Month: January 2026

I do believe that there is actually something called “the teacher mindset” even though no such concept has ever officially been studied. Years of working in a classroom changes the way a person looks at the clock, the days of the week and the calendar. Everything in life revolves around the demands of being ready and present for those hours dedicated to instilling knowledge in the students in a teacher’s care. Routines define the “teacher year” which begins in the weeks leading to the new school year and never really ends as one cycle bleeds into another. 

Sunday evenings are always a time of preparation for teachers. In addition to the usual duties of working individuals teachers begin to fret over plans for the coming week, even as they understand the many last minute emergencies and situations that may upend all of the work they have done attempting to stay on track with the scope of sequence of the subjects that they teach. As one of my education colleagues calls it, “the Sunday scaries” are a real thing for those who work in schools as they wonder if they have done enough planning to adjust to whatever happens in the hours that lie ahead. 

We teachers become so attuned to being observant and having alternative ideas for those moments when all of the best laid plans go awry that we sometimes come across as being way too controlling to those who have never been in our shoes when strange happenings upend all of the work that we have done. We are all too aware of the thousands of reasons that our school day may morph into events that were not anywhere in our prognostications. We don’t have just a Plan B but plans that go beyond Z. 

I know for a fact that I have at times annoyed members of my family who have never lived in my work world when I question their preparations for all sorts of things. They accuse me of distrusting them when I note possibilities that will change the course of whatever they have decided to do. My years of experience in an ever changing environment have taught me to be ready for anything and so I fret over the idea that things will always go smoothly. Thus the people around me sometimes accuse me of being bossy or overly anxious and yet when things go south just as I suggested they might I never utter the phrase, “I told you so.”

I am no longer actively working in a school but I do homeschooling two mornings a week and even in that tiny environment I have encountered unexpected situations that have forced me to change gears and save the day. I always need a host of alternatives in my pocket to adapt to the needs of my students which is really just the way that life is. 

A good teacher is always ready with extra pencils and paper and a new plan that looks nothing like the one in that they crafted originally. I knew this to be true whenever I interviewed a prospective employee or asked them to demonstrate their abilities with a lesson that they would present to a group of students. I looked for prospective teachers who would be able to think on their feet.

On one occasion an applicant came ready with an outstanding lesson plan that appeared to be ironclad. The only glitch came when the audiovisual equipment that she needed stopped working in the middle of it all. She demonstrated her mettle when she was able to keep the lesson flowing without interruption changing her entire methodology on the fly to keep the students’ attention. It was a masterful presentation and she indeed proved to be an exceptional educator. 

I have been retired from full time teaching since 2012. I find myself unable to completely let go of my teacher tendencies. I clean my house on Saturday mornings just as I did when I had to use my weekends to tie up the loose ends at home while readying myself for the week ahead. I spend time on Sunday afternoons grading the homework of my homeschoolers and analyzing what direction I need to follow with each of them. I awake early during the week and use the sound of the school bus stopping on my corner as a signal to get going with whatever is commanding me on my calendar. Mine are habits forged over the years but they are not unique. I find them being replicated by all of the young educators that I know. For each of us the seasons are not defined so much by the circuit of the earth around the sun as by the timing of the school year and the list of skills and knowledge that we have a limited time to convey to those in our care. 

Perhaps we come across as arrogant “know it alls” but that behavior is baked into our teacher DNA. We know that very few of our days go as initially planned so we have learned to be ready even as we look weeks ahead to be certain that when the last bell rings we have done our utmost to reach every person who sat before us waiting to partake of our attempts to prepare them for the world that they will one day enter as adults. Ours is a task that cannot be left to chance. 

As a daily consumer of Facebook I am often amused by the posts and ads that I encounter that speak to the days of my youth. We humans are rather sentimental and tend to look back on the times of our childhood with great joy as long as our experiences were positive and loving. Mine was quite wondrous save for the time when my father died so suddenly. I am reminded of how strange it was for a man so young to die when I see my former students celebrating their thirty third birthdays and I think of how many moments of life lie ahead for them. It seems almost unreal that such a young man left the earth forever and yet is remembered to this very day by those of us who knew him. 

One of the common posts on Facebook asks what our favorite places to eat were back in the day. When my father was alive that would have had to be a Tex Mex restaurant that was located in the Montrose area of Houston, Texas. It was a glorious place with polished tiles from Mexico welcoming us from the time we walked through the doors. The colors and the ambiance were exciting, a dining adventure that I knew from the start would be yummy. I loved the food and joy that my family felt on those excursions. 

Once my father died our nights out mostly consisted of visiting my grandparents and aunts and uncles. Because my mother’s budget was as slim as they might be our dining adventures consisted mostly of visiting local cafeterias where we were allowed to select three items however we might wish. Mostly my brothers and I would choose meat or fish with a vegetable of some kind and a dessert. I was a fried fish fan and almost always wanted macaroni and cheese to go along with my entree. My dessert of choice was apple pie. 

If the budget was doing well our mother might take us downtown to munch on hotdogs from James’ Coney Island, a local hangout where we would see celebrities and wealthy matrons mixing it up with those of us who were ordinary people. We sat at school desks munching on the delightful hotdogs and celebrating the fact that we got through the line for ordering without being yelled at by the men working at the steam tables.  Eating there was exciting and I still have an addiction to the hotdogs even though the original location with its local color is long gone and the hotdogs have grown ever smaller over time.

Sometimes for birthdays and other special times our mother would save enough from the budget to take us to the Tel-Wink Grill on Telephone Road where we enjoyed waffles or roast beef with gravy on a bed of white bread. The food there was almost as good as the country cooking that my grandmother Minnie Bell had become famous for preparing. Other times we joyfully gathered at a local Tex Mex place that did not have the ambiance of Felix’s but did have very tasty food. 

It was only after I met my husband Mike that I learned that there were other more opulent options for dining out. After we had been dating for a time his parents wanted to meet me at an elegant restaurant that specialized in steak and seafood. From the moment that we entered I felt uncomfortable and wondered if I would know how to act. It was quite obviously a place where prices seemed to be no object and I almost gulped when I saw them posted next to the entrees listed on the menu. 

I did my best to pretend that I was accustomed to such experiences but even the elegance of my future mother-in-law with her diamond rings and gold jewelry made me feel out of place and somehow lacking. I found myself wondering if I would have been more comfortable there if my father had lived and we had gone to such places as a family. I remember the whole affair as a kind of out of body experience in which I felt as though I was there and not there at the same time. I can’t even recall what I ordered or how it tasted because I was in a world that I did not fully understand. 

Eventually all of that changed but first I used my skills at living on a small budget as Mike and I attempted to survive with an income so small that it barely paid the rent on our apartment and allowed us to purchase groceries for the month. Mike was amazed by my ability to squeeze a dime and make it last far beyond its limitations. He learned about my world and then we built our earning power from there. Eventually eating at an expensive restaurant would be more commonplace for us but inside I never really forgot to appreciate my good fortune and to think about those who were hungry because they had such small incomes. I have never taken the comfort of my life for granted.

I ultimately became the best of friends with my mother-in-law who was more down to earth than I first thought she was. I bonded with her when I learned that she had lost her father when she was in her early twenties. That loss was as traumatic for her as mine had been. We often spoke of how much we missed our fathers and how losing them had defined us. She became one of the wisest women I had ever known who made it feel okay for me to long for my father even years after he was gone. I learned that she was actually a very humble woman and that my initial assessment of her as a wealthy women with whom I would never bond was totally wrong. She had mostly wanted to welcome me with a special feast and never once thought that it would make me uncomfortable. 

My favorite outings for dinner became her Sunday feasts that were so much like the ones my grandma Minnie had prepared in my childhood. We would sit around the dining table munching on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and then the two of us would enjoy an after dinner treat of hot tea and cookies. In those moments we began to realize how much alike we were and she became a kind of big sister and mother-in-law all in one. Somehow money or lack of it did not matter. Only our kinship and understanding of each other made those meals as special as the ones that I had enjoyed as a child.

I have never taken a shared meal for granted because it is in the sharing of our bounty that we understand our common humanity. It is a spiritual moment when what we consume matters far less than the people who are there with us. They are the moments that keep our memories alive.

 

I have to admit to being weary. I always believed that my time in retirement would be noted for the fun and relaxation I enjoyed after a lifetime of hard work and dedication. I saw all of the photos of older friends lounging on beaches and taking in the sites around the world and imagined spending most of my time having nothing but fun. 

I initially enjoyed camping trips in our trailer and I even managed to go to London twice but after about seven years of feeling free from all responsibilities my life took a turn that required my being a responsible person much has it has been through most of my seventy seven years. I found myself worrying over my father-in-law and his wife in early 2020 when the worldwide pandemic took over so many lives. I not only wanted to shelter my husband from the dreaded virus given his heart issues but I knew that my in-laws were in danger because they were in their nineties and plagued with a host of health issues. I also had students to teach so I began to concentrate on ways to do all of the things that needed to be done. 

I learned how to deliver lessons by Zoom and was soon ordering groceries for myself and my in-laws from Instacart. I found masks when none were to be had and made sure that all of us were properly vaccinated against a lethal form of the virus. I made a game of staying inside away from people who might make me sick and then infect the less healthy members of my family. I did what I always do which was to be as optimistic as possible even as I worried day and night. 

Everyone made it through those times with the exception of my father-in-law’s wife. Her heart failure finally got the best of her just as the dangers from the virus appeared to be shrinking. At the same time my father-in-law had a severe problem with a colon blockage and for weeks my husband and I spent hours and days in hospitals and rehabilitation centers with him. When he was finally released to go home we knew that he would no longer be able to live alone and so we opened our home to him, giving him the downstairs master bedroom and bathroom and moving ourselves upstairs to a small area. For four years we provided a safe space for him but finally realized that we ourselves had grown old during the time from 2020 to 2026. Everywhere we went we were treated like senior citizens and people began to wonder aloud if two late stage seventy year olds should be caring for a ninety-six year old man. We realized that it was time to make a change. 

We introduced my father-in-law to a couple of senior living places and found one that he liked. It was with a bitter sweet reluctance that we moved him even as our common sense told us that it was the best thing to do for the safety of all of us. He seemed happy but my sense of responsibility kept wondering if we had done the right thing even as I enjoyed being downstairs again and luxuriating in my big bedroom and bathroom.

For a few weeks we all settled in to our new situation and it felt quite good. I was finally able to schedule a total knee replacement for a knee that now has zero cartilage to soften the blows of walking. It was nice to know that everyone would be in a good place with no worries, but somehow as with much of my life unexpected challenges came my way. A phone call in the middle of the night awakened us to the terrible news that my father-in-law had fallen and severely injured himself. The damage to his body was devastating and for a time it felt as though he was moving toward the end of his life. Meanwhile I kept wondering if he would still be okay if he were still living with us. Guilt quite illegally took over my mind. 

It has been many weeks of ups and downs for my father-in-law and for me and my husband. We eventually got him a place in a skilled nursing center very near our home. There he is blooming and smiling again and in the interim I have been able to schedule my knee surgery for February knowing that I will have a nice place in which to recuperate without worrying.

On the same day that I made the final arrangements for my impending surgery I felt elated to witness how wonderfully my father-in-law was doing. He was smiling and boasting about the outstanding care he was receiving. All finally seemed to be well and I felt unburdened by my concerns. It felt good to be able to just be me and take care of myself for a time. 

The fickle finger of fate has a way of taunting us. On the very same night that I was celebrating the joy in knowing that everyone was going to be okay I had a very stupid accident. I was stepping into my pajama pants in my big bathroom and noticing that the static cling in them was making it difficult to get my foot all the way through. With any common sense I would have sat down to finish the job but instead after getting one leg in I remained in a standing position having a fight with the second leg of the pajamas. Without any warning I lost my footing and began rapidly falling backwards with nothing to grab to keep me from slamming to the floor. 

Within a split second my head hit the bathtub with a loud boom that brought my husband running to the scene of my embarrassment. I briefly lay on the floor gathering my dignity and then crawled across the room to use a chair braced on the countertop to pull myself up the rest of the way. I felt fine but my hands were shaking and I immediately saw how my hubris in insisting that I did not need to take precautions because of my age had brought me to a terrible situation. I had been as silly as I had accused my father-in-law of being. It was a moment of enlightenment for me. 

As I write this I am waiting for word from my doctor as to what I should next do. I feel fine and my brain is obviously working but I have read that blows to the head always need to be checked out. I hope that the finding is only that I need to finally accept the limitations of my state in the journey of life. I have always complained about old people who take unnecessary chances. I lectured my father-in-law often about going up and down our stairs when we were not home. I fussed at him for insisting to keep driving even as it was apparent that he no longer had the reaction time that he needed to do so safely. Suddenly I understood my own foolishness and pride. 

I don’t think anything bad happened to me. I am hard headed just as my mother always noted and my husband and children agree. I’ll keep you posted once I hear something. In the meantime I promise to start acting my age.

Update: My doctor insisted that I go to the local emergency center to be thoroughly checked for fractures or blood clots. I spent the day in the hallway behind a screen waiting for my turn among the very sick people who were there. I got a thorough examination including a urinalysis and CT scans of my hip, head, shoulder, neck and back. The news was good. There were not fractures or blood clots but I did have a urinary tract infection and the usual sites of arthritis and pinched nerves in different parts of my body. My mother was right. I seem to have a head hard enough to take a very serious blow and remain intact. I was relieved but still understand that it’s time for me to grow up and respect the cautions needed for my age.  

I first noticed my mother’s mental illness in July of 1969. I suppose that there were signs of her impending breakdown long before that time but I was so innocent and naive that I had never before witnessed the ravages of the mind that mental illness sometimes creates in even the most incredibly brilliant and brave souls. My mother had seemingly been a tower of strength after my father’s death. She was only thirty years old when he died leaving her to care for three young children ranging in age from two to eight years old. It had to be a daunting task to rebuild our family life but somehow she did it with so much finesse that I believed that she was superhuman. 

My mother shielded me and my brothers from the darker side of life. She was always optimistic and generous and loving. We grew in wisdom and age and grace under her care and somehow thought that she was capable of conquering the world. Sadly she was human and I suspect that the stress of going it alone and dealing with a tight budget was bound to have had an effect on her. Looking back my brothers and I realize that there were signs that she was faltering that we wrote off as a kind of quirkiness or the type of worries that everyone seems to have at one time or another. 

I remember a time when she told me that she had been engaged to another man before she met my father. She loved this man dearly and planned to marry him when he returned from his stint in the army during World War II. He was fighting the Japanese when he was killed. She recalled that she went through a long period of sorrow after his death. She even remembered seeing the Virgin Mary on the front porch of her childhood home one evening when she was particularly depressed. The way she described that moment was a bit scary but I still thought nothing about it. She had obviously overcome the grief of that tragedy and had gone on to meet my father and create a wonderful life with him. 

When my daddy died she frightened me because she had always appeared to be so strong and yet in that time she stayed in the darkness of her bedroom for days and days not even checking to see how me and my brothers were doing. That is when I decided that it was my duty to watch over my younger siblings and to be as good a girl as ever I might be to help her. 

Eventually she came back to life and managed to appear to be a tower of strength for the next dozen years. She bought and paid for a house, earned a college degree, became a teacher, was admired by countless friends and acquaintances. I thought that she was the most remarkable and perfect woman. I was still too young to fully understand the stress that she had endured. I took her loving care for granted little thinking about the many sacrifices she had made for me and my siblings. 

I was a newlywed when the most egregious symptoms of my mother’s mental illness presented themselves. I first realized how sick she was when she had no interest in the landing of the first humans on the moon. She had been so interested in space travel and it seemed out of character for her to be unable to concentrate on the crowning moment of human achievement. Instead she recounted one fear after another with eyes darting in terror. She closed the blinds in the house and languished in the dark worrying that someone was out to take her life. She was deeply depressed and certain that we were all in danger. 

I bungled her care in that moment mostly because I had little or no idea of what to do. When she eventually became well again I believed like she did that she was somehow cured of the disease that had so overtaken her mind. I rejoiced that it was over and carried on as though it had never happened. Then the symptoms returned again with even greater force. That time I was older and had much better ideas of how to find her the help that she needed. I took her to a wonderful doctor who would treat her for the next twenty plus years. He truthfully told us that her condition was chronic but that he could help keep her symptoms under control. 

She would follow his advice and take her medication for a time but always found reasons to toss the pills aside and attempt to stay well on her own. She hated that weight gain that made her feel fat even as she ate like a bird. She did not like the feeling of numbness that the medications created. She tried to use self care to stay healthy but then had one relapse after another. Ultimately she quit going to see her doctor altogether and that is when she becomes sicker than at anytime in her life. 

I found myself searching desperately for a new doctor for her because the one who had so faithfully helped her for so long had grown old and no longer had the heart to deal with a patient who would not follow his directives. I spent over two weeks on the phone all day long calling one psychiatrist after another. Some only dealt with teens, others did not not accept insurance, some worked with all ages but not seniors which she had become, some were about to retire and only working part time. I finally broke down in tears after days of trying to find someone willing to take her. The kind doctor with whom I was speaking spent over an hour comforting me and finally suggested a doctor who specialized in geriatric psychiatry. To my great relief I soon had an appointment for my mother with him and he would prove to be better at keeping her well than anyone who had ever treated her. 

Just when it seemed that my mother’s care was certain the fabulous doctor announced that the state of Texas had cancelled all of the funding that allowed him to offer his services to older patients. Instead they were assigning him to a hospital for criminals with mental illnesses. He gave us the name of a program that would take my mom but it was erratic and until the day she died my brothers and I never knew if she would get proper care. 

I tell this story because we hear many lawmakers insisting that deadly criminals just needed proper treatment before they hurt others. They babble on about setting aside a few million dollars but little realize that the system for caring for those who suffer from diseases of the brain are all too often either ineffective or unavailable. Funding for the health of American citizens is broken and especially for those who suffer from mental illness. Until we rectify this problem there will be great suffering in families trying to keep their loved ones well. It is a daunting task and even more so when the person is inclined to self harm or extreme anger and paranoia that evolves into murderous behavior. 

Luckily my mother was always a gentle soul who would never have hurt herself or anyone else. Nonetheless she endured great pain over and over again because we have yet to genuinely invest in the healing of those whose madness is often both feared and misunderstood. Advocating for research and treatments for the mentally ill has been my holy grail for over fifty years of my life. I know all too well how much we need to unravel the mysteries of why sometimes our brains turn on us. I know there is an answer if only we are willing to pay the price for finding it. A wise world would certainly make every effort to end the cruelty of only half heartedly working to understand diseases of the brain.

Each January on the holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I pause to remember what an enormous figure for justice he was. He had a way with words that inspired millions of people to reconsider their hesitation in supporting the push for civil rights. He had a dream of a time when the prejudices and narrow thinking that sadly remains part of our national heritage would evolve into a state of equality and opportunity for all. 

Martin Luther King was my hero. I have sat in the Ebenezer Baptist Church and listened reverently to the speeches that he made. I have traveled to Memphis, Selma, Birmingham and Montgomery to pay homage Dr. King and all of the brave souls who were willing to endure good trouble to end the stain of segregation that kept our Black brothers and sisters from fully enjoying the perks of our nation. I have shed tears of remembrance in each place.

The Civil Rights movement was a dominant part of my life as a child, teen and young adult. I vividly recall my grandfather explaining what was happening in Arkansas when the governor and many citizens tried to impeded the entrance of young Black children to schools with white kids. I began to follow the slow progress of the people who decided that doing what was right was more important than following prejudiced laws being used to hurt Black citizens. While I was not yet old enough to participate in rallies or marches I quietly became more and more educated about the plight of Black Americans who bore the hatred of prejudice in spite of their efforts to become equal partners in our freedoms. 

I was not yet twenty years old when Dr. King was assassinated. It was one of those moments that I vividly remember because the shock and the grief that I felt was enormous. I was washing dishes when my mother burst into the kitchen and announced what had happened, I was so stunned and devastated that I dropped the plate that had been in my hands and it shattered on the linoleum floor. When I stooped down to pick up the pieces I lost all control of my emotions and just sat next the shards crying. I knew that we had lost a great man, a martyr for one of the most important causes in our nation’s history. 

A few years back I had the honor of taking two of my grandchildren to Washington D.C. There we visited the many memorials to great leaders including the one set aside for Martin Luther King. My grandchildren took note of my emotions in that sacred place. They saw my admiration for Dr. King full force just as my students did on a Civil Rights tour in 2007. 

I have read much about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was by his own admission an imperfect man, but He did his best to be fair and honest and dedicated to the cause of freedom for all people. He noted that often good people decried his methods because they were strict followers of rules and they felt that his methods were outside of the laws. He noted just as Jesus did that sometimes the most righteous thing to do is to help those in need even if doing so skirts rules that are unfair. 

In this moment we are engaged in battles of right against might all over the globe. Old prejudices are openly rising from nooks and crannies where they seemed to have been hidden. At the same time ordinary people are standing up for neighbors and nations that are being attacked by authoritarians who do not value every person. Those marching in the streets around the world are following the lead of Dr. King and the many freedom fighters who risked their very lives to do what they believed to be right. Because of those brave souls we have a roadmap and a call to duty in ensuring that prejudice never again takes over our nation. Sadly, there is still much to do. 

The work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his fellow leaders did not diminish the worth of the white population. In fact it simply set right what should have been done for the descendants of slaves who built this nation in chains. We should all celebrate the progress but also be aware of the moments when anyone is being treated as though he or she is somehow less than the rest of us. Making America greater does not include going backward to a time when little Black girls were taunted and harassed simply because they wanted to attend the same schools as their white counterparts. It should not be a time when people are judged by the color of their skin, their religious beliefs or the accents of their voices.

Today we face major challenges and there are brave souls who are risking their own safety and possibly their lives to bring attention to the unfairness of ICE raids that are terrorizing innocents just as the old time KKK burned crosses and hanged innocent to intimidate Black citizens. Dr. King showed us how to protest. He eloquently explained our duties as caring human beings. On this day set aside in his honor remember him and do the right thing.