Susan Wittig Albert is one of my favorite contemporary authors. I've been reading her books for some 20 years, now. Maybe more. Her
website tells us that she "is the author of the novel,
A Wilder Rose, the true, untold story of the
writing of the
Little House books. Her
award-winning fiction, which has appeared on the New York Times bestseller
list, includes mysteries in the China Bayles series, the Cottage Tales of
Beatrix Potter, and a series of Victorian-Edwardian mysteries she has written
with her husband, Bill Albert, under the pseudonym of Robin Paige. She has written two memoirs:
An Extraordinary
Year of Ordinary Days and
Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place,
published by the University of Texas Press.
Her nonfiction titles include
What Wildness is This: Women Write About
the Southwest (winner of the 2009 Willa Award for Creative Nonfiction);
With
Courage and Common Sense; Writing from Life: Telling the Soul's Story; and Work
of Her Own:
A Woman's Guide to Success Off the Career Track.
She is
founder and past president of the Story Circle Network and a member of the
Texas Institute of Letters."
Having read nearly everything she's published, I think it's safe to say that I admire and respect her on a number of levels. I am "friends" with her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter and read her blogs faithfully. Now, this week, I am embarking on a journey inspired by her book Starting Points: Weekly Writing Prompts for Women with Stories to Tell. My plan is to do much of the woodshed writing in my private journal, but to write at least one entry a week inspired by the daily writing I do based on the prompts. We'll see how it goes. I always have grand plans at the start of the year to "write more." This year, I hope to actually do that. Wish me luck!
The prompts for the first week of January have to do with changes. Significant changes in my life over the past year. An easy question on the surface. There are changes that time brings to us, that we can do nothing about. Unstoppable changes that come with aging. The eyes grow dimmer, the joints ache more in the morning, the energy drops a little more than it used to at the end of the day. Those are things to be expected, and yet they are not necessarily easy dealt with. They are part of what comes with living longer, though, so I must find a way to deal with them. That, too, is easier said than done, but must happen if I am to move on with my life, my future, and not stay rooted in the past--or even the present.
Photo: New decals on my laptop :)
"The road goes ever on and on."
Those are the quotes for today's bell work. I asked my students to describe the road they are currently traveling--literally and figuratively. Who is going with you? Where are you going? Where do you wish you were going? Why? I'll be interested to see their responses. 
During the school year, I'm on a road kind of like many here in Arizona--a straight shot getting you fairly easily from one spot to the others. When I first moved here, a friend I had known in Boston (a city not known for it's straight, logical roads) sat down with me and described the road system here and said "you'll love driving here. It's so logical. You'll always know where you are and where you're going." Wrong! I have never been more lost and confused within a mile or so from my house or work than in this state! You can be driving along on a road and suddenly you will dead end into a neighborhood. So, logically you'd think you could go left (or right) and then right (or left) and then left (or right) again and find yourself back on your original road. But no. You can't get around the neighborhood so easily. Instead, you'll find yourself lost in a labyrynth of twists and turns that have you going in the complete opposite direction from where you started. Drives. Me. Crazy.
Then there are the mountain roads--north and south of where I live. I'm not very good at driving on roads I don't know and that do not give me a fair amount of distance views. Roads that have a lot of twists and turns are slow roads for me because I don't want to miss a curve and lose control. The first time I drove north to Sedona and beyond took quite a bit longer than I drive it now. And I didn't offer once to drive the hairpin turns of the White Mountains on our road trip East this summer. Once I know a road, though, I travel it easier. And faster.
The words shout across the classroom to me. I've been teaching for 35 years now and I'm quite conscious...now...of the opportunities I have to change someone's life. They are a regular part of the majority of my waking hours 180 days out of the year...minimum. Every minute in my classroom is an opportunity to effect change. Genuine, gut-wrenching, simple, subtle, silent, achingly slow change. Being a teacher gives me all that and more.
I didn't know that at the beginning. I was not prepared for the tidal wave of realization in the first week of my first teaching job. It came on me suddenly, quickly, and overwhelmed me, causing my own flood of tears at the peak of the epiphany. I thought it was too hard and too much. I thought it was impossibly to carry that responsibility. I thought I was too young, too small, too naive, too shy, too everything... I very quickly realized that a) I couldn't be everything to everyone, that b) I had to make the most of every opportunity, and that c) it mattered how I went about making the most of those opportunities.
