I taught the children I teach to make maple-seed noses (I mentioned this before). They loved it. Such a simple thing, yet none of them seemed to know of it. They were squealing with delight, hunting around through the still-too-small June seeds to find a bigger one, a bigger one, the biggest one. Some of them wanted to squeeze an opened-up, sticky bit of greenness onto my face, too. I would sit perfectly still and allow the little fingers to pinch my nose.
As I have become older, as my own children have grown to be in a different age group from the children I teach and as there suddenly is a distance of over a decade between me and my marriage to their father, it has become easier to allow the children-I-teach – different children, over the years, yet forming a large group of people, permanently frozen in the time of my mind into the preschool age and stage – to come closer, both in an actual physical way as well as emotionally. Meeting them face-to-face in the fundamental human way no longer brings out the acute shame of failure I have felt about the childhood of my own flesh and blood.
Much as I love slothing, I am not terribly upset about returning to work in a week, either. I like my job. I must be doing something wrong, or right.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
I make noses for a living, sometimes
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11 comments:
hate these word verifactions and all that but......
Do we all not just do the best we can.
The most that we can hope for ( NO BIG EXPECTATIONS) is that we do "just well enough".
Good luck Anna Mr.
But I hate these silly vxbonyz things
Dear, sweet Zola-a-Romantic-Thing - thank you for overcoming your hatred of word vers to leave me such a supportive comment. You are right, of course. This (my less-than-perfect-parenting) just is a personal pain-point I struggle fiercely with from time to time. It is very difficult to tell what is "just well enough", for me, with regard to this.
However - as I think I indicate in my post, it's not getting in the way of things completely at the moment. Which is nice. As is "vxbonyz", incidentally. To me, it almost suggests the word "bonus"...
x
When I first went north I made the winter snow work by hand. After a few weeks of this I woke up an a tractor had done it.
I guess that is one of my northern things that might count as an "experience".
lyqcqmno
Oh, it sounds to me like you're doing plenty right - or if its wrong, it sounds like good fun. This was very nice to read anna.
Sounds to me like you're a harsh self-critic, surely unjustified x
D/s Zola, that is an intriguing little story-analogy that you have brought me. It has me chewing on the end of my keyboard, I can tell you that. Yes, I'd agree with you, it does count as an experience...every time I (as a townie) have sighed and voiced the opinion (in public) of wanting to find a way of disappearing into the Finnish countryside (and you would know how well-placed the word disappear is with regard to Finland - more land than people, plenty room for disappearing), someone brings up the incessant snow work in the winter, pointing out that it only sounds like a minor hassle (and somewhat romantic at that) to my townie's ears. I don't know. How do you do it nowadays, Zola? Do you just wait for the tractor? Do you never feel the need to get out your lumikola and go for it, against the elements, the sound of the snow under your feet and under the kola, the pakkanen biting your face and ears, yet the effort making your blood course faster through your veins?
Man, I hope we get a decent winter next time round. This past year was totally terrible...although probably at your latitudes, more like the real thing than here.
Rambling.
Your word ver this time is clearly suggestive of lycanthropy, and I am highly pleased you brought it with you. Initially, I thought it might be the chemical compound which is the active ingredient in the post-werewolfian transformation headache pill, but on closer thought, I reckon it is actually the virus which, when transmitted through an exchange of blood (or other bodily fluids? I need to do my research here, but can lycanthropy be caught through e.g. sexual intercourse? Does anyone know?), causes the said condition.
Ok. Rambling really considerably now. Bye bye, Zola - lovely to see you again so soon.
x
Hei housut - you really are a very huggable pair of trousers, aren't you? Thank you. That was a very sweet thing to say. (I always, well, very often anyway, have the feeling my self-criticism is rather justified, though. I'm not bad, it's just the way I'm made.)
It is a lot of fun, though, my job is. Tiring, yes, overly laden with responsibility, yes - but do you know, I get to actually be eye-to-eye with people, really, with no crap or bollocks, which feels like something real, which in turn feels like something good.
x
Now I know even more certainly that I'll be reincarnated in Finland next time round. If we and the planet are spared, that is (isvim mani padmi hum)
Did you ever read Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow? Should I?
Signsykolmio, we need to be reincarnated in the same space next time round too, wherever that is. I did read Miss Smilla, as it happens (my best friend in Wales, Amanda from Manchester, told me to read it because the snowy bits in it made her think of me), and I enjoyed it. Take this with a pinch of salt, though - I read it some fifteen years ago, and was considerably easier to please then than now. I don't think it's crap, though - but remain unsure as to whether I'd (now) call "Literature".
Signed,
Anna the Insufferable Literary Snob,
a.k.a. Fluffy Bunny from Watership Down
PS Totally delighted we are getting mantras now in word ver. This is a truly brilliant development.
x
Dear Anna
I can only think you are doing everything right.
xxx
Pants
Dear Ms Pants,
Oh my. "Thank you" sounds very flat after what you've just said, and I really wish I could come up with something else, something less worn, something more unique, something more eloquent, something that would just go right ahead and say in more detail, in more depth and precision, how appreciative I am of the properly lovely comment you have just left me.
Ms Pants, that was a properly lovely comment you have just left me, and I am really and truly deeply appreciative of it.
Thank you.
xxx
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