Sarokwel

Okay, disclaimer: I intentionally misspelled the name of the drug I’m talking about, because I have mixed feelings about writing about it.  And I don’t want my post to come up in searches for it on Google.

It’s technically an anti-psychotic. People who are schizophrenic, or very bi-polar take it, to help them not be manic through the day.

I first started taking it two years ago this past summer.  I had not slept through the night in months.  With my first dose– a “baby” dose, or “granny” dose, according to my doctor–I could sleep.  It was incredible, and life-changing.

Earlier this year, we had dinner with another couple: dear, sweet friends from my school.  I mentioned my anxiety.  Neither of them could understand: “What do you get anxious about?  I mean, what makes you anxious?”  It’s hard to explain, how irrational things suddenly loom and have so much power.  I actually had a hard time understanding how someone could _not_ understand what anxiety is like.

Here’s an example.  That summer, I was working in my school’s development office. Sometimes, I would file.  The filing room was on a floor by itself. If you are part of a long-wealthy city family, with tons of money to donate, and have donated for generations, you might have a file there.  Any correspondence, letters from the president, Christmas cards from your family, small donations given in someone’s name… copies all go into the file with your name.

My colleagues would give me a stack of correspondence to take up to file.  I would file them, name by name, date by date.  At my own pace, easy, singing to myself in the warm, dusty sunlight.

A dozen hours later: 3AM.

I am suddenly afraid that I have misfiled something.  I imagine, instantly, that they will need the file in a year or so, and not be able to find it.  I don’t wake up and start thinking about it, I am already in a panic, heart racing, when I wake up. It’s as if my body is reacting to the worst that can happen, before reason can intervene.

I had a similar problem reshelving books at the library. What if I reshelved something wrong, and it was lost for decades?

So: 3AM, I’m in a panic. Adrenaline rushes through me, I’m sobbing, I can’t breathe, I feel sick and floaty.  I’ve been dealing with various forms of this, with various insistent reasons to panic, since I was 17.  But two summers ago, it was the files.

I decided that to keep this from happening, I would just memorize each name of the file that I filed. And the file cabinet in which I put it.  This way, I [mis]reasoned, if I heard anyone complaining that they couldn’t find a file, I would remember exactly where it was.

I have a good memory. I’m good at remembering many things, and many words, and many languages.  For a few days, with a lot of stress and effort, I was able to keep this up.  A few dozen filed documents, and files, and file drawers.  But then– a new middle of the night would happen, and I would realize that I couldn’t, in fact, keep up.  Commence brand new panic.

Over several nights of this, I get more brittle during the day.  I’m tired, and stressed, and the little things that usually don’t bother me start to be really taxing.  Occasionally, I start to cry during the day. I know it’s anxiety, I know it’s chemicals in my brain, and adrenaline in my bloodstream, but I can’t reason myself into feeling calm.  I dread going to bed at night, because I know the panic is coming.

It was such, such a relief, the first night I took sarokwel, and began to get sleepy an hour or so later.  Matt started reading to me from The Hobbit at that same time, in an attempt to give my bedtime something sweet and good, instead of dread.  Night after night, I’d take the sarokwel, settle in to listen to The Hobbit, and get sleepy in due time, and sleep through the night. It was amazing, and peaceful, and healing.

Now, I only take one half of that original small dose; I bite a pill in half each night.  Sometimes, I even take one quarter.  If I wake up and feel panicky, I take a half and suck on it under my tongue, until I feel sleepy and calm.

It has a few minor drawbacks. I’ve gained weight while I’ve been on it, as many apparently do. And, I’m not as alert in the morning with it– I have a harder time waking up, and feel sleepier for longer.  I’ve felt bad, when we have overnight guests, or when we’re with family for the holidays, because I’m always the last one to wake up.

But, still: it’s been an amazing asset to my life.  I am thankful for it. Sometimes I even thank God for it when I pray–that’s how different my nights are.  And my days: the little things don’t pile on when I am rested. It’s just easier to be reasonable.  Do I still get anxious, and more than the average person? Yes.  Do I still wake up anxious and inconsolable?  Sometimes.

That’s all, really. I just wanted to write about sarokwel.  I have some guilt that I take something every day, that I can’t snap myself out of it, that being in therapy for more than half my life hasn’t been enough to rewire my synapses. But mostly, I’m thankful to get sleepy at night, and hear Matt read, and get sleepier and sleepier, and finally fall asleep, knowing I will sleep through the night.

First childhood memory

I have a writer and journalist, Leslie, coming to work with my students after school once a week.  They love it, having a “real writer” come and talk to them.  Sarah, who writes long stories about invented hybrid animals, shows her a new piece of writing every week.  The all have their hands in the air, waiting patiently to tell the writer something, or ask her something. Hairo begins with, “I have _three_ questions…”  They hog her attention.

We are working up to taking a trip to the zoo to interview the zoo professionals.  (Did you know they feed the tigers bloodscicles in the summer?  And yes: they are exactly what they sound like.)  Yesterday, Leslie interviewed me, asking me three questions.  She and the kids took notes, trying to catch everything I said. It was a practice in learning how to write in a personal shorthand, in catching what is important, in follow up questions. They compared notes afterwards, and Leslie showed them her note-taking sheet, so they could see how she shortened words, and scribbled quickly.

The second question they asked was, “What is your earliest childhood memory?”  I remember the green trailer we lived in, the one with the mirrored living room walls.  My bedroom was immediately off to the right. I had a Holly Hobby toy box, and a small wooden bed. (I have a photograph of me sitting on my bed, in Bert and Ernie slippers, so I can remember what it looked like.)  My parents used to let me have Christmas lights strung around my bed year round, and I kept my bottle as long as I wanted (through kindergarten.)  I must have been three in this trailer, because I started going to kindergarten there, and I went to kindergarten when I was four.

I have some bad memories there, too.  My earliest memories of my parents fighting are there, and I fell out of a window once, and I hated going to kindergarten.  I also have a really scary memory of my mom, where she pretended to be blind, to see what I would do.  I panicked, of course, and cried, and finally figured out that the inside of the phone book had important numbers.  When I figured out that I could call someone for help, she reassured me that it was just a game.

As I was walking to the train this morning, I was thinking of that bedroom, and the little wooden bed in the picture, and the Holly Hobby toy box.  I remember jumping on the couch in front of the mirrored walls, to my parents’ music (Rolling Stones for sure, and Joan Jett maybe?  Whatever people were getting high to in 1980). I began to believe in elves in that trailer, a belief that lasted for years.

My first childhood memory is an image, of the light of Christmas lights, and the pink bed from the photo, and my Fred Flintsone bottle, and some sharp sherds of being desperately afraid, and waiting for Hector and Victor (the elves) to come to my pillow at night.  This is hard to put into a sentence or two, for a practice interview.  I talked about the bed, and the bottle, and the Christmas lights.  More than a day later, I’m still thinking about that trailer, and my four-year-old self.

I wonder where those memories are– are they in the deep fatty tissue in my brain?  Do they get renewed, or created whole, when I look at photographs from that time?  Would my mom remember that awful blindness game?  When I think about Hector and Victor today, is the old memory re-varnished, or is a new experience: me walking to the train, thinking of the elves?

Underdressed

I went to a benefit last week, in my capacity at my journal.  It was incredible, an amazing evening, I was moved to tears, inspired, and made lots of great connections.

When I walked into the very famous, architecturally wow setting, though, I flinched because I was ever-so-slightly underdressed.

Actually, I didn’t “walk into” the venue.  A man in “dinner clothes” saw me coming up the walk, and opened the door for me.  He even had a carefully handlebarred mustache.  Did he grow it because he knew he’d be pulling the tab on a pop-up storybook dinner every evening? Or did he have it, which led him into this job?

As the door swung open, I saw first golden glasses of champagne. It looked more yellow than I remembered, and the platters swung towards me in pleasing arcs.

I had taught all day.  At home, I thought about the event. It was to benefit a group that trains and fosters teens who live in conflict areas, to dialogue with other teens from the same area, but from the “opposite side.”  For example, white and black kids from Johannesburg, Catholic and Protestant kids from west Northern Belfast—where there are apparently still walls that separate neighborhoods.

I thought: young people, dialogue, interfaith stuff, charity, education.  I knew I had to dress up, but it didn’t occur to me to dress like I would for a formal evening wedding, for example.  In sum: I did not wear a dressy dress with stockings.  I wore a pretty dress, in a slinky material, with slouchy little leggings underneath (not tights, but again, slinky like.)  I wore a moss colored jacket over the dress, and topped the whole thing off with a hand-embroidered scarf from Palestine.  I wore my black Mary Jane crocs down, but had some gold flats in my bag. (They’re actually my wedding shoes, and I need to break them in.)

I should have worn one of my black dresses, with stockings, and some fancy jewelry that I have. No hand-embroidered anything, and not so many layers.

After the champagne, I noticed who was there, and what they were wearing. I saw many very slender older ladies, in shoes whose names I know from magazines, but cannot spell from memory.  In knit black dresses with trim jackets.  I saw young women with shiny, shiny hair, and chic little bags.  And the photographers!  They were all sidling around behind everyone, in opposite arcs from the passed hor d’oeuvers, snapping away at people smiling at each other.

The first time I ever felt undressed was in the 8th grade.  My English teacher, Mrs. Van Winkle (who had gone to school with my grandpa and taught my mother and all my uncles, and would go on to teach my sister and all my cousins) took me, as a treat, to St. Louis to the Fox Theater, to see a production of The Nutcracker Suite.  At the time, my dad was still laid off from the coal mine.  I hadn’t had new shoes (nor had my classmates) since the first lay offs.

I had dresses and many skirts. Despite my unchurched parents, Sugar Camp Missionary Baptist Church had been picking me up in the church van every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday evening, for years.  I also loved to wear skirts to school, and had slightly fancier dressed from yearly Christmas pageants at school, and singing competitions. In hindsight, I should have worn one of those dresses, some tights, and some shiny black shoes. It was winter, after all.

I had never been to a play, or anything with live music, and had rarely been to St. Louis.  For some reason, I thought that white pants, with white shoes, with no socks, would be just the most elegant thing.  Perhaps _Miami Vice_ influenced the white pants and no socks with shoes thing.  I definitely felt very elegant and “city.”  For the top, I wore a turquoise sweater. I parted my hair on the side and curled and hairsprayed my bangs.

We went in Mrs. Van Winkle’s car. It was a Lincoln Towncar.  It had leather interiors, maroon.  And I noticed that it was much less bumpy inside than any car or truck I’d ever ridden in.  Later, my dad did ask me what the inside of the car was like.  I sat in the back seat, so perhaps Mr. Van Winkle came along with us, although I don’t remember him.

The Fox Theater is incredible.  I can’t remember how interior design critics describe it.  Think: lots of gold, gilding, high baroque, tiling, cabochon jewels in every cranny. Sweeping staircase, drapery, ornate carpets.  Even now, I find it gorgeous. But twelve-year-old me?  It was the fanciest, most rich place I’d ever been. It was like every glamourous ball I’d ever read about, better than two dozen Little House on the Prairie town-bought Christmas presents and a party for the Little Women girls thrown in.  It was the kind of party the master of The Secret Garden would throw.

Other little girls were with their families.  They had on Christmas dresses with cute little wool coats–red and black and grey–over their dresses.  Oh, I had refused to wear a coat that night. All I had was a denim jacket, and it didn’t match.  My parents, typically, didn’t insist.  I hadn’t ever yet been in a suburb, and hadn’t ever yet met the kind of people who had dress coats, or who took annual family trips to The Nutcracker.

It’s hard now, looking back, to separate what I felt when I walked into the lobby, with what I know now about suburban middle-class St. Louis, or what I have experienced about the kinds of families that take annual family trips to the ballet.  And I definitely know about and have a “dress coat.”  But I knew, when my white shoes stepped onto that gorgeous carpet, that I had worn the wrong thing.

I had already felt the cold air on my ankles and legs, and reassured Mrs. Van Winkle that I wasn’t cold, on the way from the car.

Soon, though, I was in my seat, the lights went down, and I saw my first live performance. I pretended Mrs. Van Winkle was my mother, and I had a very fancy bedroom at home.  All the way home, I pretended this, and fell asleep in the car imagining that I rode in it all the time.

Pro-life, except for the people I shame on Facebook

I read the most disturbing thing yesterday in a friend’s LiveJournal post.

(Actually, the _most_ disturbing thing I read yesterday was that one half of all children in this country will at some point in their lives be on food stamps.)

But then, I was reading my friend’s LJ entry, and he described the following scenario:

He has a FB friend who he has defriended once because they don’t share views, and FB Friend sometimes posted the kind of stuff he’d rather not read. But FB Friend re-friended, with the awkward, “Did you defriend me?” so to keep the drama to a minimum, he keeps her as a friend.

FB Friend knows someone in real life who is getting an abortion later this month. FB friend has been posting status updates, calling the woman out by name, like the following: “Jane is getting an abortion on Nov 15th!! PLEASE PRAY!!!”

In his LJ comment box, I told my friend, “You should defriend that person. Not only is she publicly shaming someone (very unChristian like, in my opinion) but if anything–God forbid–happens to this woman after her abortion or on that day, this ‘friend’ is culpable.”  I also told him that he should copy her status updates to the local Planned Parenthood, police precinct, and ACLU.

I personally have very strong and deeply conflicted and emotional opinions about abortion. And I think that it doesn’t matter, in this post, whether or not I think it’s moral or should be legal.  But I think that it is a legal, medical right, and in this country our medical histories and rights are strictly protected by law, and to be private.  And we all have the right to exercise our legal, medical rights without being open to threats or publicly shamed.  My friend’s FB Friend is doing something akin to crying “Fire” in a crowd, and it’s really irresponsible, and immoral.

I ranted to Matt for a while, and then consoled myself by imagining the comments I would write on FB “Friend’s” wall when she makes those posts.  Like, “Christianity is about mercy, not shame.”  ”Jesus would never endanger someone he didn’t agree with.”  ”Those who incite judgment and violence do not inherit the earth.”

30 Poems

I never did write a good poem.  When I was in fourth grade, I got into a haiku phase, and wrote a notebook full of them.  My beloved Mrs. Johnson inked red praise in every margin.

In college, I finally took a poetry writing class with David Clewell, our poet, and fine teacher.  I had gotten into playwriting (and can talk about how the restraint of only writing dialogue is something sestina-like, perhaps) and never had room for an “extra” writing class.  But learning about poetry by writing it, with Clewell, was something each of us did, in turn.  And truly: what I learned there changed how I see language, and changed even how I teach poetry now.

In that entire semester, I wrote probably one poem that is worth anything, and we wrote one a week.  I really believe that anyone who loves poetry should take a class like this– the familiarity we have with song lyrics, and writing short messages, makes us feel that anyone could probably write poetry.  (Untrue.)

My soon to be brother-in-law is a poet, and has taken up an interesting challenge: to write a poem each day this month; he’s blogging them.  I have some friends who really get into Nanowrimo, and some who wouldn’t do that for love or money.

For me, I wrote best when I had consistent criticism, a read-through of a growing play, to hear if the dialogue was true, or if I was veering too on the nose.

I admire the idea of writing a poem a day, of writing something every day, of spending time crafting as one has time, and then saying, “Done, for today.”  I imagine Andrew’s blog growing new poems like those rows of chrysalides, sized tiny to almost-moth.

Draft/timeline

E. cannot sit still.  He cannot stay quiet.  After my first two hours teaching him, I was sure he had some form of verbal and physical Tourette’s.  Some stimulus (which I’m unable to predict mostly) will send him leaping from his seat, across the room, or table shaking, or in and out of closet darting.

He is very likeable, when he’s not driving you crazy.  He loves performing arts.  He’ll see me of a morning, and call out, “Miss!  Do I have you today?!  Acting!  I want to _act_!”

In fact, no group of students will allow him in to do a scene with them.  In fact, he would not be able to sit still with them long enough to prepare a scene.  Somehow, though, when the groups are performing, his body will become still.  He will sneak as close to the performers as possible (often in the cloak closet), crouch on the floor, and cover his mouth, grinning, watching every move and hanging on every word.

He drives his classmates crazy, and angry.  He will not be quiet, even when I’m showing them examples of real sets from the internet, and showing them costumes, and make-up ideas.  He will not sit still, even when I’m telling them about love juice— they will plead with him, yell at him (“Be _quiet!_ I can’t hear her!”) and try to push him into his seat so he’ll stop running around and bothering them.

Once, when I was trying to talk to him–close, telling him one expectation that I thought he could process–he climbed up the radiator and climbed around and above the filing cabinet, to duck a pipe on the other side and run away from me.   He longs to be permitted to leave class to the bathroom, or for a drink of water.  Alas, his advisor will not give him “bathroom tickets,” and so he can never be dismissed.

His classmates have been working on “I Am” poems, and thinking about themselves as part of their community and how they can consider history by checking out their own perspective.  I found this piece of writing in the teachers’ lounge.  It is the longest piece of writing I have ever seen Emmanuel write–the most I’ve gotten out of him ever is one paragraph, not counting the “apology letters” he writes when he is in time out.  (“Dear Miss H.  I am sorry I disrupted the class.  I can contribute to performing arts by ACTING and being good.  I am ready to come back to class and get a Meets for the day.”)

This unfinished essay says so much, and makes me wish I could do more.

“Final Draft/My timeline

One day in 19– of November 26. I was born.  I was born in at 12:37 am I don’t remember anything.

When I turned 1 I learned how to walk and everybody called me cute.  When I turned 2 I learned how to talk a little bit like saying cookie, shut up, mine, and mommy and mama.

When I turned 3 I learned how to eat by myself I was learning how to sribble srabble and spit at the floor and roll on the floor.  When I was 4 I learned how to talk really really good but I stutterd sometimes.

When I turned 5 I learned how to get and sit on the toilet and do my business.  Oh yeah when I was 4 my baby brother Dennis was born.  When I was 5 I went to _____ Elementary school.

When I was 6 I went to 1st Grade I was the student of the month.  When I turned 7 I was in the 2nd Grade I was the High Honor roll and perfect attendence and citizenship.

When I was 8 I was in 3rd Grade that’s when I started to be bad.  When I was 9 I was in 4th Grade and all I got was perfect attendence and I was bad and got suspended 27 times and 6 superintenet.  When I was 10 I was m “

 

 

I don’t know which teacher graded the essay, but all she left was a smiley face, in gray felt tipped pen, in the left margin.

Small thankful

I’ve been traveling a lot, and have a terrible sore throat, and am Monday-of-Progress Reports tired.  But, I wanted to say that I am thankful, because today the kids gave me goosebumps again.

We’ve begun reading the scene between Hermia, Lysander, and Helena. Lysander and Hermia first talk about their love, and needing to leave the laws of Athens, and how love has no straight road. (The kids nodded emphatically to that, which made me smile.)  Then Helena comes in and complains that even though all of Athens claims she’s as fair as Hermia, Demetrius can’t see it. Ederick reads Lysander and wishes to _be_ him, Sarah reads Hermia.  We lose our momentum when the word “bosom” comes up, but get back on track easily enough.

The kids are so great.  They were so willing to give the tricky text a try, and listen to my quick explanations and emphasis, and throw in their own ideas.  And ask, “When Shakespeare says ‘fair’ does he mean smart or hot?”

They read it once, struggling, and then read it a second time. I could hear the blank verse coming out, I could hear them gaining confidence.

Also, here is Ederick’s newest pick-up line: “Hey, Fatima. Why don’t you try out to be the girl who likes Lysander?”

School days

I went from worrying that I wouldn’t have a job at all, to teaching full time and returning to the mad-dash schedule of teaching.  Early to bed, early to rise, extra time given to finding amazing short stories and grading raggedy notebooks full of poems and protestations (“Miss, why did you move my seat today…).

It’s actually the perfect job, although part of me doesn’t want to jinx anything by saying that. 7th grade performing arts!  It’s a long-term subbing position, through this semester, it looks like.  And by that time, I should have all of my certifications up to speed, and hopefully the hiring freeze will be over.  But in the meantime, I’m having the kids do great little freewriting “starters,” read short stories, memorize pieces of “Annabel Lee,” and act out scenes every day.

It’s really hard, the work, the pouring out of all of my energy.  There are still three or so kids I can’t or haven’t yet reached, and their behavior and actions made difficult nuts for me to try and crack each day.

And, the students are so unpredictable.  Remember being 12, at all?  What a crazy time, on the inside, for each of them.  And I can’t figure out, on the fly, from the front of the room or the periphery of their tables, what makes them suddenly cry, stomp away, cry out across the room.  And they are so in the moment, so very literal. If I slip and say, “Anthony, you haven’t written a single thing all hour,” he will rage at the injustice because he has, in fact, written two lines.

I do love grading their notebooks each day, giving them red-inked stars, words of encouragement (“See me after class about how to make your haiku perfect,”) and exhortations to finish assignments they’ve left hanging. Several of them write back to me, questions and notes in the margins.

The very best part of each day, though, is when they’re actually acting out their scenes.  They love it, and it’s easy to keep their attention and behavior on task, because I don’t need to do anything– they are in love with seeing each other perform, and hearing what will happen next.

Oh, Joseph K.

I wrote my undergraduate thesis on physicality in Kafak– and read, for a sweaty, corner-cramped year, all of his works.  (Except for _Amerika_. I’m saving that.)  Oh, the bureaucracy in Kafka, the endless hallways, forms, doorways, misdirections, and missed directions his narrators have to endure.

Today was a Kafka day for me.

There is a “hiring freeze” for schoolteachers in this city. No new teachers (not already in the system) need apply.  I’ve had three principals tell me, wistfully, that I’d be great, they just can’t make a move until the freeze ends.

I think I’ve applied for 64 classroom teaching jobs, and two dozen nannying positions.  For those keeping track at home, I am certified in another state (with reciprocity in this state, during non-freeze times) in grades 5-12 in ELA, I am TOEFL certified, and I was awarded Teacher of the Year in my district.  My PRAXIS scores are out of this world, as are my references: principals say things like, “I wish I’d had an English teacher like Ms. H– things would have been so different for me.”

To no avail.  Finally, a great principal at a great school wants to hire me to teach seventh grade performing arts.  (How awesome a gig is that?!)  He has been fighting HR for two weeks, trying to convince them.  There might be a loop-hole: the regular performing arts teacher is out on sick leave for five months.  Could I be a long-term sub?

One would think so.  In the past 48 hours, I’ve been offered the job, then told it wasn’t possible,then told to send my SSN–quickly–and finally asked to bring certain paperwork to the school ASAP.  The layers of red tape boggle my mind.

I walked to the school today, with my teaching certificate and PRAXIS scores and transcripts and references in my bag, as if they did any good.  No one can officially hire me.  I thought about Kafka’s narrator in _The Castle_, climbing staircases, watching the snow fall, listening at doors, and trying in vain to make connection with someone in the castle.  In the loveliest (and most memorable to me) scene, he picks up a phone extension.  Instead of even hearing a dial tone, he only hears the far-distant sounds of children laughing.  The “man upstairs” cannot be reached.

The principal has a good idea– a way to get me into the school and keep me.  I resist saying too much, or even thinking about it– I am loathe to count my chickens.   Next Tuesday, I will take my paperwork “downtown” and try to get processed.  Two days after that, if I am “in the system,” I can begin teaching.

Can I digress– perhaps boast?– for a moment, to highlight my frustration? I’ve taught adults in Prague, beginner speakers with no English at all.  Children in Haiti, in Creole. Kindergartners in a housing project, “gifted” suburban sophomores and seniors in high school, and all range of middle school: tutoring in math, grammar, Shakespeare, and history.  I don’t _want_ to teach in a private school, where certification wouldn’t matter.  I _believe_ in public schools, whole-heartedly.  Can someone help a teacher out?  Make smooth the way?  Show me the secret passage past the myriad front desks, up to the room where I can get my golden ticket to teach?

I said ruefully to Matt today, “Who knew my undergrad studies would have prepared me so well for real life?”

But I am hopeful.  Tuesday, I will do whatever it takes.  Come a few more days, hopefully I will be planning drama and performance with 100 or so kiddos.  Wish me luck!

the Royal Trees of Riverside Park

Yesterday, I babysat Louisa, one of the little girls from my Sunday school class–I’ve been teaching her in Sunday school for three years now, since she was three. I babysit only occasionally, when my work schedule allows.

We did lots and lots and lots, but in the afternoon, she wanted to play soccer in Riverside Park. She even changed into her complete soccer kit to do so.  She told me the rules, and I guarded her increasingly-getting-wider goal area.  She gleefully escaped, sometimes scoring one point, sometimes two, and sometimes three.  (I don’t know how scoring actually works in soccer, but that sounded reasonable to me.)

We lay in the grass to rest, and she said, “Let’s tell a story.”  Louisa began by telling me the story of the tortoise and the hare.  (Interesting that in US English, we never use those words, save for in that story, which even little children know.)  I made up a story for Louisa, inspired by the way the blue sky looked like lace through the green-to-yellow shuddering leaves above our heads.

“Once upon a time, there was an ancient and wise king.  A dragon searches for him every night.  To escape from the dragon, he decided to turn into a tree. That tree there– see how silvery?  That is the wise and ancient king.  Every night, the dragon walks slooowwllly through the park, looking for the king, but he never finds him.

The dragon is purple and red, with golden scales.  He is very ferocious, but not very smart.”

Occasionally, I stopped, and we’d think about the bit I’d just told.  Then, Louisa would say, “Tell more.”

“There is also a royal empress, and she has loved the ancient king for many centuries.  She is brilliant and brave.  Her love for the king is so deep that she also chose to become a tree–she’s that tree there.  See how their branches go up together? They’re holding hands.  If you come here to the park on a summer night, and listen very, very carefully, you can hear them murmuring–they tell wisdom and love for each other.”

“Is that true?  Like for real life?” Louisa demanded.  I said, “It’s story true.” “Tell more,” she said.

“Every night, the dragon walks through here– he’s searching for a secret, but only the king knows where it is.  (It’s deep inside the big library, but the dragon will never know.)  You can see the gold scales glitter in the moonlight, and it would give you the shivers.

Once, a brilliant young girl came sailing up the river on a royal ship, all the way from China. She had heard of the wise king and empress brilliant and brave, and wanted to meet them.  She had long black hair covered with emeralds, and her cloak gleamed with rubies.  Her ship sailed silently up the river, landing right there.

When she came into the park–she was such a smart little girl–she stood very still, and listened very carefully.  In that way, she knew right away which trees were the royal king and empress.”

“She becomes a tree too!” Louisa said.

“Yes, the young girl–a princess, really–decided to become a tree, too.  Which tree is she?  Yes. Oh, they are wise and kind, and will live long, good lives. They can turn back into humans if they like, but they have good lives here in the park, too.”

After the story, we played it out.  A dried leaf with turned up edges can be a bed if you put it turned-up edges up, or a very good table if you put it down turned-up edges down.  We found good blades of grass for the king, empress, and princess.  You know how sometimes leaves dry full of tiny holes, looking like lace?  Those kind of leaves became skirts for the empress, and a torn leaf rumple was a cloak for the king.

Tiny squares of bark were plates for the table, and books, and pillows.  Slender, tiny twigs were serving pieces.  The royal trio ate breakfast, and slept, and talked about royal and beautiful things they knew.

And then we played some more soccer.