Second Grade Lessons

Ah, the first day of school. The photos are flooding my Facebook feed as children across the country head back to school in droves. There have been many tears shed by parents as those tiny kindergarten kiddos have climbed the steps of the yellow buses and headed off into the gaping mouth of the educational system. There are muted cheers as well, as the somewhat rudderless days of summer fun and patched together child care give way to the semblance of order that the school year brings to us. With the first Ashland Arrows football game under our belts, all is right with the world!

The lovely Madelyn Simone is now officially a second grader who no longer wistfully looks back at her sister and Nana as she boards the bus. Since Teacher Becky joined our family last summer, our daughter-in-law has become the go-to person for questions pertaining to school. “So what will I learn in second grade, Aunt Becky?,” Madelyn’s enquiring mind wants to know. “Story-writing, more sight words, earth systems and life systems in science, and maybe even a start at multiplication,” Becky suggested.

What did I learn in second grade at Fletcher Elementary School in the 1960s? Memory is hazy, but a couple of lessons come to mind. First was the love of reading, instilled in me rather than taught. When my mom went to school for a parent-teacher conference, apparently Mrs. Gretzel commented on my choice of reading materials: Dear Ann Landers. Yes, I was reading the paper each day in second grade, and I was probably telling my friends about something I’d read in the advice column. Oops.

I’m sure our teacher emphasized the memorization of addition and subtraction facts, engaged us with the magic of simple science demonstrations, and entertained us with the exploits of the characters in “The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew,” a book I haven’t thought about in more than half a century. She also encouraged our on-going literary efforts, including the requisite “what did you do this summer?” essay. In our family circle, I’m best known for my report on the summer of the broken arm, writing and illustrating the discovery of worms (maggots) in my cast when it was removed.  

Another lesson from second grade was a much more difficult one, learned in the context of a classmate’s diagnosis with leukemia. My mother and I visited her once or twice, and in our helplessness in the face of her devastating illness, we created a sunshine basket for her with a little surprise for each day. Cindy Doel was seven when she died. “Life is difficult,” M. Scott Peck tells us in “The Road Less Traveled,” and Cindy’s death was heartbreaking proof of that truth. 

As a former Tonawanda resident recently noted in his Facebook post, there was one lesson we didn’t learn in that school, in that community, at least in real life. He lamented the fact that he never really knew a black person as a friend until he went to college. Yes, really. Even though we were only a few miles from the Buffalo city limits, we could have been in another country, as our community was not integrated at all. The only person of color I remember from those days was Calvin Twoguns, a Native American boy in my class. In the early 60s, it’s just the way it was, at least in our community. Until I experienced the world beyond our suburban enclave, both through literature and experience, I just didn’t know of the richness of connection with the “red and yellow, black and white” we innocently sang about in Sunday School – but never met.

We may learn all we need to know in kindergarten, as author Robert Fulghum suggests, supplemented by our second grade accomplishments. Yet our ability – and desire –  to learn doesn’t end in elementary school. Since I’m not up to tackling physics or learning Chinese, I’ll claim Queen Noor’s words for what I’m seeking out this school year: “If we are to prosper together in our increasingly small world, we must listen to – and learn from each other’s stories.” Over coffee or the back fence, I’m listening.

The Blood, the Scar

As a weekly columnist for the Ashland Times-Gazette, I have the responsibility and the privilege of writing approximately seven hundred words to be read as my neighbors sit on their patio with a second cup of coffee on Saturday morning. I enjoy the challenge of finding a subject to bring a smile, a tear, or even an argument to my regular readers, but the once-a-week Saturday format means that my thoughts may not be published in a timely manner when they address something seen as a blip on the news cycle by the time a week has passed.

In my need to write about the protests in Charlottesville, I battled with the “old news” concern, and wondered if there were possibly any more words to be written about what happened in our nation a week ago. Talking with a wise friend, I mused, “But it will have been a week already when my column is printed.” And she turned it around and said, “It’s only been a week. Write what you need to write.”

In recent weeks, I’ve read a number of novels bookended by the first and second world wars. I didn’t seek them out, but they’ve come by way of suggestions from friends, discoveries on the library shelves, and binge-reading authors I’m meeting for the first time. Through their stories, I’m experiencing the sights and sounds of the trenches of World War I, the anguish of the Nazi occupation, the courageous actions of the resistance, and the unspeakable horrors of the concentration camps. Has that unintentional immersion in the worst of man’s inhumanity to man made me particularly sensitive, I wondered, as I watched the clips of the Nazi flag being brazenly waved on the streets of an American city, an American college campus? What are we possibly forgetting from the lessons of history if we do not shudder with the sight of that flag, that salute?

And I wonder, could this happen here? What if a permit was applied for in our city? What if a demonstration was scheduled on our university campus? What would I do? How would our community react?

As a retired clergywoman, my thoughts also go to the church in times of unrest. What is our role? The images of clergy standing with linked arms in the face of trouble in Charlottesville are powerful, but what of those in communities large and small across our nation? Do we believe the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and pastor who said, “The church’s task is not simply to bind the wounds of the victim beneath the wheel, but also to put a spoke in the wheel itself”?

Shortly before we left on vacation, on my way to trim the other half of the bushes in our yard, the orange extension cord and I took a plunge off our front porch. By the next day, I looked like I’d gone ten rounds with Rocky Balboa. But within a week or so, my scabs were falling off, my bruises had faded, and my fractured nose was beginning to adjust to its new alignment. “Not displaced, no surgery needed,” was the doctor’s evaluation.

I’m sensing that same kind of experience post-Charlottesville, as we’ve watched and listened, wept and stood vigil, and argued about who is/was at fault. By now, a week later, we’re moving on, just as we did from the World Trade Center and Selma, Normandy and Auschwitz, Gettysburg and Antietam. But I won’t easily forget the copious blood that flowed that day, and I wince as my fingers trace the broken path across my nose.

Be it a week or a century, we must not forget the blood or the scar. John McCrae, a Canadian physician serving in World War I, wrote: “To you from falling hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders fields.” In a time of great disquiet in our nation, might we flinch as we trace the reminders of our brokenness, yet lift our own lighted torch to drive out the darkness.

Watching the Neighborhood

I grew up in a tight-knit neighborhood. We lived next door to Susie and “Tet” Tetter, and a small pond separated us from the Durwalds at the corner. Across the street was the Kovach family, and then the Perrys (the junior high principal), the Foits, the Holdaways , the Tollars, the Netters, and the Fritkzes. I’d walk through the Foit’s yard to get to the Yondt house, where my friends Sue and Pam lived.

I moved away from Klinger Avenue in September 1973, yet I still remember the families who resided in the houses on my street, and stay in touch on Facebook with some of the neighbors. Our moms didn’t play bridge together each week, nor did our parents share in cocktail hours or dinner parties, but we knew each other, and both the adults and the kids of the neighborhood were on the lookout for any unusual activity on our street.

Fifty years later, times have changed. We live on a similar street here in Ashland, as I estimate the socio-economic status to be close to that of my childhood neighborhood, but fewer people own their homes than did that cluster of families on Klinger Avenue. Children ride their bikes through the alley every day, and residents mow their lawns with regularity. I know a few of the neighbors, but during the day, not many of them are at home. Perhaps it has something to do with our long-time nomadic life as Salvation Army officers, but I’m not connected too well to my surroundings, and I’m guessing this may be true for other Ashland residents as well.

There was a drug bust on the block behind us a couple of months ago, but I only found out about it on the pages of the T-G, not through the neighborhood grapevine. I don’t think those living on my street know each other well enough to have each other’s backs, and so I was glad to hear about the birth of the Neighborhood Watch here in Ashland. It’s a simple concept: neighborhood residents commit to keeping their eyes and ears open, and to report any suspicious activity to the local police. Is there a broken window in a vacant house in the neighborhood? Does someone appear to be peering into parked cars on your street? Don’t assume someone else has reported it. Make the call and let the police check it out. Better to embarrass your neighbors for locking themselves out of the house than ignoring the potential signs of a break-in.

Are local police open for citizen input? Absolutely, suggests Lt. Gary Atling. “It’s our job. Nothing is too trivial . . . we take that seriously. And we teach the new officers to take all this stuff seriously and remember who they’re working for are the men and women in this community.”

There is a balance between rooting out the bad (being on the lookout for criminal activity) and building up what is good in our neighborhoods. Those who have studied cities both large and small know the value of both organized neighborhood watch programs and intentional community development activities. Since we don’t want our lives to be consumed by our James Bond or Austin Powers impersonations, we can also take time to chat over the backyard fence, lend a lawnmower, plant flowers, or clean up a vacant lot, for all of these activities contribute to the safety and security of a neighborhood.

Here’s my hope. Not only might we be on the watch for potential criminal activity, but let’s be open to the formation of neighborhood bonds that allow for an awareness of the signs of difficulty long before they evolve into criminal matters. It may not be the 50s or 60s, and neighborly connections today may not happen as naturally as the relationships of my childhood seemed to suggest, but investing on the street where we live can bring rewards far beyond increased property value. I like Lisa Miller’s counsel: “Don’t forget to leave your handprints on the ones you love and your footprints around the neighborhood.” Good advice for sure.