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30 Years Strong

Yesterday, I turned thirty.

I woke up, got ready for work, kissed my husband goodbye, and headed down the highway. I thought: What music fits today? And, oddly enough, it was Taylor Swift on shuffle. The girl who sang “I’m feeling twenty-two!” is who I wanted to listen to on the day I turned thirty.

I stopped at Bagel World, got a marble rye bagel with olive cream cheese, and ate it at my desk before students arrived. I drank a cup of strong coffee. I remembered birthdays past — some lovely, some less-than-so. I remembered it was also my cousin’s birthday; I’d been born on his tenth birthday three hundred miles away, and now we are each starting a new decade.

I remembered going to a wedding on my 25th and sitting with friends from church at a round table with a white table cloth. Having my name called from the dance floor. Standing in front of a room full of mostly strangers as they sang “Happy Birthday.” Feeling remembered. Feeling embarrassed. Feeling cared for. Feeling like twenty-five was unimaginably old.

When I walked through the lunchroom yesterday, the high schoolers sang “Happy Birthday” (they will always remember because I share a birthday with one of their comrades), and then after school, my international students brought me a surprise birthday cake to make our meeting celebratory. Their bashful faces as they presented it to me reminded me how young and shy they still are.

Coffee with my mom.

Tea with my sister.

Then the drive home to my husband who somehow always knows how to make a day special. We had dinner in the cozy candle-lit upstairs of a restaurant we’d been to, but never upstairs.

“This is perfect,” I said. “We’re at a place we know we like, but a new part of it so it feels like my birthday.”

There were flowers from a friend on the table, texts and phone calls from people I love. Singing voicemails and messages of encouragement.

A beautiful typewriter that I wish I could be using right now to write this blog.

All of this is not to show that I had the most amazing day (even though it was amazing).

Mostly, it is to remind myself that turning thirty is a beautiful accomplishment. Many of the people I most love and admire are thirty or have been at one point. With age comes wisdom (if done correctly), and yesterday I felt more excitement about the year ahead than I did sadness at the years behind. That is saying a lot.

[first day of thirty]

I started writing online in 2012, after a birthday that left me particularly sad and confused and unsure. I was certainly happy to leave twenty-two behind, but there was so much that I couldn’t anticipate about the year to come. So, I sat down on my parents’ couch with a French press of coffee and started this blog (or the early manifestation of it).

For seven years, I’ve been thinking, processing, expressing, sharing, and writing in this space that holds so much of me. There have been times when I’ve looked back and cringed at what I wrote. I’ve even toyed with deleting old posts that feel outdated, not me, or just plain silly to preserve my self-respect. I haven’t let myself, though. To write, you need to be honest.

So, what will I do with my first full day of Thirty?

clean my car
do laundry (but I did help with a load…)
worry about finances
think about what to name the baby
stress about the right stroller
wonder how I’ll write when I have an infant

Instead, I will make stock out of a chicken we roasted this week and vegetable scraps.

I will clean my desk off, rearrange it, and write a blog post about thirty and all the joy that is to come.

I will go for a ride in the car with my husband.

I will watch an episode of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

I will enjoy a day of rest, companionship, and anticipation of what is to come.


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Things My Students Say

“When did you find out? Last week?”

I smile. I am standing in front of a room full of students just before the bell rings.

“July,” I say, evening out the stack of papers in front of me.

“What?!” There is consternation on their faces.

“Why did you wait so long to tell us?” one girl asks.

[this former two-year-old can’t wait to teach her two-year-old how to garden]
When I say the word “baby,” I’m not sure how they’ll react. I’ve taught some of these students for four years, off and on. Sometimes I feel like I’m a bad habit they can’t shake — I chase them from Latin to English and back again. Part of me thinks they won’t care. What does it matter to them, anyway? Apart from an eight-week substitute and perhaps a less-energetic Ms. Hawkins Knell, not much will change for them.

But this morning when I got dressed, I looked in the mirror and thought: It’s time.

There are things you wait for patiently, the time smoothly running as you go about life. I’m not quite sure I know what those things are; they’re few and far between for me.

I wait with anticipation. I wait with a leaning-forward.

Waiting for this baby is different from any other waiting I’ve ever done. On the one hand, I want the day to come tomorrow. On the other, I push it as far away as possible. This waiting is filled with curiosity (who will she look like? what will he enjoy? will she laugh like me? will he have Gabe’s eyes?), fear (WHAT AM I DOING? can I actually handle this? HELP.), excitement (I can’t wait to show the baby the world! share all the things I love! build our family and its culture and its ways!) and doubt (I am not the person to do this).

Along with my excitement, there is so much to process, think about, worry about, freak out about.

One thing I love about my students is they didn’t express any of these things.

They expressed joy.

[I originally bought this as a joke with a student I worked with over the summer. Now, it’s feeling like a not-joke to myself.]
Here were some other gems from the day:

“Can I hug you, Miss Hawkins?”

“Now you can’t drink coffee!!” (I assured him I could, indeed, have one caffeinated cup and some decaf.)

“You have to eat so healthy now.” (Later at lunch, this student walked by me with a twinkle in his eye, nodded at my red pepper dipped in hummus, and said, “Good job.”)

“You’ll have to go to the bathroom all the time!” (This one surprised me — must have experience with pregnancy.)

 

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An Hour a Day

Yesterday, as I was leaving school for the summer, I thought: Why does this always end with a whimper? The build-up, the high-energy anticipation of finals and graduation and students’ summer excitement dissipate, and I am left cleaning out my room, attending meetings, and, at the end of the day, wandering out of the building with the sense that this cannot be the end.

It is the end, though, and the 2017-2018 school year is over. In many ways, this year has been fraught with anxiety. Getting married is always a little daunting, but doing it in November with two days of honeymooning is perhaps lunatic. Poor Gabe had to adjust to my moods and my fears and my intense joy (although he claims none of this was surprising to him), and I was expected to jump right back into my life although it no longer looked like my life. The students never know what to call me, and my coworker says it’s my fault (“Pick one!” he teased). What I picked is too long, so the students are left oscillating between Miss Hawkins, Mrs. Knell, Ms. Knell, Mrs. Hawkins, and the poor things stutter just like I do when I introduce myself to new students.

“I’m M….” I say, shaking their hand, blinking, because if I say Miss Hawkins, I feel like I’m lying. If I say Mrs. Knell, I feel like I’m talking about someone else. Usually, I settle for something like Ms. Knell or even Ms. Hawkins Knell, and the interaction is far more awkward for people watching than it is for the new student who will forget my name entirely.

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This is the first full day of summer, and the first day of my writing challenge: write for one hour every morning. I feel like Hemingway and Woolf and all these writers I admire and loathe at the same time are sitting behind me, with typewriters, a cigarette dangling out of their mouth, and a glass of bourbon, muttering, “Come on, seriously? You’re daunted by writing one hour a day? You haven’t got the stuff.” I hear their typewriter keys clicking furiously even while the birds are singing out my open window, and I think, You’re right. I haven’t.

What is THE STUFF?

I went to a Barre class for the first time at the YMCA last night, and as I worked up the most disgusting sweat and realized the 60-year-old woman in the corner was way stronger than I, I realized that maybe ‘the stuff’ to go to a Barre class and finish without dying is the same stuff I need to do this challenge.

Maybe ‘the stuff’ looks more like writing a 5k than being creative genius.

Maybe ‘the stuff’ is the same thing that gets me up out of bed at 6:00AM during the school year.

Or, maybe ‘the stuff’ is the fake-it-till-you-make it attitude that has gotten me through many of life’s challenges so far.

If I tell myself “You’ve got this!” every morning, maybe I’ll have a slim pile of poems or a well-crafted essay come September.

There’s also the chance that what I will have is not so much a beautiful finished product but a stronger writing muscle. The ability to sit and write for an hour without stopping. The well-worked creativity that has been hiding for some time.

Either way, I don’t know how people write outside of a writing community. That’s what I emailed my writers’ group this morning as I embarked on my first hour of slow and dutiful typing. I know I couldn’t slog through the hard times without other writer friends who remind me that process and product are inseparable, and that a good dose of reality mixes well with some naive optimism.

Summer 2018 looks scary and exciting, and while I may not know exactly what to have my students call me, I do know that as a writer, I am Catherine Hawkins, and that feels about right.

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Who’s your favorite?

My students are constantly asking me who is my favorite. It reminds me of when I was little and I was convinced that my parents must have a favorite among the four of us siblings — how could they possibly love us all equally? We were so vastly different, bizarre, and needy in our young years that the idea that my mother and father could look us in the eye and say they loved us all with no holds barred seemed laughable.

Now, I tell my middle and high school students that I do not have a favorite. I mean this to the bottom of my soul, to the top of my heart, and all around. I mean it from my Monday to my Friday, from my happiness to my sorrow. I mean it from when I am angry at them to when I think there is no greater joy than hearing young people happy.

I mean it every time I say it.

Because I read these articles, hear these horrifying stories and think: that could be me.

I signed up to teach them, but really this means a lot more than I thought. It means I will help them navigate awkward social situations, I will engage their questions when I am exhausted from 18 hours of waking and walking and talking, and, I realize, it means that I would die for them. Each and every one. And that I wouldn’t regret it. And that this is what it means to love.

I love all of them, I would protect all of them, and I am sick reading these stories and praying that if this ever happens to me, I will not think twice before jumping between my curious, loving, thoughtful, funny, crazy, thoughtless, beautiful students and someone who wants to hurt them.

When I entered this field, I thought the most difficult questions I would need to grapple with were pedagogical and philosophical. I was very wrong.

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Latin in the Summertime

IMG_1382Twice a week, I tutor an incoming 8th grader at Barnes and Noble. I order a large green tea, he tells me he’s “fine” when I ask, and we launch into Lingua Latina, every middle schooler’s dream way to spend a summer morning. He never complains — even when I open the door for it — and his desire to do well is lovely. I hope he doesn’t lose it come September.

We even made a friend. Glenn is retired and he comes to Barnes and Noble every morning. I never noticed him until, as I rounded the corner of the cafe, I saw him talking to my student. My hackles immediately went up (which is not exactly the most sane response to a stranger talking to a middle schooler, but my maternal instincts are strong). Glenn proved kind and engaging, Latin being the magnet it usually is in public.

“I heard you talking over there, and I thought: I know some of those words! I took Latin all through high school and I loved it.” Glenn is quick to divulge the ways in which Latin helped him with vocabulary, writing, etc., but I can see my student’s eyes glossing over. I do not want to squelch this man’s excitement, so I smile and talk about my teaching and love of languages.

Glenn is surprised that I teach Latin, and the next time we meet, he gets up excitedly, a red book in his hand.

“Have you heard of this?” he asks, handing it to me. “After we met, I was thinking about all the Latin I took and I remembered this book.”

It’s a book on Latin in English, a huge list of Latin terms that one could use in everyday speech. I’d never heard of it, I know my coworker would love it, and I thank him for thinking of me.

IMG_1357 (1)Many people are surprised that I teach Latin. More are surprised that I enjoy it. I’m not sure I fit the stereotype of Classics enthusiast (at least I hope I don’t), and yet I’m never quite sure how to respond to such shock. Part of me wants to enumerate all the other things I love just to balance it out, but the other part wonders what I could change to seem more of a Classicist.

My coworker and I have been brainstorming the upcoming year: How do we make it fun? How do we make Latin more part of our culture instead of just something students have to do to graduate? How do we collaborate and make our subject more interdisciplinary? Each of us brings unique things to the table, and honestly I am grateful to be able to lean on his knowledge of Roman history and other things I somehow missed during my education.

I sit with my student at Barnes and Noble, and I worry about him losing interest. I make sure to move from thing to thing — translation, vocabulary, grammar, derivatives — because nothing kills joy faster than doing the same thing over and over and over. I wonder if I should make him call me Miss Hawkins instead of Catherine because in the fall he will have no choice, but it feels strange to be in striped shorts and a tank top as “Miss Hawkins.” He never wants to chat afterwards, and I bid him adieu until next time.

“Are you a tutor?” the woman next to me asks as my student hurriedly leaves.

“Yes, we’re working on Latin,” I say.

“You’re good,” she says. “You make it fun.”

I am pleased.

“Thank you, I’m glad. He’s also smart, so that helps.”

I’m a little embarrassed how much this affirmation from a stranger makes me. You would think after tutoring for seven years I would no longer need someone to tell me I can do it. You would think I had arrived.

September will find me teaching Latin and ESL, not teaching English (alas), trying to integrate music, history, and etymology as much as I can, and learning and re-learning my students as a year-older and a summer-wiser.

Now, I am enjoying my twice-weekly tutorings, my days in the sun with my old babysitting charges, visiting with friends, and gearing up for all the fall will require of me.

Today, Glenn asked if I taught full-time.

“Yes,” I said. “September, I’ll be back at it.”

“So no more Barnes and Noble,” he replied.

It wasn’t a question so much as a realization.

[First Photo: Andrew Phillips]

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WriterTeacherSingerSpy

Salzburg

I have been laboring over this piece now for days. It’s the first time I’ve ever sung alto in a choir, and my reading skills are finally being honed after years of skirting by on melody. My music is all marked up in a vain attempt to make sense of the accidentals and crazy key changes and seemingly senseless alto line.

I take a deep breath.

I plunk out the notes again.

Jen tells me to listen to the recording, to try to pick out my part.

“Copland thinks chordally, so it’s really helpful,” she says.

The first moment we began singing it in choir, I thought: Have I sung this before? How do I know this?

Ah, years ago. In Boston — Jen was the soloist and my mom and I had travelled down to see her. It’s a big piece. An overwhelming piece. And I could feel right away that I had heard it before.

It’s kicking my butt.

~     ~     ~

Miss Hawkins, is English your life?

[Just one of them.]

In reference to Edmond Dantés and Mercédès:

Well, obviously they didn’t love each other enough, or they would have waited. They would have gotten married.

[Hold on: What about circumstances? What about life? Is it possible that you can love someone deeply but have it not work out?]

In reference to Aylmer and Georgiana in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark:”

I think he really loved her. He was trying to help her.

[Woah, woah, woah! Careful. What is love? Aylmer obsesses over a tiny blemish on his wife’s cheek, to the point where it is all he sees of her. All her beauty and charm and kindness means nothing. Is that love? Trying to change someone? Trying to make them perfect?]

In reference to a grammar grade:

Wait – so you took a whole point off because I missed a verb tense?

[Yes, it’s called grammar.]

Why aren’t you married yet?

[Because I haven’t met anyone I wanted to see every day for the rest of my life.]

Really?!

[Here is where I wonder at their ideas of love and marriage. How I find it more amazing that anyone has found someone they like enough to see every day than it is that I haven’t.]

Why do you like writing so much? It’s boring.

[No! My heart!]

Why would you want to become a teacher?

[Here, I pause. Why? Do I tell them the truth? That it crept up on me and surprised me? That really, these twelve faces are the reason I became a teacher? And all their manifestations? They think I am not cool because I’m a teacher. This bums me out.]

Miss Hawkins, can I have some of your buffalo chicken calzone?

[No. Way.]

~     ~     ~

As difficult as the Copland has proven to be, it isn’t the piece that excites me. It’s the Whitacre that puts bubbles in my blood, makes my heart swirl. I listen to it over and over. I imagine da Vinci, consumed, obsessed, like Aylmer in Hawthorne’s short story.

the sirens’ song

I wonder what it must be like to feel compelled to create. To destroy the boundaries that the known world has imposed.

I sink into the low notes with silky enjoyment of their depth.

I paint pictures with my voice.

[7th graders: This is one of my other lives.]

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A Hundred Years of Singing

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I remember discovering music as a little girl in the old brown church. Out the thin windows, I could see the pink hydrangea tree dipped down to the ground, bent from years of blooming. I couldn’t read yet, but I stood next to my father and followed him. I remember wondering How do I know where to put my voice next? and it was like the first time you think maybe there is more to be known than you will ever learn.

My grandfather used to sing “How Great Thou Art” under his breath while he hoed the garden, sorted the mail, wrote notes in his little breast-pocket notebook. He would hum and whistle, and ever since he’d lost some of his hearing, the tune hadn’t been quite right.

My Maine grandpa would sing fun ditties as he rocked us in his rocking chair. “How much is that doggie in the window?” and other silly songs that came from decades ago. It was when he took out his harmonica, though, that the music really started — his gnarled, hard-worked hands making music unlike any I had ever heard before.

And then there was singing in the car, belting along to Randy Travis and other 1990s country artists, wondering why I sounded different from the man singing. I hadn’t yet learned what octaves were.

I remember staying in the blue van while my family left because we’d gotten to my grandparents’ house, but it was in the middle of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” and there was no way I was going to miss that key change, that high note at the end.

Standing in front of a large woman at church, in awe of her operatic voice but also afraid of it and confused by why she was always a little bit behind everyone else.

Getting a thrill whenever “Black Velvet” came on the radio. Alannah Miles’ sultry voice and lyrics of desire had me enthralled before I hit kindergarten.

My great-grandma played the piano by ear, sang through the open window while she washed dishes and hoped someone from Hollywood would walk by. She never did get her big break, but she sang for 105 years.

~     ~    ~

We start our lessons with stretching to the sky and then hanging loose like a rag doll. I tell her to take deep breaths, to feel her back expand with air. We do sirens to activate the different registers, we talk about our diaphragm and how it supports our breath, and we talk about opening our mouths as the notes get higher.

She loves to sing hymns. She has big hazel eyes that take in what I say with this look of hunger to learn it all. She asks to sing “Amazing Grace,” but she doesn’t want to sing it alone.

“Can we sing it together? You know, when you sing different things than I do?”

“You mean when I sing the alto line and you sing the soprano line?” I ask.

“Yes, yes! Can we?”

Who would say no? Besides, I love hearing her little-girl voice paired with my slightly-less-little-girl voice, a cappella in my practice room with the string of Christmas lights.

I’m not sure she’ll be able to hold the soprano line, and she falters a bit. Then her voice stops wavering. She sings with confidence. At the end, we smile at each other.

I tell her I love singing with her.

I don’t tell her that she’s been gathering music memories for eight years, that they will build on each other and come out at surprising times.

I don’t tell her that maybe she’ll remember singing “Amazing Grace” with her voice teacher, how the mismatch of their voices mimicked the mismatch of their time of life.

[Photo: geraldbrazell]

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Things I’ll Miss

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I spent the last three months in a house with wind chimes. I woke up in the middle of the night to the music of them in the breeze, and there was an eeriness to it. I had to grow accustomed to its sound.

But I did grow accustomed, and soon I will miss the music of wind in glass.

I have never awaited summer with less anticipation.

[She hugs me, tucking her head in like a child, and her face is red. “It’s just hitting me now,” she sobs into my shoulder, “everyone is leaving.” I take her hand and say, “I know this is hard, I know. But you’re going to have a wonderful summer, and next year, the first day of school will be just as exciting and fun as every other first day of school. It’s just hard right now.” And I try to get her to act – to put on the performing persona she does so well in homeroom – but the pictures are proof that hiding pain only works for so long.]

Good evening, my name is Catherine Hawkins, and I am an Upper School Latin teacher.

I hand out awards one after the other. I try to speak slowly because I rush when I want to be done. I pass out two Perfect Scores on the National Latin Exam; I clap for a row of students so long it has to loop around the stage.

I jump into a class photograph — right in the middle — but I do not tear up once the entire evening.

Someone has to hold it together.

And we all know Jim wouldn’t be able to [cough, cough, no-emotion-man].

I have never awaited summer with less anticipation.

[“Magistra, I will spit out my gum every morning at my new school in honor of you.”]

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I packed up my room. It is hideous and you would never imagine such learning and fun and difficult conversations happened here.

I am not even leaving forever — I’ll be back in September — but there is something about this year that was precious to me. Too dear, maybe, in a way that could not be sustained.

Good thing I have a good memory. Good thing they have left me better than the way they found me.

~     ~     ~

The past few months, I have questioned my work in a way I have never done before.

Is it valuable?
Is it challenging enough?
Is it the easy way out?
Is it glorifying to God?

This past week, tear-stained cheeks, awkward middle school goodbyes, and a gift I will proudly hang on my wall prove that this is valuable work I do.

[“Catherine, he’s been working all day to make you something special.”]

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I grew accustomed to saying the same few names over and over in class: Refocus. You need your textbook, not your workbook. Sit down. That’s hilarious, but NEVER DO IT AGAIN.

I grew accustomed to these faces, these voices, these antics that — on my more tired days — were not quite as endearing as they’d hoped.

I grew accustomed to being their Magistra, but now, as many of them move on, I will forever be their Swagistra.

[Photo: Rie H]

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Flat Magistra Goes to D.C.

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So I’ve been a little busy chaperoning my 8th graders’ D.C. trip.IMG_3129

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I haven’t been answering my emails.

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I’m loving this spring weather. And eating at a restaurant right next to where Lincoln was shot.

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I have a thousand text messages, but I’m just too busy checking out national monuments to reply.

IMG_3280 IMG_3282My coworker loves showing me around. We’re really bonding.IMG_3147And I’ve been eating super healthy on this trip. I’m determined to come back thinner than ever.

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The kids are getting a little tired of looking at my pigtails that look like piglet-ears from Winnie the Pooh, but I forgot a hairbrush, so they’ll have to do.
 IMG_3138I’m Jim’s righthand-man, and he loves posing for pictures with me. I’m the bad-cop in our co-teacher relationship: “You’re out of dress code! Spit out that gum! You’re late for homeroom again! Give me your cell phone!”

IMG_3140All these 8th graders really know how to brighten my day. There isn’t a moment when I’m not wearing the same exact smile on my face this entire trip.

IMG_3158So, if you’re looking for me, I’m a little busy hanging with the coolest almost-high-schoolers ever.

[Fear not – permission was obtained before posting these pictures.]

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Scatterings

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I haven’t sat down to write in I don’t know how long. My journal is a picture that seems to say my life is empty and not worth documenting. My blog is a snapshot of nothingness.

We had this idea to do “LoDe” (Local December Writing Month) because we thought there’d be time during the holidays to write that whatever-we’ve-been-meaning-to-write.

Nope.

Two more grad school classes down, and I’m feeling a little closer to the goal. I wrote a unit on The Odyssey because somehow I graduated with a B.A. in English and never once read it in class. I read it on my own sometime in high school, but I’ve gotta say: Classical literature is not really my jam. It’s so verbose. It’s so formulaic.

I do love the mythology, though. And I love the themes. I’m hoping on this second read-through I’ll be more appreciative of the artistry that went into crafting this epic.

I wrote a unit on it so I’d be better at teaching it, because if there’s one thing students pick up on right away, it’s if you love your subject or not.

We’re singing Veni, Veni in Latin since it’s the last week before break. We talk about the difference between Classical Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin, how Classical Latin is what was spoken during the Roman Empire and Ecclesiastical Latin is what developed during the medieval period and what was (is) used by the Catholic Church. Then, we attempt to sing, with a little processional thrown in for good measure.

There’s such a disconnect between middle school and high school when it comes to singing; my high schoolers look like I’m asking them to chop their arms off when really all I want is a little melody. I always show this video because I love the harmonies and the beautiful vowels and the hilarious way the men contort their faces to make these beautiful vowels.

We finished up our voice lessons for the semester. Two of my voice students sang in the recital, and all six of them sang in the Christmas concerts. I told them I’d better see them open their mouths on the high notes. We still have some “fig-leaf” positions to address, but overall, I was pleased.

My ivy plant still hasn’t died.

I’ve consumed a decent number of cookies this week.

I’ve attended two Christmas concerts and one middle school play in four days.

I realized — last night, in the middle of the Upper School Christmas concert — that I was so out of it, I didn’t even KNOW I hadn’t bought Christmas presents. Wait. I’m supposed to be doing this. Or at least, I’m supposed to be upset that I’m not yet doing this.

I have three Christmas gifts.

I have a lot more people.

Phone calls with distant friends and letters from Philly and an island in Maine help to hide the fact that we’re far away and spread thin.

I ran into my dear friend I haven’t seen since July, and suddenly her baby is five months old and the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen. Suddenly, time has passed and I haven’t changed much but look at this little human. 

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Every day in December, I have kept my promise to read the Advent devotional from the local seminary. Haven’t missed a day, and that’s rare around these parts. Granted, they’re short. One step at a time.

I’m still working on my dad’s sweater. Yep. The same one I started last fall. It’s like I can’t finish a project in under a year. In my defense, it is a sweater that will fit my dad, not an infant. And it is hunter green covered in cables.

So, that’s what’s been going on in my neck of the woods. As friends busy about applying for grad school, raising babies, settling into newlywed life, teaching various subjects, I find myself orbiting my little sector, hoping soon to slow down enough to create what I feel bubbling.