Drums Please

I think the time I first managed to gain some trust from the first classroom of kids I taught was the morning I introduced memoir writing to them.  (I doubt any of my former students read this, and if they do I have a feeling they will argue that it was when we read Holes or created a Brer Rabbit play, but I’m going with memoir.) That day, we read a paragraph whose author’s name I have forgotten, but it was 5-7 beautiful sentences listing sounds she heard while laying in bed on an early weekday morning.  This became a writing prompt for my students and I, and we sat for a few minutes thinking of and writing down sounds we heard those first moments between waking up and getting out of bed.

I told them about the newspaper boy pulling his wagon down the alley, its wheels rumbling over the cement. It always impressed me that it was still dark but he was out there. Though I never heard him before my dad, whose footsteps quietly creaked down the hallway minutes before the newspaper boy noisily delivered the morning’s stories.

Some students told me they could hear their dads clanging hangers in closests to get dress shirts on for work. Others told me they could hear dishwashers being emptied, coffee beginning to start, showers turning on.

I think of that day fondly because I remember the excitement we all had to share stories. And even though they might not have seemed earth shattering- soul searching events, we were all making a special dent in a moment of our lives from a simple list.

The girls and I made a list, too.  The day after Hadley was done with school, we sat down and thought of things we’d like to do this summer.  The zoo, butterfly garden, splash park, pool, beach, parks, were all some of the things that made the list.  We accomplished most of them, although “teach the girls how to make friendship bracelets” is yet to be completed.

As much as I love a good list, it seems the magic – and maybe the good memories – happens in what is not written down.

We didn’t write down, “Find a cafe that serves only cupcakes.”

Or, “Try on fancy hats and sunglasses in a department store when it’s too hot to play outside.”

We should have, but we didn’t write down, “Throw water balloons off the balcony.” Personally, I think that’s something to re-visit every summer.

I don’t think you’ve lived fully until you’ve had a dance party in an ice-cream shop.

Or had a contest with a boy to see who could make the other laugh harder by making disgusting noises.  True love, I tell you.

We didn’t write down “do lots of homework,” but there was some letter practicing going on during hot summer afternoons.

 

The next step in my memoir lesson with my students was to explore one of these sounds.  Was there a story here?  Does this memory shape you somehow? Is there something else you see that wasn’t on the list that is emerging from your description?

That’s always the hard part, and sometimes it’s too soon to write the answers to these questions.  But  I think someday I will write about the newspaper boy. And I wonder if Hadley and Harper will share a summertime memory in their classroom one day.

Until then, I’ll keep making lists for when the time is right to explore one of these memories.

Because it’s good to write these things down every now and then.