Boat Tours

Boat Tours

AJK 2024

 

I’m wearing a life jacket

To cross the River Styx

A fight to stay alive,

While the Reaper’s clock ticks.

Darkness envelops.

Despair is a friend.

But I’m taking this boat tour

Just to see where it ends.

 

I’m throwing a finger

To the tide that pulls me under.

I’m screaming curses

At the despondency that tries these weary bones to sunder.

“It’s not over til it’s over” is a promise

Not a phrase,

You either fight to the death

Or death fights you for your days.

 

So I’m wearing a life jacket

To cross the River Styx.

A fight to stay alive,

Even while the Reaper’s clock ticks.

Darkness may envelop;

Despair still a friend;

But I’m taking this boat tour

Just to see where it ends.

 

I am gasping for air,

But the clutch is mine to grasp.

I’m holding out hope,

That the heaviness

Won’t last.

My brain spins out of control;

My heart races into over-drive;

And yet each haggard breath

Tells me I’m alive.

 

Put on your life jacket

To cross the River Styx.

It is a fight to stay alive,

Though the Reaper’s clock still ticks.

Hope is a small rebellion,

When “fine” is a four-letter word.

Light breaking though the Hell;

A glimpse the darkness blurred.

Though the battle rages,

And against the dawn the night tries to win…

I am taking this bout tour

Just to see where it ends.

The Leaning Tree

The Leaning Tree

AJK 2020

  

“A little lower, a little lower!”  Mom shouted from the corner.

I was flung partially over Dad’s shoulder and he was wrestling me through the living room door. My top had already banged against the front doorway, the hallway, and the kitchen floor!  That’s just what happens when you happen to be me, a tall a mighty Christmas tree!

Still, Mom shouted to avoid more of my pine needles hitting the floor. “A little lower! That’s it! A little more!”

“I can’t wait to decorate!” Little Katie clapped her hands and jumped up and down.

“Can I put the star on the top?” Benjamin asked excitedly.

“We’ll see!” Dad laughed as he tipped me upright and pulled me around. 

I wanted to laugh too; I was so filled with glee. All of this joy was about ME! We trees at the farm had talked about what it would mean…to be chosen for Christmas (the noblest of professions for an evergreen!) We talked of the lights and the smiles we would bring. We talked of how EVERYONE would stare with wonder and awe and join around us to sing. But nothing we talked of compared to this, the real thing!

Dad wiggled my trunk into the stand, my Christmas throne. I held my breath and clung to my cones! Soon I would stand, a true Christmas beauty; tall and straight – like a soldier on duty! Soon Katie and Benjamin would stare with eager eyes and Mom would hold Dad’s hand and everyone would agree…that I was the greatest, the finest, and the very best tree!

Finally, as I felt myself hoisted to my throne, I stood proud, I stood tall!  I looked at my family. They looked confused, their bright eyes a bit downfall.

“It…leans.” Mom said, angling her head to the side.

“Yeah!” said Benjamin “it tilts like it’s a bit, well, cockeyed…”

I frowned and my branches sagged.

“Well, I think it’s a GREAT tree! Let’s put the lights on!” Katie nagged.     

Mom smiled at Dad. “Katie is right. Maybe all it needs is some bulbs and some lights!”

Benjamin smirked. “Plus, even though it’s a little tippy…it’s really tall! I still want to put on the star when we’re finished with it all!”

And my branches swelled again with pride. All Christmas long they would be staring at me, looking at me all twinkly eyed! Benjamin and Katie laughed while covering my branches with twinkling lights and handmade ornaments while Christmas music played. I assumed it was the excitement that made me want to sway!

When they were finished, and Benjamin had put my star on top, they all stood together staring at me. My lights caught the twinkle in Benjamin’s eye and Katie’s smile.

“You know, it really is a pretty tree it seems...” Dad said, pulling Mom to his side. “Even if it leans…”

Inside, I was beaming as much as the lights I was wearing. I tried to stand a little taller. And a little straighter…

~-~-~-~-~

Yet, a tree can only stand as straight as a tree seems. I could not make myself any straighter. So, still, I leaned.

On the second day I felt my right side getting heavier and heavier. My trunk shook in its stand. I tried to scream for help but the next sound I heard was the sound of my branches against piano keys land. They did NOT a familiar carol play as on the chord book I continued to lay.

Mom ran into the living room, covered in baking flour from Christmas cookies and gasped, and Katie followed with a quiver to her lip.

“Dadddd!” Katie bellowed. “Help! The tree! It’s slipped!”

“It looks like I didn’t secure it quite right in the stand. The trunk was in straight, but the weight wasn’t balanced as I planned…” Dad said as Benjamin rushed to the scene. “…it is because, well, the tree, it leans…”  

Dad resecured my base and tipped me upright. Katie and Benjamin gingerly picked up my fallen ornaments while mom dusted my lost needles off the piano so the keys were no longer green but black and white. 

“It’s still a good tree.” Benjamin said as he and Katie looked at me with eyes which still glistened and gleaned. “It’s still a good tree, even though it leans…”

I tried to stand a little taller. And a little bit straighter. 

~-~-~-~-~

Yet, a tree can only stand as straight as a tree seems. I could not make myself any straighter. So, still, I leaned.

On the fourth day of my monumental Christmas display, Katie and Benjamin came rushing in from their outside play. I heard their giggles and felt a rush of cold air as they come running in, still in their winter-wear. In their merriment I shook just a little in my stand as I saw that Benjamin was wielding a giant snowball in his hand.

“Don’t Benny!” Katie giggled as the icy ball flew and she ducked. The snowy ball went through the air and it was my needles it struck. It must be Benjamin has a really good arm because the snowball ended up delivering a forceful blow. I swayed and teetered and into Dad’s chair I did go.

“Mom’s going to ground us for life!” Benjamin said with eyes wide.

Katie’s eyes, however, began to glisten. “Dadddd! Help! The tree! It’s on its side!”

Dad ran into the room and calmy tipped me back up while, with the Christmas Cards she had been addressing still in hand, mom ran through the door. And Benjamin and Katie picked up my lost ornaments and fixed my garland while Mom mopped up the snowy puddles from off of the floor.

“It’s still a good tree.” Mom said with a now damp rag in her hand and the floor now clean. “It’s a good tree, even if it leans…”

I tried to stand a little taller.  And a little bit straighter. 

~-~-~-~-~

Yet, a tree can only stand as straight as a tree seems. I could not make myself any straighter. So, still, I leaned. My lean became my downfall and, indeed, I fell down a couple more times…because I leaned.

The cat, as enamored as the rest of the world with my glorious decor, batted my round ornament balls. And so, without much tottering, into the corner lamp both I and the cat did fall.   

One day the door was slammed and I was caught quite by surprise. That day I quickly startled from my highs. Into the rocking chair I fell with a “whack!” and then I continued to teeter…forth and back, forth and back.

Or the time water was added to my stand and splashed a little more to the left than the right… I ended up on the couch tangled in a blanket. Now that was a sight!

Each time, Mom came running – still covered in her Christmas preparing. Each time, Dad was called and he picked me up with so much caring. Each time, Benjamin and Katie picked up my dropped canes and misplaced lights and green. And each time, it was decided that despite all it seemed, I was still a good tree – even if I happened to lean.

Each time I tried to stand a little bit taller.  And a little bit straighter. 

~-~-~-~-~

Yet, a tree can only stand as straight as a tree seems. I could not make myself any straighter. So, still, I leaned.

So even though I tried as much as I was able, it wasn’t long before I leaned right onto a festive looking table. If trees could sigh, I would have but Dad did for me instead. A deep, saddened, frustrated sigh as he shook his head.

“No more!” He said. “I can’t keep picking up this tree! I never should have kept a tree that leans!”

Mom unplugged my lights and Benjamin brought the storage bins. It wasn’t even Christmas day and already I was going to be turned in.

“Stop!” Katie yelled. Big tears sliding down her cheeks as her eyes leaked. “We can’t just have Christmas without a tree! What if we just let it lean?”

Dad took another big sigh and gathered Katie in his arms. “I suppose,” he replied, “if it leans against this table for a couple weeks, it won’t do any harm.”  

So that is what they did. With my head on a table and my branches on a chair…for the next two weeks I stayed right there.

My view wasn’t quite as elegant as it had been standing up tall. I couldn’t see to the kitchen or out the hall. Most of the time no one looked at me with the same wonder and awe. I was left to be, leaning and all.

~-~-~-~-~

I was afraid I’d be lonely, having failed at my mission to be the reason for Christmas cheer. But, to my surprise, every night, the whole family gathered near!

Dad was telling a story – or so it seemed. He had a big book and Mom had these figurines. Each night Dad would read just a little bit more. And mom would pull another figurine from her secret store.

First Dad read of a girl named Mary and Joseph, her fiancé. He talked about how Mary was going to have a baby – even though that wasn’t the way. He talked about God’s love for everyone, for Mary and Joe; and about how through this baby, the whole world would know!  Matthew 1:18, John 3:16

Dad read that when an angel came and told Mary she had questions and said “how can this be? Joseph will never believe that I’m having God’s baby!” But the angel told her not to be afraid and everything he was saying was true. Mary said “I’m God’s servant and what you have said, God will do!” Luke 1:26-28

“What about Joseph?” Benjamin asked the next night. “When he found out about the baby, did they have a big fight?” So, Mom took out Joseph and Dad read about him too, about how the angel stopped by Joseph and told him what to do! “Take Mary as your wife, without any fuss! That baby she carries is Emmanuel – that means ‘God with us!’” Matthew 1:19-24

The figurines of Mary and Joseph started alone on the table. They were really far away from where my top draped over a stable. Mom took out a donkey explained this was because they had to travel really far! They had to walk since in those days there were no cars. The Caesar had decided everyone should pay him a certain amount and so he sent them to their hometowns for this tax and a count. Luke 2:1-5

When Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem there was nowhere to stay! “We’re all full! We have no rooms! We’re tired, go away!” Mary was very pregnant, and they were tired too! Joseph asked the inn keeper what they were to do. Mom placed the innkeeper to the side and placed down a trough as Dad read from his book that there were no guest rooms but a barn out back, “take a look!”  Luke 2:6-7

Dad read that if the baby were to come it would be in the manger he would lay. I looked at the cold little trough without any hay! This was no place for a baby and Katie agreed! “Mom, a barn? What if Mary has her baby?” Mom told her to wait, the story wasn’t done. Still, when no one was looking I shook some soft tinsel and needles down to soften the crib should Mary have her son.

The following day Mom pulled a couple shepherds from her box. Dad explained shepherds protected sheep from danger like cliffs, wolfs, and fox. That same night the shepherds were not far away in the field. They were just watching their sheep, acting as their shield. This would have been their job, like every other night. Yet this time something happened, which gave them quite a fright! Luke 2:8-11

“What happened??” Katie and Benjamin asked with a whine.

Dad looked at Mom and nodded and she said “One more part. Just this time…”

Mom pulled out an angel with large wings and a flowing gown. She was beautiful and if I were Mom, I’d never want to put her down. Benjamin and Katie stared, engrossed! And mom explained she represented just one of the heavenly host! Dad opened his book again, and read of how the angel spoke to the frightened men. “Don’t be afraid; I bring news of great joy! It’s meant for every man, woman, girl, and boy! A Savior has been born and in a manger he lays!” Then the host of angels broke into songs of praise!  “Glory to God and peace on earth where his favor rests!” The shepherds ran off, to find this savior was their quest! Luke 2:9-14

Benjamin and Katie stood with eyes aglow. That seemed the way they looked at ME not so long ago. I wanted their attention, their giggles, their laugh. But it was then that I noticed a shepherd without his tall staff. “He must have dropped it as he ran to see” and I wondered if I could help with something from my tree. So, when my family turned for the day, I dropped a candy cane for the shepherd to use on his way.

The next nights to the stable Mom added sheep and a goat and a cow. She said, “we don’t know what animals were there, but let’s add these for now…” Dad read about how the shepherds found Mary and Joseph and baby just like the angels said. He read about how the babe was laid in a box from which those same animals were fed. Luke 2:15-16

“It’s cool that the shepherds came since they were so far from their friends! But did they get any presents?” asked a curious Ben.

“WE get presents at Christmas and birthdays both!” echoed excited Katie. “Were there any presents for the new little baby?”

What a good question, I thought. If I wasn’t leaning, I would be protecting all of those beautiful packages that had been bought!

To answer their question mom pulled out three figurines more. She said “the best gift for the baby couldn’t have been bought at a store! The angels and shepherds, they brought worship and praise. These aren’t things you find in window displays.”

Then Dad grabbed his book and said with a grin “Worship and praise are the first place to begin! Still, if we go to our story’s end, we will find other gifts brought by some special guests who attend. They came from a great distance, a land very far. They said they had seen and followed a star. They were important, the likes of scholars or kings we are told. They came to worship and brought with them gifts of myrrh, frankincense, and gold.” Matthew 2:1-2, 9-12

Benjamin protested: “I would have brought diapers! Or a bottle! That just seems commonsense! Who gives a baby gold or frankincense?”

Katie nodded in agreement and then thoughtfully considered what she would bring. “Except, maybe,” she said “their gifts weren’t meant for a baby – but a king!”

Mom and Dad smiled and then Mom explained: “to be a King the world had never known was the reason this baby came!”

I didn’t quite understand what Mom said was supposed to mean…but even I understood the honor meant for a king. So while the magi stood stately with their gifts, I allowed my favorite ornament from my branches to slip. Something special for the king who was a baby, the one who came or was still coming, maybe.

Finally, it was Christmas Eve and Katie turned and looked at me! “I know our tree tips, I know that it leans, but since it’s almost Christmas can’t we turn its lights on…please?”

Dad smiled and nodded and soon I was aglow. A leaning tree that shone from head to toe.

“Look!” Benjamin shouted and I froze in place. He was pointing at me with joy and excitement on his face. My old pride awakened and thought “now’s the time! I may lean but it’s finally my time to shine!” 

I soon realized he wasn’t as concerned with my branches as he was with how my lean touched the table. And his gaze rested not me but the stable.

“I didn’t realize until now, with the tree lit, how, because the tree leans…well, just looks where the star sits!”

I couldn’t see the star on my top, but I could see the table and the stable and I had a good idea of where I stopped. Even I was taken a bit by surprise. My star rested over the table where the stable lies.

“It’s like the star that helped the wise men to know…that there was a king born and where to go!” Katie was excited and she pointed this out. She was beaming and shouting, dancing about!

“What’s this excitement?” Mom asked, grabbing one last figure as she entered.

Dad grinned and gestured “It appears it’s over our manger that the tree’s star has centered.” Grabbing his book he gathered Benjamin and Katie around. “I think that means it’s time for where our true Christmas excitement is found!”

Dad recounted the kings, the shepherd, and the sheep. How there was no room in the inn for Mary and Joseph to sleep. He reminded them the angels had promised joy for the earth – all on account of a special birth. Mom placed a baby in a manger to lay – right there with my tinsel, some needles, and hay. Dad read “The baby came, her firstborn, a son, while Mary and Joseph were there. Mary placed him in the manger after wrapping him in some cloths to wear.”  Luke 2:6-7

“This is baby Jesus?” Katie pondered.

Benjamin asked “Was it really a baby that filled both shepherds and kinds with worship and wonder?”

“Except Jesus was no ordinary baby,” Mom replied with a nod. “You see Jesus was the Son of Mary but first the Son of God.”

“To us a child is born, a Son is given…” Dad read before saying “it’s because of Jesus our sins are forgiven. He is called ‘Wonderful Counselor’ and ‘Mighty God’… because for us to understand God’s love, He had to come where people trod. So God became like you and like me, so we would know hope, joy, and peace.” (Isaiah 9:6)

Mom added: “For God so loved the world, so loved you, so loved me…He came nothing more than a simple baby. He humbled Himself, though He was God and King, even though he was the One of whom the angels did sing! God knew that if we were to ever understand His forgiveness and love, He would have to come down from heaven above. He came in a way we could understand. In the form of a baby would grow into a man.” John 3:16, Philippians 2:5

Dad continued, “One day that man, Jesus, would show God’s love for us in this – He would die for us while we were still caught in our sins. But he would defeat death forever, so time separated from God would be never!”  

“Don’t you see, there is no doubt!” Mom added, “Jesus is what Christmas is about! The baby that the angels did sing, is the Lord of lords and King of Kings...”

Something stirred deep in my trunk I couldn’t quite explain. I stared intently where the baby Jesus was lain. It was as if everything made sense now…I leaned even further and made my lean, a bow.

I know now however, what I wish I had known when I was smaller…it’s not about standing straighter; it’s not about standing taller. Christmas isn’t about the presents, the carols or the tree. It was never, actually, all about me.

I don’t know how long a Christmas tree stays. How long before I’ll be ushered out of the house, the next holiday to make way. But I know that no matter what it seems, I am proud to be a tree that at the manger, bows. A tree, that leans…

Anika J. Kasper, 2020 - all rights to this work are my own

Freedom Swings

I have been desperate for a swing.

A literal swing.

You know, the ones at a good community playground with the long black rubber seat and attached to chains that hang from 15-foot-high steel frames and creak like they were bought from an Azkaban rummage sale? 

I love a good swing and, these days, they have been surprisingly hard to find...

In especially small towns (where I’ve found myself for the last 13+ months) you’ll be lucky to locate a park with an available swing set (and, if you’re lucky enough to find one – it’s likely at the elementary school and already in use and you can’t just sit around like a creeper, staring at the swings, waiting your turn. I might call somebody come talk to me…).

And in Michigan, the land of potentially perpetual winter, if you’ve managed to locate a park with swings, they are likely not going to be put back up until the last 10 day forecast, and the next 10 day forecast, all promise higher than 32 degrees and less than six inches of snow…

And this spring? This spring the parks were all shut down (some still are) as to avoid them becoming a public meeting place and therefore a COViD transmission potential. There were twice I found beautiful swings, completely available for use, on days when I would have loved to swing – but I couldn’t.

When I helped my best friend move out of her apartment, she reminded me the camp had gotten a swing set after I left and, though the swings were child sized and the set placed precariously in between trees, I did I get to swing for a few minutes then. It was good for my soul. Though not quite the same…

Because I love a good swing and have for years, perhaps even decades now.  I have distinct, clear, crisp memories of being a tween and teen and finding swings at a park after a walk or church picnic or some other type excursion. I remember pumping my legs long and hard, going as high as I could – so high gravity would jolt me a bit at the top, and so hard I would pendulum back and forth… There was something about a swing that made me feel weightless, burdenless, unhindered, free. I love the way a good swing makes me feel free…

In college I would seek them out.  I discovered an otherwise relatively pathetic park just down the road from the dorms with an excellent set of swings. When life got too crazy. When my head got too busy. When I needed to escape. When I needed to feel free... I’d go for a short walk, swing until my legs gave out, and walk back…somehow better able to take on life, and better able to untangle the thoughts in my head and the stirrings in my heart – for better or worse.

And all week I’ve been desperate to find a swing.

I pass a park on my way to work. Not far from where I’m staying. I know they have swings. Twice I stopped. 

The first time there was a ball game going on and there was a gaggle of children on the play equipment.  I would have to wait my turn, which would make me some kind of creeper…

The second time there were less people. I could have swung with the three or four kids on the monkey bars but I glanced at the swings as they were – without kids on them. They were swings. On play equipment. At a park. Meant for children. They were small. And short. And the frame not high enough for someone taller than 4 feet to pump and win… I drove back to the house and made dinner before dark (an especially admirable feat in my life!) instead.

Tonight, I wasn’t exactly restless. But nor was I settled. I picked up the book I had been reading, making it through a few pages with a disinterested distraction. I put it aside and picked up my phone; browsing, I found myself doing much of the same. I glanced at my watch. I declared, with the air of someone who is clearly no longer a young adult, that it was getting to be too late for adventures. Still, I countered: “What I need to do is find some swings…”

I ventured into the town in the opposite direction (seeing as the obvious park in the town on the other side had already let me down) and Google searched parks, typing the address into my maps. Several miles later and the “destination on my right” was DEFINITELY someone’s house. As were the properties on all sides. (One of them did appear to have a swing set – like the kind we had in the 90’s but you can still get at Wal-Mart for like $198.99, all metal with a plastic slide on the side and when you pumped too hard the legs would come up? – but it felt weird to ask to borrow it).  I tried typing in the name of the park. I backtracked two miles. I came upon something of a park – but people were totally setting up tents! Already dusk, I didn’t have time to walk the trails to see if they did indeed have swings… somewhere. Dejected, I drove into town and started driving around the block… when I came across the school playground and a family just leaving. In the dusk I saw three swings.

I walked over, chose the swing in the middle and sat down.

For a while I just swayed softly. The familiar sense of being able to exist without strings attached (sans the two chains holding me up, of course) playing in the recesses of my mind. I heard the ever so slight creak of the chains and I smiled, my head leaning gently on the links. 

I turned forward from the sideways lean I had been at and began to pump. Slowly and lightly at first, and then faster and harder as I picked up steam; my legs matching the momentum of my body as it continued in its arc-shaped flight, a pendulum back and forth and back and forth.

And that’s where this long (aka: Anika-length) story finds its climax…

Because this is where the story should end or begin to conclude with some note of my blissful sense of freedom just as maximum height and gravity met in a war for my body and my soul. Because swings help me to feel free… Because something about swings sets the world to right. 

But that’s not what happened.

I didn’t end up in some blissful zen-like flight pattern. I had no sooner made it back and forth a fifth or sixth time when my brain did the opposite of what my brain normally does and went into hyperdrive. I was processing the lackluster sunset and the sirens in the distance and why the lights were on in the school and whether I needed to stop for gas and how grateful I was to find a swing but how this couldn’t be my park because I didn’t want to share my sacred space with everyone and it was quite a bit out of my way and plus I wasn’t going to be living where I was forever which reminded me, I really needed to start apartment hunting again…

I wanted to say that it was my spiraling thoughts which caused my raging nausea, but I don’t think that was the case at all. If anything, the motion sickness started at the same time and I was trying to push past it – confident that the swinging would do what it does best and take care of the things in my heart and my head…

But it didn’t.

Less than 10 minutes after I found my swing, I found myself I shakily dismounting it.

In college I could have kept going for a half an hour or more. Stopping only when I had I had pumped all my inner angst loose. This time, had I not stopped, the only thing pumped loose would have been the lunch I consumed some several hours prior. 

The drive back was quiet. You would think most lonely drives are but mine only are when I’m thinking.  Otherwise I’m listening to music. Or more often than not, an audiobook. Or talking to myself. 

The drive was quiet.

I was thinking. And seething. And trying a little not to cry. It’s not like one night of motion sickness could ruin my love for swings, but it was a bit like being disappointed by an old friend. A close friend. Knowing she’d be there for you. That he wouldn’t let you down. Being so excited to spend time, to share your life, to be yourself. And then getting everything but. Leaving feeling like your friend wasn’t who you remembered and that though you loved them, you weren’t sure if they loved you. And that hurts!

It hurts to be suddenly trapped by something which is supposed to help you feel free…

It’s where I’ve been with words.

Another silly thing to say. To write. Especially, to write. I’ve only written a handful of times in the last five years. Since before grad school… Oh I wrote papers, endless papers. And I wrote camp curriculum which filled thick binders. And I wrote sermons. For the last year I wrote a sermon week after week after week.  All of it writing and all of it so far away from the way my fingers used to fly across a keyboard, flooding a screen to keep up with my heart and mind. All of it felt so confining. So trapping. So imprisoning.  I was working on a sermon at my parents’ house once last fall and my sister asked what I was working on. When I replied “my sermon”, she sighed. “I figured. But I keep hoping you’ll say you’re writing. And then I’ll know. I’ll know you’re back…”

Even the words now feel like burning, feel like clawing, painfully and slowly out of place I don’t know if I should yet return.

It hurts to have been trapped by something which once always helped me to feel free…

And maybe there are profound and divine words here. Words about where my true freedom should lay and Who they should lay with. Maybe I should be spending time with John and recalling that “if the Son has set you free, you are free indeed!” (Jn 8:36). Maybe I should be imparting something true right now… Because those words are true. 

But right now, all I know is that I’m stuck some where between the dark and the light. Somewhere between the fact I know while I crave to be free, that freedom in my soul, the freedom writing and swings and a bad run on a long road helped me tap into, isn’t something I’ve known in quite some time.

An Ode to Teachers

At the beginning of October, I began a long-term sub placement.  It was at the school where I served as an “Academic-Behavioral Interventionist” part time for a school year and where I’ve frequently served as substitute teacher amidst my other jobs since.  This fall, with my extensive summer job search and application process proving completely unsuccessful, I found myself in need of a job…and Hillside found itself in need of a sub willing to carry out the day-to-day and teaching for one of their beloved 5^th grade teachers who would be out for a back surgery.  I agreed, thankful for the community I knew was at Hillside and for God’s provision for my needs. 

The fact remains…I’m not a teacher.  I am a decent instructor.  And a notable substitute as I come with enough experience and a bag of tricks to make the day survivable for both me and my class.  But there are MANY reasons I didn’t go to school for elementary education.  It turns out I like lesson planning (I love lists and am a great planner and there is a strategy to lesson plans) but the day in and out of classroom management for talkative pre-pubescent 10 and 11-year-olds proved beyond my key “niche”.  I often felt like an overwhelmed island. I had no idea what I didn’t know or what help to ask for…but I had 29 crashing waves reminding me constantly of what was being asked of me. To say it was a learning curve would be, at least, accurate. 

I found I learned other things as well as time went on.  Mostly about the teachers whom I’ve always appreciated but haven’t been awarded sainthood.  At one point a teacher friend commented something along the lines of “no one will be a bigger supporter of teachers than you after this!”  I responded that I was applying to be president of their fan clubs.  I learned much about what it is like to be a teacher and what is required of them in the classroom.  Below is my (incomplete) list of some of those things.  And, if you are anyway anticipating a third snow/cold day with children whom you love but are wondering, with wide eyes and decreasing patience, how you all are going to make it out alive…thank the teachers you know.  I promise you they don’t hear it enough...

I was in a FULLY STOCKED classroom for less than a week when I felt the compulsion to buy things for my students and room.  I can only imagine what a teacher goes through at the beginning of a school year, pre-anticipating the real needs of students.

Every post about drinking cold coffee is true.  No matter how soon I get to school.  No matter how soon I start the coffee pot and no matter how soon I start drinking the coffee… 

I enjoy an occasional adult beverage.  Sometimes I even enjoy one to wind down.  I VERY rarely drink copiously and never as an escape.  That being said…I find it an absolute miracle that more teachers aren’t raging alcoholics.  If they were, it would make sense to me…

Every time you read something about staying awake, unable to sleep, because of a student, believe it.  It isn’t an over generalized sentiment.  It is impossible to spend 8 hours a day with individuals and not care deeply about who they are as individuals. (I anxiety slept about my class and students almost every night.)

Everyday I looked at students and said “You are NOT stupid! We are still learning this skill!” and “you are going to do something incredible with your life!” and “everyone judges success differently.  I judge it most by people who keep working even when it’s hard!” and “you need to give yourself more credit!  Just because you don’t have it yet, doesn’t mean you won’t. You are half way there!”  I didn’t say these things as platitudes.  I truly believed in my students.  I repeated often to the class “You need to believe in your selves half as much as I do, and you’ll change the world!” Did they believe me?  Maybe not.  But someday I hope they know they are capable and think back not back to me, their long-term sub, but the dozens of teachers who have been saying the same thing for YEARS!

5^th graders, (or many other -graders for that matter), are not necessarily inherently nice kids. I lost count of the times I was called “stupid”, “ugly”, “fat”, and any number of things.  I have been sworn at, kicked, punched, the target of jokes and drawings and gossip that would have made me leave school crying as a 10-year-old.  Teachers would like to say they are immune to these kinds of comments and jabs. (I mean, after all, it most often came on behalf of whatever student whose behavior I most recently corrected. We would have a conversation about the need for me to feel something I didn’t like because they were feeling something they didn’t like. Kids are still working on how to respond in appropriate ways.  Most teachers get this.) But…teachers are human too.  They have like 30 students they give up time and sleep and energy for.  Students they invest into academically and personally.  Students who might thank them for help on a problem, but it may take years – if they ever get there at all – to be thankful for the investment.  Teachers aren’t immune. I’ve seen calloused teachers; I haven’t seen immune teachers.  Stuff builds up.  Stuff hurts. 

Teachers try to prove themselves to each other.  I witnessed some incredible teaching “teams”.  Pockets of teachers in the same grade level who were all committed to working together and sharing ideas and the best worksheets and STEM projects and “crazy red squirrel on crack” student stories.  And yet…there is this subtle recognition that all teachers want to show each other they are doing enough.  Good enough.  I spent pretty much my whole time trying to prove myself.  Sometimes I cut myself enough slack to recognize I wasn’t and am not an elementary teacher.  I was just the long-term sub. That no one was expecting me to understand grade level standards and learning targets or how to take the new reading curriculum that the students DESPISE and make it usable.  But part of me expected it from me.  And most of me tried really hard to convince myself that I wasn’t being thought less of because of my failure to measure up.  And every so often I saw that same flinch in even seasoned teachers who were capable of feeling the same things…

Teachers spend a lot of their non-teaching time doing things that involve their teaching time.  Conferences.  Online trainings. Reading dozens of articles about other teaching strategies, projects and ideas that are working, ways to better care for the whole person of their students, and studies on education.  They are browsing Pinterest for projects, fresh ideas, and encouragement.  They are paying for subscriptions to sites with more tools and helps and premade worksheets.  And yes, based on the conversations I heard and calendars I saw, they are doing this on their summer “breaks” (the ones everyone is always so jealous of…)

Since I mentioned curriculum…I only got my feet wet in the world of “grade level standards”.  I have only a cursory knowledge about what all goes into creating those standards at a state level and barely more about implementing them.  But based on what I saw, experienced, and know about the classroom…to meet all of the grade level standards in all subjects would require 10-hour school days, 6 days a week, for at least 11 months a year.  A classroom without any behavioral issues, perfectly attentive students, and another teacher wouldn’t hurt either.  I have NO IDEA how teachers get through it all!

Group projects.  If you let them choose their partners, they goof off the entire time.  If you choose their partners for them, they fight the whole time.  I’m pretty sure, based on the chaos which ensues by assigning a group project, I know how wars are actually started.  The struggle between “this would be a fun project/this is a good skill/they don’t do enough hands-on things/they need to learn how to work together” and “is this worth curling up in a corner and crying about for three days?” is REAL. 

Speaking of wars…seating charts take the strategy of seasoned Army generals, the patience of UN diplomats, the daring sense of adventure of Indiana Jones, and the problem-solving genius of a published mathematician.  “Billy can’t sit next to Danny, Brad, or Shelly.  He does sit well next to Sally and Robby, but Robby can’t sit next to Sally.  Robby also can’t sit next to Brad or Shelly but works surprisingly well with Danny…” And then the earth-shattering sass when they discover who their new neighbors are…

Teachers say things that just don’t make sense.  It’s like (I imagine) parenting but with 30 super different children with very specific personalities and needs.  At least once a week I said something like “new rule: you can’t make art out of an apple and leave it on your desk.  It needs to go home at the end of the day!” and “I don’t know why I need to remind you of this, but we don’t lick our friends!” and “For the love of recess! Why are your cradling him? Put him down!”

If you have a child whose teacher is out sick, pray for them.  If they are gone for more than a couple of days, consider meals and community gatherings of support; they might be dying.  This wasn’t a case of the sniffles, they are really not okay! The only basis I have for this knowledge is the sheer terror of lesson plans.  Granted, as a non-teacher lesson plans may have been more challenging for me than a gifted teacher who can do such things with flourish and speed.  But, shoot!  I was gone for the equivalent of six school days when I went to Israel and I put an embarrassing amount of time into lesson plans.  What content was reasonable for a sub to cover? Was I leaving enough work? Not enough?  What would I have to reteach when I got back? How did I leave notes on students that didn’t automatically make the sub form negative opinion of students but gave them the information they needed to give my special students the care they needed?  And the headache of having to go through it all and figure it all out again when you come back?  Yeah, teachers don’t take sick days lightly. 

Teacher’s aren’t thanked. Not really.  I can say this because I’m not and wasn’t a real teacher.  I say it as someone who was meaningfully thanked EVERY time I saw the teacher whose classroom I was covering.  I know many phenomenal teachers and they are phenomenal because they didn’t go into teaching for the thanks but because they truly love what they do and, more importantly those they do it for.  But it’s still not taking place. Not in so many words.  If they teach in elementary, there is probably a collection of art from their students or occasionally there is a hug.  Small pieces of a student expressing their love and thanks in ways they know how.  There is the satisfaction of watching a student grow in and own skills in life and academics.  There is the inner knowledge that what they do makes a difference.  But not many people turn around and say, “thank you”.  Not many professions have so many expectations…from law makers, administration, parents, teachers, and childless strangers…with so few actual resources…that are accomplished with joy and creativity and ingenuity and personal sacrifice…and are done with nare a word of acknowledgment or thanks. 

I was asked routinely if I would do it again…I often admit reluctantly I probably wouldn’t.  Reluctant because it makes it sound like a bad experience when mostly it was just a lot.  I was working a 50+ hour week, for the same pay I would make for a sub job that included giving out worksheets and reading homework while the kids were at PE.  I made less than minimum wage, still had to put hours in at my other job, and was still doing homework for my last class.  I wasn’t eating, not sleeping well, and constantly worried about my kids.  I learned I’m capable of many things but that teaching 5^th graders is not likely my life’s calling.  I am thankful for those for whom it is.  I am incredibly grateful for the teachers I’ve had throughout my life who taught, encouraged, inspired, and helped shape me into the person I’ve become.  It is likely you haven’t heard it recently, so thank you. 

Crashing for Turtles

I was driving to Annual Conference the first weekend in June…in Traverse City…after class…in Fort Wayne.  It was a five-hour drive after a four-hour class after an hour-and-a-half drive.  I wasn't exactly looking forward to it. I plugged in an audio book novelette (that I was bound and determined to finish before I arrived…I did) and began the northward journey. 

I was a little more than half way through and driving past Grand Rapids on 131.  Traffic was pretty busy, and, eager to be done with my drive, I weaved in and out of the lanes at 77 mph with the cars merging in and off the expressway.  Until, all of the sudden, the right lane was at a near standstill, hazard lights creating a parade. 

Cars flew by, passing the parade at an otherwise normal speed.  Already in the left lane, I was one of them.  I slowed and looked curiously towards the beginning of the line.  And then I saw the reason for the cautious traffic.  Looking to have made it across the merging lane and into right lane was a huge box turtle.

It took giant steps, racing across the traffic.  I was proud of its persistence but as it made it ever closer to the left lane of northbound traffic, I thought for sure it was toast.  I flew past but looked back several times in my review mirror.  A giant red semi barreled ahead.   I wanted to close my eyes but realizing I was looking in my review mirror, I simply focused on the road ahead, cheering on the turtle I was positive was about to reach its certain doom. 

I glanced back one last time as I merged to the right and saw it.  The semi saw the turtle, now just a dark speck in the dead middle of the lane.  The driver pulled so far to the left, the truck tilted in the ditch.  It’s tail and nose were in the lane, creating a semi-circle hedge of protection as the turtle continued in its unstopped mission to the grass and the truck made its way slowly back onto the road. 

I cheered!  Like literally clapped a couple of times.

And I texted a friend (through voice-to-text, calm yourselves) and told him, in very short version, about the miraculous turtle save and the semi who swerved off the road for it.  He responded shortly after with a message that read “good for the turtle! But be safe! Don’t go crashing for turtles!”

I decided, first, that “Crashing for Turtles” would be an EXCELLENT band name (if you are looking for a band name and use it, please give me at least a nod of credit or let me play kazoo in one song or something because you know it’s a sweet name!).  And then I was struck by the profundity of the phrase.

The idea of what it meant to crash for turtles and whether it was a good thing or bad thing, metaphorically, consumed me all through conference. And then for days.  Even weeks.  I declared it one of the most beautiful images of self-sacrifice I could possibly muster, and I dreamed of writing about it.  The latter might not seem like much but for someone who hasn’t wrote anything of greater worth than a research paper in months, the desire to write fanned the tiniest little spark inside of me. A spark that said maybe all of the pieces of me I thought I once knew weren’t gone…

Then life got in the way.  First it was school: Heady reading and several papers.  Then the end of my job where I was working way too many hours.  Then camp.  Then the start of another class.  Then just about the time I felt compelled to maybe, just maybe, finish my thoughts and what it meant to crash for a turtle in my twisted brain of metaphors and pictures and images…more life got in the way. When I opened the file on my computer marked “crashing for turtles” today – it was dated as “last edited by user on July 17”.  Significant because that was a day before the boy who, technically, coined the phrase (though my brain did all of the running away with it, so it was never really his or had anything to do with him), suddenly but quietly exited my life.  At almost the exact same time, I found out a dear friend was killed in a fatal car accident.  I lost all desire to talk about crashing for anything.  Let alone turtles. 

But more than two months later and the image hasn’t left.  If anything, it’s become richer and more meaningful and poignant.  And harder and more painful and more real… Because, you see, ultimately, the idea of crashing for turtles is about putting yourself on the line for something inferior. It either displays the ultimate heart of service or the reality of being made a slave and the distance between the two is striking. 

There is something incredible, for me, in the concept of the turtle as a person or mission or reality.  Someone not inferior in value or worth but in some other way. (*Insert the first disenfranchised, discriminated, unrecognized, or “forgotten” person or people group that comes to your mind here, for example*).  I love to the point of chills and tears what it means for the biggest and most powerful (of which all off us are in different places and spaces) to throw a piece of themselves off the proverbial road to protect the innocent, the vulnerable, the ones without the means to protect themselves (and yes this can be as simple as greeting the visitors sitting in the fifth row on the right at church even if you’re not really the outgoing type).  Creating that semi-circle of protection.  It's something I witnessed my friend Nick do often...and there were many previous "turtles" who attended his funeral to tell the tales...

And, though the semi put itself at risk, made the choice to protect, it was only part. Because what actually happened, as happened with the right lane of cars previous, is that it forced the cars behind it to stop and take notice. The turtle survived that day because if it was important enough for a big ol’ semi to throw itself off the road, then surely it was important enough for the sedan behind it to at least look towards what it was swerving around.  I was awed by the thought that I passed a mile of cars in the right lane (and merging lane) going nare 10mph with hazard lights on and those in the back would have NO IDEA the reason for the first and yet they too had trusted that the reduced speed and caution was important and necessary. 

I think this kind of crashing for turtles in underused and important and Biblical.  It seems like it is very much like the task of the Good Samaritan, the call of the Rich Young Ruler, and the drive of the early church (among many other things).  In our me-centric world of selfish gain and a gospel that fits my needs and wants and ministry in my comfort zones and is convenient for my schedule and matches my political leanings and my picture of the way the world should go…there is something unfortunately revolutionary and uncommonly heroic about the one who choose to lay aside her [comfortable, convenient, satisfying, desired, etc] life for her friends.  Let alone a vulnerable stranger.

And yet I’m torn. Not with that particular reality but because “crashing for turtles” is a metaphor with a double-edged sword. I’m torn because I realize that if something had happened with that giant red semi, if the itty-bitty little sedan behind it didn’t slow or stop or see, if traffic felt the need to dangerously merge at the wrong time, real people in real time could have been really hurt.  If that had happened, the headlines on the paper wouldn’t read “huge box turtle courageously saved by sacrificial truck driver”, it would have read something terrible like “Alcohol not in play in Thursday’s deadly accident”.  And no one would have easily forgiven the report of “Driver notes turtle cause of Thursday’s crash causing two deaths and seven injuries…”  Because the very real actual turtle was important and worthwhile. But not as valuable or worthwhile as that of a human life. 

And we all crash for these kinds of non-literal turtles.  We all have things in our lives that get valued above and beyond what is right and reasonable.  We have “turtles” which are given worth and importance and investment…turtles that, in seeking to save, we destroy parts of ourselves, parts of lives. I think about the long-toted idols of work and money and busyness and sex and drugs and stuff and gluttony. And the seventeen other deadly sins and whatever else it is that seems like something we are willing to stake our lives on, willing to crash for, things which seem like they are worth something and maybe some are in the short term but aren’t worth anything near a human life.  I think about the nights I didn’t sleep to finish the homework I was unwilling to settle for a “B” on.  I think about the jobs I went above and beyond simply to prove to someone else, somewhere else, that I had what it took.  I think about my sometimes consuming anxiety or my crippling thought obsessions. I think about the relationship with a boy who first caused me, quite unknowingly, to spiral from the phrase “crashing for turtles” at all.  The relationship being something I was willing to crash for but in the end being something which, when it crashed, how it crashed, deeply affected how I knew and understood “me” and what I had in value and worth.  I think about all of the friendships I’ve had which ended in one way or another.  Those too being something I would crash for and did crash for and yet caused the same and even worse crash of identity when it came to trying to decide why some people stay and some people go. 

I think about the ways that “self-care” is becoming a needed and important piece of mental health education…not because of the selfishness created in a me-centric reality but because in knowing and doing and moving and being (often out of an unhealthy core and unhealthy identity) people crash and burn in a way that seems to destroy them and takes others down with them and leaves them no good to themselves or anyone else.  And sometimes those are the same people who thought they were saving some turtle, when in fact nothing was saved and much was lost.

I’m stuck with these competing narratives, the ones warring against each other that demand an answer.  Any answer.  And the answer is important because it seems like the turtles I am willing to crash for or the ones I already do and have say a great deal about who I am and whose I am.  So I’m desperate to know and see and understand. I want the answer telling me how to move forward.  How to know which turtles to crash for and which to entrust.  Answers that say something like “this is how you know what turtles are worth it!” or “here is a definitive way to know whether or not this crash is Christlike or chaos inducing” or “when you encounter a turtle that you are unsure of, proceed with the following seven steps…”  But life isn’t like that, is it?  Life is full of questions and incomprehinsibles and unknowables and things most unfair. 

And so, despite the fact words have finally made it to page, I’m still caught in the tension.  I wish I weren’t.  I like when things wrap up in neat packages.  When there are conclusions and steps to purpose.  When I finish writing something and can tie some sort of bow and say “This. These. Here are the words which have been burning deep and needing to be found.”  But I’m only newly back into the writing world.  And these words themselves are coming out of place of tension – of both insecurity and hope. So, turtles or not, perhaps, the tension must remain.  And maybe little by little it can be less about me and more about the God I wish to serve.  And maybe that will be enough…

The Scar Chronicles

Today is my scar’s 10^th birthday.

Over the years I have come to really love scars – and mine in particular.  (Let’s face it, we have been through A LOT together!)  I love scars for a couple of reasons for sure.  For one, scars have stories!  Oft untold, some unknown, but always more than just the mark they bear.  For two, scars are the reminder of pain but the presence of healing.  It’s proof where something was once broken and hurt, has now been made new.  My scar isn’t “pretty” but the cells used to create that flesh were brand new!  Brand. Freaking. New.  Something broken turned into something healed and whole.  And that will preach…

Everyone told me my scar would be “hardly noticeable” after a year or two but 10 years later and we are still going strong!  Which, honestly, I’m okay with.  I did everything to reduce it early on.  The scar cream and the lotions and protecting it from the sun and hiding it…   But now, if I were to wake up without it one morning?  I think I would miss it.  It is so much a part of me…  And it stands as this incredible reminder.  Life has changed a lot but still it remains.  Much like God’s faithfulness…

Granted, it’s not quite the scar it once was!  From a five inch long slight smile across my neck that was bumpy and slightly grotesque to a nearly 7 ½ inch beauty (second surgery) which was somewhat cosmetically better…to today!  The end is just a faint pink line, but most is still quite visible.    

And so, 10 years later and I still get questions about my scar!  I think when you have a large scar on your arm, people start assuming fun accidents involving ladders or chainsaws or grizzly bears.  When you have a large scar across your neck, people don’t know what to think!  As a result, my scar has garnered quite an array of responses!

When I say array…I literally mean array!  Think less of the color wheel and more of a color spectrum… People’s reactions and responses have been numerous and often hilarious.  Good, bad, ugly, downright confusing… You name it, I’ve probably heard it!

I decided the best celebration of my scar’s 10^th birthday was to chronicle some of those stories.  In the words of another old, good friend – Larry the Cucumber – “I laughed, I cried, they moved me, Bob!”  

So, without further ado…

The Scar Chronicles

When I first came back to SAU after surgery, I didn’t really know how to let people in on the dramatic life changes since we left for Christmas break. Still covered in bloody gauze, I covered my neck with a scarf.  People heard my [nonexistent] voice before they ever saw my neck.  They would always say “Are you sick?”  And, much to my elder sister’s displeasure I would say “Oh! Not really!”  (I thought this was funny because I didn’t have the head cold they expected… Faith did not.)  When they did see my scar, they would gasp ‘what happened?!”  “Umm, over break I found out I had cancer and they took out my thyroid…” was just a little awkward. For the same surprised reaction, however, I found I could tell a better story.  So, I started to say “Well, an old lady came up to me in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  Robbed me at knife point.  Stole my Carmex!” Most looked shocked for like a second, laughed, and then asked what really happened.  While I felt the story softened the blow, I had to stop telling it when the reactions I received included “But why did she want your Carmex?!” and “Was that the Wal-Mart in Jackson?  That is why I NEVER shop there!  I only go to the Meijer.  Way less dangerous!”   People still talk about this story.  Mostly me.

This probably should have deterred me from making up stories but sometimes I still do occasionally for a laugh.  One of my favorites is to tell young people that I was born with my head on backwards, which of course was fine until I wanted to learn how to drive.  So, I had to have a couple of surgeries to turn my head back around.  “If you look closely,” I say while demonstrating “my head still doesn’t sit totally straight.  It kind of points to the left and I can’t get it all the way to the right.  So someday they might have to fix that.”  Most pause and go “nuh-uh! That’s not true!”  And I tell them the real story.  Last year I told it to a kid in a class I subbed (instead of my normal spiel found somewhere below).  He tended to be a bit of a punk and I wanted a reaction out of him.  But he just said “oh” and left. The next day I was in the class again and some other student asked me about my scar.  He whipped around and went “You’re so stupid!  She told us about it yesterday.  She had to have her head turned around because she was born with it backwards!  DUH!”  He body slammed a reading pillow while rolling his eyes at his “ignorant” classmate.  I cleared it up with her.  I have no idea what he believes…

My first scar especially, curved up like a slight smile.  When people ask questions by saying “what is that?” I like to respond with “It’s my second smile!  See!  I smile even when I frown!”  Then I typically frown and trace my smiling scar.  The kids I work with get PUMPED about this. (I was once introduced to a parent by an excited student saying, “see her second smile, mom!”) I can really attribute it back to a friend from college, however.  We worked together on a custodial team and he said, “can I turn your scar into a smiley face?” “Why not!”  I replied, expecting him to take the sharpie in his hands to put two single dots for eyes.  When I realized the dot was becoming a full-fledged eye, it was too late.  What did I do?  Leave it as a cyclops?  Two full sharpie eyes and nose later and my neck had a face!  Which could only be [mostly] removed with 100% acetone!  The smile (without the face) lives. 

For whatever reason, when people see what appears to be a slit throat, they assume the worst.  I’ve gotten many questions about suicide attempts.  My trigeminal nerve, carotid artery, and jugular all sit directly behind my scar (cancer was “carved” off of all three).  If I was aiming with the scar I have, I don’t think I would have missed.  But it also isn’t the residual scar from a rope burn from an attempted hanging.  Guys, I promise I didn’t try to slit my throat! Or hang myself!  Or…anything in that direction!

My scar is (or was), for whatever reason, a people deterrent.  Some have come clean about it.  Others I hear about through the grape vine.  My scar scares people apparently??  It’s how I found out about one of my favorite rumors! 

My junior year I lived on a floor of mostly freshmen.  I pretty much kept to myself (for reasons in another story) but one girl seemed to avoid me like the plague.  For a freshman who didn’t know me, I thought this strange.  But, remember, I was at a pretty tame Christian Liberal Arts College.  We were eating a floor dinner once and I was talking to my RA about my upcoming/recent surgery or something and freshie sat nearby, listening nervously.  At one point she released a visible relief style sigh.  I asked her about it casually.  It was then I found out that, (though it wouldn’t surprise me if it somehow went back to my own mugging at Wal-Mart story…), I found out I was in a gang!  Or had been.  She had been avoiding me because she was afraid.  Because someone told her I had been in a gang.  (This story is WAY funnier if you know anything about me and my general persona in college or high school!).  After her confession, the stories trickled in from others.  At least twice it was reported I got my scar in a gang initiation.  A few times it was in a gang fight.  The most common report was, thank the Lord for redemption, I was in a gang, but I turned my life around and wanted out and they slit my throat.  I’ve never been so hard core before or since!

Not related but part of the “deters people” family of stories…years later I was working in Outdoor Education when I coworker reported the humorous story of a kid who, after being scratched in Reptiles and Amphibians class, declared he didn’t care because girls liked guys with scars!  We laughed collectively before I (it is my fault, really, I don’t know why I said anything!) commented something along the lines of “guys get more attractive with scars, but girls don’t, how does that work??” And a male coworker replied, “It’s true!  I think girls with scars are super unattractive.”  The table went quiet.  Another coworker went, “Dude, Anika has a super noticeable scar…”  To which the first responded with “I know.”  I had long expected my scar was an “attraction deterrent”.  While I had ZERO desire to attract any of my male coworkers, it was the first time it had been voiced so clearly.  Cheers!

Sometimes people get confused about anatomy…

I had a professor that I SUPER appreciated in college.  He cared about his students in and outside of the classroom and prayed and supported me through a lot that first semester especially.  He had this tendency the first few weeks (up to a couple of months) I was back, however, to look at me with these eyes.  Eyes that spoke a pity and an appreciation I didn’t feel I deserved – like maybe I was a living, breathing miracle.  I was in his office middle of the semester, talking about life, and at one point he stopped me.  He said “Wait, when you talk about your thyroid, you keep gesturing to your neck.  Where is the thyroid?”  I explained that it was a butterfly shaped organ that sits over the larynx, toward the base of the neck and I watched a lightbulb go on.  He responded “You’ve always said thyroid, but I think I was thinking hypothalamus.  I thought they opened your neck and went up from there into your brain…  That makes way more sense!”  The conversation moved on from there.  In my mind it was a simple mistake: he thought something first and it lodged.  It happens!  Until I remembered what the hypothalamus does.  No wonder he looked at me like I was a miracle!  Although, I did notice the weird look seemed to stop…

The summer after my first surgery I was counseling at camp.  I, (as part of another no longer remembered conversation), mentioned that I didn’t have a bellybutton (the button was lost with my gallbladder surgery, just the indent-ish hole remains, but saying you don’t have a bellybutton gets a fun response).  The other responded with a quick but otherwise serious “oh! Is that why you have that scar across your neck??”  “No…?” And then I shared the story with my friends and other counselors and we still laugh.

Last year I was subbing in a third-grade classroom.  I had been in this room a few times as the teacher was a friend of mine.  Towards the end of one day, a young gentleman came up to me and said, “Miss Kasper, did you just have a baby?”  I was suddenly very self-conscious and confused.  “No…” I replied hesitantly, waiting for the explanation I knew was coming from this particular young lad.  I braced myself.  “Then why do you have that scar across your neck?”  I chuckled and told him I would tell him tomorrow.  The class left, and I LAUGHED!  At eight years old, I’m glad he didn’t have all of the facts of life figured out yet, but I am still concerned about how he thought babies were born…

Not quite anatomy but questions about my scar sometimes warrant further concern.  Like the young girls who asked about my scar and when I gave them a brief synopsis one replied with wide eyes and not enough laughter to be attempting a joke: “DID YOU DIE???”  She seemed relieved when I told I did not and was still, in fact, very much alive. 

Most people don’t just come up and make comments about my scar unless they are children.  Which I get.  I am totally okay with people asking about my scar and, in fact, I would rather they just ask then create rumors about my shady past.  But I also realize that not everybody is, and I while I know the answer, they don’t!  Others’ stories don’t include a quick surgery.  As a result, however, I am surprised when adults do comment.  Here are some of my favorites: 

• At a grocery store a late teen/early 20’s cashier decided to make small talk by asking “so what’s up with your neck?”  I’m normally pretty vague (because I don’t always have the time or energy to deal emotionally or otherwise with people’s reactions to “cancer”) but perhaps my shock and his abruptness caused me to reply with a simple “Cancer.  Surgery for nearly five hours.”   It is the fastest I have ever seen someone ring up groceries (outside of Aldi – those people are like cheetas!) and he ended with a quick mumbled “have-a-nice-day-ma’am”.  I felt bad for ruining his cheery mood. And also for laughing at him in the car… 
•  As a bonding/why not? activity, I went with my fellow female RA’s and RD boss to do water aerobics my senior year of college. Now, the water aerobics class was about 96% people over the age of 60.  At one point, an elderly(er) gentleman came up to me in the pool.  Pointed to my neck and said “I see you’ve got yourself a zipper! Me too!  Wanna see?”  I didn’t say yes but he moved the swim shorts (pulled up to his chest hair) down to his bellybutton to show me a scar that looked like his gallbladder had been taken out.  I didn’t stick around for the story… 
• I had one concerned stranger tell me in a one sentence lecture that my “neck tattoo” was the reason no one respected my generation. 
• I had someone ask me to explain the meaning behind my confusing “neck tattoo”… 
• I had a kid on a skateboard, however, tell me that my “neck tattoo” was “sick!” with a thumbs up of approval.  Another teen once told me it was a “kickin’ tattoo!”
•  (*Apparently tattoos are like their own section. Do people actually get tattoos to look like scars?  Also, I once joked I would get it tattooed over.  With ivy.  Or barbed wire.  If I wasn’t so attached to my scar as is, I think barbed wire would be sweet!) 
• I have had random people (typically women in their 40’s and 50’s) tell me if they had such a hideous scar they would use some decent cover-up!  Because there is nothing people like better than unsolicited advice from strangers!

My favorite reactions are the ones from kids!  They have less of a filter and less inhibition.  Their natural curiosity lends more quickly to a voiced question.  “Miss Anika, Miss Kasper, Anika…umm, teacher person…” (Depends on the environment) “…what happened to your neck right here?” (as they draw an imaginary line across their own necks…or mine).  I eventually will give them a short health and science lesson that includes them feeling for their own thyroids and telling them some of the important stuff it does and telling them mine “got sick” and had to be taken out.   Before that, however, I always ask “Well, what do you think happened?”  First – it gives them a chance to think about why they asked and what they actually want to know.  Second – it gives me a chance to figure out what people, even little people, think about it.  Third – it often results in funny, occasionally well thought-out, answers…   Including (but nowhere limited to)… 

• You probably just had some sort of surgery or something… 
• A dog attacked you! (I’ve also gotten cat, bear, and dinosaur) 
• You were playing “Red Rover” but they caught you! 
• You dropped your necklace into the fire and you picked up and put it back on when it was still hot and it burned you. 
• You were at a rodeo and the cowboy threw the rope too far 
• You were clothes-lined (this is also a common question of well-meaning adults) 
•  My mom said you shouldn’t play with knives... 
• You were wearing a hoody and you jumped off the playground equipment, but your hood got caught and you just dangled there until someone helped you out of your sweatshirt. *shrug* It happened to my brother once…

*I can’t make this stuff up!  I’ve tried!  Also, when I worked at the daycare it became, unintentionally a favorite story.  Sometimes a preschooler would climb on my lap and request “Miss Anika, will you tell us the story about how you got that thing on your neck?” And then she would summon the others…  I mean, it IS a good story…

I think this synopsis needs to end with the reality that even though I love my scar… I wasn’t always okay with it.  Even when I got past the “make it go away” and found myself relatively attached to it, it also made kind of insecure.  People were/are sometimes weird around my scar.  I can sometimes get weird (unintentionally) around my scar…like it turns darker red when I’m stressed or struggling, and I cover it when I’m feeling vulnerable or overwhelmed…  It left this looming of question of “will people accept me with my scar?”  Not in spite of or despite my scar but with it.  Not because they are able to look past it but because it was so much part of my picture.  It’s no longer the burning question – mostly because I have friends who are stinking amazing…

I was honored to stand in a wedding for dear friends of mine the summer after my second surgery.  That meant that my scar was red, bumpy and noticeable to boot!  I fretted about how I didn’t want attention to be on my scar (for me or others) on their special day.  An older friend said she had some great coverup samples and told me to experiment with them, use what worked, and later give back the rest.  I found one that nearly completely faded it!  BUT it didn’t erase it.  In the end, it was okay.   My newly married friends came and visited around the holidays and brought their wedding album which I had made it into as a member of the bridal party.  My dear friend said, “did I tell you what happened?”  “No…” I replied (trying to figure out if I should tell her I forgot to take my white hair tie off my wrist and it was in like every photo).  She responded “my photographers called when editing photos and said they noticed one of my bridesmaids had a pretty noticeable scar and asked if we wanted it edited out.  I told them ‘no’ and that it was something I loved about you.”  [I told them about the hair tie then because I was a little irritated they could edit out my scar but not my awkward white “bracelet”].  Sometimes when I’m in a funk where I don’t like my scar, or just need to be reminded of the incredible people in my life, I think of this story and tear a little.  I am SO grateful for friends such as these!

So, I raise my glass and toast to the past…because it’s been a hilarious ride!  Happy 10^th Birthday my old friend!  Cheers! 

It's just a sewing tracer! Promise!

After Surgery #1

After Surgery #2 (This is my "I just one a goldfish!"picture)