Teaching English--Beginning with Vietnamese

Today one of my students asked me--as we were diagramming predicate adjectives and predicate nominatives (which, by the way, they now call predicate nouns)--"Mrs. Jones what in the world made you want to be a teacher?" 

And in less time than it took to crack my yardstick against the white board (no, it isn't corporal punishment...don't tell Henry David Thoreau..it's just such a great power trip, a yardstick and speed grammar in colored chalk on the black board, blazing dry erase markers up front, and 15 kids flying around the room diagramming Tim's uncle has been the town mayor for twelve years, and Your little brown dog is actually a Doberman or Professor Dumbledore seemed angry at Harry for the whole term..if you love this stuff like I do, you understand) I was back in Mr. Jacobson's pink and blue sixth grade classroom, at Wilcox Elementary.

None of us were sure why they painted his classroom pink and baby-blue over the summer, but now that I'm a teacher I'm pretty certain he must have done something to incur the wrath of the maintenance crew (teacher-the/ pissed off-staff,the, custodial). Anyway, I digress.

It was the year they separated me from all my friends, you know, three sixth grade teachers...let's keep that mouthy White kid (and when I say White, that was my name, not my race...although I guess technically it's my race, but I wasn't meaning it that way, and why do I feel like I have to explain that anyway...sheesh--definitely another blog, another day) away from her friends and maybe they'll stand a chance of learning something this year, or coming in from recess without having been verbally badgered for an hour, or making up their own minds about a topic (okay, I admit I may have been a little bit overbearing as a child...but thank God, I/ 've outgrown/ that! ).

Literally, and I mean literally, every morning I woke up hating the idea, the very thought of, getting out of bed to go to school. I detested everything about education and my life. My big brother had gone away to college and rather than living in a state of Nirvana, not having to wonder when he was going to crawl out the bathroom window only to crawl around the house in the dark and scratch on the screens of the TV room to crawl back through the bathroom window and come to our "rescue" after unlocking the door to our screams, I was completely and utterly depressed...because  believe it or not, I really adored him. 

That was the fall of 1975...and if I recall correctly it was also the fall of Saigon.
So that fall we spent the days looking through microscopes at purpled onion skins in Ms. Yancil's class, working algebra problems and learning grammar in Mr. Jacobson's nursery-colored classroom, and then spent the evenings watching dingy green and gray footage of military airlifts, the double propellered army helicopters taking off straight into the sky with  hundreds of South Vietnamese crammed inside, dozens more hanging from the runners as they rose higher and higher into the sky, roters whirling, until the hangers-on finally dropped off or were pushed to the ground.(hangers on-the/ dropped---or were pushed-finally/ to ground-the.)
It was also the fall we learned to diagram sentences. It was like discovering the math of English. Suddenly, words--which  I/ had adored-always, violenty-quite, like-brother,my, big-- fell into comprehendable rank and file, slanting lines of prepositions and sloping adjectives inclining adverbs. I covered my college-lined notebook paper (it was time for the big hitters, we were in sixth-grade after all) with messy pen and graphite lines filled with words--beautiful words. No, they drew themselves, the harder the sentence, the more in love I fell.

But I/ hated-still/ school......

And then Dâm arrived.

The Methodist Church sponsored one of the refugee families--the ones we saw flooding into Laos every night as  the North Vietnamese army marched its way south--and the family they sponsored was Dâm’s.
Her family had escaped with their lives, but they had been separated from her father. I don’t remember much more than that, and I’m not sure I ever truly understood. Maybe they floated on inner tubes, or doors or pieces of rafts—I remember the anchor men called them “boat people,” but most of them never used a boat.  Dâm and her family had somehow gotten to Laos, where they stayed in a refugee camp and learned basic English phrases like “Thank you” and “Please.” And when Dâm came to Castle Rock that’s about all the English she knew. 

The Methodist church found Dâm’s family a little two-bedroom house, scrapped together enough clothing for seven children and their mother, a tiny scrap of a woman who was still nursing Dâm’s baby sister, Hieuh, and then sent them to American public schools.
And that’s the event that changed my life. 

When Holden asked me why I became a teacher, it’s hard to explain that it happened nearly forty years ago in 1975 when Mr. Jacobsen called me to the back of his classroom and asked me if I would like a special project. My job, he said, for the rest of the year, would be to teach Dâm English. No more sheets of diagrams and sitting, waiting for the others to finish, no more grammar for me at all. How, I asked, would I do it? He told me: Just be her friend (you)/ be-just/ friend-her.

She had five brothers: Co, Minh, Trinh, Quang, and little Trang, who was only three years old and looked like a tiny skeleton of a boy. I’m always afraid I’ve forgotten one, now, as I’ve forgotten so many things. Her full name was Nguuyen Thi Dâm, meaning she was the daughter of her father, Van Nguuyen. The boys went by Nguuyen Van Co and on down the line. 

Co was sent to junior high, where the first thing the boys did was to teach him every swear word they could think of. I can't imagine the weight or the anger Co must have carried around on his shoulders as the oldest son--his father lost in war. I was always a little frightened of him. But one day I remember seeing him smile.
I had a friend named Peter and one day Co tried to ask if we were siblings. I tried so hard to understand him (I/ took-seriously/ job-my), repeating, “Peanut butter? Peanut butter?” Finally in exasperation Co started laughing, and I suddenly realized he was asking if Peter was my brother. Dâm, Peter, Co and I laughed until our sides ached. It was one of the few times I saw him let down his guard.
I played at Dâm's house; she came over to mine. We met almost every day in the middle at the Elementary school and played on the swings and teeter totters, and we sat on the monkey bars and exchanged languages. I remember so little of what she taught me, and I wouldn’t know how to spell it if I tried. Dow Di ,Mat , Mui , and Mea…that was head, ears, eyes, nose and mouth. She taught me to make paper gum wrapper chains, and I still have it in a little box on my dresser. She taught me to scoop up one rock at a time as I threw another in the air, like a game of jacks without the rubber ball. Her mother made the best chicken I have ever tasted, and I never realized how very destitute they were. In fact I didn't realize at all until my parents scolded me for eating supper at her house. When they found out she had fed me They were appalled (parents-my/ must have felt\ sorry-for her). Dâm became my best friend. Her smile was as quick and as bright as fox-fire. Her skin was as rich as coffee, her hair as thick and dark as the fall had once felt. She laughed at all my jokes, and with her I never had to fight for my way. She trusted me in everything.
And because I was just a kid, I never thought ahead to what might come of my beautiful Vietnamese friend. 

But that summer I went on vacation with my parents, and when I came home………….. Dâm/ was\ gone. The Methodists moved them to a Vietnamese community in Denver where they could have support, friends--a network. I guess there weren’t too many people like them in Castle Rock, but like most 12 year olds. I guess I had never noticed. I don’t know if I’ve ever cried that hard over a friend since.

Dâm was the best friend a 12-year-old girl could have ever had. Dâm taught me to not be sad angry anymore, and she made me think I was good at something. Dâm saved my life and taught me one of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned: When you’re absorbed in yourself and depressed beyond words, try helping out somebody else. When you get your eyes off your own sadness, and you focus on another’s, the sadness suddenly recedes. Dâm came across the ocean, and she washed away my loneliness. And for that, I will always, always love her.I-for, that/ will love-always, always / her
I don’t claim to be an expert on the Vietnam war. It wasn’t even considered history yet when I was in high school. I’ve never been to Vietnam, and I don’t know if I ever will go. 

But, oh, how I would love to see Dâm again. I’d probably chicken out if I ever found her…I doubt she even remembers who I am.
But I try to imagine what she’s like now. I’ll bet she’s married and has grown up kids, just like me. I’ll bet she still smiles like the sun and her hair is still jet black. I’ll bet she can still turn handsprings around me in math, and that her English is impeccable. I wonder if she taught her daughters to make gum wrapper chains and play the rock-tossing game, and I wonder if she still laughs about peanut butter.

I believe God heard me praying every night that fall when I was 11 years old: “God, please, please, please send me a friend.” And just like God, with his enormous sense of humor, he didn’t just send me any old friend….he went to Vietnam to find her. And who could have ever guessed that by the time my birthday came around that spring, and I turned 12, I would have already become the teacher I decided eventually to become.I / became \ teacher.

Death Before Death--Remembering Alzheimer's and my Grandmother Esther

This Saturday morning was a drippy, gray, fall day. Not the kind of day you like to go to the park and walk for charity. But it fit my mood, somehow--remembering Alzheimer's is never a happy day for me. I'd prefer to remember my grandmother the way she was..............before the way she was.

I'd like to think about her teaching me to knit a red scarf, casting on. I'd like to remember her needlepointing, quilting, sewing, painting. I'd like to imagine her when she was a young teacher in a single-room school, and I'd have liked to have known her when she conducted the high school choirs and taught art at all the schools.


Sometimes I think about her singing at a school bonfire before a football game for Rio Blanco County High School in 1926, standing around with the other girls in their heeled Mary Janes and dropped-waist dresses, the boys with their hair greased back, parted down the middle like Jay Gatsby and Nick Caraway, the girls in their Marcel waves looking like Daisy Buchanan. I didn't know her then.


I remember holding her velvet-gloved hand in the backseat of the car, as we rode to dinner--something we could never afford to do until Grandmother and Grandydad came for a visit, stroking her mink coat and breathing in the smell of her perfume. She would lay her hand on top of mine, then the sandwich of hands would pile on her lap as she pulled her hand from beneath to lay on top of mine, then my sister's, then mine, over and over as we giggled all the way to the restaurant.


I remember the summer she took me and my sister to Meeker to spend a week prior to my parent's arrival--the month every summer we spent with them, swim lessons and afternoons at the pool with Herb Albert and the Tiajuana Brass playing over the speakers, piano lessons for every child in town as she somehow managed to get lunch and supper done for us all. The noon whistle which signalled our run down the block to meet Grandydad as he came home for lunch from the courthouse and abstract office, a quick trip to Bernie's Super 8 to pick up ice cream. The pipe smoke that permeated their car, the cold smooth concrete of the garage floor on our barefeet. The sizzling hot asphalt smell the summer they paved the road outside the house.


I remember the smell of varnished wood and the dark comfort of polished church pews and deep red stained-glass windows...touch me not for I have not yet ascended, let the little children come unto me...The preludes and her little black chapel cap and cotta as she watched in the the rear view mirror for Father Johns to appear and begin the service. The worn black organ shoes she couldn't play without, and the way she changed them for proper pumps to go the take her sacraments at the rail, changed them back to play the music for communion.

I remember the dinner parties she would throw and the special code: FHB which meant family hold back when there were unexpected guests. The impromptu concerts on her double pianos and the family singing the old songs as she played. On special nights my dad would sing in his sweet tenor an old high school solo of "O Danny Boy."
I remember the day we baked chowmein noodle chocolate cookies and the way we gathered Nanking cherries so she could teach us how to make jelly--grandydad squeezing the cheesecloth bag as she held the strainer, purple steam rising and scarlet syrup staining our hands.

I remember the matching dresses for Easter and Christmas that arrived as if by magic, trips to Cinderella City and popcorn and balloons--things unheard of for a poor minister's daughter. I remember the phrase she taught me the summer I asked her for the drop-leaf desk, abandoned in the basement..."everything I have is yours, darling."

I remember the green Samsonite luggage and dancing by the pull-out bed in the TV room...knowing it was rude to ask, but also knowing there was Avon lipstick or perfume or bubble bath wrapped in perfection paper, golden bows and invisible tape. One for each of us every time they visited.
There was the colorful straw Ute Creek bag and cabin shoes, the crisp cotton lawn dress and rubber soled espadrilles she wore to the cabin. I never remember seeing her in pants. There was the amazement that she could drive a stick-shift truck, and she could wiggle her ears. There were the scary late night potty runs when she would appear without her perfect teeth after we hammered on the ceiling with our broom handle--the water softener whining like a ghost in the laundry room. There were hanging bags filled with dresses and peplumed suits from the Denver Dry Goods, pill-box hats and chunky-heeled shoes--a 12-year-old runway model's dream.
And there were always the days when she would pay us kids a quarter for the first one to find her keys, or her watch. There was the day she couldn't find the black organ shoes and those times she simply ignored the stop signs on the way to Bernie's Super 8. The way she would blow a stream of air across her upper lip and dab at her brow with the delicate handkerchief she always kept tucked in her blouse, singing "I must be losing my mind."

And the irony is....she was. There was the evening daddy asked her to play O, Danny Boy and she turned, her face puzzled like a little girl, and asked him, "Now how does that one go?"
When her youngest son was found alone, face-down on the floor of his apartment three days after his death, it was the last of her untroubled days. When my dad died shortly after his 50th birthday, it was her undoing. I met my grandad's plane, but the woman who was with him wasn't my grandmother. As we sat and visited in our sorrow, she asked my mother "Who was that nice little girl who picked us up at the airport?" My grandmother would have shamed the woman who struck my grandad with the shower head as he tried to get her ready for the funeral, but she wasn't there. The sweet grandmother with her impeccable manners and good taste would have been appalled at the lady who reached across the table and took food off my plate. And she would have never snuck my father's fishing knife into her luggage as we divided up his things.

Some of the moments were funny, like the time the hospital confiscated her nail file as she checked in for her evaluation, and then produced the fishing knife less than an hour later to cut out a tag from her sweater. I couldn't help but giggle at the scorch marks from the aluminum pans she had heated in the microwave and the way she mixed Mountain Dew with Scotch she kept hidden in the kitchen.

But the day she went to the Alzheimer's wing in Fruita wasn't funny. My grandad went with her so she wouldn't be alone. He took his lazy boy chair and their television, and left behind the glorious double pianos she had played her whole life. He seemed to know neither of them would ever be coming back. He caught pneumonia around Thanksgiving and we thought he would die. But with my grandmother alone, disoriented and frightened, he rallied enough to move back into their room. Fight as he might, though, he couldn't keep this modest refined girl he had married from wandering the halls in the nude, and he couldn't convince her to eat. She died of starvation shortly before Christmas--her body simply forgot to eat. We buried her in the snow overlooking the White River Valley that she adored. Less than two weeks later, we returned to lay my grandad to rest beside her.


I miss her so deeply sometimes it hurts. Her beauty went beyond the Biblical beauty of Esther--it seeped from her every pore. Champion of the underdog, generous to a fault. She was a musician supreme and a lover of art. Her taste in clothing, furnishings housewares and music was Epicurean. She was a small town girl with global knowledge and big city refinement. I sometimes pray for God to bring her back, which I'm pretty certain he won't do.

But I know without a doubt that I will see her again. And when I walk through the gates of heaven, I won't be surprised if she is playing the piano, having become the indispensable concert pianist of heaven's event calendar. And as corny as it sounds, I'm pretty sure the tune she'll be playing will be Danny Boy and my dad will be singing at her side.

Body Image Breaks Through Gender Lines--the cost of the beauty industry on our boys

Click here and watch "Onslaught"

 There is a little game I've always enjoyed playing with my girls called, "Find the 10." I like to play this game with them when we are in public places requiring various stages of undress...places like Water World and Six Flags, Long Beach and rodeo carnivals. You know, places where massive amounts of young women are in sub-massive amounts of clothing.


The goal is to find the young lady who could walk right off the barefoot-burning concrete, sand, or sawdust and onto the glossy front cover of Cosmo, Vogue, Elle, Glamour, Self, Madmoiselle, Marie Claire, or one of the other dozens magazines that bombard us from the grocery check-out line, every month, with another gorgeous body. I’m not unreasonable. There’s an allowance for makeup and hair styling that simply can't be maintained at a water park, a certain give-and-take for acne, or crooked teeth—subtle imperfections that can be covered-up or hidden. What we're after here, I explain, is the thin, well-toned natural beauty with proportional breasts and thighs, a slender waist, no paunch, no muffin-tops, and a dainty derrière—no cellulite.


I know you know where I’m going with this. The point, and you already know it, is there are no 10’s. There is sometimes a smattering of 7’s and 8’s, maybe, maybe, on a real good day a 9 comes along. But I’ve never been let down, not once. At the end of the day, when it’s all been said and done, there are no real 10’s.


I have spent years telling my daughters that the girls they see on the magazine covers are there for a reason. And that reason is that they are the ABnormal, not the norm. They need to understand the truth about classic beauty and its portrayal: The truth is, nobody wants to see somebody normal on the front of a magazine (or a Greek statue or a Reuban painting for that matter.) People see normal every day. The public wants something remarkable, show-stopping if they are going to pay money for it and give it a certain amount of worship or respect.


To ask magazine producers and advertisers to put average girls, the ones with poochy bellies and jiggly thighs, cottage cheese on their butts, and too-big or too-small bustlines, noses and lips, in their photo shoots is like asking car magazines to run pictures of faded Hondas and four-door Chryslers that you see every day on your commute to work. It’s like asking outdoor magazines to eliminate photos of breath-taking mountain peaks and dramatic sunsets over glacier floats and replace them with shots of average hills and run-of-the-mill twighlights.


So if we understand that these human bodies are no different from car bodies, then WHY are young women STILL BELIEVING that they should look like these women? After all this time, aren’t they smart enough to know, or haven’t they had a mother smart enough to tell them that those women are abnormal for a reason? Haven’t they had anybody tell them, “You won’t, can’t and shouldn’t look like that.”


But the truth is, you can tell them and tell them, but they won’t believe. Ask me, I teach high school.


But lately, and here’s the worse part, I’ve seen something even more disturbing. We’ve overlooked the cost of the beauty industry on the American boy. As our girls have been bombarded with these images, so have our boys, and they’ve been paying close attention. Ask a typical high-school boy what is beautiful, and he will spit back the name of whoever is the most recent magazine cover or movie show-stopper. For example, which boy in America didn’t receive the message, the minute Transformers was released, that “hot girls” look and act like Megan Fox, leaning over an engine with her breasts blossoming from a tank top and her backside blooming from beneath her mini skirt or shorts. I mean, wasn’t she abnormally “hot” enough then? But show high schoolers a picture of Megan Fox after plastic surgery and the girls will grimace. The boys, however, say, “she’s hotter.” Look at a photo of Heidi Montag before plastic surgery, and she will garner envy from almost every girl as one of the few, abnormally rare, Barbie-perfect girls. Show her after plastic surgery and girls understand—she’s as miserable about her looks as they are. Show the boys and they say, “better.”

For years boys have been told what is beautiful and how to obtain it, and nobody has bothered to tell them differently. I’m pretty sure we’re due for a “turn around is fair game” scenario for American male teens, but I’m not sure it’s fair at all. To me, it’s comparable to the sexual revolution in the 1970’s that gave women permission to break the double standards held by men for centuries regarding casual sex. Now women can sleep around as much as they want…and skyrocketing Chlamydia infections, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and cervical cancer are just one of the rewards. (Don’t get me started with the question of why is it that men can “carry” but women are the dadgum walking Petri dishes for sexually transmitted diseases??—that’s obviously another blog.)


Anyway, back to the boys………here’s the deal. Try being one.

I mean it. Back in my day the “bods” to emulate were Bo and Luke Duke, and I don’t remember ever drooling over their abs. Daisy got plenty of exposure, but try as I may, while on the opposite channel Jacqueline Smith climbed up the boat ladder as we looked down, I don’t ever remember seeing the Duke boys with their shirts off. Unbuttoned, yeah. Off, no. The older guys adopted a sort of Burt Reynolds look, but even so, he was a husky guy…no denying it.

Kurt Russel never stripped off his shirt that I remember in “The Professor that Wore Tennis Shoes” and even John Travolta, a bit later, was hot with his leather jacket or skin-tight Wranglers ON, not off. I mean, weren’t we girls titillated when Tom Cruise slid out in his boxers and a white oxford shirt? Where was the competition? Any boy could do it. Even though we girls were blowing out and feathering away our hair, and crash dieting, and repeating “we must, we must, we must increase our bust,” trying to look like Cheryl Ladd or Heather Locklear, guys back then could just get away with either: a) a great smile or b) great hair. If you had both…………oh baby, you were an ultimate fox.

Those days are gone. Try competing with Taylor Lautner. Even Taylor Lautner couldn’t compete with Taylor Lautner. Cute wouldn’t do it………….it had to be “ripped.” Have you seen these Holywood Hunks lately? They could out bench-press Bo and Luke any day. Starsky and Hutch look like a couple of dweebs beside Channing Tatum and Josh Duhamel. Not only can Zach Efron dance, he can shoot hoops, and sport a six-pack. When even Orlando, who got his biggest break playing an elf, has a bod-to-go, what is a 15-year-old boy to do? When Isaiah Mustafa pops up on the TV nowadays, the message is you have to do it all—Old Spice Style—and have the body to match.


And girls aren’t helping. Just as for decades men have held women to the impossible ideals enforced by Hollywood and the media, now girls are expecting the same from their men. I was appalled when my 13-year-old daughter and friend were disappointed when they saw one of the cute high school athletes this summer at the pool and giggled because he didn’t have a six-pack.


How fair is that? Studies are beginning to show that self-image issues are one of the leading concerns for young males now-a-days. We girls, who thought that boys never worried about their weight, are now teasing them when they don’t have pecs that look like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s. For boys it’s not just about staying fit, they have to “bulk up” to measure up. And no matter how often they hit the weight room, they need to be told that they will probably never cut it. It’s going to take anabolic steroids to really get the job done. Not many 17-year-olds have the luxury of a personal trainer and a $4 million contract that makes their job “getting ripped.”

Old guys aren’t helping either. I spent all last night watching George Clooney do pull-ups and push-ups just to prove what………….that he could? I liked him better with a striped prison outfit on. How long are Denzel Washington and Matthew McConaughey going to keep it up? I’m tired of looking at old men’s butts in the movies and giant boys with their pants pulled down past their tenderloins on the walls of Abercrombie and Hollister. (I was just informed that those are called “sex lines” by my 17-year-old daughter. What is a mother to do?)


I guess we finally figured if women could be held to impossible standards of nakedness, then so could men. I wish we as females had enough sympathy to feel sorry for these next generations of males that will grow up with impossible standards, low self-esteems, eating disorders, as well as the baldness, cancer and rage addiction that come with steroid use.


Just as women seem to be coming into a more enlightened age of Dove Young Women’s project, shows like Mad Men that celebrate female curves, studies that help us understand that a runway model from 1972 would have to lose over 12 pounds to make it in the industry today, we are seeing the see-saw tip the other direction. Sure there are girls who will still seek to reach an impossible standard of thinness and plumped parts, but we’ve made a lot of headway. But I’m afraid that we’ll finally, just maybe get used to liking ourselves and gloat while the other side of the table says, “Just a salad, please—I’m on a diet.”


I’m afraid that a generation from now, my daughters will be at the waterparks and beaches with their sons having to tell them, “Here’s a game I like to play. My mom taught it to me. It’s called Find a 10.” And their sons will groan, like my daughters do now.


Or maybe, just maybe, we could just finally learn to love each other just the way we are and quit trying to be something that Hollywood has always been good at—fiction.

Sent to you from someone who loves you--send it on!

Image by Shoes on Wires via Flickr