When Time Has Stopped

When time has stopped and will not soon begin,
our labored breath, its burdened rise and fall
records life and life again,
unwilling instruments, ourselves.
We try the walls and find them to be
choices that our hearts have made.
Worlds of promise tease our eyes
as if by wanting we were one with greens and slope,
as easy as the grazers there, or free explorers clothed as children are
in chasing creatures, cloud and sun.
We cannot go, or leave our lives untended,
make our way to some new valley’s home
to sink our hopes in darker soil there.
Owned.
Stilled within.
We wait.


I’ve been hearing this poem in my head lately. I wrote it years ago after my love told me he was moving to a city far away. It was before I knew how to be me without him. I’m not sure why I’ve been thinking about it. When I wrote poetry back then, I wrote it because I had to secure my reality with concrete images. I wrote it to rescue myself. I think I am looking for the place in me that is not that raw vulnerability, and yet is a deep enough place of reality that a poem or a saying would have value if read by another. This blogging idea is presenting an opportunity. Why I am thinking of that poem has to do with preparing myself to leave this house I’ve lived in for thirty years. I’m not going until July, but I am working my grieving all the time. It is a very good move. I’m going to Maine, a place I love ,to be where my daughter and granddaughter are. It’s the right time and place. It’s just that I can’t go there without leaving here.

Say Hello Eileen

Say Hello









In the classroom of third and fourth graders that I taught, we began our day with what we called, “Say Hello. As children came into the room from the bus they chose a partner to play chess with, or a book to read with a friend, or to build a fort in the back room out of the blankets and orange crates that were there for that purpose. During the year I am remembering there were three boys who regularly chose to play hockey with my sheltie Barnaby as one of their teammates. Barnaby had a plastic food dish that served as a puck when turned upside down. One of the three boys teamed up with the dog and the two of them would push the puck toward the goal while the other two tried to intercept. We had worked out acceptable limits to the game. Often they had an audience of other children who had chosen to draw at a table in the back room while they watched the game. Say Hello lasted about a half hour. What I loved about it was that all of us had a chance to find ourselves and become comfortable in our relation to each other and the classroom. Sometimes a restless somebody needed direction or just a conversation with me in order to settle down. I valued that part of our day because it supported the children in their sense of belonging before we ever got into the teacher directed part of our day . I did make one correction to the beginning of our day. I was writing a math lesson as the children entered. I began to notice that most of them had chosen what they would like to do and were talking to their friends but no one had spoken to me.

“Oops,” I said to myself, “this won’t do.” At our morning planning I explained that I felt left out when they didn’t greet me as well as their friends when they came to school. From then on each child came into the classroom with a “ Good morning Eileen”. I love the sound of that in my memory’s review of school days. It became the sound of my connection with each child. I’ve thought if I ever write about those years I might call it “Good Morning Eileen.”

When people ask me how come they let you have the children call you Eileen, I answer, “I never asked them.” When they ask me how come they let you take your dog to school I answer, “ I never asked them.” When anyone, adult or child, came into our classroom, I asked what they would like to be called. I said, “I like to be called Eileen, what do you like to be called?”

A Beginning

This is a beginning that is more than learning how to use my computer. The beginning feels like the beginning of not rejecting a new electronic culture. I am older and we didn’t have computers or microwaves or cell phones or TV while I was growing up. They have all felt like a great clutter that I must try to incorporate into my life, or not incorporate into my life. So I mostly haven’t. I tried a cell phone for a while. I couldn’t find the times when I would want to be so connected by phone to other people. I stopped paying for it. I have happily lived without TV for 25 years. I read instead. And I have never added a microwave to my kitchen. Partly my choices have been because I don’t want to use more resources to run my life than I really need. A lot of my choice making has been to protect my inner life from clutter. Recently, I have had an image of an old curmudgeon who won’t give up her horse and buggy to try out that new fangled automobile. Even though all the preferences I’ve stated are true, I’d like to acquire a happier response to the evolving electronic age. Opening this blog, joining the crowd, telling about what I’m pondering is my starting place.

Traveling in Ireland

I traveled to Ireland with my daughter and granddaughter in the spring. My granddaughter Maija was the driver and the photographer. We reached the Cliffs of Moher. We climbed along paths to the water's edge. Maija tried to get the best picture. This is one of 87 shots of the same place in my picture file. Ireland is green and the sea. The most fun, I suppose, was traveling with my children.