you take a Thai cooking class, you’re expecting to someone to whip out the fish sauce – anytime now, to let you know it’s authentic. I was expecting my colleagues to act in high regard and the parents as role models. Instead I received an education in human behavior.

But I tell you I figured some things out. I had to. I had to become a teacher in order to learn teaching isn’t only done at the front of the classroom. Just like light, it is not selective, we were all teaching each other and we were all teaching the children (consciously or not) from our actions.

I know I wilted in that school environment. It didn’t matter that I was enthusiastic. We live in a hurry up world and I wasn’t keeping up. I learned not to trust anyone. I learned that gossip is impossible to contain. It’s hard to fight and the more I fought the harder the words fell. I learned that even in the discipline of teaching you cannot try to seek the approval of others. It’s a game you’ll never win and if you do you’ll be on the losing side. It’s a hunger that will be never satisfied, a form of starvation.

People believe a teacher’s job is easy. They don’t say it out loud necessarily but their minds are screaming: I can do this. Who can’t teach simple math and simple English, right? This is why so many look down upon the profession of grade school teacher. They think anyone can do this. While all of us who have taught would gladly place these buffoons in a classroom full of children with attitude problems, they are to a large degree, right. Everyone is a teacher.

I was deeply agitated and insulted when people told me I wasn’t a good teacher. Or when they said one day I would be. I wanted to be the best teacher now. That was my goal. When I decided to leave teaching for good and abandon my graduate school degree, I felt like I was giving up on an important dream.

Years later, many years later I can finally say they were right. I wasn’t a good teacher and I don’t know if I ever will be. There are those who can take complicated theories and distill it simple; teachers who can inspire, motivate and move their students in ways I never could. It’s simply not my gift. And I’m okay with that.

But I try to be a good person and I hope that shines forth. That is my goal in life, it always was and that is why I think I was attracted to Waldorf education. The colors and art found within Waldorf schools pleased my senses but the philosophy pleased my mind.

I’ve heard it suggested that it would take an alien encounter to bring humankind together in the radical way that is needed. I guess the idea being we would have to come together and stop fighting because we would realize there was something else out there.

But I believe that is a dated way of thinking, like the old religion when self flagellation or crusades was considered awesome. Knowledge has changed in the way it is passed. In the beginning a king or some sort of anointed official told you what God said, then we the people got to read it for ourselves so it makes sense that the next wave of knowledge will be passed through “ordinary” people, from within not without.

We are in the realm of the everyday man, reality TV has turned everybody and anyone into a celebrity. Ordinary people are getting their 15 minutes of fame like never before in history. The internet has given the voiceless a voice, the many a soapbox, the masses a flute. It is the equivalent of a power tool in the hands of a woman or a small man (just kidding).

And since we all are moving towards “equality” it makes sense that the responsibility of knowledge and truth is thrust upon everybody. We are not just learning, we’re teaching too. When you post a blog or open your mouth or pick up trash you are conveying not only who you are but what you believe in. You are teaching some aspect of yourself to the world. Learning is “passive”. Teaching is “active”. Learning is receiving and teaching is giving.

Our generation’s renaissance is upon us, I hope to live long enough to see it come into fruition. The ages seem dark, they feel medieval but they harbor hope and rejuvenation.

Shoebox experiments, burgers and spilled root beer made me realize that the title of teacher was taken away from me so I could learn it was never theirs to take in the first place.

You don’t have to be a teacher to teach.

on the oregon trail

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 01:34:00 +0000

I have a love/hate relationship with Portland. I loved the libraries, green spaces and parks, the rhododendrons and the 1920s houses. It’s a very beautiful city. But I hated the weather and the unfriendliness of the people. I felt like everyone was a little too cool for me. And it certainly didn’t help that it was where I had my worst relationship and worst jobs.

But it brought out the writer in me. Naturally.

I was watching the news when the newscaster said something that I feel pretty much sums up the hypocrisy of Portland for me. It was going to be an obscure holiday something like Flag Day so he was announcing what would be open or closed. He said, and I am not lying, “Libraries and liquor stores will be open.”

But I haven’t lived there for many years. Maybe all those Californians moving in has changed the dynamics of the place. Maybe all those Fuck Bush stickers have finally been removed. Now I don’t care for Bush but I care for the language being displayed on bumpers and house windows. Maybe the Stepford Wives feeling has loosened up a bit then again maybe the weather has changed.

Thu, Dec 15, 2005
Dearest Friends and Family,

I won't sugar coat it. It has been a rather challenging year. But not in a Katrina kind of way, more like "Is the universe conspiring against me" kind of year. So lets get into all the nauseating details of what Brad and I had to endure while moving to the "Great Northwest", shall we?

Our new life started out searching for a new place to call home and while we were in the drudgery of sorting our different "apartment searching styles", we were involved in a hit and run accident within 48 hours of arriving.

**Brad note** If I ever see that guy again there will be a misunderstanding.**

Brad's grandpa-style driving probably spared me and the car from serious damage. Nevertheless, the damage was worth over $3k as we later found out. Oh, goody. But our induction to the "Great Northwest" did not stop there, our household belongings were "lost at sea" so to speak - actually they were sitting in Seattle for "consolidation" so I had to watch Brad entertain himself with a paper cup in our empty apartment. He would push the paper cup into the carpet and make circles – thus, "cup art" was born. Riveting.

**Brad note** She said she liked the cup art at the time... Don't let her fool you.**

Oh, and did I mention that we were unemployed! Oh, yeah. The teaching gig that I was suppose to do fell through and the MMA (mixed martial arts) academy that Brad wanted to train at turned out to be "not a good fit". This was huge because this was one of the major reasons why we moved here – Brad wanted to train with the best and pursue his dream of becoming "the ultimate fighter". (enter: hard rock music)

But the good times, didn't stop there, Brad hit a dog with the car. Yes, on the exact same very road that we got into that blasted hit and run accident. I was rather surprised that Brad decided to continue along and not stop to see if the animal was okay.

**Brad note** I'm no Vet!! What was I suppose to do? It's not like I was going to put that potentially rabid dog in my car and drive it to the doggie hospital. What would you have done?**

Now this just happens to be one of those relationship "tests" that I wasn't expecting – I mean, if asked the question, "If you hit a dog by accident, what would you do?" I didn't expect – keep going. I realize this conjures all sorts of images of flying dogs being rocketed into the sky - rest assured, Brad gave it a good thump and the damn thing ran back where it came from, and to Brad's credit he did not speed up or back up in an effort to tag the dog again.

When we are not plowing down farm animals or trying to hold down a steady job, Brad and I have been somewhat pro-active when it comes to our health. We cleaned up our diets significantly by cutting out as much MSG as possible (avid label readers) – yes, it's in everything and makes you pig out - we also cut out dairy (eating out is more challenging) and have reduced our desserts every night (we are sugar junkies). And we cut out pork – no more bacon. The nice thing about the Northwest is that it supports an organic foods lifestyle that we try to incorporate as much as possible. . .

So it was really weird to be back. I was almost in a constant state of paranoia that I would accidentally run into certain people and so I did. But the crazy part was I always saw #11 (the comedian) and his father. (Remember Mrs. Blue jay wanted to kick him out of my class?)

I usually saw father and son at Fred Meyers or Wild Oats. But the even crazier part was I always saw them before they saw me which gave me time to freak out and hide. My modus operandi became hiding behind Brad as we sped walked out the door.

I don’t know why I acted like this. What was I afraid of? I guess I didn’t want to be asked the dreaded question, “So what are you up to these days?”

I attended a wedding where I saw old friends and where the dreaded question was inevitably asked. I couldn’t say I was working at a popular retailing company during the night shift as a stock clerk making minimal wage because I had no idea what I should be doing with my life, so I said, I was a proctologist.

Because God knows how hard I tried to forget the past and make peace with it. I didn’t want to go through life acting like a victim or some sob story who couldn’t move past her own misery. But my mind wanted to rewind and replay the footage from Trembling Trees, trying and hoping to spot out the reason or the reasons I was fired. Nothing made sense. If I wasn’t suppose to be a teacher then why was my training so wonderful and inspiring? If it was just Trembling Trees, the faculty and parents then why did graduate school also turn out so poorly? I mean if I was supposed to teach why didn’t my luck change?

I felt like a forty-niner picking at the ground, blowing up dynamite over and over again hoping to sluice out some gold nugget of knowledge. If only I could go back and do things differently. Why did I not see the signs? Why was I not able to connect with the parents? Why did I feel like teaching was the right profession for me? Was my intuition wrong?

The questions remain unanswered and as the years went by I realized that I might never understand why this happened to me. It’s an unsatisfying feeling to live with to put it gently. And to put it not so gently it turned out that getting fired was my personal hell, my unseen burden.

I could blame the parents, I could blame the faculty and I could blame myself but what was the point of that? I desperately wanted to learn from the situation. Isn’t that what everyone says? Learn and move on. Life is a lesson. The only lesson I could glean out of this was to never teach again. Because when I tried, things got weird and then weirder.

That’s why I moved back to Oregon. After Mrs. Bear was fired, she opened her own Waldorf inspired school. I learned that she was shown the door after I had moved back to Hawaii. Apparently the Core Group decided that summer to let her go – after she had returned from a teacher conference that the school paid for her to attend. Mr. Wolf, I heard left the school, left the country in fact to teach in England. He probably saw the REDRUM writing on the wall. So in essence, Trembling Trees had a 100% turnover rate of their grades teachers that year.

Mrs. Bear asked me to teach her future first grade class that she was building up but we got into an argument. I wasn’t ready to step back into this world and the first grade class never happened. I told her she didn’t have the numbers and later she called and said I was right but it didn’t matter two years was not long enough to move past my fears and trepidations. Sad huh?

I knew that I needed to forgive the people who I felt had wronged me. At first, I had the hardest time forgiving the parents involved – my forgiving came in waves over time. This was embarrassing because I thought I was stronger than this. I thought forgiving them would be easier and quicker. I wasn’t going to allow external factors define who I was. I wasn’t going to let their actions still dictate how I felt after all this time. But even when I had forgiven the people at Trembling Trees I still did not feel like I had let go of the past.

When I was in Hawaii I received letters from my former mentors Amy and Joanna. Amy said that she was sorry to hear what had happened. She felt the decision was unjust and extreme. She also mentioned that there was no need to respond and even when I did to say thanks it was the end of our correspondence. She had said what she wanted to say.

Joanna encouraged me to stay with teaching and said that I had the heart of a teacher. Those words burned. When I closed her card I had tears in my eyes. Eventually I threw the card away along with the letters written on my behalf by the parents who supported me.

Some of my former students also wrote to me. This was an unexpected joy. But when I announced to #2 and #3 that I would be returning to Oregon, I never heard from them again. #2’s mom was one of my supportive parents until the end when she started to believe in the bad things being said. She actually said to me, “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” And #3’s mom was the one who apologized to me in the coffee shop that day. But who knows, maybe it was just a coincidence.

my little shoebox (what is light?)

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:55:00 +0000

My experience in Thailand, especially at the temple brought back the dream I had of my father and his mysterious message: light brings the heart into this world. I studied it as I would a mathematical problem. (Okay let’s be honest I stayed with it longer.) Perhaps I thought it held a key to my Waldorf experience. But I wasn’t sure if I was trying to solve something that wasn’t really a problem at all.

During that last Waldorf teacher training year there was a segment on teaching sciences to 7th and 8th graders. I was excited about the different experiments or ways in which to teach light, color, electricity, gravity and magnetism. I felt like I had learned more during those days than I had during my entire childhood.

So the dream came first, then conducting the science experiment for graduate school and then the realization that both were related. Well. . .

We’re heard it said that light covers darkness, that is, if it is dark all you need do is turn on the light. But darkness as it turns out, is not simply the absence of light. True darkness is the absence of objects, of things and beings. Darkness is the absence of stuff like in the black hole phenomenon. The reason why it’s called a black hole is because there is nothing in there, light does not exist because there is nothing for the light to shine on.

Now isn’t that interesting?

The only reason why we see light in the first place is because there are many things that surround us all the time. In other words, there is plenty of stuff for light to illuminate. If a room is dark you can’t see the table and chairs and pictures hanging on the wall but if you turn on the light you see everything in the room.

And we mistakenly think: I see light. I see that the light bulb is sending out its beams. That’s light, right? Wrong. The light bulb may be the source of light but that’s not light. We only see the light because it shining out from the bulb.

Light needs something to shine on in order for us to see light.

When the sun rises it spreads its rays over the landscape, the trees, the grass and animals, and we see the world unfold. This is because the sun has a world to shine down on. When we walk with a candle in our hand, the candlelight reveals the room as we go because there is a staircase in front of us and a house to illuminate. Even an empty room is still a room for the light to seek out. That is why in the experiment you have to create nothingness so you can witness for yourself that light cannot exist in pure darkness.

So don’t take my word for it. Click here for the pdf science experiment and do it yourself. The experiment is easy and inexpensive to do. You’ll also impress your students and your friends. So important to constantly “1-UP” your friends.

Find a good shoebox, use flat black paint to cover the inside lid and box and poke holes in the indicated areas. Follow the directions! And grab that friend while you are at it. It will be easier. Slip into that completely dark closet or room. Not a peek of light!

With a strong flashlight have your friend shine the light into (the paper towel roll that is connected to) the box while you peek inside. What do you see? If you’ve done it correctly with no cracks or unpainted areas, you won’t see anything. You simply will not see a beam of light.

But when you lower a pencil into the box from the top hole you will see a pencil appear. Why? Because light now has something to shine on. It can’t shine on blackness, nothingness or emptiness. Light is like our eyes, eyes need something to see. If you’ve ever been in a completely dark environment you know how bizarre it feels to have your eyes wide open and see nothing.

So what is light? The gift of God’s wisdom? I’ve heard it said that God is love therefore God is light. God is love and light. He loves (shines on) all creatures even if you’re stupid and that’s why we say God is great. I figure.

Light is neutral. It shows no sympathy or antipathy. It illuminates the garbage as well as the gifts. It shines on ugly, beautiful, big and small, goodness and evil and so I started thinking it is up to us to decide what to create, destroy, erect and tear down. It’s up to us to decide what the sun will shine on each day that it inevitably arises.

All this time we thought darkness was the problem but truly it is what light is revealing and illuminating that we don’t like. Darkness is not to blame. Darkness is a snow-like reprieve - it blankets. Why do we fear the dark? The darkness holds possibilities and rest for our eyes. When we no longer fear the dark, we no longer fear a perceived lack, the unknown or our imaginations. Light just lets us know what we have done. And darkness gives us a break.

So from a scientific point of view light does bring the heart into this world. And what can the heart represent but good and kind deeds; the heart of a person trying to push though, be brave or endure. The heart can symbolize many things and to say someone has heart is indeed a high compliment. Perhaps my father’s message was take heart or maybe he was pointing the way to the notebook that had the science experiment in it. I don’t know.

The fact that we give light something to shine on gave me a lot to think about especially in terms of teaching and what it means to be a teacher. Instead of the emphasis being on light or dark, things took center stage. Things we create, things we think and things we do. And things we choose to focus on.

into the temple

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 05:05:00 +0000

As people were getting ready for the temple celebration we noticed during our visit to my aunt’s store that throughout the neighborhood people were creating trees out of money. It seemed every household would carry their money tree however modest or magnificent, to the temple during the procession.

When we returned we saw the women working on our own money tree. But it was made out of 100 baht bills, not 5, 20 or 50 baht bills that they saw in front of the other houses. My mom had taken all of the money people had donated during the parties and exchanged them for crisp biggie bills.

I eyed the stack of bills on the floor of the beauty salon and sat down to join the other women helping to make the limbs of the tree. We slid the bills between split sticks and glued red and blue colored tissue paper on the ends.

It took some time to create the limbs of the tree and then assemble it. In the end, a woman magically appeared to fix our tree since it was looking rather haphazard. The woman was a professional, no different than a flower arranger or an artist who had a good eye for aesthetics. Then we placed the tree on a wooden cart that the men would carry. The cart also held a framed picture of my deceased grandmother and a silver bowl filled with fruit.

I didn’t know much about my grandmother having only met her twice. But I did remember what my mother had said when she heard about her mother’s death.

My mom came out of her bedroom wiping tears from her eyes, “My mom died.”

I put my arm around her, “I’m so sorry.”

“Why her?” She cried, “Why not him? Why her?”

And that was all I needed to know. It wasn’t that she didn’t love her father but he had been a drunk while her mother a sober saint. But after a lifetime of drinking, and a particularly bad episode of wandering home drunk, my mom pleaded until he at last quit.

Now everyone in the household was getting ready to join the procession of people heading towards the temple when a group of 5th grade boys stopped by. As part of the festivities, they were going to perform a sword dance at the temple’s main stage. But since my mom, Brad and I were honored guests (?) we received an exclusive performance right in front of the house.

The boys were wearing black jackets and slacks with colorful threading detail – one boy carried a large drum around his waist while most of them banged on cymbals. During one of the dances, a few of the boys performed with a curved sword. The dance depicted a long ago battle scene that took place in Northern Thailand. My favorite part was when two of the boys put the curved sword in their mouths while dancing and swinging another sword.

I understand how hard children practice for any kind of performance. And it was an unexpected gift to receive. I felt blessed to be part of this beautiful day, with my Thai family all around and Brad by my side.

After the performance, we slowly made our way to the main street and joined up with other people getting ready to head over to the temple.

The road became crowded with colorful money trees in shapes such as peacocks, spades and flowers. Appearing to float along, the various money arrangements bobbed over the crowds of people. Brad helped to carry the cart but it was awkward since he is taller than the other men.

The men held the horizontal legs on their shoulders while Brad held it within his arms in order to stay level with the three other men. I felt honored that Brad helped to carry the money tree and my grandma’s picture. But I also found it ironic that my aunt with her gaggle of ka-toy friends did not help out. One in particular was larger than Brad but since he donned a skirt, wide eyes, lipstick and flamboyant attitude he was considered a girl.

Inch by inch we made our way down the street walking past homes and a smattering of onlookers. The 5th graders provided the loud music and the ka-toys, the entertainment as they drank liberally from coolers and cups. Based on what I gathered it was the local moonshine. The ka-toys danced and laughed unattractively. When the procession had suddenly stopped, the beefiest lady boy accidentally bumped into one of the 5th graders, too absorbed she was in her dancing.

“Oh!” She exclaimed then she said something as she sauntered back to her friends. Everyone started laughing.

“What did she say?” I asked my mom.

My mom was laughing as well, it took her a moment to reply, “How the young boy is going to have bad dreams tonight.”

A large silver bowl was placed in my hands. One of my uncles made a throwing or tossing motion. We had been communicating through pantomime. Sometimes I caught him staring at me and sometimes he caught myself looking at him. It was strange not to be able to talk. This particular uncle looked to be quite the character too. His dark skin contrasted by the whites of his large eyes and Kramer-like hair; he was very animated. Brad and I learned he had been in a muay-Thai fight once - once.

“I told him he paid 15 baht to get beat up. And that next time I would do it for free,” my mom said.

Inside of the bowl were coins that had been wrapped in cellophane like Hershey kisses. I didn’t know why this surprised me, my mom had always been a generous woman but the amount of money being poured into these events felt like a lot. It wasn’t everyday that I saw stacks of money made into parade décor or attended catered parties complete with entertainment.

My mom carried another bowl filled with cellophane covered money. As we approached the temple, the boys’ music was drowned out by a band playing on a high concert stage just outside the entrance. The noise was great. Once we entered the courtyard I was told to toss the coins. It was just as fun as throwing Christmas candy in a parade. Children rushed forward and quickly hit the ground feeling for the money. Red firecrackers on very long bamboo poles exploded overhead.

Quickly I ran over to the dewy grass for cover. When the firecrackers had stopped, and the smoke had cleared I saw the stairs leading up the temple were covered with people. For a modest-sized town it looked like everyone in the area had showed up.

There was another stage within the courtyard and the group of people that had just arrived gathered between this stage and the temple. All of the people carrying their money trees lined up with their offerings in front of a different monk. In the chaos I lost sight of my family. A blessing was recited from the monks and then the money trees were carried away.

After watching the children perform on stage, we went in search of water and the toilet. We discovered that beyond the temple and the tented area, there was a carnival. There were games and rides and food booths. When night had fallen, the colors of the carnival came alive. The whole event felt as though it stretched out beyond the horizon.

We walked back and forth from the temple and the carnival. Sometimes we spotted my mother in the crowd and other times we were greeted by stares and smiles. “You know you’re the only white person here,” I told Brad. One time we were stopped by a pair of brave young men eager to speak with Brad wanting to know about this farang but between the liquor and limited English the conversation was slurred and sloppy.

Arm in arm, we explored the new temple, admiring the craftsmanship. It was hand-built and painted. The brilliant colors set off the whiteness of the walls and stairs leading high to the top. It took ten years to build. Inside the life of Buddha was depicted through paintings and words. The centerpiece was a large gold statue of Buddha surrounded by flowers, offerings and smaller statues.

Earlier in the week, friends had taken us to the temple for a sneak preview through another entrance. They had pointed to one of the opened window shutters that surrounded the temple. It was an elaborate gold painted carving with Thai lettering. Through minimal English we learned that it was my mom’s name on the window, along with her mother’s Jandee. We all stared at the contrasting blue and white lettered sign. All those years of sending money earned my mother’s name and her mother’s name on one of the windows.

As we continued to walk around Brad and I decided that on the other window shutters must be other donors. All of the windows were encased in glass to protect the artwork. It was a place of honor. How fitting that each benefactor was given their “own window”. In America it is common to see names of donors on a special plaque or on the steps of the building, perhaps even a wall but I liked the window idea.

I tried to stand still to soak it all in. This was the first time I had learned that my mom donated money. Previously my mom had simply told me a new temple was opening in her hometown.

Then Brad said, “Are you ready to see your name?”

My mother and Brad had discovered it by accident on another previous trip.

“Yes.”

“It’s downstairs. When you and I came the last time we only saw the main temple. Underneath it are pillars with plaques on them. Your mom gave money in your name, and your brother’s name in honor of your father.”

He led me to the pillars below the temple. I saw that the pillars were covered in river pebbles and I ran my hand along its surface. It was quiet down here, which was odd since there were so many people about. It was as if nobody knew about this place downstairs.

“Here is yours.”

Together we looked at the blue signs with white lettering. I had never seen my name in Thai before. I realized that my name would be here for as long as this temple stood, most likely after I had left this life.

“And then here’s Larry’s,” Brad pointed to another pillar.

I was lucky to have waited. During all those years I didn’t feel lucky. I felt sorry for myself because my friends had all these grand traveling adventures and I did not. I so longed to see the world and explore new places. My childhood trips to Thailand fueled my desire. But I never seemed to have the money.

Yet given the experiences I had shared with my mom and Brad those past few days I no longer felt frustrated or deprived. I felt my father’s presence here more than I ever did back at Punchbowl. Recalling my feelings for my father that always seem to sit somewhere deep within me, I marveled at the idea that our names were together in this place of worship. And would be for however long this temple stood.

the tooth fairy

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 02:57:00 +0000

His name sounded like what the Fonz from Happy Days said when he stuck his thumbs up.

Ay showed up spontaneously one day. He had a vehicle and asked if Brad and I wanted to see any of the local sights. We ended up on a trip to Doi Suthep National Park.

On the way there he pointed out the intersection. I nodded but on the inside I wondered why everyone kept reminding me of my father’s death. Brad believed it was their way of connecting with me. Perhaps it was their way of honoring and remembering him too.

Everyday that we were at the house, I saw my father’s picture. He was not smiling. It was like one of his military photos, black and white, stern and serious. Even though I had a hard time looking at the picture I’d often walked right up to it. I missed him.

I remember Jonas discussing Rudolf Steiner’s beliefs on reincarnation. I carefully listened. In fact I don’t think there was anyone in the room who didn’t hang on to what everyone was saying. The class debated whether or not people were reincarnating at a faster rate due to the population growth. Then I raised my hand, “Is there a chance, I mean. Will I ever see my father again?”

Highly respected, there were rumors among the students that he was clairvoyant. Jonas looked at me, “When did he die?”

“When I was six.”

The class waited for his answer.

He finally replied, “No, I don’t think so.”

“When will I see him again?” I fought back tears, unfortunately it was heard in my voice.

“In your next life, but most likely you’ll be the father and he’ll be your daughter.”

It was a strange thought to consider. The following day when I entered into the classroom there was an article on my desk. It was called, “After Death” written by a man I had never heard of.

“Who gave this to me?”

A few shrugs.

“Does anyone know who gave this to me?”

Then an unlikely student walked over to me, her name was Enid. She was a rather abrupt woman in the classroom who I didn’t know very well so I was surprised.

“I did. I thought it might help, it helped me.”

***

On the day of the temple opening in Lamphun, we awoke to find that bright flags had been hung in front of the house.

“What are those flags for?”

“It lets people know that they can stop by our house on the way to the temple for food.”

“But why are they in front of some houses and not others?”

“Everyone takes turns. It might be my turn this time and the next time it’s yours.”

It was to be an all day affair. We learned there would be a long procession to the temple where everyone would end up and gather. In the meantime people stopped by and say hello, eat and socialize.

Not unlike churches in the US, this particular temple was one that folks in the neighborhood will attend. Private donations were made to see this new temple built and I later learned my mom was one of them.

Sometimes I felt like my mother was leading a secret life. A double agent: in America she was a widowed housekeeper, an immigrant, one of the many, but in Thailand she was a successful intelligent woman who had made her way in the world.

I grew up ignorant of how much my mom struggled and how little she could comprehend. Since she spoke to me solely in English I assumed she knew English.

When my mom told me she grew up poor, eating food today that her family would have to work for tomorrow, I thought she was exaggerating. Until when I was 16 I saw for myself the poverty of Thailand and the conditions in which the family lived.

When my mom handed me letters from the bank or insurance companies I thought she was being lazy and that if she made a little bit of effort she would understand what they were writing about. At 12, 13, 14 years of age, it didn’t matter – the language was over my head, “I don’t know what this means!” My mom would then angrily take the papers from me, “Then what an’ the hell are you going to school for?”

I was hurt but now that I am older and struggling with learning other languages I understand. When my mom was called for jury duty she had one of her friends fill out the paperwork. All they had to do was be honest, right? Surely the judicial system would see that my mother was unfit to be a jury member: Do you speak English? No. Do you read English? No. Did someone help you fill this form? Yes.

But she was still called to report to court.

“Mrs. Cox? Please approach the bench.”

Solemnly she walked up and said, “Yes, your highness.”

The courtroom erupted with laughter.

The judge paused forcing down a smile, then replied, “You are dismissed Mrs. Cox, you may leave the courtroom.”

What is confusing is my mother has a stinging sense of humor. She got humor. She was quick to laugh. We may not have had a Dolly Parton Christmas childhood but when we could we laughed. We debate if her court room antics was her doing or not but I knew this particular incident definitely was.

One of my mom’s girlfriends was having a birthday party, Caucasian and Thais were talking in their respective groups, military and civilian. I watched my mother and her friends. I felt strangely part of both groups but I sat with the Thais. I sat with my mother.

A white man joined us, asking questions as he was curious to get to know this bevy of Thai women. Then finally it was my mother’s turn, he looked at Jan.

“How long,” he scooted closer to her, “have you been in the country?”

My mom made an ‘umm’ noise, scrunched up her face and said, “Six. . .”

“Years?” the man offered.

“Hours,” she replied coyly.

The women cried out laughing. One of them playfully pushed her. It took a brief moment for the man to get it. But once he did he got up and retold the story to everyone at the party.

***

We were sitting on the porch watching the morning activities unfold. It had become a ritual. Grandpa was tending to his ducks, as he did every morning. He sold the duck eggs and liked to keep his earnings in his pocket.

Brad had asked my mom, “How do you say ‘duck’?”

“Bet.”

So every morning Brad said, “Bet, bet” to Grandpa when he fed his ducks.

My mom and I sat quietly. It had been a rough couple of years for the both of us. So these moments on the porch, this trip to Thailand was healing for us.

I looked at the picture of my father and asked, “What ever happen to the bus driver who hit dad?”

“He didn’t run away.”

“I know,” I said. It’s odd what you remember and what is told.

“He died, two years later. He was hit by a bus.”

We were silent again. Sangla walked by with a fan-shaped broom sweeping the steps, making her way to her beauty salon.

“What do your brothers think of Sangla?”

“Fine. Nothing. Why?”

“Oh, I was just thinking in the States he would be treated so differently. No one seems to care that he’s gay.”

She made a humph noise, “Are you kidding me? He has six brothers – everyday they beat him up.”

I laughed uncomfortably, “Seriously?”

“Yeah! He was teased, his brothers didn’t want him to act like a girl. It’s just everybody’s too old to fight now.”

I thought how quickly I was ready to judge America. It was an easy trap to fall into.

“I wonder why he is the way he is. You know?”

“He spent a lot of time with a relative in the city, an aunt or something. She was a prostitute. He hung out with a lot of them, doing their hair and makeup, helping them dress. They thought he was cute. I’m sure it was fun for them to have a little boy around. I guess that’s why he likes to do hair.”

We watched Sangla’s black and white Corgi-mix, Lychee waddle over into the sun and lay down. I leaned over to check the dog dish to see if she had eaten the rice and chicken feet dinner from the night before. She had.

Then my eyes got wide as I said, “What does Grandpa think? Do you think he remembers he had seven sons?”

She laughed, “Who knows. But I’m not saying anything.”

***

Brad and I liked to go walking so on our usual morning walk we decided to walk further and down the main road where Sangjun’s store was. It was modest, ramshackle by American standards, but typical of the area, the store faced towards the road with no “4th wall” like a farm stand.

When we arrived Sangjun and her little girl were squatting on the ground, busy preparing a meal. After grabbing a couple of canned ice coffees from the store’s refrigerator we hung out for a moment before walking back. I looked at the large black and white picture of a young man over a doorway who I presumed was their deceased son.

My uncle placed a gift into our hands, a book about sacred Buddha amulets as well as a Buddha amulet. I had seen many of these hanging from my mom’s friend’s necks on gold chains. I never wore one or a Christian cross.

We wear these things to feel safe or for special reasons. But I don’t like to announce my religious beliefs because during most of my childhood I didn’t feel like I knew what it was. But when my mom gave me a necklace with an old tooth encased in a gold-trimmed charm, I carried that for comfort, for peace of mind.

Although it was a little strange to receive, you could see the tooth and it looked a little – well, gross.

“Is this your tooth?”

“Yes.”

“What is this for again?”

“Luck. Good luck, it’s like you’re carrying a little of me around. For protection.”

I took it when I moved to Thailand. Larry took his to Iraq.

the house blessing

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:36:00 +0000

Someone turned on the radio while the living room area was being prepared for the monks’ visit. There were seat cushions lined against the wall about seven or eight with large spade shaped fans propped up behind them. In front of each cushion was a small silver bowl filled with treats like breath mints and next to each bowl was bottled water.

A large tripod object was brought inside like a tepee without the canvas and placed right in front of where the monks would be sitting. It was decorated with colorful tissues and silver paper wrapped around the poles – I wondered what the significance of this thing was and what it would be used for.

Outside round tables and blue folding chairs were being set up throughout the front driveway and out in front of the stage and continuing down the street. In various places there were people cooking outside in the yard. Brad and I wandered around and helped scoop hot sticky rice into plastic baggies for individual use. We stood around on a makeshift wooded table with the other ladies. We could not converse but when we did communicate it was through pantomime, simple words and smiles - mostly smiles.

My mom was continuously asked by neighbors and friends, “Why doesn’t your daughter speak Thai?”

She replied, “She would hardly use it in America.”

It wasn’t as if I didn’t want to learn but it was hard, and as strange as this might sound my mom wasn’t much of a language teacher. Growing up, I constantly asked her what was being said, how to say this or that in Thai. But she didn’t get the hint, she didn’t seem to take her daughter’s interest to heart. She simply taught me a few things here and there and left it at that. After a while, I stopped pestering my mom and accepted living in a language of non-understanding. Instead I paid attention to body language, tone and inflections, I learned to hear what my ears couldn’t comprehend by watching.

Brad went around the house and curiously watched people cook and took pictures of everything once he was told that nobody minded, in fact they loved it.

None of yesterday evening’s emotions surfaced again. I was pleased to see that Brad didn’t sulk or act strange or complain. He embraced his new surroundings with the interest of a seasoned anthropologist, the eagerness of a tourist and the humility of an open-minded young man halfway around the world.

“What do you think of my aunt?” I whispered to Brad when I had the chance.

“I would have never guessed she was man.”

I laughed.

The golden robed monks arrived and settled in the living room. A sound system had been set up so the monks were heard by the people sitting outside. Various drinks had been placed on each table for guests filtering in and Naa Sangla indicated to Brad and I to sit down under the tripod along with my mom and her father Dee.

We sat on the cold tile floor as comfortably as we could with our hands in a wai, heads bowed and eyes shifting from side to side to see what was going on around us. A white string was wrapped around Brad’s head then mine like a halo. Then I realized that I had seen the same white string being hung around the roof, it was hung inside around the room, placed around the heads of the rest of the family and continued around the tripod we were sitting under and between the clasped hands of each monk. The string ended (or began) in a ball sitting beside the monk who led the ceremony.

Then it I realized the string was the same type of string that would have been attached to my wrist after visiting the temple or after receiving a monks’ blessing when I was a child.

As the monks began chanting in unison, I took a peek outside and saw that many people had arrived and were sitting around the tables listening. My eyes wandered back to the immediate surroundings and rested on Brad. I wondered what he was thinking and how a practicing Southern Baptist found himself here in Northern Thailand participating in a Buddhist house blessing ritual. I hoped Brad didn’t think this was un-Christian like.

But as soon as I had that thought I caught his eye and he smiled back. It was as I hoped. We were both experiencing something unique and special together. Later he told me, “Those monks should start a record. They were really jamming. We need to get those guys into a recording studio.”

The blessing took a long time. When it was finished, gifts were given to the monks from the family. Small electric fans still in their boxes with a decorative flower arrangement perched on top were ceremoniously given to each monk. Flash photography was snapped. Considering the hot and humid climate this was a nice gift for each monk to have. On cue people brought food for the monks on low round tables. Immediately, we were ushered outside.

“I can’t believe how many people are here,” I said to my mom as we were seated at a special table.

“Just wait til this evening, more will come.”

There might have been around a hundred people enjoying the catered meal that afternoon and as my mom predicted that evening a few hundred more arrived. The food was brought to us by a courteous staff – there were several dishes to choose from and it all tasted very good, different kinds of bottled soda and water was set out on the tables along with a bucket of ice.

After our meal we sat on the patio as people came up to my mom to pay their respects and dropped money tucked away in envelopes into a large silver bowl.

“Why are they giving you money?” I asked.

“To help pay for the meal, the party,” She said. “Everybody does this.”

That evening we were introduced to various friends and relatives. Sanjun was spotted stumbling around drunk. Her friends held on to her, guiding her through the crowd. My mom gave her sister bunny ears, while Brad snapped a picture.

“Your sister looks like she’s having a good time.”

My mom sat down beside me, “She drinks too much, all the time.”

“Why?”

She sighed, “Ever since her son died. He turned 18, had a girlfriend, a job in the city. Everything. Nice looking boy. Motorcycle accident. But he was okay, he was going to live, he was talking, saying, Mom, I’m going to be okay.”

“What happened?”

“They moved him to another hospital. He was fine in Chiang Mai but everyone was saying, ‘Why don’t you move your son to the bigger city?’ And so they did, even when the doctors told them, ‘Please don’t move your son. He’s fine.’ He died after the move.”

“Oh, how awful.” I looked at my aunt who they managed to get into the beauty salon for a rest.

“I said to them, ‘Why did you listen to what everyone else said? Who cares what they say or think?’ Now they blame each other.”

I thought about my uncle, the one who picked us up from the airport, “Does he drink too?”

“No. But he lets her. What can he do? Sad.”

It was sad. I could not imagine the blame and the loss they must feel.

If I thought getting fired robbed you of your identity I think the same thing can be said about self-doubt. Hearing about my aunt and uncle’s plight made me realize how much we listen too much of what other people say. Their well meaning advice becomes like a poison in a well and much like gossip, it spreads and spreads until it takes over the whole water supply. Because if you’re wrong, you’re wrong but if they’re wrong you will regret having taken anyone else’s advice but your own.

mom's longan prediction

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:29:00 +0000

Chiang Mai airport was tiny compared to Bangkok so it did not take us long to maneuver through it. We waited outside along with a handful of Thai military men holding AK-47s. As another wait stretched out before us, I wanted to ask Brad, “Well, what do you think of Thailand so far?” If I had, he would have replied, “It’s a lot dirtier and poorer than I expected. The pictures I’ve seen made it look different.”

But I didn’t ask because I was afraid of the answer. I knew he felt just as relieved as I was to have my mom around but I also knew the real test for Brad was coming up – he was going to meet my family. Away from the cities, Brad was going to see a different side to Thailand. This Alabama boy was a long way from home.

I watched my mom make several phone calls inquiring about her family’s whereabouts.

“Are they coming?”

“They’re coming.”

We waited and searched for a car until my mom’s sister Sangjun ran out eagerly towards us as her husband tried to figure out his way through the parking lot. When he finally did, people I did not recognize jumped out of the van – all 7 or 8 of them. Everyone loaded up the luggage while my mom caught up with them in rapid fire Thai, Brad and I were pushed towards the front, my family insisting we be closest to the air conditioning which didn’t work very well. As the Thai language faded into the background as it did so many times during my youth, I stared out the windows.

There were familiar elements to the city. My memory would be jogged temporarily when I spotted an outdoor restaurant. I suddenly remembered it was night and the restaurant was nearly empty. My mother, Larry and I were eating a late dinner. Other times I felt disoriented and dreamy. Everything had changed so much. I might as well have never been here.

Loud motorbikes rode along side traffic between the sidewalks and the lanes. Yet it was subdued compared to Bangkok. In Chiang Mai there was more room, more space, and I began to understand why expats and tourists enjoy this northern city. It was also considerably cooler.

As we continued to move towards Lamphun, I noticed more shops had up popped up along the road to the point of blurring the lines between the cities. I had to ask, “Are we in Lamphun yet?” It was explained that there was now a freeway that ran parallel connecting Chiang Mai and the smaller towns although we were taking a smaller road.

Then as we drove through a nondescript intersection I was nudged and I heard the word, “Daddy,” Aunt Sangjun pointed to it.

“That’s where the accident occurred,” my mom explained.

I stared at the intersection which now had lights. A strange feeling overcame me, it was at that moment I realized that I was the same age my dad was when he died here, 33 years old.

My brows furrowed. The van continued to drive along the road a little longer before turning off another. The landscape became wider everything looked browner than I remembered. I remembered green rice paddies but now everything looked dried up. I asked my mom what happened and she said everyone planted longan trees now.

She explained how one farmer here had made a nice profit from his longan fruit trees and how everyone followed. Now there is more supply than demand. My mom was angry when she had heard her family had cleared a plot of land to plant longan trees.

“You can’t eat longan, it’s a dessert, it’s not like rice or bananas. What are you going to do with longan?”

I was surprised to see that the road where my family lived had been paved. As the van squeezed by other parked cars and people who had gathered around for a street party I could see that the tiny road was being blocked off by a stage that was in the process of being set up – right in front of the house. Surely, I thought this wasn’t being done for us.

As I stepped out of the van I noticed that one of the old wooden houses on stilts was still on the property. One of my uncles lived there with his family. The other brothers lived in their own homes not too far away as half the neighborhood shared the same surname. My mother once told me, “Lani you have about 100 cousins who’ve you never met.”

The new house was made of cement, tiles and wood. The raspberry red tiles gave it a Spanish feel. Later I learned my mom had asked that the wood from their old house be reused.

In the driveway area, away from the stage setup there was a mini karaoke style celebration going on. The speakers were directed away from the house but I knew this was not what Brad wanted to see after another exhausting day of traveling. In fact, it had been a grueling past few days. I hoped everybody would pack the party up and soon.

Sangla came out to greet us. She wore no makeup and was simply dressed. It was good to see a familiar face. Out of all my Thai relatives, I had spent the most amount of time with her. She's a hairdresser. And in the summer of 1989 she had cut, permed, teased, straightened and styled my hair. She is what is known as a ka-toy. A lady boy. And would KILL me if she knew I was saying this.

As I looked around, I wondered who was a relative and who wasn’t. It didn’t seem right that I didn’t know. I heard Larry’s name being said and she knew her mom was explaining that Larry was in the military now. He was married and she had brought baby pictures of her first grandson.

We had barely made our way through the new home when we saw him. My mom hugged her father and then introduced us. His brown wrinkled skin stretched into a smile. He was missing many teeth. It was hard to tell how old he was but it was easy to see that he had lived a hard life. Painfully thin, his words came out slurred and from time to time he drooled. I watched his saliva hit the tile floor. Discreetly someone would wipe it up. I wondered if he remembered me and what he thought of Brad.

Both my aunt and grandfather pointed to a picture of my father that I had not noticed upon entering the living room. It was a black and white picture and as soon as I saw it I burst into tears. Surprised and embarrassed by my reaction, I broke away from everyone and headed to the bedroom where Brad and I would be sleeping.

“Are you okay?” Brad asked.

“They have a picture of my father in the living room.” I wiped my eyes furiously with the back of my hands, “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

We hugged.

There was a knock at the door. My mom peeked in, “Are you okay? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, mom. I just wasn’t expecting there to be a party outside! It’s so weird to be back.”

“How do you like the house? Your room?”

“I really like it. It looks much better than I expected.”

I was preparing myself to use the same concrete and cinderblock bathroom that we had used years ago. I wondered if we would use the squat toilet and bucket bath. And I feared it would be too different for Brad – at least I had a memory of what to expect. But there were three bedrooms and two bathrooms. Our bedroom had the only adjoining bathroom which had a western style toilet, shower and sink. This was a deliberate choice for which I was thankful. My mother shared the other bathroom with her father and sister.

Strangely my grandfather Dee slept in what would have been the indoor kitchen. Because he didn’t like the bedroom since he was use to sleeping on the floor in a shared communal living room. He said he felt closed in so he slept on a cot in the “kitchen”.

The functional kitchen remained outside and it looked like it had about 18 years of grime on it.

All of the furniture in the bedrooms smelled new. Including our bed spread with a cartoon sun and moon pattern and the headboard adorned with stuffed animals. I thought this was a strange way to decorate a room but then I thought about how poor my mom’s family was. I was positive none of them had toys or playthings growing up – perhaps it was natural for my aunt to want these kinds of things now that she had some money.

After we showered we laid in bed listening to the karaoke music. Tears formed in Brad’s eyes and immediately threw I arms around him. I had been watching him carefully and this was the first time I saw Brad react this way since our arrival into Thailand.

“What’s wrong? Is it the music? It’s only for one night. At least we’re here.”

“No, no. I mean – it’s everything. It’s so different. Your grandfather. . .” He trailed off.

Frail old people in the United States had more meat on them than my grandfather did. This was what hard working people in the other part of the world looked like in their old age. Face to face – not from a distance or a photograph or through the removed realm of television. It wasn’t romantic or dignified as is often portrayed in America. It was as Brad said - different. It was culture shock but these kinds of words hold little comfort when you’re immersed in a world so unlike your own. I held on to Brad and eventually we fell asleep to the intermittent sounds of Thai karaoke.

***

The next morning the household was busy getting ready for the monks to bless the new home. Lunch would be served to guests and dinner and entertainment was to be provided in the evening. I was astonished by how much work was going into this celebration. I hadn’t been expecting anything at all. I just thought we were going to see my mom’s new house.

In America you don’t celebrate someone’s new home. There might be a house warming party but the whole town isn’t invited. Because the American landscape is dotted with new development, life is modern, big and busy. You might know your neighbor. But here – the new house, my mom’s homecoming was a cherished occasion as was our presence. We were treated like honored guests. I was special and I didn’t even know why.

thailand

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:08:00 +0000

Over the years my mom and I talked about returning to Thailand. She had gone back many times: for her mother’s funeral (due to poor medical treatment), for the death of her youngest brother to AIDS (due to a cheating wife) and for the necessary pilgrimages that most immigrants feel once they’ve landed on US soil.

It was not an easy thing to coordinate, although it seems simple enough. More often than not money was the problem and it became a frustrating hurdle. I longed to return, to see Thailand again, to see how it changed and to see how I had changed.

For some people there might never be this desire to visit the country where your dad died, where you don’t speak the language, where the culture is so very different but for me it seemed I was holding my breath ever since I left. I felt submerged in the world of waiting.

But then the moment arrived.

“I’m going to Thailand,” my mom announced over the phone.

“When?”

“Um, March.” In 2007.

It had been 18 years since I last saw Thailand. There was no way I could wait any longer. My mom explained that she was having a new home built and she also said there would be a temple opening in Lamphun. It felt like the right time. It was the right time.

“I’m going with you.”

At my job I didn’t ask for the time off I told them I would be leaving for three weeks. I was ready to quit if need be. But it didn’t come to that. Once I made the decision everything fell into place.

Although I was concerned about Brad, he was untested and I wasn’t sure if he would sink or rise to the occasion. He was born and raised as a Baptist in the rural South. His overseas experience was relegated to living on Base in Okinawa. And the closest experience he had in a developing country was visiting Baja California one day while dropping off donations to an orphanage for the blind.

During our second date which involved coffee at a café I learned of Brad’s unshakable belief in Creationism.

“You do realize,” I said, “you’re talking to a former archaeologist.”

“Yes,” he sounded unsure. I briefly wondered if he knew what archaeology was but chose to ignore this.

“How can you believe only in Creationism? There’s scientific proof! A whole discipline called Geology is based upon this. You can see the layers of sediment. Hello, carbon dating!”

“I don’t believe in all that crap. You don’t believe that God created everything?”

I continued to stare. The men I had dated either disregarded God all together, strict Evolutionist or even worse completely wishy-washy on the matter so this was new territory. “I believe in God, I believe he created everything. How could anybody not believe in a higher power but I also believe in Evolution.”

“You can’t, they don’t go together.”

“Sure they do. God just got the ball rolling; He got things started.”

“That totally disregards everything in the Bible.”

“No it doesn’t. The Bible was written by man which means it is inherently flawed. It’s not even complete. They’ve found other books of the Bible. Anyway I believe there needs to be a marriage between God and Science and until there is one, we’ll keep debating this subject and never find the answers we’re looking for.”

“Well I’m glad to hear you don’t believe in the Big Bang theory.” He eyed me suspiciously, “Do you?”

“Oh, heck no. I remember the first time I learned about it was in astronomy class, I thought this is it? This is the best we could come up with?”

We laughed but I now knew that the immediate issue was addressing Brad’s feelings on homosexuality before we went abroad.

“I’ve told you about my cross-dressing uncle. You will behave. Heck, I’ve got cross-dressing uncles on both sides of my family. Not a peep Brad. He’s a person just like you and me.”

“I know, I know. It’ll be weird that’s all.”

I stared at my boyfriend of three and a half years trying figure out how he would react. We had had many discussions regarding this topic. There were times when I was flat out discouraged by his narrow view but something told me to hold on. Some of my friends were flabbergasted by my ability to tolerate Brad’s negative feelings but I believed in him. This wasn’t a woman’s stubbornness to change a man; it was simply a woman’s ability to see what was good in a man.

“And remember,” I said to myself mostly, “this is not a vacation. This is an educational excursion.”

***

As the bus left the safe haven of the Suvarnabhumi Airport, I looked out the window hoping to see a familiar sight. But there was nothing, 18 years was simply too much time in the life of a city like Bangkok. It grew in leaps and bounds like Superman conquering new heights and tickling all the 12 senses: smell, taste, sight, warmth, sound, speech, thought, ego, touch, life, movement and balance.

As we carefully stepped off the bus, we came in contact with Bangkok. The air was polluted with the noisy, smelly traffic, the people stared; it was hot and the dirty sois (streets) contrasted the massive supermall, high rise buildings and pedestrian bridges looming around us.

I was afraid to touch anything and felt very vulnerable, but the smell was familiar, after all these years, I remembered the smell of Bangkok.

“Which direction? Which way do we go?”

“I don’t know. What street are we on?” Brad started to look through the guide book. There was no point in trying to blend in, we didn’t.

I looked around. “I can’t find one.”

Brad peered at the tiny map in the book and looked around, repeating this step several times. “I think we need to go that way.”

We had previously picked out a soi in the Siam Square district that had many guest houses or motels in close proximity to the light rail system and shopping centers.

I was glad that we had packed light, each of us carrying school-sized backpacks much to the surprise of airport personnel and friends, but already the bag felt heavy. It had been an exhausting “day” involving a flight delay in Seattle, complete with confusing stopovers in Hong Kong and Taipei and finally our arrival at the new and spacious Suvarnabhumi Airport. The sun was setting. I was hungry and nervous about finding a hotel room. Against my planning nature, I allowed Brad to talk me out of booking reservations. I cursed my mom for not teaching me Thai but took refuge in knowing that my mom would be arriving tomorrow.

As we turned down the street which looked more like an alley way I immediately felt a sense of déjà vu. Then I dismissed it because surely a lot of streets in the city must look alike, especially when you have no idea where you are going. There was no way that we were on the same street that my family had stayed at the last time I was here. I looked at the guest houses and stared at the one that felt most familiar. Then I turned away.

“Which one do you want to check out?” Brad asked. The street had guest house after guest house. These were small establishments located on the same street where ice was cut and Nissan cars grew.

“I don’t care. You make a decision,” I took off my backpack and stared at him.

“I want your input.”

“But I don’t care. I’m too tired to care.”

We walked up and down the street trying a few places but every place was booked.

“I knew we should have made reservations!”

We walked all the way down the long street but there was nothing. I started to panic and think about where else we could go. We had deliberately chosen this street because there were so many choices.

“What should we do?”

“There’s a hotel at the end of the street,” Brad pointed to the tiny sign in the distance.

“I’m so tired. You go and see if they have any rooms. I’ll wait here.”

Brad walked back, “They have rooms.”

“How'd they look?”

“I didn’t ask. It looks like a nice hotel.” Then he added, “It’s 1000 baht.”

“A 1000 baht?”

We stared at one another. I knew what Brad was thinking, too much, no way, are they trying to rob us? He was an instinctive miser and before our trip was over he would have a chance to flex his bargaining muscles. But now was not the time.

“Just for tonight,” I pleaded. “Let’s go. It’s getting dark and I really don’t want to hop in a cab and find another place to stay.”

After we checked into a room, we walked to the nearby mall in search of dinner. I automatically knew that I had been here before. The feeling was so strong that I sought out the information desk to find out what mall we were in.

“Mahboonkrong,” The woman replied.

I smacked the counter and looked back at Brad, “I knew it.”

“I can’t believe out of all of the places we could have ended up in Bangkok we ended up in the exact same place I stayed at when I was 16. We came to this mall everyday when we were in Bangkok. That street must have been the same place where we had stayed as well. Unbelievable.”

As we walked around the busy and crowded mall, I sensed God’s unseen hands guiding and protecting us, keeping us safe. It was so overwhelming to be in foreign country and to know that I was standing in the same spot I was eighteen years ago by accident was amazing. But I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in miracles. I relaxed. Our adventure had begun.

a locket of light

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

My morning ritual usually consists of opening up my journal and writing down my dreams from the night before. On a good morning (or night), I’ll remember three to four dreams but on average I write down one or two. Sometimes I don’t remember any but the key is to hold on to them like a balloon, don’t let go or it’ll float away.

I imagine most people get out of bed and start thinking about what lies ahead and start filling their minds with thoughts and more thoughts which does absolutely nothing for dream recollection. It’s funny when I hear people say, “I don’t dream.” No you do dream, you just don’t remember.

Brad is a quick to rise person, almost disgustingly peppy. I, on the other side of the bed, am sluggish and slow. I think this helps me to remember what I dreamt of. I also wake up frequently during the night because I have the tiniest bladder. Camping is a nightmare. I hate unzipping the tent, slipping into my boots and stepping out into the freezing cold wilderness to stumble around for the “good” place to squat. I’m also a lot of fun on road trips.

There are some mornings when I don’t want to wake up because I’m having the best dream in the world. It’s like I get to live another life when I dream. If my mom has a double identity, one as an American and the other as a Thai then I do too as a day and a night dreamer. At night, I’m single! I’ve been kissed by so many interesting men. I’ve met Oprah and flown through the sky, dodge bullets, saved lives and tasted and smelled. I’ve painted, heard music, read and composed letters.

On occasion I’ll even have a pen and notebook by my bed in case I wake up from a dream and need to write something down. This is a common trick for those of us who know that if there is something you want to remember in the middle of the night, you better write it down because you will forget it. Even the vividness of a nightmare will become cloudy dull in the morning.

But there the dreams that stay with you no matter what.

Some might wonder why I bother to write them down and the best answer I can give you is, it is my science experiment, my interest, my mystery novel. Every night there is a mystery to solve. Why did I have this dream? Was it something I ate, read, saw, or experienced? Or is it a message from my subconscious? Help from the angels?

Some people believe that dreams are our way of communicating with the angels, with Heaven. Because dreams are usually an echo or reflection of what you did that day, it’s just that the dream images might be a little more circus mirror-like. But if you went swimming it should be of no surprise that you would dream of floating or feeling weightless or something along those lines. Dreams are like saying, here’s what I did, thought, and saw today.

Now I wouldn’t freak out, I’ve had some fairly kinky sex dreams too. But I think the repercussions of your subconscious plucking random thoughts and images to relay to the heavens would be of interest to you because while you don’t have control of your dreams you do have control of what you chose to do with your twenty-four hours in a day.

I know when I’m watching too much TV because I’m constantly dreaming of the characters and sitcom situations. I know when I’m stressed out or worried. I’m lost, maybe hiding. And I know when I’ve forgiven myself for a failed relationship when the man I hurt stops turning away from me in my dreams and starts smiling.

I believe in the power of dreams. They reinforce your behavior like instant replay; deeds become dreams just like thoughts become actions. Sometimes we don’t understand waking life but a dream can help us find our way. There are so many references to dreams in major religions, literature, legends and history. Famous spiritual leaders, generals, writers, scientists and philosophers have found creative solutions and answers through dreams.

This was one of those dreams, although I didn’t really get it. At the time I was very stressed out. It was before I taught first grade. I had a dream of my father. And he doesn’t make an appearance very often. The last significant dream of him I can recall was when I was in college. We were facing each other, sitting on a grassy hill. I felt calm and happy. I don’t remember what we talked about if anything but his presence was profoundly moving. It was a nice dream but when I thought about it later it brought out all those fears I had about where he was now. Heaven or Hell?

But in this dream I found a coin sitting on a dresser. It opened like a locket. Inside I was surprised to find a black and white picture of an Asian man. He was getting ready to be executed and had a distressed look on his face. On the other side of the coin/locket was a picture of my father. He too looked distressed at the sight of his friend being executed, for he was next.

But somehow in the dream, the coin gave me peace and I went upstairs to find my mom cleaning. I opened up the locket again to show her what I had found but this time I saw the words, “light brings the heart into this world.”

I puzzled over this message so I told my mom. She thought it was assurance that my father was looking after me. Light brings the heart into this world. It was a nice saying but I wasn’t sure what this, well, really meant. So for years I sat with it. I figured I’d file it away in my memory and hope that its message would be revealed to me in a clearer way sometime in the future.

the uneducation years

noreply@blogger.com (Lani Cox) — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:41:00 +0000

In many ways Brad was my life jacket that kept me afloat, my Titanic door that helped me navigate through the constant maze of short-lived office jobs.

I remember when I was younger I asked myself: If I had a choice to choose between career and love what would it be? I chose love because to me a career without love didn’t seem like much of a life to lead.

It’s odd that I even came up with that question, as if the possibility of having both wasn’t realistic enough. I wondered if I had somehow cursed myself.

When I was in graduate school colleagues were inevitably interested in Waldorf education upon learning that I was a Waldorf teacher. I surprised myself by speaking about Waldorf in the most neutral terms and by continuing to keep my firing a secret.

The interesting thing about pursuing my master’s degree at a school that endorsed Montessori education was it allowed me the chance to compare the two. I got to work with the materials that are common in a Montessori classroom, observe teachers and students alike and decide for myself that there were merits to both systems.

But I thought Waldorf was the stronger and more complete educational system, which only served to make me angrier and more disappointed that I was considered a failure and a total fuck-up.

Waldorf and Montessori, I grew to understand, are polar opposites. There are minor similarities but both are intrinsically different in educational philosophy and practice.

What was interesting to learn was both Rudolf Steiner and Maria Montessori were contemporaries, both educational systems were born during the same tumultuous time of pre and post World War II Europe. Both Steiner and Montessori were highly educated in philosophy and medicine, and both educational systems are thriving and practiced worldwide today.

In the simplest terms Montessori is individually based and the meat of the curriculum is centered on innovative learning materials. Children are grouped according to ages 3-6, 6-12, etc. so first, second and third graders are in the same classroom. Academic studies are also presented to the children at a much younger age than Waldorf which is why I think Montessori is popular in the US.

When you walk into a Montessori classroom you will notice how organized it is. There are shelves consisting of various activities like counting beads and blocks for mathematics. There is a reading corner and a language arts area where the child will find trays that hold little objects like a doll’s tea set with an accompanying basket filled with words. The idea is the child will remove the tray and work on the activity, in this case, laying out the tea set and matching the corresponding word to each item.

The younger children engage in chores like buttoning or lacing mock clothing, washing dishes or spreading peanut butter on bread. (The dish washing station seemed popular with the little ones.) Maria Montessori wanted to create a home-like or domestic atmosphere. Think of the toddler and kindergarten classroom as ‘playing house’.

But the point is each child chooses an activity to their liking. The teacher observes the children from the periphery occasionally stepping in when needed. Experiencing a Montessori classroom reminds me of when we watched those psychology videos in college where the child was asked to play with a toy while the adults recorded their behavior. And this makes sense when you learn that Dr. Maria Montessori developed the kinds of activities that she did for children who were mentally retarded. However Montessori education is regarded as a clever educational philosophy suitable for all children. The idea being that the child understands best what they need; adults on the other hand, usually get in the way.

It seemed fitting then I suppose, that at this time I was unlearning what I learned in Waldorf and that I was learning to play by myself again. I was no longer a part of the unique group of specially trained Waldorf teachers. Instead I was an outcast engaged in the sole activity of forgetting.

There were moments where I lost afternoons, evenings and mornings sitting on my bed thinking about what I had happened. Even when I fell asleep I dreamt of the children and would wake up crying because I foolishly hoped that I had finally moved past this.

I was ashamed that these people had gotten a hold of me and that I didn’t know how to let go. I felt weak-minded and for a woman who came from a heritage of strong women this was like dying a pointless death or filing a tax return.

There was a dream I had when I was a teenager that I remember very clearly because it seemed so real. I was at a gas station at night when I heard over the radio that a convict had escaped. The next thing I remember was running. I sensed a car driving along side me and then a gun went off. I had been shot in the face. When I woke up I fully expected to wake up in a hospital instead of in my own bed. White walls, machinery, maybe a doctor or a loved one bedside, you know the works but as I do wake up I realize I am in my bedroom in Mililani Hawaii. My body was tingling all over, like when your leg falls asleep. I was stunned. I laid there for a long time trying to make sense of the dream and why I was not in a hospital.