Notes from Public School - Day 130

Here is one of my favorite stories.

It seems like a good day to share it.

I hope you like it and find meaning in it.

The Physics of Friendship

They looked out the window of the bus together, side by side, cheek to cheek.

The heat and humidity of the Brownsville morning and the air conditioning on the bus caused the windows to fog.

Hilcias pulled his sleeve over his hand and used it as a window wiper, moving it back and forth until he and Taki could see clearly the Gulf of Mexico along the coastal road.

People began to stir and stretch and reach for their bags above, below and around them, but Hilcias and Taki stayed as still and quiet as the leaves on the trees that lined the street beside the bus station.

Do you know there are five foundational forces in the universe?

They hold everything together.

They bring order and chaos.

Four of them can be explained by physics - the gravitational force, the electromagnetic force, the weak force and the strong force.

The gravitational force keeps planets in orbit around their suns and our feet planted firmly on the ground.

The electromagnetic force brings us electricity, information, and connection - it underlies the mighty power of lightning and the gentle touch of the human hand.

The weak force creates nuclear energy and makes stars shine.

The strong force holds quarks inside of protons and neutrons and holds protons and neutrons inside of atoms.

The fifth foundational force can’t be explained by physics, though.

It can only be explained by friendship.

It is love.

Taki and Hilcias stepped off of the Greyhound bus into the early morning sunlight.

“Where should we go?” asked Taki.

She looked at the horizon between the Gulf of Mexico and the Brownsville sky.

She was very still and very quiet.

Hilcias looked at the horizon, too.

“I guess we should go to the water,” she said.

They reached for each other’s hands.

They walked together down the road toward the gulf.

This created that fifth foundational force, which is the strongest force of all, for it keeps hearts in orbit around each other and gives hope.

from trevor’s encyclopedia of lost things

I.

Ah, these are my only chancletas, my only flip-flops. 

Now, they've fallen apart. 

Turned to dust. 

There's nothing to repair.

A little bit of wire and tape are all I have left.

I have a few centavos in my pocket. 

I could use that to buy another pair of chancletas at a roadside market, but I need to use them for Hilcias.

A new pair of chancletas can buy tortillas, beans and mangoes for a few days on the migrant trail, and I care more for his belly than for my feet.

The migrant trail is so rocky hard and scorching hot. 

Barefooted, without chancletas, I feel each step.

It hurts.

But I have tough feet.

My heart is in my feet.

They're feet that've walked the farms and fields of El Salvador from sun rise to sun set, from dark to dark, since I was a little girl.

They're hard as stones.

They're part of the earth itself.

I know, though, they weren't made to walk a thousand miles over the migrant trail without chancletas.

But I walk step by step, carrying a pack on my shoulder that holds everything we own in the world, holding Hilcias in my arms, walking slowly and steadily with abuelo.

We sit by the side of the trail.

I give a small sonrisa, a small smile, to Hilcias along with a handful of mashed tortilla, beans and mangoes.

As I touch his little hand, I notice it is cracked like dried mud, too calloused for a child.

His heart is in his hands.

I kiss him on the cheek.

It's soft like the skin of a mango.

And the sun has given it a mangoes color.

How I love my hijo.

I give a tear to the earth for my bruised feet and his weathered hands.

Once, a kind priest told me, "Our tender God walks the earth with his feet and holds the earth in his hands."

As we make our way to Matamoros and the bridge to el Norte I wonder, does God hold my tender feet that've been bruised by the earth?

Well, no matter.

Whether or not God is holding my feet, I am holding my child, walking beside abuelo, and traveling on.

On my bruised feet.

With my beating heart.

Una vida mejor awaits us.

I hope.

II.

Her feet 

are calloused and cracked  

like rocks 

in plowed ground, 

like stones 

in turned soil, 

the soil 

she walks over 

barefooted 

as her grandfather 

turned the earth 

with donkey and plow. 

She has

the feet 

of her grandfather, 

for she walked 

beside him 

down the long rows 

of beans and corn 

when she was

a little girl.

He walked 

up and down 

those rows 

until his feet 

were broken and bent 

and made him genuflect

to God, 

to the wealthy land owner, 

to the land itself. 

Her feet 

are broken and bent 

like that.

When her feet 

are in the soil 

it is

as if 

they are part 

of the land, 

as if 

they hold the secrets 

of the earth, 

as if 

they know the mystery 

of how seed 

and dirt 

and water 

become 

a bean 

in a pod,

a kernel 

on an ear 

of corn. 

Her heart 

is in her feet, 

her heart 

is in the land, 

her heart 

is the mystery 

itself.

Her feet speak, 

"Estoy aquí, 

I am here, 

estoy aquí." 

Her feet 

are signs 

to the world - 

"I am 

a human being."

Notes from Public School - Day 129

A story about listening

Listen.

She is a genius, but no one knows this about her.

She looks at the world with a heart and mind full of curiosity and wonder. 

That is how I first learned about her - because of her curiosity and wonder.

 "There's a girl who knows a lot about whales," came the word over the water. 

And she did. 

She drew a beautiful, detailed picture of a bowhead whale and wrote beneath it, "A bowhead whale's blubber is over two feet thick so it can withstand the Arctic cold. The bowhead can create it's own breathing hole by breaking through ice up to one foot thick." 

She drew a blue whale and wrote, “A blue whale's heart is as big as a Volkswagon Beetle, but it's ears are the size of the point of a pencil." 

And she drew a sperm whale with these words, "For many years, oil from a sperm whale's head was used to provide light for people. In fact, people measure the strength of light in lumens, which is the light of one pure white spermaceti candle." 

She is a whale genius.

It is not her ingenuity that causes me to love her, though. 

No, I don't love her for what she can do. 

I love her for what she can't do. 

She cannot speak. 

She hasn't spoken a single word in her whole life.

When she was two, her mamí talked with her in the language of poetry as she walked with her tied to her back down the long rows of peaches under the South Carolina sun. 

Her mamí reached up to the trees, took the peaches in her hands, and rubbed the fuzzy skin against her soft cheek.

She whispered,

“Amo el trozo de tierra que tú eres

porque de las praderas planetarias

otra estrella no tengo. Tú repites

la multiplicación del universo.”

“I love the handful of earth you are.

Because of it's meadows, vast as a planet,

I have no other star. You are my replica

of the multiplying universe.”

She waited for her to talk back to her in toddling language, to say words like mamí and amo and tú, but she didn't say them. 

She didn't say anything at all. 

She only looked at her with wide, unblinking, brown eyes, eyes the color of the deep parts of the earth, and jutted out her bottom lip as if to say, "There is much I want to say, but I can't.”

Now, people ask her, "What's your name?" or "How old are you?" or "How are you?" and she answers them with whistles instead of with words. 

They ask her abuelo and mamí, "What's wrong with her?" and they simply sigh the sighs of people who have carried heavy loads on their backs and in their hearts.

They answer, "Dios sabe, God knows." 

I know, too. 

So I want to tell you so you will know. 

That's the meaning of life, right? 

To know and to be known. 

To listen.

To be heard.

Notes From Public School - Day 128

I teach my students to write small moments from their lives.

They think of a moment that was meaningful to them and write about.

I love to read their small moments.

“One day, you’ll realize that the small moments are really BIG moments,” I said.

I like dropping teacher knowledge every now and then.

Here is a small moment from my life that I shared with them.

We were walking down the beach on the sand as the tide was moving out toward the ocean. 

I was holding Zeke's hand, talking with him about sea things. 

"I didn't know jelly fish swam this close to the shore during the spring.

I bet that drift wood is as old as The Old Man and the Sea.

I heard a horseshoe crab's blood can be used to treat cancer.

Wow! Look," I said.

"What is it?" he asked.

I picked up a shell out of the deep, hot sand and held it in my open hand.

It was unlike any shell we had ever seen. 

There were two shells, one on the top and its twin on the bottom, connected at the back, and clammed up tightly in the front.

"It's a clam!" I said.

"Is it alive?" he asked.

"I don't know," I answered. 

"Let's find out."

We returned to our chairs, took our shovel, and made our way to the shore line where the waves come to an end in the sand and ran back into the sea. 

I dug a small hole, Zeke scratched out a little trench, and we placed the clam back into a sandy water habitat.

We sat and watched. 

Children played around us. 

Families swam in the surf. 

People relaxed in the sun.

The clam opened and closed itself, almost imperceptibly, leaving only a small bubble to show us it was still alive.

"Did you see that? It's still living!" I exclaimed.

"We did something nice for that clam," said Zeke. 

"I wonder what nice thing it's going to do for us?

 

Maybe it'll make a pearl for us!"

In a way, the little clam did give us a pearl. 

It reminded me of something I learned from the great writer George Bernard Shaw. 

He taught me that in a world where survival of the fittest is in effect, where only the strong survive, there is an art in life where the smallest and most forgotten things are of utmost importance, where there is a survival of the kindest.

Life is in that art.

We saw that today.

Notes From Public School - Day 127

the little monk knows a beluga whale looks at you quizzically for they are curious creatures, and sing long, beautiful songs because they are the canaries of the sea

the little monk knows a narwhal places the tip of its hornlike tooth into the broken tooth of a hurting narwhal to assuage its pain

the little monk knows a blue whale has ears the size of a point of a pencil and a heart the size of a Volkswagen

the little monk knows whales migrate over great distances, and his humble prayer is

Migrant God,

     Walk with me,

          Write with me

Notes From Public School - Day 126

In a creek, sharp-edged rocks become smooth stones.

It takes many years.

But it happens.

“I am here,” says the creek. “Estoy aquí.”

And it is always there.

It seems to be powerless to transform the world around it.

But it is.

And it does.

As a teacher and a writer, I am a creek.

Here are some sayings from creek-side today.

• some stories break the little monk’s heart and scatter it all over the ground; some stories mend the little monk’s heart and put it back together again
• sometimes the little monk hears with his eyes, sometimes he sees with his ears, but at all times he looks and listens with his heart
• the little monk knows his heart is the size of his fist, but a blue whale’s heart is the size of a Volkswagen

Notes From Public School – Day 125

Today in Social Studies we were studying the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Our activity read, “Imagine that you just moved into a new house. What is the first thing you would do?”

I wonder.

What is the first thing YOU would do?

I said, “I would look for an Olympic sized swimming pool in the backyard, because I love to swim.”

My students chuckled.

“That IS the first thing you would do, Mr. Barton,” they said.

Can you guess the first thing my students would do?

“I would look for a big backyard that was mine to explore, with grass and trees as far as I could see,” said Jhoan.

“I would open all of the windows and let fresh air and sunshine come in,” said Nashly.

When we began this activity, most of my students’ eyes were filled with…what? 

A mixture of sadness and hope?

Yes.

That’s it.

A mixture of sadness and hope.

Since I teach in a Title I school, most of the families I work with every day are at or near the poverty line.

This means they work very hard but struggle to put food on the table and clothes on the back and money for those times they get sick and just can’t get better.

They have enough money to rent a place to live, but not buy a place of their own.

That where the sadness comes from in my little ones’ eyes.

What about the hope?

Where does it come from?

I hope a little bit comes from me.

From 7:30 AM until 2:30 PM, I tell them a hundred times, “You are beautiful! You are a genius! You are wonderful! You are courageous!”

I hope the systems in which we live will tell them that, too.

I hope those systems will help their dreams come true and not leave them with dreams deferred.

The great writer Langston Hughes (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem) reminded us of what can happen to a dream deferred.

I don’t want that for them.

I want their dreams to come true.

That’s what I work for each and every day.

That’s why I teach.