It's the Small Stuff That Counts

Last week was refreshing - a stop and consider type of refreshing. The kind that realigns your heart and mind, allowing your perspective to broaden. First, I realized I have only two weeks of the college semester left, that I've essentially made it to the end! All that crazy almost done. Hard to believe, but such a relief.

Then my son had a sleep over birthday party. I set a limited number of 12 year old boys who could crash at my house, but my husband said "No, invite them all." When I bulked (I don't "do" bigger groups of younger kids well) he said he'd take over the party. And that he did. I made sure the party had what it needed and hung out for happy birthday, then split. (Yes, I came back and spent the night listening to nonstop chatter except between the hours of 3am-6am, so I didn't totally abandon my husband to the mob!) But what a husband. Knowing I have limits to what I can take with a huge group of crazy younger kids, he was more than willing to take over and let me escape for the craziest part of it.

And escape I did, thanks to one of my best friends answering my picture and rhetorical question on IG about needing to escape the number of running, noisy bodies in my house. Hang out time and a movie and just a really nice night. It is rare to find people you can completely be yourself around. I have foot in mouth disease - the bad combination of a big mouth and a strong-will - so it's refreshing to find someone who knows who I am and I don't have to replay the night in worry later.

The weekend was also shared with a family friend who comes by once a week to watch movies with us. He owns over 2,000 movies and we've currently been binge watching our way through seasons of Survivor. We've been at it for 18 months now and we're on season 23...that's 11 1/2 years of Survivor! It's always a great night when he is with us - we usually eat dinner or have snacks and cheer or yell as needed at competitions that are years gone. Lol.

And the moments that started the refreshing of these past couple days were with my students. My Seniors, the majority of whom were my Juniors last year, started presenting their "Things That Happened to Me" slideshows last Thursday and finish up tomorrow. Based on Oskar Schell's photo book of the same name in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, I asked them to choose a combination 20 pictures of their own and internet that show me who they are. I don't think I've enjoyed any other project as much.

Can't put up my students' pictures,
but this is where we meet.

My Seniors told me where they've been and where they're going; what they've failed and what they've accomplished; what makes them laugh and what makes them cry; who they love and who loves them; how the world has changed them and how they want to change the world; how they're broken and how they've healed. They've shared their families, friends, pets, jobs, favorite colors, hobbies, interests, secrets, and dozens of little things in between. I've enjoyed every word of every presentation the past two days. How could I not?

According to the state of Pennsylvania they're my job, but to me, they're simply my kids. And soon enough, after two years in my classroom, they'll be graduating. So this week, for now, I am going to enjoy my time with them and all they're willing to share.

Yes, we have work to do, friendships have tough times, my kids and their friends can be a crazy bunch, my husband and I may not always be so mindful of each other, and my current journey is CRAZY, but it's the day-to-day where life happens - memories are made, lessons are learned, and lives are fortified.

It's the small stuff that counts.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

I am not typically a person to reread books. There are just too many titles I want to read in the first place to spend time going back to stories I already know. However, teaching literature has also shown me the benefit of rereading. Besides the very cool fact of knowing a couple literary giants inside and out, there's the way a story changes and effects me the more I look at it.

All that to say that, much like my recent post on The Catcher in the Rye, Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close didn't sit well with me during my first read. Also, much like the reasoning behind Catcher, Foer's unreliable first person narration flows in a stream-of-consciousness thought process. In this case it is a nine-year-old boy named Oskar Schell. The story takes place a couple years post 9/11, but jumps back and forth as Oskar recalls his life and family previous to 9/11 and how his life has changed since. The hard part for me is Oskar's personality specficially. He doesn't speak straight forward, instead using language creatively, such as saying he has "heavy boots" instead of "depressed." His imagination is overactive, causing him to ask crazy questions and invent crazy things that seemingly make no sense. His social skills do not follow the norm, leading him to do things that ostracize him, although for those who really know him, it's just "Oskar." Honestly, upon first reading I thought, if I were his parent I'd want to lock him in a closet (only when he drives me crazy, for his own good, I promise).

Oskar shares narration with his grandmother and grandfather, the former currently in his life and the latter having left before Oskar's father was even born. Through each of them we see a historical (WWII) parallel experience to 9/11 - a mirror to Oskar's suffering, if not worse than his suffering. The chapters narrated by Oskar's grandparents are my favorite, the story pulls me in and I feel for the characters deeply.

Now before you decide I'm cold-hearted, not caring about a kid's loss in 9/11, let me say I'm seeing a pattern that I don't mesh well with in literature. My Honors 11 class chose Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close as the novel with which to finish off our school year. That means a reread for me. At the same time, I've been rereading The Catcher in the Rye (for at least the seventh time) with my AP Lit classes. And between the two I've realized it's the stream of consciousness narration that I don't handle well. The tumbling of thoughts from the first person narrator drives me crazy, I begin to dislike a character who is meant to garner sympathy. And on Oskar's part, I feel more bad for his mother who has to deal with him! (The crazy feelings of parenting middle aged children have not left me quite yet.) As a person who thinks through so much in her life and the process thought follows in general, this was kind of a surprise. I reassure myself that I'm not a hypocrite because stream of consciousness is unbridled thought and totally different than a third person, omniscient or limited.

But also, much like rereading Catcher, my second read of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close changed my view of Oskar. Already knowing what his thought process was like, I was able to see beyond it (even appreciate it a little) and feel more deeply for him. Everything he does has absolute purpose, from his clothing, to his ideas, to his routines. To be such a unique individual and have the one person who understood you disappear forever, tragically no less...it's overwhelmingly sad. And to be the parent left, watching helplessly and maybe hopelessly, as your child struggles along with the blow to his innocence?

This much I know is true, I will have to reread all books with stream of consciousness narrators to truly see what the story is trying to say. Ugh, Holden Caulfield, what have you done to me?!