Skip to main content

Silent Night Reborn

Silent night
Holy night
All is calm
All is bright

Hospital bed
Middle of night
Doctors and nurses
Witness the plight

Round yon virgin
Mother and child
Holy infant
So tender and mild

Tiny blue babe
Fights for each breath
Mother and father
Await her death

Sleep in heavenly peace

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Popular posts from this blog

My Love-Hate Relationship with Teaching

I have a confession to make, one that seemingly meets the criteria of a mundane mid-life crisis: I love what I do, but I hate my job. I’m a kindergarten teacher by trade. I adore children—always have, always will—and have a natural affinity for the littlest learners. I enjoy watching their growth across a school year, the way they come in green and fresh as newly planted seeds at the start, and leave my classroom as saplings stretching toward the infinite sky of knowledge and understanding. I hate the metrics that are used to define my students’ performance (and my own). I loathe the over-reliance on a narrow band of assessment measures that ignores the intangibles of student growth and extinguishes the joy of learning. I resent seeing children reduced to numbers on a grid in the name of data-based decision-making. I cherish the time I spend with my students in the Zone of Proximal Development. I thrive on the everyday teachable moments that enable me to coach into my stud...

Going Solo

I miss my right breast. There, I said it. It’s not often that I allow myself that luxury. It’s been nearly twelve years since I had it. My late breast was warm and soft, lovely really, even if it was a shave smaller than its mate, and parting with it saddened me deeply. I could say that I lost my breast, but that would imply that there was some remote possibility of getting it back. It’s more accurate to say that I removed it for medical reasons, and replaced it for cosmetic ones. If I had known how much the laborious process of reconstruction would hurt, I would have taken a pass on the effort. When the plastic surgeon explained the process of stretching that would precede placement of the actual implant, it did not occur to me that post-surgical skin might rebel against this strain on its capacity. However, once you’ve committed to the risk, you need to see it through to the reward, which is exactly what I did. I tolerated the pain for the eventual trophy—a cohesive sili...

The Curse of Expectation

I had a disappointment last week. I’d submitted my book to an indie writing contest and the winners were to be notified by Thursday. I didn’t get the notification. It’s not that I expected to win. Wait, scratch that. My disappointment indicates that indeed, on some level, I did expect some kind of recognition. Maybe I wasn’t expecting to take the grand prize, but I was hoping for at least an honorable mention. Acknowledging that was the first step in being able to let it go. Once I recognized my expectations as a cry for validation, I saw them clearly as a self-imposed burden of proof meant to silence the inner critic who keeps raising doubts about my writing talents. My disappointment wasn’t about the quality of my work—it was about my need to prove myself. What I am learning—slowly, painfully, and inevitably the hard way—is that disappointment is an inside job, rooted in my expectation of how the events in my life are supposed to turn out. I keep slapping my preconceived...