Sally Gerard

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Life can get so crazy sometimes. I keep a printed calendar on my desk by my computer and strike through each item each day with a highlighter when I’ve completed it. I update the calendar every Friday afternoon and print it for the next week. I like having that hard copy next to me, rather than having to get into something on my computer to see if I’ve done everything. It’s physical, right in front of me, and when it turns to highlighted, it helps me stay on track.

Or, it can be a total train wreck. Sometimes life gets in the way, like this week with not one “writing-500 words” highlighted as complete, not one “yoga” highlighted as complete, and several other tasks undone. It is our fall launch time though and I’ve had my hands full setting up courses, welcoming new students, helping new students understand how to work our platform, calming anxious parents (times a million), oh, and grading, grading, grading. All this while I try to maintain a personal presence in each and every course, connect with and get to know my students, and try to begin to form community in each course so students feel like I’m a real person and I see them and hear them and care about them, which I do.

So, while I’ve posted links to free PDFs of required novels my students need, made videos about how to do class discussions for them, read their funny and touching first memoir assignments, tackled the strengths and weaknesses in my AP students first essays, redirected some lost students back to unit one from their attempt to start with the last unit, and worked hard to find new Laffy Taffy jokes (I really dislike the banana flavor), my daily writing has gone by the wayside. Fortunately, there is always tomorrow.

Sometimes the whole week gets away from me before I even realize that Monday has passed and it’s almost Friday. Sometimes the week drags by like five Mondays. I wonder at the ways I perceive time and the why and wherefores of my perceptions.

Like when you’re a kid and you can’t wait for your birthday or Christmas or that family trip to camp out and time drags until you get there and then it’s over so fast. I guess the anticipation is something you never get over, but I feel like there must be a way to see the blessing and beauty in each moment and somehow to weld into your heart, mind, and soul.

I believe we are meant to notice. Why else would a cool misty morning tug us down the path? Or the call of a friend make us put the work away for a few minutes? Or the heart we gave to another refuse to take silence as an ending? We were not created to be alone. We need that partner in love and life to be able to help us see that blessing and hold those moments together.

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How often do you let someone else take credit for something you really did yourself? Or, because a compliment is embarrassing, you minimize something you accomplished? Why do we have such a difficult time believing in the gifts and talents we have, when we have been so fearfully and wonderfully made?

Sometimes we simply need the blessing of that “other” who encourages us to be who we are meant to be, to push beyond what we thought we could do, to remind us that God blew the breath of creation into our one and only unique soul. That “other” person, whoever it is in that moment of need, becomes the physical angel that we maybe prayed for or that we didn’t even know we needed.

I want to notice and be aware of those “others” in those moments when I cannot believe in myself. They are answers to prayers whispered in isolation when I need to know that I do not walk alone.

Storms (HJ)

What can we say to someone when their grief and loss is so deep? When we cannot hold ourselves together? It happens in a single heartbeat, so fast that we will never get to say goodbye. We have no words anyway.

Cody was a light in this world. When he wandered into my creative writing class, and what brought him there I do not know, he flourished. He wrote from his heart and his compassion, and his words moved me.

My classroom seemed to be a magnet, at times, for students on the fringe. For students who had no other place or group. For students who were hard to get to know, to communicate with, to motivate. But Cody didn’t see that. He saw the person beneath all that hard and engaged with them and accepted them and made them feel they mattered, and they did matter to him.

Cody went out of his way to do for others, many times at his own expense personally. Others came first.

When my wooden hall pass, that he’d made for me, was broken, he made me another. When that one was broken, he found a piece of metal and using his welding skills, he welded my name to the metal and that became my new pass. Though I no longer need a hall pass, I keep it on my table at home because Cody made it for me.

Through the last two years, I’ve watched a budding romance develop. Cody and another incredible student of mine. All summer she sent me Snap Chats of their various adventures and Cody’s bright smile next to hers filled me with joy and blessing.

He is no longer here with us, but I take comfort knowing that God wrapped Cody in his arms in those final moments on that road and gave him the love and peace he needed. And now, those of us who loved Cody must take each other in our arms and give that same love and peace and comfort as best we can, even if we cannot find words.

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Chokecherry season has been overwhelmingly abundant this year! I have picked and juiced enough to make one the biggest batches of jelly ever, and there are still three bushes that are ripening their berries. Those will be another week or ten days. I didn’t have time to actually make the jelly, so all that purple chokecherry goodness is in the freezer waiting for a rainy weekend day, so I have time to jelly and jar it all up!

Fun facts about chokecherries:

They contain anthocyanins, which is a “type of flavonoid, a class of compounds with antioxidant effects,” useful in treating high blood pressure, colds and UTIs

Tree Time Services Inc.

(Verywellhealth.com). Today’s Dietician says they also help to prevent certain kinds of cancers.

The Carbondale Farm says that the fruit could benefit from a name to change to something friendlier or inviting in order to entice people to use them more as a food. Native Americans have always valued this fruit. While the tiny berries are rather tart…okay, beyond tart, the jelly and syrup are delicious, and beautiful.

They are ecologically important because they attract pollinators. Yeah! So, jelly up to the bar.

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I read recently that it’s important to celebrate birthdays because it marks our beginning. I can remember, as a kid, looking forward to supper on my birthday because I knew that cake was imminent. It should be a joyous day, and I can’t think of any good excuse for not knowing the birthdays of those you love and care about. That’s what calendars and sticky note reminders are for.

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I realize that some of the origins of the ways we celebrate birthdays are pagan, but so what? Some have cake and ice-cream, some prefer pie, some probably prefer something completely different, but it’s just one day and it should include something special. I remember turning 16, not because of the driver’s license, but because I received 16 blue carnations. I also remember a blue and purple round two-layer birthday cake, although I don’t remember how old I was. It was special because the cake was store-bought and frosted in my favorite colors!

You are never too old to celebrate your birthday, even if it has to be alone. Get a cake with loads of frosting, your favorite ice-cream, have your favorite meal and count the blessings of the years you have lived, and those you have yet to live.

Over the weekend, we made our annual trek to Waverly, Nebraska to attend their 42^nd antique machinery and threshing show at the Camp Creek grounds. Meeting old friends that we haven’t seen for year is a highlight as we greet each other with hugs and get a short time to catch up with each other’s lives. Bonus was my brother Mike, nephew Ben, and his lovely lady, Isabella.

In the relative cool of the morning, we walk the rows of antique tractors, seeing some of our favorites from years past and finding new ones we’ve never seen before. That leads us to the threshing grounds where our good friends run three antique thresh machines and power them with antique tractors as the grain gets augured into antique carts. The straw pile is collected and taken off the side, baled by an old bailer. The crowd gathers and gets of taste of what farm life used to be like.

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There is butter churning, corn grinding, draft horses, antique horse equipment, an old print shop, and this year they added a jail built in a little town close by that they’ve hauled in and plan to restore to its one-cell former glory. There weren’t any notorious criminals around!

Of course, most of our time is spent down in the shady grove filled with hit and miss engines, a beautiful array of colors, sizes, and sounds. It is conveniently located close to the ice-cream shed.