I've been at a "Revolutionary Grammar" Workshop this week, looking for practical ways to holistically synthesize the teaching of grammar with reading and writing. Sometimes what you come to a workshop expecting doesn't get delivered, but you fly home dusted with a different kind of pollen. Here's what I've learned:
Grammar wears blues and greens, a summer day personified. Over her shoulders, she slings a wicker pack basket filled with several changes of costume in other circadian shades. Curious props can be seen peeking out the top of her basket: a small brass hand mirror, a red admission ticket attached to it with the words “taking notes;” a pair of mirrored sunglasses ticketed with the words “Yadda, yadda, yadda;” a small bottle of Elmer's Glue labeled with a red ticket that reads “pay-per-view TV;” a Webster-Merriam Dictionary with the word “thermos” taped on to the cover, just to name a few of her metaphors. She has more in her basket, jingling around among the atmospheric garb of shape-shifters. Some days she dresses as a noun; other days, she prefers being the action. Today she is off to the nearest playground to lead a workshop on prepositions. Children soon fall into squiggly lines of chatter in Grammar’s wake as she loops her way through the park to the latest scape in playground design.
Grammar gathers her audience around her and beckons them to sit, motioning them to watch. She then climbs up the red webbed structure the kids fondly refer to as The Eiffel Tower.
“What am I doing?” she calls.
“Climbing!” the children shout.
“Yes!” she retorts. “Where am I climbing?”
“On the Eiffel Tower!” the kids glee in unison.
“Yes, I’m climbing on the Eiffel Tower!”
In a flash—did she fly?—Grammar now hangs upside down from the Caterpillar, another climbing apparatus.
“What am I doing?” Grammar begins again, quizzing the giggling children now gathered around her as she swings upside down, hanging from her knees.
“You’re hanging upside down!” comes the shrill voices of the delighted children.
“From the Caterpillar!” a pig-tailed girl in polka-dotted overalls adds.
“In the playground,” a sly older child slips in.
“On a sunny day!” Grammar smiles upside down, her short silver hair brushing the wood chip carpet beneath her blood-rushed head as she swings back and forth.
Next, Grammar runs wildly, the children joined in a whip following her blindly, joyfully. “What are we doing?” Grammar’s voice trails behind her.
“Running!” the children scream, voices deliciously icing the air.
“Where?”
“Around the spinning seats! We’re running around the spinning seats!” the children laugh.
“Can I have a turn?” asks a boy.
“Yes, you may,” says Grammar, handing him a white baseball hat with the word Leader on the bill. “You may go anywhere a squirrel can go: up, down, around, through, in, over, under, on, to, in front of, beyond, anywhere.”
“Can I be next?” a shy girl asks.
“May I be next?” Grammar gently corrects and repeats the query as she beams a smile and nods yes to the young girl, “Yes, you may.”
***
There are pivotal moments in life that a writer returns to again and again through reverie. The moment embeds itself into body memory and sinks to the depths of one’s being, forgotten until needed. If one is lucky, the experience is retrieved, plucked like a pearl and strung with other moments to form a life narrative. We wear them like a jeweled necklace, invisible to onlookers but worn to smooth polish like a constant talisman to writers willing to dive deep enough for the gifts secreted in the dark waters of consciousness.
***
My room is still dark. Only dawn light sifts through the small dormer window at one end of my shoebox attic bedroom on the third floor. The house is old, originally a barracks during the Civil War, and has more recently been stuccoed and embellished in antebellum Greek revival fashion with a Doric columned front porch. There is a wrought iron balcony enclosing French doors between the first and second storeys that is protected by the porch. Between the porch and the roof is a half circle wagon wheel window from which we can see a great distance. It is my favorite place to watch thunderstorms come in over the valley. The third floor expands under the peaked roof and includes my small room, my brother’s larger room, a small windowed bathroom big enough for a commode and a sink I can barely reach, a play space, and large open spaces under the eaves for storage. Our house is built into a hillside, and the only thing the road beyond our driveway leads to is the town cemetery, which sprawls out over the hilltop under a canopy of ancient trees. It affords visitors a peaceful vista of the surrounding rolling hills and valleys of the Ohio River in southwestern Pennsylvania. We take our daily walks there with the babysitter, popping butter and eggs and sucking honeysuckle along the winding drive. We play hide and seek among the tombstones and rustling leaves in the fall, sled down the snow-covered hills in winter.
It is Saturday morning. Early. My five and a half year old brother, 18 months my senior, wakes me up, “Hey! Wanna go up on the roof?” I’m told we did everything together, brother and sister, but in retrospect, I think that was more a condition of sibling existence in the adult world of the 50s than an affectionate bond. No matter. Tim beckons; I follow. Out the third storey bathroom window we clamber. Up the steeply pitched tar roof shingles we climb, exploring the hills and valleys of our new found freedom. I make my way to the peak at the front of the house where I just know the best view will be had. There, I perch like a small bird, sear-suckered feathers ruffling in the wind, pixie haircut almost flowing behind me. In my imagination I can feel it, long locks kissing my shoulders.
I look out and beyond the circumference of my daily life that ends at the edge of our yard. Below me are the streets and alleyways and houses and buildings of the village arranged in neat quilt squares. There, the library! There, the village square where I nervously met Santa Claus last winter, too shy to sit on his knee. Just at the edge of the village runs the railroad tracks and beyond them is the Sewickley bridge, spanning the Ohio River like a blue barrette, holding in place the road to Coreopolis that passes Dairy Queen when we go to the airport. I can see for miles. I dream I can fly. The world is new and alive and I am its fairy awoken to its magic!
My mother walks out of the house, emerging from the front door under the roof of the porch. I watch her stride purposefully several steps out into the driveway, turn and look up. She is small from my vantage point. I want to wave, but quickly see the terror in her eyes. Tim is tapping my shoulder. “Quick, gotta get down!”
We spend the rest of the day in jail: our rooms. Bread and water are placed at our doorways. I watch from my dormer window as my father erects a swimming pool in the side yard. Our toddler brother wobbles at Mother’s knee. A neighbor stops by to talk to my parents. Laughter wafts up to my window and their faces look up at me. The story has been told.
I live out my childhood and adolescence reminded often of this misadventure, most usually retold at the dinner table like a litany for the benefit of company. It wasn’t until I left home and started to explore the world of writing that I claimed this story for my own. It wasn’t until I became a writer that I realized the day I climbed out on to the roof when I was four years old was the day I became a poet.
***
I am at Bard, sitting in a classroom in Olin Humanities and Lecture Hall reading and writing, supposedly about grammar. Place and context—I’m not seeing it. This workshop does not live up to what it advertises in the blurb. I’m waiting for a revolution. In the meantime, I’m gathering appropriate accoutrements for what I hope will be a peaceful takeover of outdated teaching models plaguing classrooms, a teacher’s constant frustration. What is in my toolbox for this demonstration so far? A pen, a notebook, seven senses, a reader, and other folks’ ideas. What more do I need?
Tomorrow is hump day—I’m told I’ll see the light then. Perhaps the troops will rally. Will we take up grammar arms and march into a new understanding? Here’s to a positive disposition rather than opposition.
***
This morning I put on my blue dress and packed my wicker basket with scissors and collecting jars. I’m off to look for monarch eggs underneath the milkweed leaves. I feel another metamorphosis coming on. Wings are budding on my shoulder blades. I have a change of clothes with me, something appropriate for flying high and getting the bigger picture, taking the measure of the land, the land where Meaning and Language reside.
Some of us wait a lifetime to claim what is ours, to recognize who we are. It is a hard lesson to learn to be in charge of your own celebrations, your own revolutions. The children are waiting.
