12/29/19 Not Bored

12/29/19
Not Bored
by Holly Winter

I wanted to help my friend, Linda celebrate her birthday. We met at the Denizen Theater in New Paltz for a Christmas play, and then I was going to take her out for dinner.

The play was great, but I was so tired I was falling asleep. It's the last showing of this run and the room was packed. I liked the play with it's puns and one liners, but was so tired from the late Christmas party in Argile last night that I was fighting to stay awake.

It's a small theater and the actors noticed my nodding head. So they played to me with looks of desperation. Louder noises. Steps in my direction. They stared at me all the time, as if they were willing me awake.

Their attention embarrassed me, but I was too close to sleep to turn the tide.

I don't think Linda noticed my struggle and I hope the rest of the audience didn't notice.

Do the actors understand that my exhaustion had nothing to do with my feelings about the play or the quality of the play, both of which were amazing?

I had this deep need to let them know that I wasn't bored, but they were busy at the moment and it would have been difficult to have a heart to heart conversation with them, besides I was nodding off--not a great time to talk.

Pinch. Pinch. I pinched my thigh over and over again in the same spot. It hurt. A lot. This was going to be a nasty bruise. The pain mostly worked. I stayed awake for the rest of the show. Or I think I stayed awake, maybe I was snoring through the whole thing and only dreaming of staying awake?

When it was over Linda cancelled our dinner plans. We are expecting an ice storm tonight and the rain had already started. It was safer to head home right away.

I got home and tumbled in to bed, ready to nap.

But I was suddenly wide awake.

12/15/19 Finding His People

12/15/19

Finding His People

by Holly Winter

Heather, Dianne and I went to Kings Valley Diner and sat at a booth next to the windows. We let the waiter know we would tip well, but we had just come from dinner and weren't hungry. He shrugged and continued his fast pace waiting tables.

Heather's tenth grade son, Hector was there with his classmates from the Kingston High School choir. They were celebrating after their big concert at the Old Dutch Church.

We could see Hector sitting with his friends, his hair bun sticking up over the sides of the booth where he sat. I had the best view of the kids and lifted my camera to take a photo as fast as I could, but Heather had used my phone and left the settings on video, I whined at her for leaving the phone on video.

I missed the best shot, but this is the second best shot:

The girl sitting next to Hector jokingly changed her hair style to match his: a bun for two.

Hector has found his people. 

The owner of the diner went over to the kids and made a blanket statement about them needing to stay quiet and the kids, all of them good kids, immediately lowered their voices.

I said to Heather, "Tell the owner to ask the kids to sing."

And so she did and so he did.

After some rearranging and without a teacher present, the kids stood and performed one of their songs from their concert.

Teenagers finding their gifts and talents and their people gives me hope for us all, because the sooner you find your talent the sooner you find yourself.

12/9/19 That's the Good a Phone Call can Do

12/9/19
That's the Good a Phone Call can Do
by Holly Winter

Every time I call my friend Gayle, I say "Hello" in a different way. I'm not sure when this habit started, but this joking of a greeting has become a reflex.

Tonight Julie was at Gayle's house and I called so we could coordinate our trip to New York City.

The start of a phone conversation started with 'hello' in three syllables, "He" in a low voice, "lo" in a squeaky high voice, and the "oow" in a low voice again.

Gayle started laughing. And laughing.

Julie said in the background, "Why are you laughing? Nothing's funny."

That got me laughing.

Gayle and I laughed and laughed while Julie kept asking in the background what we were laughing about which made us laugh harder.

Finally Julie laughed, too.

After a few minutes of laughing, Gayle said she was going to put the call on speaker phone, but she must have hit a wrong button and the call was disconnected.

Which made me laugh even harder as I lay alone in my bed at 8:00 at night where I was resting because lying down helps the pleurisy (a virus on the outside of my lung) hurt less.

It doesn't matter that laughing hurts right now, because even though it hurts, it's as if the weight of worry is lifted when I laugh.

I called back, laughing so hard when she answered the phone that we all set off laughing again and might have continued but once again Gayle hit the speaker phone option and disconnected us, again.

It took three calls for us to stop laughing and remain connected so we could discuss our NYC trip.

I had been worried that I wouldn't be able to walk as fast as my friends or that I couldn't go home if I didn't feel well. But after all of the laughing, I decided there was nothing to be worried about.

That's the good a phone call can do.

12/3/19 Playing to Win

12/3/19
Playing to Win
by Holly Winter

On Thanksgiving day, my 5 year-old great nephew H and I played a chase game around the dining room of the firehouse where my family celebrates. We ran around tables, with H always a few steps from me. He laughed so hard as he squirmed out of my reach.

I was finally able to catch him; I picked him up and spun him around. "I'm the winner!" I joked.

He broke into tears of frustration and struggled to get away. My sister motioned for me to let him go. Later she told me that my brother's grandchild can't handle frustration, which I found frustrating.

A child will have trouble learning to read or write if he buckles when things don't go his way. I am a kindergarten teacher so I know a lot about 5 year old boys. Being able to take a risk is essential to learning, and you also need to have a high frustration tolerance, meaning that you can continue learning even when things aren't going your way.

H is a student in a Kindergarten class in a school in the same district where I teach. It's such a shame that he doesn't live in the area where I teach. I would love to help push his learning so he could gain even more skills.
He came to my house to play one snowy day when school was closed. He picked up two giant chips from my giant Connect 4 game and asked, "Can we play this?"

"Yes."

"Can we play it right now?" he asked.

"Let's do it." I smiled.

We'd spent the afternoon together, grateful that the roads were passable by lunch time. I took him to a friend's restaurant and then to an art center where he worked on projects for a few hours. He asked if we could go to my house to play some more.

I won 8 games of Connect 4 in a row before he broke into tears. This time there was nobody around to interfere with his moodiness around losing.

"I want to win." he stood with his fists clenched and tears falling fast.

"You want to win?" I asked, ignoring the tears.

He sobbed, "Yes, I want to win. You always win. I want to win."

"I'm very good at this game." I said. "I've been practicing for a lot of years, and I like to win."

He buried his head into the living room chair and shouted to me. "Now it's my turn to win."

"Nope." I said without pity. "I will never, ever let you win. I like to win."

He has many (2nd) cousins who are in their twenties. They love to spend time with him and I'm guessing that do whatever they can to keep that smile on his face, like let him win or backdown when he gets upset.

He cried louder.

I suggested that maybe we should do something else if playing this game was going to make him sad.

"No" he sobbed. "I want to play." He demanded to go first, and I let him. He dropped the chip into the outer row and I put my chip into a center row.

"Why do you put it there?" he asked, wiping away tears.

"Do you really want to know why?"

He nodded his head.

I showed him all of the ways I could win the game from the center and how few ways I could win the game from the edge.

He watched as I motioned over the rows then said, "I thought I could win at the edge because it was the first circle."

I nodded and told him I liked his strategy, but if it wasn't working he might want to try another strategy.

From then on he watched every chip I dropped and tried to guess my reasoning behind each move. I couldn't have been more excited, that he was making himself focus even when he was upset.

"Hey." I said to him. "Stop focusing on the game. Shouldn't you start crying again?"

He laughed and focused harder.

"No more focusing." I joked, which made him study the board even more.

When he lost the next game he didn't cry, he studied my diagonal win, then told me that he was going first again.

"Nope." I said. "It's my turn to go first."

He went to cry when I grabbed a center slot, but his mood changed back to curiosity and he dropped a chip next to mine. For every chip I dropped, he dropped a chip next to mine. I loved the way he had changed his strategy, even if it didn't work.

During the next game he worked to build his own row of chips, rather than only focusing on my builds. After a few more games, it happened. He won a game.

He flopped on the floor and giggled uncontrollably. "I won." he laughed. "I really beat you."

"You did." I smiled.

"And you didn't let me win." he said.

"I will never let you win, I like winning too much to give it away."

When he was done laughing, he reset the board and asked me if I wanted to go first.

"Yes." I said, dropping the chip into the center column.

After another batch of games, he won again and couldn't stop laughing.

I smiled. "How does it feel to win?"

"Really good." he said, nodding his head up and down.

"How does it feel to play the game even if you don't win?"

He thought about it for a moment, then said, "It feels fun to play but it feels better to win."

As he set up the board for another game, I relaxed. Today he learned to push through his frustration and his brain might remember that a good way to move through frustration is to focus. It's a first step.

I tried so hard to get his parents to enroll him into my classroom, knowing that I could give him the skills he needed and help him excel. But they liked their neighborhood school.

I sighed. I couldn't have him in my classroom every day, but maybe I could help shape him into a learner by spending time with him on snow days.

12/2/19: Poem: Afraid to Boast

12/2/19
Poem:
Afraid to Boast
by Holly Winter


I don't die easy
but this last scare
made me doubt
my escape artistry.

Is the path with the
indifferent face the goal?
I am afraid to boast
of health when I am
still hurting.

12/1/19 Nobody Likes a Cookie Counter

12/1/19
Nobody Likes a Cookie Cutter
by Holly Winter

Some nights I nest at home with a good meal and a good book; other nights the very thought of sitting at home disgusts me. So even with temperatures near freezing and a slow, bitter wind blowing dead leaves around on a moonless night, I was in the mood to get out of the house and let someone else pay for the heat to warm me.

So I called my friends.

First Julie (My friend who is always up for a literary event.) and I went to the Spring Street Gallery in Newburg for a book signing and poetry reading. It was our first visit there and I didn't know what to expect. We were delighted to find free desserts, drinks and a room filled with people in the mood to listen to authors read their writes all for a suggested donation of $15.

The authors provided nibbles, since the theme of the night was food, and I ate several almond cookies and swear they're the best cookie I've had in years. (Not all at once. One cookie at a time, with several minutes between my eating so anyone watching was likely to forget that I'd just eaten the same cookie a few moments before.) 

Just in case anyone was keeping count, I picked up a chocolate cookie, too, so as not to hurt the author's feelings. I was sorry I bit into that chocolate one, it was ordinary and not worth the four bites, especially since I don't like chocolate. (No. You can't change my mind on this one. My friend Theresa has tried.) Why did I even reach for that cookie? To show appreciation for those cookbook authors making gluten-free cookies. Their kindness was most appreciated.

But what do you do when the author who is also the baker is standing right there and you've just taken a bite of a cookie that you don't care for? Spit it out? Stick the uneaten portion into your pocket to discard later? Put it back on the dish? Yeah. No. I ate it and was sorry for eating something that was less than desirable. 

To wash away that chocolate cookie, I ate another almond cookie. I didn't hear the authors thank me for helping to shine a spotlight on their recipe. They were nice people so they probably did thank me, but it a quiet way--maybe just between themselves like this,

"Thank goodness Holly came or we might have too many cookies left at the end of the night."

Though we were invited to eat as many cookies as we wanted, with the cookbook authors standing right there, I felt slightly conspicuous chowing down cookie after cookie. I told the authors that it was rare for me to like cookies so much, which is completely true. I also told them that I eat very little sugar, which is also true. 

And though this almond cookie was the new love of my cookie life, I worried the authors were secretly counting my cookie capacity, so I had to wait until both authors left the area or turned their heads to talk I could feel safe eating another cookie.

Nobody likes a cookie counter.

I felt bad about not buying the book--but it was big and heavy and I was pretty sure I would never make cookies that require you to arrange the almond slivers in a careful circle on each mound of cookie dough before it's baked into a flat, crunchy cookie. I'd probably just eat the raw cookie dough rather than spend time arranging each almond sliver on each cookie mound. 

One woman read poetry about food and I remember her mention about letting the universe lick the bowl when she baked and I wondered why she wouldn't help the universe out with that job. Hello? The universe can't be expected to command lightness and darkness, manage gravity AND lick out the bowl when you make cupcakes. 

Another cookbook author read from essays he and/or his wife had written. His writes were incredibly interesting, but didn't make me curious about the actual recipes in the cookbook. Were the recipes any good? Would I be required to buy slivered almonds and piece them into a design, one almond sliver at a time? I didn't buy this cookbook, either, due to my new fear of precise placements in baking. 

We had to leave early, so we stood in the back while I ate a few more cookies before we drive to Marlborough to meet Anne and Dianne for a Jimi Hendrix movie and then some Jimi musical performances from old white men with bandanas on their heads. (I don't know a lot about Jimi, but I'm up for any event of any kind if my friends are involved.)

Julie was ready to eat dinner and asked what I wanted. 

"I'm not hungry." I said. "I ate all of those cookies."

Julie looked deep into my eyes. "Cookies aren't dinner."

I love a friend who doesn't consider cookies to be food. I'll bet she doesn't even count calories when she's running on her treadmill for an hour every morning. As for me I have to pay attention since this pleurisy gig has taken over my health since I can't exercise right now.

No dinner for me.

I just sipped hot lemon water and took in the crowd, my age and older mostly wearing jeans. The music was too loud. Julie and I put earplugs into our ears at the same time, Dianne and Anne fashioned their own out of bits of paper napkin and stuffed them into their ears.

Dianne said something and I couldn't hear her. I removed one of my earplugs. 

"What?"

She removed one of her earplugs. "I can make a better earplug out of a paper napkin, I bend it like this and It works perfectly." She stuffed the horseshoe shaped piece of paper into her ear.

Anne and Julie each removed an earplug so Dianne could repeat herself.

Then we each put our plugs back into our ears and bopped our heads to the music, glad to be out on a Saturday night.