Possibilities Everywhere! #sol15 Day 29

A funny thing has happened during this month of slicing.  The more I've written, the more memories have floated up, connecting to current issues in my life. Where before ideas would cross my mind and leave as quickly as they came, now they are sticking and percolating in my  mind, and taking new shape and meaning.  I think this is yet another gift that the Slice of Life Challenge has given me.  

On a walk to the playground with my children today, I remembered a spring day 25 years ago when I took freedom a step too far and rode my bike further than I was allowed to go.  Venturing to a nearby park with two friends, we rode our bikes up and down the hills, exhilarated.  Until my final ride down the hill when I lost control of my bike and crashed, in the days before anyone wore helmets, laying flat on the ground, stunned.  People nearby saw me laying there, un-moving, and called 911. Several fire trucks and ambulances descended on the park for...me.  And I was really fine, just completely embarrassed.  My mother just so happened to be walking in the park, not realizing I was there.  She saw all the commotion and then saw my friend Amy, waving to her, saying, "Don't worry, Mrs. Neagle, she's fine!"  I can only imagine my mother's panic now that I am a mother myself.  

I thought about this story at the playground today, with my children, as my son took daring leaps off the slide.  I considered writing a poem about my bike riding misadventure but poetry doesn't come as easily. As we walked home, I thought about another story I could write.  At my mom's house today, I noticed she had put out an Easter decoration I made when I was a "Squirette."  The Squirettes were kind of like a youth group for girls but it was an interesting group and definitely slice-worthy down the line.  

The stories and memories and connections keep coming.  Writing every day for almost 30 days now is something I've never done but has changed me for the better.  I think it is something worth sharing with students, the idea that the more you write, the more you want to write, and the more the writing helps you make sense of yourself.  Another gift.  New insight into who I am, who I was and who I still hope to be.  

This notion of ideas being everywhere calls to mind one of my favorite poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, "Valentine for Ernest Mann":

You can’t order a poem like you order a taco.

Walk up to the counter, say, “I’ll take two”

and expect it to be handed back to you

on a shiny plate.

Still, I like your spirit.

Anyone who says, “Here’s my address,

write me a poem,” deserves something in reply.

So I’ll tell a secret instead:

poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,

they are sleeping. They are the shadows

drifting across our ceilings the moment 

before we wake up. What we have to do

is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife

two skunks for a valentine.

He couldn’t understand why she was crying.

“I thought they had such beautiful eyes.”

And he was serious. He was a serious man

who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly

just because the world said so. He really

liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them

as valentines and they became beautiful.

At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding

in the eyes of skunks for centuries 

crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us

we find poems. Check your garage, the off sock

in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.

And let me know.

Slicing has let me live my life in the way Nye suggests, more awake and more present, seeing possibilities everywhere. The more I've written, the more I've had to say.  And it really feels like I'm just getting started...