Write Now. Write Here.

Family history, like history itself, is never perfect and is shaped by chance, circumstance, and story. Family history, like history itself, is always a little more complicated than it seems. My father did not want to get married and he never wanted children. Then he met my mother. She had a way of getting what she wanted. She wanted him and she wanted children. I noticed early that he was not like other dads. I had friends whose fathers spoiled them and could never say no. And while I wondered what that would be like, that was not the dad I got. My dad made the world bigger in so many ways. Other girls got little gold rings and tiny lockets. I got a passport and a library card with the strong message that those two things would work together. I was unfocused so he introduced me to ping pong to teach me a host of lessons: keep your eye on the ball, stay focused, you can’t hit it if you can’t see it. To give my mother a break when my siblings were babies, he took me to movies. I learned to see and love movies the way I would later read and love books. I still read several books at a time– a habit I learned from him. And I still have a deep love of movies.

First there was me. Then there were two of us and then three of us and then four of us. And he knew how to be the dad we each needed by being authentically himself and seeing each of us clearly. He lived his life by loving the world and by seeing the humor in it. He taught us to do the same by inviting us along for the ride. He had integrity and was absolutely fair. He was unafraid and embraced the complexity of life with his wry eye. He could get to the heart of life with a story and a point. If Aesop played jazz piano, he and my dad would have had a lot in common. He taught me insight is just a placeholder when you are learning something new. Life is not as simple as point of view, because there is always more than one perspective. We followed him around the world and learned those lessons everywhere we went.

When I wanted to be excused from school to protest the Vietnam War in Washington, he said I could go–but he had one condition: I had to articulate the other point of view before the protest. How could I? The other side was wrong! He held his ground and a couple of days later I told him why some one would fight in that war and how they might feel like it was the right thing to do. I went off to the protest and shouted out against the war with passion. But I also saw the quiet girl who sat by the window in my homeroom a little differently. Her father was in Vietnam. I thought about her again when my own son went to Iraq. My father taught us to have empathy with those with whom we disagreed, while taking a stand for what we believed was right. Hate is lazy. Disdain is a cheap way out. He drew a hard line against bigotry. “When you don’t limit your friends to the color of your skin, your world is twice as big.”

He was full of paternal paradox. He had both a sense of foreboding and an ability to throw caution to the wind. He was a devout Episcopalian and wide open to the faith of others. He did not ever take a day off from work, but would leave early once a year to meet the circus train and have a drink with the ringmaster.

It’s been 20 years. He died at an age that would make him a contemporary of mine now. I hear his voice in my brother’s voice. My brother and I do not always agree, but we were trained by the same guy not to be threatened by complexity– to respect and trust other points of view. We were trained by the same guy to argue for what we believe in persuasively and then listen to learn something new.

But I don’t just hear his voice in my brother’s voice. The lessons from my father are lit up right now and catch me by surprise in the voices of others. Chimamanda Adichie is a Nigerian novelist and the author of Amerianah (a wonderful book). Her Ted Talk on The Danger of the Single Story resonated with what I was taught and have come to believe. We all need diversity in literature and in the storytellers. We need to see and learn ourselves, but we also need to see and learn others. Then we can learn to embrace the complexity in which our stories are entwined. The “single story” normalizes the two dimensional into stereotype. This is the history of the Virginia History books of my childhood. These books told a single story and they got it wrong.

I had a historian for a father. Not everybody does. But everyone can have a library card. Everyone can embrace stories from different points of view. Everyone can listen and learn something new. We don’t need monuments to the single story. Nor do we need to rush to trade one single story for another. In stripping history down to truth we can’t, in our hurry, strip the story of hope. We need to ask questions. We need to listen. We need to wait. The answers are going to take time.

I made a donation to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia this week in my father’s honor. The mission of the museum is to preserve stories that inspire. I don’t have little gold rings and tiny lockets from my father. I have the treasure that I carry forward. I have a story waiting to be broadened by perspective and deepened by truth. The truth is our shared story. And that is where the hope is. Thanks, Dad.

Right now I am happy. And I truly believe that when I feel it, I should say it. It compounds the feeling and makes it twice as strong. Writing it down makes it even stronger. That is why gratitude journals work. If you’re happy and you know it, write it down.

My parents gave this to me. They never, not once, asked asked us if we were happy. But they often, out of nowhere, would say it. “I am happy.” There was a call and response that was uniquely theirs. I am happy, one would say, and the other would answer with one of these interchangeable phrases: It doesn’t get better than this. It’s good to be alive. Life is rich. I am better than I know how. They, each in their own way, lived this to the very last and the legacy runs deep.

They only said it if it was real. They said it in the shadow of the great pyramids, when drinking cider on the Rhine, over cocktails on a rooftop in Rome. But they also said it at the breakfast table when the marmalade was good; when cracking crabs on a screened porch; when the needle dropped on a great song; or when one of us made them laugh.
Fake happiness was for other people and other feelings were not to be discussed. “I’m bored,” I said once and only once. “There is nothing more boring than a bored child,” my mother responded. And she went on to recite Robert Louis Stevenson: “The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings; .” My parents worried about our well being (sometimes more than others) and curated life in the most amazing way. But finding and identifying happiness was our job.

They were not happy all the time. Misery did not skip our house. While happiness could burst through any veil of gloom, it could not be controlled or put upon to stay for one more cup of this or glass of that. Happiness came and went… and always came back. When it did, no matter how fleetingly, it was greeted and named.

Long ago, I was on a walk with my boys in the woods. One of them looked up at me with an earnest yet joyful smile. ‘Mommy,” he said, “I’m in an ‘I love life’ mood.” Without intending to, I’d passed on one of the most most important gifts that was given to me: the ability to name happiness boldly, unselfconsciously, and without apology.
You don’t lose empathy points for moments of happiness in a crisis and you don’t gain empathy points for being gloomy. Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of another— all of the feelings. So if happiness shows up at your door during a global pandemic, invite her in. Name her. Greet her. Welcome her. She’s here to help.

I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’ve got this. Parents, teachers, principals, and superintendents conjugate hope, courage, and determination. I’ve got this. You’ve got this. We’ve got this. This has been going on for days and yesterday Virginians found out it is for the long haul. Schools will not reopen this year. The news is hard and there was a collective sigh across the state, but nowhere was it a sigh of relief.

Teachers work so hard to build community and their energy comes from the love they develop for their students. It is real. Now, without closure or a roadmap, they have to figure out how to do their part with and for students they will not see again this year.

Students will miss egg hunts and splash parties and birthday parties. They will miss raffle sales and camp outs and end of year celebrations. Playgrounds are silent without their chorus of “Not it” and “Hey, look at me” and “Whoa, watch this!” Childhood is not over. But this season is a different season. This is a pause they will remember and history will too.

And the older students. The seniors. This will be the year they missed prom. Graduation. Beach week.

Parents (many of whom are teachers) are asking this question: “How do I home school my child?” This question was being asked last week, too. But it is different this week. We stand on the shores of overwhelm with a brave face. The brave face is important. The feelings are real. The compassion for yourself, your child, your child’s teacher, your neighbor is essential.

We know how to do this. Classroom English instruction is built on the model of the literate home. It is true. Literacy happens at home and is largely caught not taught. It doesn’t or can’t always happen at home, so school tries to fill in the gap with a state mandated 94 minute literacy block. Teachers are evaluated on how well they create the kind of literate environments that mimic the homes that launched highly successful and literate people.

The world is quieter– and deeper–with a whisper of opportunity waiting to be found. Look around your home. Is there printed material? Are you playing games with your children? Are you talking to them? Are you talking about what you are reading. Are you making sure they have something to read. Yes? Then school is in session. That is where you start. Build routine, habit and ritual from there. You don’t need the questions at the end of the chapter. Here are the essential questions–no answer key required:

How is it going?

What do you notice?

How do you know?

Can you say more?

Teachers are scrambling to answer “Now what?” They are working in uncharted territory. No one knows what this looks like. In a climate of loss, anger looks for a target. Please don’t target teachers or school systems. Please don’t compare efforts as a way to take the focus off the very complicated issues at hand. Much of the academic material has been covered by this time of year. The period after spring break is often a period of heavy review for state-mandated or Advanced Placement tests. Instead, right now, children are engaged in real time, project based, hands-on lessons in the greater good:

Everybody has the right to be healthy and safe and happy.

Our choices affect one another.

Sometimes we do hard things and make hard decisions for the greater good.

Research shows that successful teaching (and learning) is built on “knowledge of student” and “relationship with the teacher,” as well as the ability to “reflect on what works and what doesn’t work as you go.” These things are native to parents. We are in this together. You’ve got this.

I gave the Uber driver the address and as we drove we chatted about his country (Nepal) and the custom of arranged marriages and the movie “Blinded by the Light.” The time flew and before we knew it, he was slowing to a stop.

“Is this the house?” He asked.

“No, this is not the house, but this is the address. There was another house. I lived here… there. Once.”

“Once” is the siren call from the confluent depths of memory and story. The past suddenly becomes the guest of an ordinary moment.

We both stared at the looming construction. I explained the house of my childhood had been sold and torn down. He seemed more upset by this than I was, but then he couldn’t see what I could see. He couldn’t feel what I could feel. I described the apple orchards that once stood on the farm behind our house. They were next to the stable that housed our neighbor’s horse. Once.

I told him how the doors were never locked and how we never knocked or rang a doorbell as we went into each other’s houses. We climbed backyard fences and took shortcuts across yards of people we didn’t know. I described the way our fathers stood in Izod shirts and madras shorts and drank martinis and turned hamburgers in the wafting smell of charcoal. Our mothers, in pastel shirtwaist dresses or coulottes or pedal pushers, swayed with babies on their hips as toddlers splashed in baby pools, while we gathered sticks to roast marshmallows.

Our summer birthdays were celebrated at picnic tables with cake and Neopolitan Ice Cream slices. On a summer night, beyond the trees you could hear the high school marching band practice. Screen doors slammed, unstable metal swing sets creaked well into the night, as did the grown-up sound of low laughter in face of life that was mid-century modern. The Uber driver, not quite dry eyed, left and I stood in the shadow of “Once.”

Eventually the swings became still. The swing sets were removed. We moved our fun indoors and the sixties gave way to the seventies. We had parties in the basements that had been presciently called rumpus rooms in the sixties. We went off to college. Or didn’t. There were showers and backyard weddings in the very spot we had written our names in the air with sparklers. Before long we came back and our children spilled out of cars; they grew up as their grandparents grew old. Like the swing sets that once stood in backyards, the houses on that street began to still. Before long, the houses were sold and sometimes torn down. They were replaced with houses that were much bigger. I looked at the house being built on the spot that my siblings and I once stood for prom pictures. It is going to be a much bigger house. But looking at the house I didn’t feel the loss or sorrow that the Uber driver expected me to feel. I felt hope for the people who would live there and uttered a silent prayer for them. Their house was being built on a foundation, now invisible, upon which I still stand. Their house will be much bigger and I hope they will find living there every bit as grand.

Last Thursday, I went to visit the new third grade teacher at Fox, Miss Eck. Her classroom is Room 204. She has created a wonderful environment. Her room — inviting, purposeful, and organized — is a true invitation to learning. Miss Eck was welcoming to me and it was a pleasure to see the space I’d loved given a new lease. Miss Eck has words on a bulletin board that say, “In this classroom you are loved.” I felt such joy standing in what is now her classroom and thought about the lucky children who would have her as a teacher. It was not unlike the feeling I had as I looked at the new construction at my old address. The feeling is hope for the future and gratitude for the past and a deep impulse to bless the moment and the space. There is a threshold between “Once” and “Someday.” We all stand there together. The threshold is Now. And it is every bit as grand.

When I became a teacher, at the age of 22, I knew it was for the long haul. Teaching was how I chose to serve, and I knew it would take a lifetime to develop a practice that would be worthy of the calling. I was curious, well read, well-intentioned, and inspired. That’s what I had. I did not have much experience, but I knew that If I kept reading, stayed intentional, cultivated my curiosity, and sustained the spark of inspiration, it would only get better. And it did. People debate whether teachers are born or made. It doesn’t really matter, because born or made, teachers take time to become fully who they can be.

Great teachers believe in great beginnings. Each fresh start is one more run toward getting it right. This month teachers are having all kinds of adventures, but I know from experience that whether in a tent in the woods or on a bridge in Paris, part of every teacher’s attention is on that bright shiny start in September.

Teachers don’t talk as much about endings, but last September I began with a deep curiosity about ending well. Committed to the twin intentions of beginning well and ending well, I threw myself into my work. I knew it would be my last year and I wanted to savor it. I wanted to teach well and to make it good to the last drop. I slowly confided in my closest friends and administrators. I needed the support of my tribe while I tested my decision for certainty and peace. I began to try to listen to and practice what I preached as both teacher and mentor:

There is not a problem that cannot be solved

Be strategic.

If you don’t get it YET, take a break . Then keep going or ask for help.

The secret of getting done is getting started.

Brainstorm ideas to find the most elegant solution

If it is too big to accomplish, break it down.

If you want to do something big, do something small.

Set the goal, see the goal, achieve the goal.

Anything worth doing is worth doing with good manners.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

I wrote and wrote.  I wrote about the beauty I saw in the classroom, I listed the moments that made the day come out right. I wrote about messes.  I wrote about the things that fell apart and how they came back together. I taught and taught and taught. And thanks to a glorious class of students (and their parents), and to a generous host of angels in the form of friends, former students, student teachers, and parents, it happened.  We ended well. We successfully tied a loose knot in the golden thread that runs though every teacher’s story. There was just one final step. I began this last year with a curiosity about the ending. And now I’ve ended this year with a curiosity about beginnings and the way they gently take shape. So I end at the start of “next” and wait for next gently to take shape. I begin the way May Sarton began her journals and the way I begin mine. I begin with these words: “Begin here.”

These days it is hard to pick up a magazine or  listen to a podcast and not encounter the latest thinking about the oldest trick in the book.  Habits. After all, habit formation is the bedrock of cultures that created the training of ancient armies and sustained the rituals of primitive religions.   Habits were life sustaining and soul sustaining. They still are.

Habits are age old.  I often tell my students that they were born in the 21st century,  I was born in the middle of the 20th century and my third grade teacher was born at the end of the 19th century.  We are part of the long chain of history. Third graders are the same, but the world is very different. When I was in the third grade if we had “good habits,” it meant that we were neat and clean in freshly pressed clothes and had nice manners.  Those are certainly good habits, but there is a difference between habits of presentation, and habits of agency. Both are important, but I am keenly interested in habits of agency: habits that help third graders to feel and be more independent and purposeful.  Rilke asks us to live the questions. One of the most powerful questions I have lived as a teacher is, “Which habits will support my students as critical thinkers, reflective readers, and creative problem solvers?” There is no answer key for that one. It is a question that stands firm and seeks new answers.

Habits may be nothing new, but the world we live in is.  Habits around cell phone use, email, video games, super-sized fast food, drive-thrus, social media,  and streaming mark the difference between living creative lives of self-control and living lives where technology, uncontrolled, encroaches upon our schools, homes, and lives like the desertification of arable land.

There are two kinds of classroom cultures. There is the culture that is intentionally built and supported by routines, habits, humor, and mutual respect.  And there is the culture that is built by mistake– a culture of heavy top-down control and shame based-practice that keep those terrible twin wolves, Fear and Chaos, clawing at  the door. No one chooses that. Not the teacher and not the children. The intentional classroom is the fiercely conscious and loving classroom. This is where the agency of the teacher comes in.  Love can’t be mandated. It is a fiercely conscious choice.

I’ve had a ringside seat for 40 years.  The world is a more unpredictable place than it was when I started teaching, but it is no less beautiful.  Over the years I have become more intentional about creating a safe space with my students in the light- filled corner room on the second floor of Fox where we can uncover the beauty of the world together.   Years ago, the piano and easel were taken out of my classroom to make room for computers. I worried. I had to learn how to let go of the piano and the easel and still intentionally create and preserve space for music and art in my classroom.  I want creativity to be a habit in the lives of my students.

I teach cheerfulness and happiness as habits.    I love a good fresh start and teach my children that each day is a new beginning.  I believe that walking across the threshold of a classroom door should always be an act of hope.  In Room 204, alongside my students, I have worked to cultivate the habits I teach over time. One of the most important habits is to “Look at the world with the eyes of  a writer.” I don’t want my students to miss a minute of their unfolding stories.

Each child I have taught has been part of my unfolding story as a teacher.  Forty years ago I wanted to make a difference in the world by making a difference in the lives of children.  My students have made a difference in me.

This is my last year as a classroom teacher.  I’ve kept it quiet because instead of a “last” year, I just wanted one more really good year– one more chance to get it right. I am loving this year and this class.  I can’t believe how lucky I am to be ending my career with the same love of teaching that I had at the beginning. It is time to turn the page. In June I will step across the threshold of Room 204 into “next.”   It works in both directions. Stepping across that threshold has always been an act of hope.

The people at Hospice take grief seriously. Serious grief?  It sounds comically and tragically redundant, and I didn’t want any part of it.  They told me counseling was offered as a benefit. Grief counseling sounded like being sad on purpose. I didn’t want that either. It was bad enough that I’d lost my mother and my sister within two years.  I wondered how I could honor them by taking sadness seriously. As if I had a choice .

I have had four immediate family members lose their bigger-than-life lives to cancer. Because of this, a grief  counselor explained that I was high risk for something called “complicated grief.”  I found out this happens with multiple losses and can be as severe, and with the same symptoms,  as clinical depression. I knew I didn’t want that. So I did as I was told. I took grief seriously and accepted the counseling. I avoided complicated grief, but I learned there is no escaping grief itself.  As a friend pointed it out, grief is like the children’s chant about the Bear Hunt: “Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, have to go through it.”

Grief is like a scavenger hunt.  One intuitive clue unlocks the next. Day after day.  I couldn’t see where I was going, I just did the next brave thing. Intentionally. I read the poem, wrote the poem, walked the woods, and walked the dog.  I got the massage, cleaned out the refrigerator, organized the pantry, and went to the ballet. I cooked my way through my mother’s cookbooks and wept on the beach. I read my mother’s essays and read my sister’s journals. I sobbed my way through dance documentaries at night and somehow stood cheerfully at my classroom door in the morning.  My husband and I hosted holiday dinners and upheld our family traditions and planned family vacations, just like we always do. He held my hand tightly and I laid my head on his shoulder. Life goes on. Life is different.

Grief is like a tide that moves in and out with a fog of sharp edges. I learned not to be afraid of the sharp edges of grief, those unpredictable chards that could and would poke through any moment unannounced and uninvited.  They cut deeply, but they did not scar. And, oddly, they did not preclude joy. That is the mystery. Joy breaks in much the same way pain does, and with the same unpredictability. I began to recognize joy with a new kind of familiarity that reminded me of the people I’d lost– but in a good way–and helped me celebrate the people around me.  I couldn’t create joy, but I could make room for it. And I could keep my eyes open to it.

Grief comes with a map that has a cryptic warning and promise.  “Do not get stuck here and you won’t get stuck here.” I had to believe it.  We are creatures of habit and I worried that sadness would become a habit too. Deep down, I knew I wouldn’t get stuck in grief as long as I sought the reminders of life’s richness every day.

The months rolled on, but grief’s fog continued to roll in. I discovered I needed a transitional bereavement policy that didn’t exist. Yet.  So I decided to create one. I gave myself permission to put my students and their instruction first and excused myself from faculty meetings and arbitrary deadlines.  I wrote my own excuse. To make room for the work I needed to do, I stopped writing this blog.  People said it was a mistake. They knew what I knew: the way to kill a blog is to not post on it. But I didn’t trust myself to write for the public. My writing needed to be private. It was a risk. If someone is reading this now and is helped by it, it was worth it.

I poured what I had into my teaching and my students. I worked to model the truths  I learned from my mom and my sister. Happiness is a choice.  You can’t compare loss. Everyone is worthy.  Feelings are not right or wrong, it is what you do with those feelings that matter.

June came. We did well as a class and the year was a success. In the summer I could fling open the doors and breathe deeply. I had time to take it all in, and to begin to give back to those who had given so given so generously to me. Morning by morning, I woke up and chose life.

September came and with it a new class of incredibly wonderful children. I find that I love teaching as much as ever and that my teaching is informed by last year ’s deep reflection on what is most important in the classroom. The calendar page turned and I waited. The people at Hospice told me that the thirteenth-month mark is significant in the grieving process.  It eases. Life is established as a new normal.

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Barbara Elliott Hopkins (Sparks)

August 16, 1928- October 9, 2017

When my mother asked me to write her eulogy she said, “It is going to be hard to try and figure out the words for what I’ve tried to say with my life over the past 89 years.” She was right. It is hard, but I will do my best.

The fact that my mother was bigger than life is both our comfort and our heartbreak. Heartbreak–let’s get that word out in the open. She would not want me (or you) to dwell in heartbreak any longer than we have to. She lived her life as proof that the worst can happen and you can still go on one step at a time until joy regains its foothold on your life. For Mom, heartbreak was never an excuse to avoid joy. My mother taught us that when we fall apart, we hold it together. She taught us to keep going, because she knew that life would get better. Easier. More beautiful.

Early on, my mother took fate by the hand and they traveled together as choice and chance. Chance was the invitation; choice was her response.

By chance she ended up in Washington. She was flying to New York from Florida in the early fifties during a hurricane. The plane made an emergency landing in North Carolina and then had to make another in Washington. She chose to get off the plane in Washington and did not get back on. She never looked back. By chance she had friends who lived in Washington who welcomed her.

By chance, she found a poem by John Updike in the New Yorker Magazine. She chose to tuck it into her wallet to read and reread. She said she didn’t remember the title, but remembered the yearning for love. One night, a thief came up the fire escape and stole her purse through an open window. The purse and wallet were later recovered, but the thief kept the poem. “He must have needed it,” my mother said. And she pointed out that she no longer did, because by then she’d found love.

It was by chance she found love when she met my father on a streetcar at DuPont Circle. There was no question that he was the one. Not in her mind. He, on the other hand, took some convincing. When he came to Washington he had been given one piece of advice: the best way to advance in Washington was never to get married and have children. That advice slowed him down, but it never stopped her. She lived across the street from him and then when an apartment opened up in the building next to him, she moved in. When he asked why, she responded that she’d read in a magazine that nine times out of ten the boy marries the girl next door. They may have met by chance, but my father didn’t stand a chance.

I asked him when he knew. When did he know that she was the one? He said that she took all her friends to New York by train in a club car to attend a party her brother was giving. She invited him to be her date. On the way back they all stopped for breakfast at Aunt Marge’s farm near Philadelphia. Many of my mother’s cousins were there and my dad fell in love with my mother’s family. It was the first inkling he had that if she became a Hopkins, he was going to be an Elliott. That’s how it works in this family. At its best, this is an inclusive family and no one was more inclusive than my mother. Her rule was simple: if you say you are one of us, you ARE one of us.

By chance she only had four children. She’d always wanted six, like Grandma Elliott, but she once wrote for her writing group, “The good Lord knew what he was doing by just giving me four— especially the four I had.”

She stuck by us no matter what. Her parenting philosophy was that love trumps supervision, and her mother-love was fierce. When we got into scrapes (and we did) she was philosophical: “You paid your tuition; I hope you got an education.”

Her rules were simple: be polite, don’t pout, and be home for dinner. Those rules extended to the many people who ended up living in our house. And there were many. Coming home for dinner was no hardship and our friends loved coming home with us. My mother was an amazing and adventurous cook. She grew a lot of her own vegetables. She, with my dad, presided over the stories and antics at our dinner table. Many of our family jokes were really punch lines of stories that had been told over and over:

“Never get married and have children.”

“One streetcar later and none of this would have happened.”

“Now you see her, now you don’t.”

My mother could laugh at herself. And did. When my parents were stationed in the Middle East, they had a weekend house in Jericho. The house was set upon terraced land at the foot of the Mount of Temptations. The veranda led to the roof of the tool shed that stood on the terrace below.

They often entertained guests there, and on this particular Sunday, my parents were entertaining a congressman from Washington. We were told to “comport ourselves with decorum” and we did our best… until my mother stepped just beyond the veranda and said with her most elegant elocution, “And here we have a view of the Jordan River.” And then she disappeared through the roof of the tool shed. Whoosh. She was gone. Disappeared. We couldn’t see her– we could only hear her laugh. We started to laugh. We couldn’t help it and we couldn’t stop; we held on to each other and couldn’t move. We were helpless. The congressman looked horrified. My dad, by then also trying not to laugh, shrugged and said with great flourish, “Now you see her, now you don’t.

No one was laughing harder than my mother. Dad walked over to the gaping hole the roof and said, “WHOA Sparks, you all right down there?” She shouted up, “Couldn’t be better!”

My mother was ingeniously generous. One morning, when I was about nine, she said, “I have a surprise for you when you get home.” I knew it would be good. When I got off the school bus that afternoon, there it was: a brand new bike on a kickstand. Actually there were four brand new bikes on kickstands, because there were four of us. No doubt she had pulled each of us aside and told us that she had a surprise for “just for us.” That’s how she worked. We were thrilled, but it turned out that the real surprise had been for my father.

That week, he’d worried about bringing home important visitors for lunch, and this was to be the day. His concern was not unfounded. Though she had great taste, my bohemian mother, with her flower child heart, cared more about self-expression than decor. My dad fretted, but my mom had a plan. When he went off to work that day she alerted the trucks that waited around the corner. They sprang into action and unloaded and installed new draperies and carpet. They unloaded and arranged new furniture. They unloaded four brand new children’s bikes.   They took the old furniture away and when my father and his guests arrived, the new table was set, lunch was ready, and he stood in a room he didn’t recognize. His favorite record—“Round Midnight” by Thelonious Monk— was playing on a new Victrola, and he couldn’t say a word in front of the guests. He told me that somewhere in the middle of the meal he stopped worrying and started enjoying what my mother had created… just for him.

My mother was adventurous and fiercely dedicated to her family. As each grandchild graduated from high school, they went on cruise with mom. These adventures took them all over the world. She took all of us to Capon Springs every year, a place she dearly loved. She made sure that everyone could afford to go to our annual Elliott Family Reunion. Her idea of family was expansive and she was so encouraging to so many. Thomas Wolfe said you can’t go home again. He hadn’t met my mother. She kept home alive for all of us.

My mother understood acceptance. She watched two of her children die– our sister Elliott and our brother John– both incredible people. Her heart broke, seemingly letting more light in and more light out. When I asked her how she could not only endure this, but go on with her life, she explained that she was honored to be there when they each took their first breath and it was an honor to be with them at their last.

When I asked my brother Charlie what I should say today, he told me to talk about how Mom spent her life learning how to be an angel to so many, and how she depended on the angels around her. He told me to talk about the way she always said, “When you need an angel, you get an angel.” She believed it and delighted in the almost daily proof of it. One day, Mom had an appointment in an office building. She pushed her walker to the big heavy doors and when she realized that she could not open them, she peered into the empty lobby. No one was there, so she waited for her angel. Finally someone came through the door and held it open for her. She thanked him and said cheerily, “When you need an angel, you get an angel!” She went through the door and realized she faced another set of heavy doors that she could not open. She turned around to see if her “angel” was still there but he was gone.

“What did you do, Mom?” I felt the discomfort that comes with worry. She said, “I waited for my angel. It didn’t take long. Someone came through the door and held it open for me. And I reminded them, ‘When you need an angel, you get an angel.”’ Mom lived with angelic force and had faith in the economy of Grace. She never wavered. Over and over, even at the end of her life, she marveled at how lucky she was.

A little over a month ago, she found out that what she’d been calling gas pain was Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. She was matter of fact and pragmatic. “I want to go to movies, I want to see my people, I want to teach cheerfulness with my last breath.”

My brother Charlie and I, along with Ben and Teri, were honored to help mom write her last chapter just the way she wanted it. And many of you, friends and family, helped us do it. We did go to movies. We had big family dinners, and walks with great grandchildren and bubbles, and dancing in the living room.

Mom was a radiant mix of the luminous with the numinous. When asked how she was, she always responded with “Better than I know how.” And she meant it. Her wish was to die at home with family and friends around her. She said over and over how lucky she was that this wish was coming true. I gathered her words in a notebook that I kept close by.

She said:

“I want to go fast, but not today.”

“People give what they have to give.”

“People do the best they can.”

“It takes a special family to produce such people.”

And she said, “Everybody has to die, but it is nice if illumination of character shows up in the end.”

She was a wordsmith, but she spoke most boldly with her life. Her last breath was her last word — punctuation on a life lived well. And yes, she did it: she taught cheerfulness with her last breath.

What was she trying to say with her life?  It is my task to come as close as I can to putting it in words.  I think it is this:

“Go forth and choose joy. It’s waiting for you.”

Trapeze artists fly through the air with the greatest of ease, but not without a net.  No one flies without a net, but it can feel like we do. Teachers are high flying acrobats who fly the highest at the beginning of the year.  Before  our students even enter the room, we have a repertoire of the tried and true. Our stunts and maneuvers uncover the rigors of our classroom, the joy of a literate community, and the excitement of getting something brand new just right. We get to know our students; they get to know us and each other. The more skilled we are, the more effortless it all looks. Our repertoire helps us make it through September.  By October, it is clear that the pairing  of teacher and class is a love match. The routines and rituals have been established. We soar, learn, and make mistakes. Only the teacher knows the amount of summer preparation, reading, cleaning, organizing, writing, and coursework that is involved in laying the groundwork for the acrobatic feats of deep learning. September is tough. September is worth it. September makes way for October.

This year September is tougher than usual. Room 204 is happening without me.  The first week of school my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The second week of school she was hospitalized. Now she is a Hospice patient at home. I am absent from school so I can be present to her.  This.  Here.  Now.  Sometimes it feels like we are making this up as we go along and discovering new moves in mid-air. It is the most daring of family acts and my mother is bent on the good finish. But sometimes it really does feel like we are flying without a net.

The first thing I did was find a great substitute teacher.  The next thing I did was choose a great book to help my class process my impending  leave.  To ease the transition, I gave each child a piece of string and asked my third graders to brainstorm all the ways string might be useful and important. They held on to the string as I read The Invisible String by Patricia Karst.  In this book, a mother  explains to her children that we are connected to the people we love–and to the people they love–by invisible string that will not break.  I explained to my third graders I was leaving for a while and why.  I told them  they could keep the pieces of string in their pencil boxes as a reminder of the invisible string that connects us, even when we are not together.

Much of what I do now is help my mother welcome her wonderful friends who come to support her. A group that has met at my mother’s house for the last 27 years came last week. I told them about The Invisible String.  Before I knew it, I was reading them the book. Suddenly the book (like most good quality children’s literature) took us to a deeper, quieter, and more poetic place.

And then I saw it. When we leap into the unknown, we may fly high–but never without a net. Not ever. Our net may be invisible, but its invisible string shimmers with love, hope, grace, and profound connection.  It is strengthened by who are and who we love and who loves us.   It stretches from the past and into eternity.

Our family story is a great big beautiful messy love story with lots of happy endings.  My mother taught us to believe in happy endings, but never more powerfully or courageously than she is teaching us now.  Each day is a stunning leap into the unknown.  But never without a net– a net made strong by invisible string.  A net made strong by love.