object of memory

we must return to where it was lost / if we want to find it again

Category: beautiful brains

  • 525,600 minutes x 7

    525,600 minutes x 7

    One of my favorite people in all the universes—known and yet to be discovered—turned seven today. It feels strange to think I’ve only known him for three years. Perhaps they were light-years or some other measure of time yet to be documented. Perhaps this little guy, who isn’t so little anymore, will be the one to discover it.

    Time brought us together. Time, as in the hours of preschool. Time, as in the minutes left of play. Time, in its exactness: the space between now and next and then. Time as the locus of everything—comfort and discomfort, measurable yet boundless. Like empathy. Feeling. Love.

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  • unintentional poetry

    Poetry is, indeed, everywhere.

    Unintentional preschool poem:

    Numbers are letters

    but you don’t know that

    because you are sweet.

  • metal heart

    metal heart

    Ellie weeps. Something in her weekly journal entry has made her sad, but she cannot find the words to explain why. “My scooter wasn’t going in the direction I wanted it to,” she had said earlier as the class talked about their weekends, but I wonder if there is something deeper in the statement.

    She weeps intermittently through our morning project about the human body, though she pauses and joins the class in drawing the heart. As they work, I say to them softly, “Think about how your heart pumps. Think about how your heart nourishes your brain, your lungs. What shapes do you see? What movement?”

    A child lobs a loaded question at the group: “What is more important, your heart or brain?” “That depends,” I say, smiling slyly. “It really depends.” Ellie glares at her peer and says matter-of-factly, “If you don’t have a heart, you die.” My own heart pumps quickly in reaction to her words.

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  • what to do with a busy brain

    what to do with a busy brain

    Raise your hand if you have a brain that is busier than your body. Hello, friend!

    I recently had a psychiatrist appointment during which I expressed distress over my level of anxiety. I know I am anxious when I stop sleeping at night—a frustrating no-win situation where I don’t want to go to bed because I know sleep won’t come. However, I’m also nearly paralyzed by the idea that I won’t sleep and will be too tired in the morning.

    Cue the tiny violins, but honestly, when you work with four and five-year-olds all day, you need to be awake. They know when you are bluffing. Plus, you are used as a human tissue for eight hours a day, five days a week, and if that immune system is depressed, well, you wind up with RSV like an adult four-year-old. Hello. That’s been me for the last three weeks.

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