A Month of Transition: July Journal

July 2

All is coming apart or together depending on how things fall in or out. Probably somewhere in the middle. I am now bouncing between despair and optimism, panic and relief. Life either will be a lot easier or become very messy. We are up in the air on a place to live, the viability of my job, Mary’s employment, the nursing test. All of our life hinges on these. I have not a clue as to how it will all turn out.

July 4

A typical Fourth of July here, cloudy and cool, possibly rainy. Summer will start next week.

Mary is depressed due to all of the uncertainty and precariousness, everything propped up like a scrap sculpture balanced. Could get us up and out. Could fall and make us restack. We will be alright. Things are shaky, but will improve piece by piece.

I need to start writing again. I keep getting side tracked into distracted patterns. I must write and write, more and more.

July 5

Here at school wondering if anyone besides Micah will show up today.

July 7

Dream:

I was imprisoned on a bed, but the one in charge said I had to go down somewhere. My lawyer made a good case, but the one in charge was thinking of way to tip me off or cut a hole in the bed to get me out. There was a lot to this dream that I can’t put into words.

July 10

I haven’t been writing much these days because my brain has been otherwise occupied by the shift in my duties at work to include the dreaded administration and financial aspects in the absence of our director who is vacationing in Europe. I am capable, but not naturally inclined to these duties, and they make me obsessive and nervous. There’s the house hunting and moving and Mary’s roller coaster moods because of test stress. It has all become a messy tangle in my mind. I am trying to unravel the knots as things fall into place. My director is back so that is off my plate.

We found a house, and Mary is doing well on her practice tests. She has also had a few job prospects follow up with her so that helps her mood.

July 13

I am reading about Robert Altman. He used whatever came to him, circumstances, writers, actors and made them behave so that he could fit it into the framework of his vision, or he shifted his vision to include whatever came along. This is what I long to do, but I won’t be able until I throw all of this continuity out. This idea that I need to be attached to the way things are.

I already teach like Altman made films. I use what is at hand and in my mind and the minds of my students and proceed from there. I go looking for inspiration and fit what I find in. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I rarely do sit down lessons. Most of my teaching is in the general business of children exploring.

Somehow I have to take my creativity out of the preschool into writing and art.

I want to dream about whales. Instead I dream about the problems of teaching and life’s dull fears. How do I embrace what I live and dream of the impossible.

Think of six impossible things before breakfast, actually at breakfast:

1. a whale wearing a fake mustache

2. trees growing upside down

3. edible bread made out of rock

4. grinding corn with pillows

5. everything falls into place with a little nudging

6. a full sized peanut butter whale, swimming

Can you tell I was reading The Whale by Philip Hoare at the time.

July 14

We will start moving 7/17, Saturday. That gives up two weeks. Plenty of time to move from one to another.

July 15

Denial is my way of life and other people help me implement it. How do I trust in people again? By taking control of my life! Decent people do inconsiderate things and wonderful things. I want to do something wonderful.

July 23

It has been 8 days of upheaval and waiting with held breath. Mary passed her nursing test, off course, but went through a lot of worry before she was notified. We are now on the precipice of complete change.

1. Mary will be a nurse.

2 I will be unemployed or employed somewhere new.

3. Rowan will be moving out in September.

4. We will live in a different house

5. Jordan will be living with us again for a while.

6. I will start a new journal.

7. The hand of fate is upon us! Whap!

July 24

This is it. The end of so much and some shifts, not a totally new path, but we definitely hit a jog of the magnitude of our move to Washington 14 years ago, new jobs, new house, new career, new college. Our children are all adults and mostly independent. I have helped to raise so many children.

I want to do something that is not moving, be somewhere not in transition so I can hold my thoughts steady. What do I want? I want to have control of the situation to some extent.

July 25

This can be my place

Sunday in a new house,

freshly painted,

a few cars on the road early,

no coffee,

just a living room crowded with haphazard furniture,

boxes and crates.

July 26

Everything is forming. Our possessions arrange in the space of an old house. Mary is pleased with the kitchen. I am happy with my desk space. She will make an exercise area.

I have to go find a new journal because this one is finished.

This will be my small writing journal. I will fill it with words of smallness and rise into life like smoke on a calm day.

July 27

I filled out my first job application very confidently. I have power in my work and will use it.

July 29

I moved all of my preschool stuff out of BCS. The entire process is almost finished. Our house is almost homelike.

July 31

I live in a fantasy world sometimes. I want everything to work our right for everyone, but I usually don’t have the power to do much about making it work out that way. New things come and go. Nothing gives me that feeling of opening that I used to get when the world shifted, sometimes by just paying attention to little things.