Third Entry on Wednesday

When I was a teacher I attended many workshops. Some were mandatory and some I chose. Some were useful and others a total waste of time.  I found myself today thinking about one where I had the experience of relating something I read to my own life. The workshop was designed to help the teachers realise that teaching a child to read is considerably more than the teaching of the decoding skills. We had read an extract from a children’s book —Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner which is the story of a boy who wants to win a sled race to save his grandfather’s farm. There comes a point in the book where Stone Fox, the Indian, gives up his chance to win the race by doing something honorable.  The directions asked us to relate this to our own lives by answering questions designed to help us to do this, and much to my surprise, at that point I found myself writing about the Society for Creative Ananchonism {SCA}. One of  the main reasons I and my younger son were members of the SCA was because I wanted my son to be a part of something where honor was not only discussed but considered an important part of one’s behavior.

I know I have mentioned that I am reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Kidd for our book club meeting next week and I have been open about the fact that I really didn’t like the book and have found it hard going. Well, I finished it tonight and to my surprise, there is a part of this story towards the end that brought tears to my eyes and suddenly made me see something about my own life. All through this book the heroine, a child named Lily,  is searching for her mother– desperate to find out why her mother left her. At the end of the book, August, an African-American woman whom the author characterizes as “a vision… of feminine wisdom, compassion and strength” tells Lily, “You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside… You don’t have to put your hand on Mary’s heart to get strength and and consolation and rescue, and all the other things we need to get through life, “she said. ” You can place it right here on your own heart. Your own heart.” {Author’s italics}

Until I read this part of the book, I really wasn’t aware that the reason I am happy at this time in my life is that I have found my “mother inside.” What I need in my life, the “strength and consolation and rescue”–all of these and so much more — I now can and do give myself.

Until later…