The BIG Review of: The Last Summer (of You and Me)

I finished reading Brashare's book in the Holiday Inn Express in Mississippi that we stayed at on our way to Georgia. I started it in the Pep Boys on Battlefield the day before our trip. Why do automotive shops say it will take about two hours when they mean four (more on that later)?

The plot: Alice and Riley, two sisters, and their best friend Paul spend summers together at the their respective beach houses for several years. Paul stops coming to the beach, although I'm not sure why, but at the start of the novel, Paul is on his way for the summer. Alice is waiting for Paul which seems to be a central theme of the book--Alice waiting for Paul, Alice waiting for Paul and Riley, Alice waiting to let Paul know how she feels--yet I digress.

Paul is working on his last paper before entering graduate school; Alice is contemplating law school, while Riley is content to swim and explore the ocean. The dynamic with the three of them, simply put is--Paul and Riley are best friends. Alice and Riley are close sisters. Paul and Alice have a complicated relationship built around a lot of teasing and flirting that winds up being TRUE LOVE (read, Alice is a virgin until Paul who had never fucked anyone he cared about until Alice this summer).

Everything is going along swimmingly, literally, until we find out that Riley has copped up with a bout of rheumatic fever that nearly killed her as a child, and apparently when it comes back, it's worse. In her case it takes on congestive heart failure. Riley's only chance, a heart transplant, is just over the horizon, and in the meantime Riley doesn't want Paul to know she is sick. Being consumed with nothing else, Alice has to shirk Paul from her due to all of his questions about Riley and herself. Torn between her loyalties for her sister, and her undying devotion to Paul, Alice chooses her sister.

In the end, Riley dies, but not before Alice allows her swim in a heated pool each day for a few hours. Paul has been told about the illness, realizes why Alice shut him out, and makes it up to her by being supportive during the time when Riley is gone. At first Alice is plagued with thoughts of guilt because Riley found out about the relationship between Alice and Paul, but Riley forgives her. This forgiveness is what lets Alice know that it is okay to be with Paul even if Riley is gone.

Subplots include Riley and Alice's father having an affair with Paul's mother; Paul's father being dead due to an OD, a culture of lifeguards, two small girls who live in Paul's' house after he sells it, Paul's grandparents who are rich blaming Paul's mother for her husband's untimely demise, Alice's mother being terse about most everything.

Overall--6 --plot was bit predictable, characterization not stellar

For the past three years on my birthday, I've been in Florida reading AP exams. Universally,

Who the hell knows what I was planning to say here? I started this post in June, and now it's October. Why do I start things and never finish? Why do I plan to go back when I know I won't? And why don't go back and finish things? Is there something in me that won't allow it? I know my personality type is more of a starter, but I seem to finish only under duress. I'm a teacher's nightmare, yet I'm a teacher?

I would hate having myself as a student.

Simply a List

This is what I want to write about:

My grandma's stay in St. John's for exactly four weeks, her death, her funeral.
I know that if I don't write about these things soon I will forget them and they will be gone.

I feel this striking sense of losing my extended family without her and my mom to hold me to them. I saw people this month that I'll probably never see or hear from again.

Is this what it's like when everyone gets older?

My friends having babies and being pregnant while I feel like a barren wasteland. Not becuase I can't get pregnant, but because we're not ready yet. And then I wonder if I will ever be ready for a baby. And then I think about not having my mom to show me how to be a mother in the first few hours and days of a newborn's life. Yes, that may come to me, but I wish I didn't have to rely on my instincts alone. I wish that I was able to look into my mother's face as she held my child for the first time.

Memories that my family and I shared around my grandmother's hospital bed as she took her last breaths.

Mary Carsten's love of the family tree, and how it literally drove her to work my grandma's funeral.

The last wishes paper that is lost.

The dating talk I had with Piper.

Finals

My seventh hour students are working on their final exam for my class. I asked them to write a reflection about their experience in my class this year--what did you learn? What was fun? What really sucked? What skills have you developed (yes, I've seen Napolean Dynamite; yes, the knuchuck skills could apply here)?

Watching them sort through what they've learned is fun, but I'm always surprised when I read final reflections. The student who I thought learned a lot says he learned nothing new. The student who resisted everything we did in class feels like an authentic learner. I can't count on a single sure thing when I comb over these to adapt my lessons and activities for next year.

Little do they know that I had my own final yesterday--my summative evaluation. I almost quit my job over it. Walking out into the bright sunlight after being under flourescents all day would have been marvelous. But, instead I hunted down the princi-PAL and started the review process. He says: Let's start with any questions you have.
Me: Well, I would like for you to explain to me why I earned progressing on these first four items. I would like to start there.
Him: What? (Takes paper and looks at it; shakes his head.) Oh, no. Oh, Leslie, no you didn't earn progressing on those. You didn't get any progressings.
Me: Oh, okay. Okay, good.
Him: Oh, I'm so sorry. I bet that's a relief. No, you've done a great job this year. I'll go over your strengths with you--and you probably have a lot more, this is just what I've seen. (Lapses into some strengths I have: my sense of humor, my willingness to develop professionally, my ability to work with students until they understand everything.)

The walk between picking up the evaluation and straightening out the evaluation seemed quite long. It's good to be praised sometimes at the end of the year when you think you're drowning. I hope my students feel as though they've been praised a bit this week when they're finishing their freshman year.

Heaven's Picnic

Right now I think my grandma, instead of being aware that she's stuffed with tubes, bloods, medicines, and breath, is enjoying a leisurely picnic with my mom, my aunt, and my grandfather. My childhood dog Bandit is there as well as all of my great aunts and my even one of my cousins who dided in infancy.

In the heaven picnic there aren't onions in the potato salad, and there aren't onions in anything becuase she hates onions. It's the perfect temperature and the ants that are there are traveling in a single file line to crumbs that have been left for them instead of smuggling through all the fresh foods and trampling along the picnic blanket.

On the third floor of St. John's, my grandma has tweny-two medications pumping into her veins to help her breathe, help her kidney functions, and help her do everything else she was doing this time last week. This time last week when I talked with her for a few minutes about how she was and what she was doing. Before she had Tastee Freeze for dinner on Tuesday. Before she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure on Friday.

That Zebra Got a Reprieve

On the commute to school there's a small pasture where animals have been grazing on and off all year. Yesterday, I saw a zebra kneeling over a wired hay bale, grazing. It was definitely weird to see the zebra out in a cow pasture; his stripes were dingy and he looked completely out of place. How I feel sometimes in school. That my views, while not too far left, are completely far fetched from those around me.

Each day I am more and more surprised by how little awareness students have and how quick they are to make a bad choice. On Monday I had to sub for Brandy (who left school promptly after arriving because she was having false labor pains). Picture Chris--typical high school gamer. Doesn't want to do anything, and doesn't do anything. At one point, he literally had a zero in English. A zero. Wears black, has black hair, and is pale. Chris imagines that he's smart, but he doesn't' prove it through his actions. Like on Monday when the principal comes in to light a fire under Chris to do his science project. Chris refuses. Principal says in a sterner voice to get to work. Eventually, Chris erupts into a "This is fucking retarded!" And leaves the room mumbling, then screaming "Later!"

I never would have dreamed of a principal overhearing me cursing, much less cursing at him--but that's Chris for you--never thinking about a point from which there is no return. Before he said the F word, he had a window where he could have gotten up and pretended to work for a few minutes. There were fifteen minutes left in class. He could have gotten a reprieve.

When I pointed out the zebra to Laura, she said, "you're joking right?" No, I tell her--pretty zebra eating grass. Right between the gas station and the tax place. "At the meat packing plant?" Well, yeah, I guess it was the meat packing plant. "Well, that zebra won't be around later." Then it hits me. All year I've seen animals in that pasture. This zebra, a few cattle, a horse, some ostriches. There for a few days--then an empty pasture.

This morning when I saw the zebra I sighed a breath of relief. He had earned a reprieve for at least one more day.

Absent--for three days--Mindedness

I haven't posted on this for three days. Not because something has happened, or something didn't happen, not because I didn't think about it. But, like what typically happens when I start something and think about it a lot--I just didn't get around to it again. I checked FaceBook thirty times, and I checked my email, but I didn't get on here to blog.

I love to start things and leave them. I hate finishing things--not that you can exactly finish a blog, but I don't follow through with things either. When I was growing up, my dad told me I was a dawddler. I never hustled or got into a hurry. Even now when someone needs something quickly from they store, I don't go by myself, lest I lose track of time. I'm not sure what gets me off the path; sometimes I catch myself staring off into space not thinking about anything in particular. Then I'm frazzled and I speed up to make up for the lost time. That's when I forget things. I forget chocolate chips for some cookies, or I forget the milk for the cereal. I have gone to the store only needing a loaf of bread, and come back with everything but. Does this happen to other pepople? If it doesn't is there help for people like me out there?