Sunflowers

The funeral was under the topic of the sunflower.

Dear attenders

Being class teacher is a priviledge for me as it gives me the chance to get to know my students better and build a deeper relationship.

My relationship to Michelle was comparably short, nevertheless I think that I knew her quite well. This maybe so due to her always sitting in the front row or having worked together intensively in our project week in June. But also due to her open, happy and sociable personality.

I noticed her very early in the year because she was the most reliable of the 22 students in her class. Whenever I gave an assignment, no matter of what kind, she fulfilled it whithin a day.

Of all her attributes, the one that most stuck with me was her directness. She always told one straight what she thought. I wasn't spared either: "That's because you are an old lady.", she said to me in one of the lessons when I was having one of my repeated memory gaps. No, I wasn't shocked - but her two neighboring girls were. They looked at her in disbelief as to say "are you out of your mind?" first and then at me, wondering "how will she react?". I answered: "Yes, that's right, as you can also notice that from the wrinkles under my eyes."

Michelle made it easy for me to be myself because she was one of the few students who didn't need a security gap when speaking to me because I was a teacher. The contact with her has always been natural.

For all these reasons - when school starts in 11 days - she will leave a huge gap in the first row.

translated to English, pls forgive me any mistakes you may encounter

Not the first, not the last

There was a strange envelope in the mail today. It had this blackish band on the left and it was addressed to me personally, not the family - bad news. Someone died and my gut feeling told me that it wasn't an old person. I dreaded to open the envelope but I had to eventually, right? My heart stopped when I read the name, tears filled my eyes - no no, it's not possible, is it? How? WHY? It said

Sad and stunned, we have to take leave of our beloved

Michelle ***
born 7. August 1993
Our sunshine has left us forever on 28. Juli 2009 after a short grave illness. We are immesurabley sad and we miss you very much.

But how can that be? I left her as fit as a fiddle only 3 weeks ago ...

She is not the first student I lost. Sixteen and a half years ago, I lost a student to meningitis. She was 19 or 20, her name was Andrea and it happened just before Christmas. The memory comes back to me as if it happened yesterday.
It was evening, the Christmas tree lights were already on. I got a call from the principal, who said that he was sorry to bother me at this time of day but he had bad news ... I hung up feeling bad - for two reasons. First, not only because she had to die but because she died while new life was growing inside me - I was pregnant with my first child. And second, because the last things I said to her were not nice. I was angry with her because I had reasons to believe that she had ditched the exam. She showed up two lessons later, after the exam had finished, saying that she hadn't found the room ...

I did not have a strong relationship with Andrea as I had with Michelle. With Michelle, it clicked right away, from the first lesson. She always sat in the front row, an eager student, vibrant, always smiling. She was special in another way, too. Michelle moved out from her mother's and went to live with her father - and burned the brigdes to her mother, something I did not completely understand but I would not ask her about. Was she seeking female recognition in me? I don't know. I was Michelle's class teacher but I also had this strong urge to mother her, although she was a very independent girl.

As I was saying before, the two girls were quite different but they two things in common - they both died within hours after having first symptoms and the last feeling I had for both of them before their deaths was disappointment (Michelle had walked out of the class room while I was asking who's turn it was to clean the blackboard when she knew well it was her turn) ...

... and I was looking at my two months old niece today (picture above), thinking the exact same thing as I did sixteen and a half years ago - one dies when one is born.

Sisterly Love

I was sitting on my backyard patio, marking tests of my graduates and enjoying the spring warmth when I heard someone in the house swearing like thunder. It was the cactus, my teenage daughter. She was screaming - "that little brat! He eat my stracciatella yoghurt!" Of course, she was talking about her smart younger brother who is truly greedy when it comes to sweets or treats of any kind. This goes to the extent that it can happen that one of us finds cookies or chocolate under or behind his bed.

Anyway, she was conconcting a plan on how to get back at him when I say to her: "You know, I have a better idea. Why not beat him with his own weapon?" Earlier today, I had bought two donuts at the bakery, one for each. He knew I had done so because I had told him before he left to go back to school (yes, we do have midday breaks here! Annoying!). The house then went quiet, the cactus retired back to her room.

10 minutes later, the boy enters the house and after a while he comes out to see me and tells me in an angry tone: "Why did you buy me a donut if you were going to eat it yourself?" I told him that it wasn't me who ate it but I gave his sister permission to do so since he ate her favorite yogurt, when she had been so kind to buy one for him, too, and he knew no better than to eat them both. Grumpily, he accepted my explanation and went inside.

I finished my marking and went inside, too, where I met the boy who was getting ready for piano lessons. He comes close to me and says: "You know, I can see that the cactus loves me because she spared one quarter of the donut for me. " And with that he opened the door and took off ...

P.S. The photo above has been taken in December 2004

Spring Break

Unbelievable but one week of my spring break is already gone. I did a lot of things but it feels like I have done nothing. I've made my garden beautiful, I repaired the water closet of the toilet, I've been on a photographing walk with my old friend Kurt, I've even met my parents a few times (yes, they were here for 2 weeks but stayed with my sister only - you think they've got the message?), I've been to watch my son's soccer match where he even shot a goal (wow) - these are all wonderful things but the main thing I wanted to do was to write a few questions for the final exam of my graduates which will take place in July and will last 4 hours. As head of department I've taken the chance and have formed a group who will work together to lessen the burden which is substancial if done alone. So, here I am Monday of the second week and I've only got one full question and two scrap ones. Hey, that's better than nothing, right? Yes, but I wanted to have finished 4 and one plus a bit really feels like nothing ...

And then - when I have a lot of time in my hands, my mind goes wandering - to places which are not really healthy. Painted Maypole has written a great post about forgiveness. Well, I thought I was so great, too, at forgiving. I don't want to depreciate my skills as they are quite good but there is this issue which keeps popping up and bouncing back about once or twice a year, preferably in spring, probably because the happenings at that time had been very intense during this time of year. So, I've had my anger in the rise as the feelings and the thoughts started to bother me again. Every time I thought I had forgiven and put it behind me. Does the fact that it can still bother me mean that I haven't truly forgiven? I hear Chani's words ringing in my ears: "If you haven't let go then it is still serving you for something." I wish I knew for what, all the pondering hasn't led me to anything. So, I've been wondering - what if there are things in this life that we can't forgive because they are that despicable and have carved wounds so deep that they don't seem to be able to heal? And if one day it doesn't bother us anymore - does that mean that we have forgiven or did we just let the grass grow over it over the years?

Maybe it's a good thing that I've planned a spring trip, again, this year. Last year I've even taken my teenage daughter with me (she implored me to be able to join me or she would have to die if she had to stay with the boys - ugh, these adolescents and their inclination to exaggerate!) and since we've gotten along so great, I've decided to repeat the adventure. Last year we've been to Brussels, Belgium and this year we are heading to Stockholm, Sweden - from Tuesday till Saturday. Skandinavia is still very unexplored by my travelling self and has been on my wishing list for quite some time now. I am very excited to go on this trip, my camera is ready, the right currency is in the purse - if it only weren't for the packing ...

April walk

"April, April, der macht was er will!"

A saying we have here in the german speaking part of Europe. I don't even know if there is a similar saying in English? Anyway, the translation is - April does what he wants - meaning that you can have any kind of weather in April, which is certainly true so far this year: Snow, rain, sunshine, clouds, hail ... As you might know, we have male and female articles before nouns in German and April has a male one. Hmm, I have been wondering about April being male!

But this weekend, finally, we've been blessed with a little bit of sun rays warming everyone's limbs and making nature grow in all different colors. This weekend, I finally have found the time to take a walk and enjoy nature in its full beauty ... the result is recorded in the pictures of this entry.

I've been waiting in anticipation for this day to come, the day where the term ended and school holidays started, the day that I could go to sleep without thinking about business. Yes, lately school has been more business than teaching. It has been so stressful that the skin in my face has started to become all spotty, a reaction to stress.

There has been good things happening but also bad ones and sad ones, some of them brining me back to my past. First, a colleague died, only two years after he retired. He was a great person and his sudden death shocked everyone - leukemia - from the day he was diagnosed, he only lived more 2 months. At the funeral I met one of his 2 daughters whom I once taught. "You still look the same as when you taught me", she said, "and that has been exactly 20 years ago, I was 13 then and I am 33 now." And I was only 23 ...

It was sweet to see her again, even if the circumstances that had brought us together after so many years weren't exactly the most joyous. It brought back memories of my first class. I was only 10 years older, nearly a child myself, yet they had accepted me as a person of authority without ifs and buts. Teaching them was fun. Once they tried to scandalise me by putting a condom on my desk. When I came in, they were all seated, awaiting my reaction. Thinking fast I asked: "Does this thing belong to any of you?" Unusual silence filled the place. So I went on myself: "Well, I didn't think so!" That was the moment when the whole class burst out laughing. They told me that it was a sample they got from sexual education and I could keep it if I wanted to.

About a week later I went to have dinner with someone whom I hadn't seen for 17 years ... Our school places classes at the disposal for teaching degree exams in Maths and Science. I have given my classes many times and when I have been asked last November if they could have my 8th grade for a candidate, I answered in the affirmative as usual. Little did I know then that the candidate was none other than my University buddy F with whom I had sat most of my master's exams. I think we were both shocked to meet in this most peculiar way but really really pleased it had happened. Just go figure, of all the dozen possible classes, coincidence (or was it destiny?) chose mine to give to her for her examination lesson ...

Well, I've told the good one and the sad one - that leaves the bad one and I truly don't know where to start ... Thinking about it, it probably started on the day where our headmaster, who is also a great colleague of mine, asked me how my daughter was going in school and I answered that she was fine but her class was on the war zone with their Maths teacher. He then told me that we had a similar situation at our school which was causing him headaches. One of my colleagues, who is turning 59 this year, has been having problems with one of his classes. Parents have been writing letters of complaint to the head master. Well, so far that was no news. His way of teaching has always been causing students to rebel. This time, though, the problems must be massive or there wouldn't be any lawyers involved. The headmaster told me that my colleague risked to be suspended from teaching. You can imagine that I was totally shocked! I didn't think that something like that could ever happen. What a great year for me to become head of department, right? Needless to say, those headaches were immediately transmitted to me and only have gone away yesterday, the first day of school holiday. The worst thing of all was that I had to keep it to myself until the final decision had been made which was last Friday afternoon but since I left the school at noon, I have no knowledge of the outcome. I only know that after the two weeks break, I have to take over the class in question and I am not sure if I am looking forward to that ...

Thinking of You

I'm inundated with work, I'm tired and the weather doesn't make me feel better altogether as it is raining. I'm just saying this to explain why I have been quiet again but I don't want to make this post about me.
I think Slouching Mom has had more than her fair share in the sick chapter and as I cannot go by personally to bring her a bunch of flowers to cheer her up, I have decided to post my latest art in photography for her. So, here Sarah, this rose is for you. Get well soon!

You look familiar

Sometimes I think I live 2 lives. Life A, the teaching life and life B, the non-teaching life. I can't say that I like life B better but transitions are always difficult, especially the one from life B to life A and if part of life B has been spent somewhere else than in and around the house.
The week in the snow, a thing we have been doing regularly every year for the last 9, is probably the best of the year. The combination of snow and sun seems to have therapeutic powers, add fresh air and exercise and you get a healthy week.

The first time we've done that as a family of 4, we had been back from our 3 year stay in Australia for a bit more than a year. The kids were 2.5 and 6 yrs of age. We had bought the little boy a pair of plastic skis and had him between our legs ski down the slopes. He loved it but our backs and quads had a tough time keeping up the good work. The girl hadn't much skiing experience, either, so there was no room for recovery for either of us adults as each of us had tomake sure both of the kids made it onto the chairlift and stayed seated safely until it was time to hop off.

It was a fortune to have chosen this location which wasn't only family friendly and free of cars but was also basically in the middle of the skiing slopes which meant tieing the skis on the boots infront of the house and take off right away without having to carry them for miles. Imagine doing that with 2 little kids - a nightmare.

Seeing both kids this year, (can you see him wearing her old ski-suit on the picture on the right?), now 10 and 14 yrs, leaving the house without us, mounting the chairlifts without any help and waving to us from far made me think of how easier life has become in due corse. Too easy? Obviously, because this year we've been announced that next year we cannot come back to same appartment we have been renting year after year and which has been a jewel to us all this time. I was surprised at myself for not being incredibly sad at the news and I have been wondering if that was really to be attributed to maturity, having learnt that nothing ever stays the same and change can be a real chance sometimes ...

On the last day, while arriving at the top of the mountain with the cabin, I decided that today I needed a cup of coffee from the coffeeshop. Looking for a table to sit down with the tray I spotted a few empty chairs beside a couple of people. We sat down and while stirring my coffee, I looked across the table and I caught up with the conversation a man and the woman across from him were having - one of the typical male-female issues. When I looked at him, I had the impression that his face was familiar to me. I asked my daughter if she had seen him on the slopes or in the village (yes, I have crossed that line where I think my daughter's got the better memory than old me) but she denied. I decided to join the conversation and I let them know that I completely agreed with the woman. She took her glasses off to look at me and I turned my head to catch her face, as well, and the sensation caught me - she looked familiar, too! Where, where in the book of my past should I place the picture of these two individuals? I just had to let them know. "You two somehow do look familiar to me." - "Really?" I just got a hunch of where to place them. "Yes, did you go to school in D by any chance? " - "Oh my, yes.", she replied. "Can you tell me your name?", I asked. "We are siblings. I'm Diane and this is my younger brother Adrian." Now, I definitely knew who they were. "Of course. What class were you two in?" ... Well, you can imagine how that conversation went on. We went to the same highschool - 25 yrs ago. How cool is that?

One thing is sure, though - I would never have had this kind of encounter if we had decided to stay in Australia for the rest of our lives ...

Old Anxieties

You can't blame everything on your childhood, I still hear it ring in my ears. There are things, though, that can have an immense and lasting impact to our being and can still haunt us in our adult life ...

We went for a walk on Boxing Day. It was an awful day weather wise but after two days of being stuck inside with family, it felt great to just be able to see and hear our breath in the cold. Walking towards the woods, I noticed an oak tree. On the pathway there were shells of acorn. Instantly, I was carried back to my childhood, second or third grade of primary school, where I remember to having received the task of collecting acorns for an art lesson. This doesn't appear as a big deal today but my parents being immigrants were no big help with school tasks and I was left on my own most of the time which resulted in feeling helpless - and most of all - a growing anxiety ...

Today, every time my daughter tells me what kind of assignments she has to complete, I internally gasp, thinking that I would have died resp. still would die if I had to do that. There are so many situations in life where I shrink in anxiety shouting internally "I can't do this!" because I never really learned that I can! Self-confidence? That is only one of the things that got crushed in my childhood.

Life has mysterious ways of working in our favor sometimes. Last summer, our current head of department decided that it was time to hand the job to somebody else as he has also been working for the teacher-board at the same time for a while now. There were only 2 teachers that were eligible for this job - a younger single male colleague and me! We both had a zillion reasons for not wanting to do it. Me for one, I already had the double load of being a working mother, two, I didn't think more work would really help my persisting personal crisis, and three, yes - my anxiety! Him, well, my colleagues didn't think he had any cogent reasons. I think you know where this is going - he wiggled himself out with a dozen excuses and I took the job because I can't suffer cowards. Yes, I took the job and an extra load of anxiety as a free gift, starting January 2008.

I remember the conversation with my daughter when I mentioned the matter to her. I was interested what she thought about it, since I might be even more absorbed with work in being head of department. The reaction surprised me a great deal: "Yeah, take it and show those men your female power!" I replied that it wasn't a matter of power, it was rather a matter of more work and if she didn't think that I already worked enough? "Ok, then take the job and leave the work!", she replied - She's a funny girl and so much stronger than me that sometimes I wish I had had her personality when I was growing up. Or, would it have been enough to have had different parents?

Many teachers congratulated me on the career advancement but frankly, I didn't really feel that that's what it was nor have I ever been one to care for prestige and ambition. I was going to do the job because somebody had to do it. No, I definitely wasn't born for the job, just the thought of having to chair a meeting, where 80% were men and some of them quite older than me, made me whimper like Teri Hatcher in Desperate Housewives. Needless to say, I didn't get an subtle introduction to my job, I have been thrown in like a non-swimmer into the water. My first meeting was on 14 January, only one week after start of school.

I slept badly the night before the meeting and I was nervous, of course. The meeting itself went ok, I stumbled once or twice but that was of no importance. The feeling that carried on after the meeting, was that it felt weird to being addressed and looked at firmly by our oldest member while he was speaking. It didn't make me uncomfortable but more than listening to him I was wondering if he was just being correct or if he was assessing me at that moment. I'm sure you can imagine how glad I was when it was over. But while we were having dinner afterwards it occurred to me that the meeting might have been over but my work had just begun ...

A Saturday Walk

To Deal or Not to Deal

As you can see from the date of this entry, I've already tried a comeback on the previous month. I had written quite a long post explaining the reason for my absence but I was not brave enough to press the button "publish post". Let me summarize my silence in one sentence: When I had the time, I was dealing too much with myself to write anything and now that I would have a lot to write, I don't have the time ...

The longer you stay away, the more difficult is to come back. If I am here today, it is only due to a few wonderful people who were in turns brave enough to let me know that they care and were missing my presence, even if I myself don't really feel that I make a lot of difference in the blogging world. Therefore, I am very thankful, especially for the award passed on to me by Slouching Mom --->


Well, not all the dealings with myself have paid out. Usually, they've just depressed me. I guess I'm the opposite to a friend of mine. She has always repressed everything that happened to her until the day when her body rebelled against her and robbed her from her sleep - all she managed to sleep was 2 hours every night and this for months and months. She got herself checked up over and over without finding anything wrong with her body until she realised that it was her mind that needed recovering from sexual abuse and other stuff she never dealt with. Consequently, she turned herself in to a psychiatric ward and is getting better as we speak ...

As opposite to her, I've always done too much thinking which resulted in depression and hard work to get back out of it. This time, I felt that I had been depressed enough times to get me nowhere and no matter how much thinking I did, I would lose in any case as there is no perfect solution to my problem. Hence, in January I've decided to stop the thinking, to accept that the circumstances in my life are not perfect and to enjoy what I have ...

... so finally, I found peace.