It’s an old idea, but it’s a good one: some of the best lessons adults learn come from an elementary classroom. For example: Tying shoes is hard. Untangling knots is harder. Everything is better with recess. And colour. It’s okay to hug someone. Especially if they’re unhappy. Success is better measured by clipped corners and smiley face stickers.
Maybe you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be eight years old. When you’re eight years old, school is about fun. It’s an adventure of new clothes and backpacks, classroom goldfish and dinosaur posters. Your teacher smiles a lot, and her skirt swishes when she walks between the groups of desks, lightly tapping on your shoulder. Recess is about fifteen minutes…
It’s been awhile. Somehow, between moving boxes and Oklahoma weddings, I seemed to have lost August – and I’ve hardly anytime to pull in a month of Sundays, look back on the bumps and the slides, and throw in a mishmash for the memories; a hearty dish for the soul. And now, it’s finally time to put this pot of…
When I met Anna, she was inside of herself. This isn’t uncommon with teenagers. The high school years seem to be ripe with a lack of self-confidence and misunderstood emotions, and this was no exception. But with Anna, she was ready to put all of that behind her, and thankfully, I was given the gift of witnessing her to take…
One of my favourite poems growing up was Robert Frost’s, “The Road not Taken”. I was constantly enamored with this idea that life was an adventure, full of unknown twists and turns, with who-knows-what kind of exciting thing just waiting up ahead, around the bend. But I couldn’t expect to have those adventures if I took the same path that…
It’s just a little over three years ago that I first drove up into the PCS parking lot on a Thursday evening, just as the sun was beginning to set. I’d driven down from Edmonton that day, and five hours later, I was still trying to calm down my nerves for my upcoming interview – but it was the mountain…