Putting in the Sky

Part of my job is to inventory books, which, I suppose sounds dreadfully boring, but for me it is quite sacred to hold a story in my hands and enter the ISBN, Title, and Author into the school’s system. It feels like a birthright, I think.

It’s also terribly tempting to take a minute, or the equivalent of my lunch break, to dive into these stories. If they’re chapter books, I limit myself to first sentences. I love reading first sentences. Writing them is another thing altogether, but reading them is like pouring that first cup of coffee when the morning is turning from black to blue.

Picture books, though, I admit I’ll read, and that’s how I found Miss Rumphius, a book from 1982 that was written by Barbara Cooney, and won the National Book Award for Children. When Miss Rumphius was a little girl, she helped her father in his painting studio, and sometimes, “when he was very busy, Alice would help him put in the skies.” I had to write that down in a little booklet I carry around because what a beautiful thing it is for a child to help her parent with the work they are trying to do. I used to help my dad staple packets for a course on Philosophy he was teaching, and it was exactly like putting in the skies.

Alice and her father get to talking, as is the custom when you work together on something grand, and he tells Alice that it doesn’t matter so much what you do as long as you, “do something that makes the world more beautiful.” Thus, Miss Rumphius’ pursuit to make the world more beautiful begins, and the morning I read this sentence, I decided that is what I want to do. All the time, I want to ask myself, “Am I doing this to make the world more beautiful? Is this project, essay, job, task, WHATEVER, something that is going to make the world more beautiful?”

Hours later, I sat in a meeting with an excited and passionate group of PTA members. There will be a library renovation and these stories I am holding each morning and wondering about need to be accounted for. What will we do with them? How will we organize them? How can we help? Can you come to the PTA meeting the Monday after Spring Break and talk about your plans for the library? It’s for the kids.

I drove home miserable that afternoon. I don’t want to go to the PTA meeting. I don’t want to go to any PTA meeting ever, and what is wrong with me?

So I pick up Hadley and Harper, and I’m grumpy, and apparently Hadley and Harper are too. “I wish it would stop raining,” Harper says, slamming her backpack and herself into the car. “Yeah, well, I wish I could take my Light Saber to school,” Hadley says. “We can’t have everything we want.”

“Mommy,” Harper says, “what does it mean when you put bunny ears behind someone’s head? Because I do it all the time, and E told me today that it means, ‘turn around and kiss me.'”

“That is NOT what it means,” I say.

“It does, Mama. He looked it up on Google. Or maybe it was Wikipedia.”

I’m not sure how to respond, so I just keep driving through the rain on the way to piano lessons.

“Mom, quick,” Hadley says, taking out a piece of paper and a pencil. “Ask me 100 questions about science.”

“Hadley, Science? Seriously? You want me to ask you 100 questions about Science?”

“Yeah, and they have to be multiple choice or true/false answers. I’m making a Scantron test.”

I’m realizing now how much Hadley and Harper help me put in the skies, and this is what I want to do instead of go to the PTA meeting. I want to listen to my girls talk about what bunny ears mean and I want to come up with 100 questions about Science for a fake Scantron test. Can I say that to the PTA president, though? “I can’t go to your PTA meeting and tell you about plans for your library because I want to be with my daughters. Also, I have no plans for the library other than to read stories to your children and talk about those stories with them. I’d like to help walk your children through Walk Two Moons, Raymie Nightingale, or Bridge to Terabithia. I’d like to help your children with their stories and poems. I’m good at that, but I don’t want to sit in your meeting and talk about plans. I want to sit in your library while the sun streams in the sky roof overhead, and I want to hold those stories and think about them, and then I want to go home and be with Hadley and Harper and my husband, and I want to think about Science and the meaning of bunny ears.”

The piano teacher takes Harper in the piano room first, and they discuss a term called, “audiate.”

“Do you know what that means?” the piano teacher asks.

“Yes,” Harper says, “it is when you feel it on the inside but you can’t see it.”

The piano teacher walks into the room where Hadley and I are, and I am already smiling when she peeks in, shocked, and says, “Did you hear that?”

“I heard it,” I tell her. “She’s a poet, don’t you think?” I ask.

She goes back to Harper, and I think about feeling things on the inside that haven’t been seen yet. What does it take to help put in the sky?

When it’s Hadley’s turn, she plays a piece she’s been working on for a competition the piano teacher wants her to play in. Hadley’s memorized it, and there are no mistakes in her execution. There is a pause after Hadley plays, and I can hear the piano bench creak with the weight of the two of them sitting together.

“Very good, very good,” the piano teacher says. “Now. What else do you think needs to happen?”

Another pause, and I know Hadley will struggle, and this is why I love our piano teacher. She knows Hadley well – the child wants to know exactly what she needs to do to get the work done and she will do it, but then it’s done. As she told me in Kindergarten once, “Mama? Once I’m done, I’m DONE. There’s no going back.”

Except the piano teacher sees something in Hadley, and she is trying to pull it out of her; make it bloom. The trouble is, that will be messy, and it will bring with it uncertainty and imperfection. This makes Hadley uncomfortable. The answer to, “What else do you think needs to happen” is, “I need to make a mess. I need to play with emotion. I need to feel this song before I see it.” That’s difficult for Hadley. It’s difficult for everyone.

It can be a terrible lonely and arduous task working to put something into the world that you feel but haven’t yet seen, but I think it’s similar to putting in the skies, and I think it’s like trying to make the world a little more beautiful.

That’s what I want to do, even when it aches to do it. A week before I flew to California, Ashlee Gadd sent a package to Hadley. The reason for the package is a story for another day, but along with a load of goodies, she sent Hadley a note, and one of the things she told Hadley is, “When the world is ugly, I like to try and put something beautiful in it.” That’s what I think I’m doing when I’m doing inventory in the library. That’s what I think the piano teacher does when she teaches my girls. That’s what I think Ashlee’s done with The Magic of Motherhood. That’s what I want to do every time I write. I want to take what aches and somehow try to make it beautiful, and I think that is why I can’t go to the PTA meeting on Monday night.

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