“I think the possibilities for ChatGPT to remove rote work from the classroom and empower deep learning experiences are exciting.” –Charlotte Dungan, COO of the AI Education Project

I confess that I’ve put off writing this post for months. During those months, I’ve done a lot of reading, thinking, and handwringing. And I confess that I’d never heard of the AI Education Project before I read about it in The Hill, but it doesn’t surprise me that there is such a project. I suspect it’s heavily funded and populated with technological and educational experts eager to push new tools and strategies into our classrooms. Because this is the way of things in education. For the past few decades, we’ve jumped on any new technological bandwagon, confident that this will be the silver bullet, the means by which we’ll raise test scores and compete with educational foes like China, Korea, and Finland. From Promethean boards (which, all too frequently, I’ve discovered being used as expensive screens onto which to project videos) to one-to-one computer initiatives to artificial intelligence platforms like ChatGPT, educators have been sold a pretty consistent bill of goods: The technology is out there, folks. We need to use it intelligently and responsibly.

I confess this, too: Artificial intelligence is here to stay. That barn door has been opened and won’t be closed soon, if ever. But I’d like us to carefully consider what “responsible” use of this actually means. I’d like us to come to a consensus about this, for it’s a Wild West of policies and practices out there now. This leaves administrators, teachers, students, and parents in an ethical No Man’s Land. Most importantly, this should leave us with crucial considerations: What constitutes “rote work,” and should we expect it from our students? Do we truly value the skills identified in national and state standards, skills like critical reasoning, problem-solving, close reading, drawing conclusions, and using strong evidence to support our claims? Should we expect our students—and our citizenry—to think or not?

If the answer to all of these questions is no, then we can farm out problem-solving, critical reasoning, researching, summarizing, interpreting, writing, and creating to AI. And we can call this “intelligent, responsible use.” If the answer is yes, the problem that educators now face seems insurmountable. In a recent BuzzFeed article, “Teachers Are Revealing Gen Alpha’s ‘Missing Life Skills’ That Were Second Nature To Anyone Who Grew Up In The ’90s, And I’m Honestly Shocked,” staff writers reported the skills teachers lamented their students lacked. These skills included organization, problem-solving, reading, and critical thinking. They also included soft skills, such as being able to ask good questions, advocate and think for oneself, persevere in challenging situations, self-regulate, and simply try. Yet, Damon Beres reports that the “rote work” of which former IBM COO Charlotte Dungan insists AI should remove from classrooms includes “researching a topic by seeking out multiple (human) viewpoints. Strengthening literacy skills by scouring resources for new information. Formulating conclusions by using logic to decipher the resources. Using rhetoric to create persuasive arguments to advance said conclusion.” Herein lies the problem. We apparently don’t agree on what students should be expected to do independently. And we don’t agree on what is “rote work” and what is “essential work.”

In his article, “AI Has Broken High School and College” (Aug. 2025), Atlantic writer Damon Beres writes, “AI has been widely adopted by students and faculty alike, yet the technology has also turned school into a kind of free-for-all.” In this article, he interviewed colleagues Ian Bogost and Lila Shroff , who admitted they were struck by the “normalization” of AI use. Shroff reported that in an article she’d written about K-12 education, three in ten teachers said they used AI weekly. In a recent Forbes article, Dr. Aviva Legett reports findings from a recent survey of college students (two-year, four-year, and graduate students) that “found that 90% of students have used AI academically, with nearly three-quarters saying their usage increased over the past year.” She argues that these findings echo those from a global study by the Digital Education Council that reports “86% of students across 16 countries already incorporate AI into their studies, with more than half using it weekly.” A July Newsweek article reports similar findings:

Quizlet’s 2025 How America Learns report revealed that 85 percent of teachers and students (age 14-22) now use AI in some capacity, marking a substantial increase from 66 percent in 2024. Among students, 89 percent reported using AI for schoolwork, compared to just 77 percent in the previous year.

Clearly, AI use has been “normalized” by a majority of students and an increasing number of educators. I’ve watched this normalization in the high schools I visit as a student teacher supervisor. Math homework? No problem! Just give the problem to AI, and it will solve it quickly. Reading homework? No problem! Just identify the text to AI for a brief, efficient summary. Writing homework? No problem! Just give the writing prompt to AI, and it will generate an essay in the blink of an eye. Research assignment? No problem! Just give the research topic to AI, and it will produce a research essay with multiple sources and accurate citations.

Interestingly, AI search engines don’t always accurately cite sources. In a March 2025 Fortune article, “AI search engines are confidently wrong more than half the time when they cite sources, study finds,” Beatrice Nolan cites a Columbia University study:

That’s according to a study from The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, which tested AI products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search and Google’s Gemini to assess their ability to accurately cite news articles. The analysis probed eight AI systems and found that, collectively, the bots provided incorrect answers to more than 60% of queries.

Researchers also reported that “despite poor results, the AI bots answered queries with ‘alarming confidence,’” and “rarely used any qualifying phrases, such as ‘it appears,’ ‘it’s possible,’ or ‘might.’” Award-winning teacher and former civil rights attorney Joseph R. Murray asks, “Will students think to double-check the AI? We already gave them a green light to coast through their classes.” He worries that giving AI to students who woefully lack content knowledge is like leaving toddlers “unattended in the candy store” (“Think our education system is bad now? Wait ’til AI takes over,” The Hill, 4/05/2025). In response to his question as to whether or not students will fact-check their AI citations and content, the answer is unequivocally no—at least for most students, high school and college, who will neither take the time nor possess the research and critical thinking skills to fact-check anything.

For the past few years, I’ve felt the anguish of teachers who’ve resigned themselves to the fact that almost any work taken out of the classroom will be completed through AI. I’ve heard the legitimate questions they’re asking: Why teach writing or reading, problem-solving or reasoning when students will just use AI? Why should I be held accountable for proficiency in the skills identified in my state standards when my students aren’t independently learning and practicing them? How do I prove that my students have done their own work—and will this even matter to parents and administrators? What is my role as a teacher now?

As a retired English teacher, I’ve tried to imagine what my career would look like now. If I value what I’ve always valued–critical thinking, close reading, thoughtful, well-researched writing— here’s what I’ve concluded: 1) All student writing would have to be completed during class time on paper, as I constantly monitored student progress; 2) All important reading would have to be completed during class time with paper—not digital—texts, again as I walked around the room, continually monitoring “real vs. fake reading”; 3) Despite in-class writing and reading assignments, all evaluation would be fraught with the challenge of determining if it was genuinely “student work”; 4) Consequently, justifying my grading practices would be fraught with student, parent, and administrator challenges. In short, if I wanted to uphold the educational values to which I’d devoted my life and to teach as I’d done for 41 years, I would have to change my practices and policies, resigning myself to the reality of students who constantly worked to “get around” them. All of this makes me sadder than I can say. And it makes me fearful, for it doesn’t require any real prophetic skills to predict how a nation of non-thinkers will ultimately fare.

For years, I’ve read and heard that many tech creators and gurus deliberately send their own children to schools that don’t rely on technology. There are schools like this, but they are the exceptions, not the rule. For most parents and students, their schools rely heavily–some exclusively–on technology. Students read, compute, write, and create on digital devices. With the normalization of AI, they can do even more. Actually, they can do it all. I’ve read of teachers who attempted to outwit AI by creating writing prompts and problems they believed were foolproof. These are valiant, well-intentioned efforts that AI will address with “alarming confidence.” And given the amount of student work most teachers must grade, they’ll inevitably be worn down with AI-generated responses that may not directly address the writing prompt or may not show evidence of math procedures taught in class, but are close enough. And they’ll be worn down with challenges to the authenticity of student work, mandatory parent phone calls, and persistent defenses of grading practices. They’ll just be worn down, exhausted to the point of submission.

Again, I’m painfully aware that AI isn’t going anywhere. Even schools that have adopted stricter cell phone policies can’t truly meet the challenges of AI. Some may argue that these policies are a step in the right direction, and they may be right. Still, although teachers and researchers may lament how students lack perseverance and problem-solving skills, I’ve seen just how diligent and resourceful many students can be when trying to work around school policies and computer firewalls. Some have shown amazing grit and ingenuity. A former colleague once joked, “I only wish these students would apply the same skills to their coursework.” Indeed, if only.

In closing, I’m making a plea for our communities and school boards to address the real concerns of AI. For the sake of our teachers and students, for the greater good of our future citizenry, we’re ethically responsible for carefully studying the impact of AI. And if we want to retain the good teachers we have and recruit quality teachers, we’re responsible for creating clear policies and support regarding AI, addressing the real challenges of widespread student use, and evaluating the efficacy of holding teachers and schools accountable to standards and practices that current AI usage makes virtually impossible to uphold. Above all, we’re responsible for determining whether we truly want our students to think—and think well—or if we’re willing to raise the white flag and concede this to artificial intelligence.

The living and the dead at his command
Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand,
Till, chok’d with stench, in loath’d embraces tied,
The ling’ring wretches pin’d away and died.
—Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 8

In his article, “Face to Face with Death” (The Post, June 3, 2024), Tim Brown identifies a particularly heinous form of torture described by the poet Virgil in these lines from The Aeneid. This practice was used by the Etruscans, predecessors of the Romans, and adopted later by the Romans. Brown describes the gruesome nature of this torture:

A living man or woman was tied to a rotting corpse, face to face, mouth to mouth, limb to limb, with an obsessive exactitude in which each part of the body corresponded with its matching putrefying counterpart. Shackled to their rotting double, the man or woman was left to decay. To avoid starvation, the Etruscans continued to feed the victim appropriately. Only once the superficial difference between the corpse and the living body started to rot away through the agency of worms, which bridged the two bodies, establishing a differential continuity between them, did the Etruscans stop feeding the living. Once both the living and the dead had turned black through putrefaction, the Etruscans deemed it appropriate to unshackle the bodies.

I should’ve included a trigger warning at the start of this post, for this is stomach-turning, nightmare-inducing stuff. To be shackled to a corpse and left to decay is unimaginable.

For many, however, this practice may be a fitting—albeit awful—metaphor for the condition in which they find themselves. That is, they may feel as though they’re shackled to dying systems, ideologies, practices, or relationships, and forced to carry these corpses as they navigate their lives. Perhaps they’re shackled to systems, ideologies, practices, or relationships they desperately wish would die. Or perhaps, they’re shackled to what psychiatrist Carl Jung referred to as their shadow selves, the hidden parts of themselves they’ve repressed and denied, too ashamed to reveal them to others. In any case, being bound like this is abhorrent.

Consider the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the king condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a hill for eternity but never reach the summit. French writer and philosopher Albert Camus regarded Sisyphus as a metaphor for the modern condition: Our lives are meaningless, and being conscious of this meaninglessness is a form of torture. Some may argue that being bound to a boulder (and the act of forever pushing it up a hill) is certainly preferable to being bound to a rotting corpse. And this may be so. Still, by all standards, Sisyphus’ punishment was hellish and eternal.

And consider the Apostle Paul. In his Letter to the Romans, he laments his own shackles:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. [Romans 7: 15-20]

I empathize greatly with Paul, my good intentions shackled to my sinful nature. His words here are my words, his lament, mine. I know what I want to do, but too often I find myself doing what I hate. Like all humans, I’m a carnal, mortal creature, my spiritual self bound to a physical self with a corporeal appetite and a limited shelf life. Face-to-face with the parts of me I wish would die, like Paul, I must confront them daily.

As I said earlier, I suspect most of us find ourselves shackled to something. Regardless of our political, cultural, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, we encounter things that are undesirable, at best, and reprehensible, at worst. We may feel chained to things we despise, corpses which others have forced upon us. And the time we’re destined to be shackled to these corpses is insufferable.

In recent years, I’ve talked with people who shared their belief the world is literally going to hell in a handbasket. They contend the conditions in which we’re living now are worse than ever. This may be true, but I suspect there were those in every age who felt much the same. I understand and empathize with them. And at this point, I confess I might’ve begun my post with this disclaimer: Regrettably, I can offer no original or simple solutions to the challenges we face and the pain we suffer. Still, I might share what others have said and written.

In Gal Beckerman’s article, “Be Like Sisyphus (The Atlantic, Jan. 22, 2025), he recalls Camus’ essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” and is reminded that, for Camus, Sisyphus wasn’t necessarily a tragic figure. Beckerman writes, “he has some power over his existential predicament. Once he grasps his fate—‘the wild and limited universe of man’—Sisyphus discovers a certain freedom he gets to determine whether to face the futility of it all with joy or sorrow.” In the end, Camus maintains that “the struggle itself toward heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Is the struggle towards something better enough to fill our hearts? Is the fight to unshackle ourselves enough to make us happy? Some would argue, yes. Beckerman concedes that this may be a “bleak model for those in lamentation over our current moment.” Yet, he also contends that this model may be appropriate today as we acknowledge “that sense of being cosmically screwed while knowing that finding purpose, and even some kind of hopefulness, is possible in a world that promises nothing.”

There are other models, too. In the book of John, Jesus warns his disciples of the trials they will face when he leaves. He explains that it’s for their good that he dies, so that the Holy Spirit will come, and they will not be alone. In John 16:31-33, we read:

“Do you now believe?” Jesus replied. “A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

For centuries, Christians, like all people, have encountered the troubles of this world. Following Christ, they’ve sought to live well in this world but not to be of this world. They’ve sought to “take heart,” holding fast to Christ’s promises of salvation and abundant life. They’ve sought to live joyfully despite their circumstances, to find peace and comfort in the midst of suffering. And they’ve found freedom, despite the shackles of their mortal lives.

Some might find the model of “hopeful pessimism” compelling. In her book Hopeful Pessimism, philosopher Mara van der Lught argues that pessimism isn’t the same thing as fatalism. That is, you might believe it’s likely a tornado will destroy your house and take your life, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that it will. According to van der Lught, pessimism is simply “a refusal to believe that progress is a given.” Today, many would argue that progress is definitely not “a given.” In politics, science, education, business, medicine, and culture, they believe we’re losing ground, moving backwards, and conceding what gains we’ve made. Still, van der Lught writes of “radical hope,” which operates in the direst situations, even those in which death seems certain. Czech dissident and later president of his country, Václav Havel, was asked about hope in a 1985 interview, and he said that hope was not a “prognostication” but “an orientation of the spirit.” He explained further by claiming that [Hope is] “not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.” Both van der Lught and Havel understand the shackles of pessimism and offer “radical hope.”

Clearly, there are models from other faiths and philosophies for “those in lamentation over our current moment.” I’ve offered a few. Beckerman concludes his Atlantic article by suggesting that “[f]or those who feel dread about America and the world, hopeful pessimism might seem like a thin string to grab on to, but it offers, I think, what might otherwise be called realism without requiring that one abandon the beauty of possibility.” Camus, Christ, van der Lught, and Havel understood this realism. They also understood that though we may be shackled to all kinds of corpses (figuratively speaking), we don’t have to abandon what is good and true. We must not abandon the beautiful possibility that things will improve, and our chains will be broken.

I’ll leave you with the final lines from Dylan Thomas’ poem, “Fern Hill”:

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
          Time held me green and dying
     Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

“This is why I value that little phrase ‘I don’t know’ so highly. It’s small, but it flies on mighty wings. It expands our lives to include the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses in which our tiny Earth hangs suspended.” —Wislawa Szymborska, 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature Lecture

Before IDK and its emoji were ever conceived, Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska championed the virtue of “I don’t know” in her 1996 Nobel Lecture. She had been living the truth of this virtue for decades. For uncertainty and unflagging curiosity may indeed help us fly “on mighty wings,” exploring “the spaces within us as well as those outer expanses.” In her Nobel address, she wrote:

If Isaac Newton had never said to himself ‘I don’t know’, the apples in his little orchard might have dropped to the ground like hailstones and at best he would have stooped to pick them up and gobble them with gusto. Had my compatriot Marie Sklodowska-Curie never said to herself ‘I don’t know’, she probably would have wound up teaching chemistry at some private high school for young ladies from good families, and would have ended her days performing this otherwise perfectly respectable job. But she kept on saying ‘I don’t know’, and these words led her, not just once but twice, to Stockholm, where restless, questing spirits are occasionally rewarded with the Nobel Prize.

Undoubtedly, IDK may drive “restless, questing, spirits” onward toward certainties that benefit humanity in the form of answers and cures, inventions and solutions. It’s often the fuel powering our imagination and will. Szymborska understood this as a woman and a poet. At the beginning of the 20th century, when many poets set out to “shock us with their extravagant dress and eccentric behavior. . . for the sake of public display,” she argued that the real work of IDK happened privately and humbly:

The moment always came when poets had to close the doors behind them, strip off their mantles, fripperies, and other poetic paraphernalia, and confront – silently, patiently awaiting their own selves – the still white sheet of paper. For this is finally what really counts.

I’ve experienced both the terror and delight of “the still white sheet of paper.” As an undergraduate and graduate, I spent hours in the Calvin T. Ryan Library on the University of Nebraska Kearney campus, hunched over a spiral notebook, eking out one wretched sentence after another, only to scratch out most of what I’d written and begin again on another blank page. I knew what I didn’t know, and this knowledge was both a blessing and a curse. It saved me from writing “fripperies” and falling in love with first thoughts, but it also paralyzed me, taunting me with the reality that I may have nothing to say. Much as I longed to, I struggled to take the prevailing advice of writing experts: draft quickly and revise later. Before I’d even finished a thought, I was revising. Early in the writing process, I wrote with the red pen of a critic. It’s a miracle I ever finished a paper or poem. For me, IDK was—and continues to be—both friend and foe.

In the years since my retirement—years I’ve come to call my serious writing years— I’m finding that IDK is more helpful than adversarial. Subscribing to Szymborska’s claim that “Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know,’” I find myself surprisingly inspired. Though my poetic wheelhouse has always been the natural world of the Midwest, I recently began a series of poems about a fictional English manor house and the family who occupy it during the 19th and early 20th centuries. That I don’t know much about English manor houses hasn’t stopped me. Not yet anyway. I’ve created people and rooms, events and histories for a place and people I’ve come to know well. And the best part is this: I don’t know where any of this will lead me. I don’t know if any of these poems will ever see the light of day. I don’t know if they’ll live a brief life, only to be shelved in some unmarked notebook. I don’t know what I don’t know.

And I’m more than o.k. with this, just as Wislawa Szymborska was. For it’s the pursuit of knowing, which is both painful and wonderful, that inspires and culminates in something new:

Poets, if they’re genuine, must also keep repeating “I don’t know.” Each poem marks an effort to answer this statement, but as soon as the final period hits the page, the poet begins to hesitate, starts to realize that this particular answer was pure makeshift that’s absolutely inadequate to boot. So the poets keep on trying, and sooner or later the consecutive results of their self-dissatisfaction are clipped together with a giant paperclip by literary historians and called their “oeuvre” (a complete body of work). . .

When I asked my poet father one day about revision, prompting him to tell me how many times he generally revised a poem, he answered, “30 times or more—usually more.” As a high school student, I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing, for I’d always envisioned my father and other serious writers as those from whom the right words flowed generously up from some eternal well of beauty and truth. Revising a single work at least 30 times sounded arduous, even painful. Truthfully, it sounded like grunt work. Yet, I’ve come to know the truth of revision, which, as Szymborska claimed, begins “as soon as the final period hits the page.” And I’ve come to embrace that not knowing is essential to trying and to “the consecutive results” of my “self-dissatisfaction,” which will be the body of work I leave behind.

There is also the kinder, gentler side to IDK. Poet Mary Oliver writes, “Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving.” As I’ve aged, increasingly I find myself surrendering to the fact that I don’t know a lot, that I’m “playing at the edges of knowing.” Like Oliver, German spiritual teacher and author Eckart Tolle argues the benefits of IDK, contending that “[s]ometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing.” Certainly, there are circumstances when being too comfortable with not knowing may be dangerous and irresponsible. IDK may be an excuse to avoid philosophical, cultural, political, and scientific uncertainties that we should investigate. Still, if we’ve wrestled with these uncertainties and concluded that our struggles have taken us as far as they can, we can take comfort and find refuge in “not knowing.” For a time—maybe forever—we can be content in our pursuit of knowledge, whether it bears fruit or not.

We can admit, too, that an admission of IDK may be temporary. In time and with experience, we may discover what we’ve failed to understand. Years ago, as I was desperately seeking treatment for the migraines that had plagued me for most of my adult life, I recall a conversation with my new doctor. I had asked him about a new migraine drug I’d researched, and he confessed that he didn’t know anything about it. After years of doctors obfuscating and offering glib treatment options, his humility was a wonderful thing. Finally, here was a doctor who knew what he didn’t know—and admitted it. Even better, here was a doctor who promised to follow up, conduct a drug study, and call me when he had answers. Weeks later, he did just that, and his efforts changed my life, giving me more migraine-free days than I could’ve imagined.

And then there is this: “It is much easier to be brave if you do not know everything. And so your mama does not know everything. Neither do I. We know only what we need to know.” These words are from Lois Lowry’s Holocaust novel, Number the Stars. In every age when conflict and uncertainty threatened to undo all that was good and true, some have managed to power on, marching forward to the adage: We know only what we need to know. This may sound foolish, blindingly naive, and short-sighted. It may read as a refusal to confront the horrors of war and poverty, a refusal to stand firm against evil. But I only have to imagine myself in such situations to understand the truth of Lowry’s words here. I only have to consider how many navigate today’s world with only the knowledge necessary for that day and that circumstance. For them, for us, IDK may be less an admission of weakness than of bravery.

There are many, many things I don’t know, and I’ll never know. Some of these things will trouble me to the edge of frustration and despair; others will inspire me, sweeping me onto the “still white sheet” of paper and life. Perhaps we need a second emoji choice: an IDK with the face of wonder and contentment. This would be an emoji I could get behind.

photo by Collyn Ware

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. —W. B. Yeats, “The Stolen Child”

The world, as Yeats declares, is “more full of weeping” than a child can understand—than a child should understand. And even at the cusp of adolescence, my grandson, Griffin, has yet to fully cross that inevitable threshold to understanding. There are so many moments when he is still that bare-chested little boy in a straw hat stirring the water with a stick, that sweet child who flings my front door open and exclaims, “I’m here! What are we doing today?” Too soon, he will leave this child behind. But not this summer, not today. Today, we have the “waters and the wild,” the magic of each new day, which breaks golden and true.

A few weeks before Griff’s 12th birthday, we stood at the edge of the pond in a small cove where bluegill spawn and school. As he looked into the water, he turned to me and said, “This is so beautiful.” Tears sprang to my eyes. We stood in silence for several moments watching the fish. We’ve shared so many moments like this during his 12 years. Griff sees the uncommon beauty in the most common things. He will stop to marvel at uniquely shaped rocks on the road. He will find the one red, ripe strawberry in a patch and eat it before he leaves the garden. He will uncap and smell any scented candle or bottle of cologne, his sense of smell always active and finely tuned. He will wax nostalgic about holiday memories and family traditions. From the moment I first held him, he captured my heart and recaptures it daily.

“Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies,” writes American lyrical poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Or when people die, their deaths are so removed they don’t wholly register. In Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Indian Camp,” a boy about Griff’s age makes a trip with his physician father across the lake to the Indian camp where a woman is in labor and needs assistance. The woman’s husband has been injured and lies in the bunk above her. Unable to help, he has listened to her screams for hours and, in a final act of desperation, takes his own life. The boy, Nick, witnesses this death and the cesarean section his father performs without an anesthetic. In the final lines of the story, Hemingway tells us that Nick rests against his father as they row back across the lake toward home, quite certain that he will never die. When one is very old or when the circumstances of one’s death are so foreign and so unnatural (a suicide at an Indian camp), it’s understandable that children may believe they will never die. Death is a distant galaxy. It might be glimpsed through a high-powered telescope, but its presence is a suggestion, not a cruel reality.

The child in Griff believes I can easily sprint across the lawn to retrieve the baseballs he’s hit. In the kingdom of his childhood, I will be forever young—or young enough to stave off infirmity and death. At 12, however, he’s begun to see the slower, less able me. When I didn’t move quickly enough and took a wiffle ball to the chest last week, he gasped. “Are you o.k., Grandma? I’m so sorry—are you o.k.?” Of course, I was o.k. I can still take a wiffle ball to the chest and stay in the game. But it was his quick concern that struck me. In that moment, I could see the shadow that crossed his face, the understanding that I was older now, that I would die. And even as I wished I could wipe away the shadow, he squared up at the plate and hit a ball deep into our neighbor’s yard. Smiling, I said, “That was a great hit.” Grinning, he replied, “I just love the sound the ball makes when it connects with the bat like that, don’t you?” And I knew that for tonight at least, we could both live happily in the kingdom of his childhood.

In her novel, The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy writes, “Childhood tiptoed out. Silence slid in like a bolt.” This is the painful thing about the loss of childhood: it often comes with silence that slides in “like a bolt.” I want to hold on to the noisy Griff, the boy who talks your ear off and shouts as he leaps off the edge into the pool. When he was young and wanted to be a bull rider, he used to flail around the room, throwing his right arm in the air, whooping and hollering as I counted off 8 seconds. Then he’d collapse in a sweaty heap on the rug, panting and looking up expectantly as I announced, “Griffin Ware riding Red Rock, a new world record!” If anything, I don’t want Griff’s childhood to tiptoe out. I want it to go with whooping and hollering, to make a noisy last stand.

For every child, I suspect there is a parent or grandparent who wishes they could delay the onset of adulthood. It’s an unrealistic but universal wish. We consider the adult world our children must navigate, and we hold fast to those last days of innocence. In his novel, All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy writes:

He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all.

I’m afraid it’s just this: we suspect if our children knew the truths of adult life, they’d “have no heart to start at all.” We chuckle when kids declare they will grow up to be professional athletes, rock stars, and billionaires. Let them dream, we say. We want them to imagine the lives they want to live. Yet, we also want them to have the heart to grow up and take on the real responsibilities and challenges of adulthood. If we send mixed messages, we confess it’s with the best intentions.

Griff just returned from a minor league baseball game. For a day, he had a VIP experience as he lived his dream. He spent time in the dugout, took photos with players, and came home with a signed jersey and too many memories to count. Like many boys his age, he can see himself taking the field and hitting the winning run in a championship game. The dream of becoming a professional baseball player is still alive and flourishing, even as the painful reality of its unlikelihood lurks in the dugout. I want Griff to have the heart to dream these dreams for as long as he can. And then I want him to have the heart to embrace new dreams as he moves into adulthood.

In truth, I could say so much more about this boy who’s blessed my life. I know that the day is coming when he won’t ask his grandma to pitch wiffle balls or ride around with him in our UTV. I know that he will soon experience a world that’s “full of weeping,” a world in which death abounds. This day will come soon enough. Until then, I will live happily with him in the kingdom of childhood. Neither of us can imagine a better place to be.

may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living —e. e. cummings “may my heart always be open to little”

Several years ago, my Philadelphia daughter and I were drinking coffee one summer morning when she turned to me and said, “Is this what you do?” “What? I asked. “Drink a morning coffee?” She shook her head and pointed out the wall of dining room windows to four bird feeders well-stocked with black-oil sunflower seeds. As I watched birds swoop in from the timber, I said, “Well, yes, this is what I do. I’m a bird person.”

I have a thing for all birds, but especially small, blue birds. A bluebird or indigo bunting sighting can make my day. I’ve been known to creep around the edge of our timber like a crazy woman, eyes peeled and breath held, in search of an indigo bunting I can hear but not yet see. I’ve been known to make a dead stop in the middle of a trail, believing that if I stand there long enough, a bunting or bluebird will simply appear. And when an indigo bunting visited one of our bird feeders last year (a first! a miracle!), I crawled on my knees through the dining room, crouching low under the windows—much to the amusement of my family—in hopes of getting an even closer look at it. Biologist and bird artist Julie Zickefoose claims, “[t]he presence of a single bird can change everything for one who appreciates them.” Although I’ve yet to see another indigo bunting on our feeders, I’ve lived in wonder of this single sighting, transfixed as a shaft of sunlight ignited a blue so brilliant, it defied words.

“Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much,” writes Gregory Maguire in his novel, Out of Oz. This may be what I love most about birds. The way they navigate the world at the “margins,” “on the edge of things.” In my father’s Jottings Towards an Autobiography, he writes, “I have always been like Thoreau, preferring broad margins between myself and others.” I learned to love birds from my dad. And I grew to love the “broad margins” that allow me to notice the small but infinitely valuable things on the edges. As I walked this morning at the nature preserve and heard the distinctive song of the indigo bunting, I looked high into the trees, searching the uppermost edges of their silhouettes to find a lone bunting perched at the very top of a cedar. He was singing at the edge where earth meets sky. I might’ve missed him if I hadn’t learned that treasure lies at the margins.

And I might’ve missed him if I hadn’t learned to live by the words of American naturalist John Burroughs: “If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.” I walk and watch with expectation, with confidence. Because I have birds in my heart. Because I walk without earbuds, listening. “In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence,” writes Irish essayist Robert Lynd. To see birds, you must hear them. To hear them, you must be quiet. In this season of my life, I’m learning to relish silence. I’ve always valued solitude, but I’ve discovered an intimacy with the natural world that only comes, I believe, from “becoming a part of the silence.” Birds have much to teach me, and I’m still learning.

I’m learning more, too, about the ways birds inspire us. Burroughs understood their particular significance to writers:

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

For eight years, I’ve had a blue parakeet named Billy. He lost his partner two years ago, and several months ago, he lost his ability to fly. As I worked in the kitchen one day, I heard a thump and was horrified to see that Billy had plunged from his perch at the top of the cage to the bottom, where he scrambled to right himself, his wings flared awkwardly to each side for balance. But what happened next amazed me. He used his beak to climb up the cage and positioned himself, once again, on his favorite perch. Since then, he plummets to the cage floor several times a day, but he always makes the laborious climb back up to the top. The first time this happened, I thought he had days, maybe hours to live. But Billy is a force of nature; he’s “large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic” and refuses to let his age and handicap dampen his spirits. He sings in the mornings, his voice more tremulous now but joyful nonetheless. As a poet—and a 70-year-old—Billy has become for me a symbol of the kind of joyful perseverance and “buoyancy” I seek.

Last week, on my 70th birthday, as I was rounding the trail by the turtle pond, I spotted an indigo bunting in the cattails about ten feet ahead of me. For a few glorious seconds, it stayed there, letting the sun catch its iridescence. This must be a sign, I thought. Hours later, as I looked out my kitchen window to the new purple martin house my husband recently built, lo and behold, not one, but two male bluebirds were perched on top. This has to be a sign, I thought.

A sign of what? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I really have no idea. I just like the fact that several small, blue birds showed up for my birthday. And so, as I enter a new decade in my life, I’m amazed, again, at the great mystery of the natural world, how it welcomes you, and as poet Mary Oliver writes, announces “your place in the family of things.”

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
― Mary Oliver (Dreamwork, 1986)

Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others—it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it. —Yo-Yo Ma

As track season comes to an end, I’ve hung up my running shoes. Figuratively—not literally. As a nearly 70-year-old, I’m certainly not in competition form, and it’s been a few years since I ran more than the 50 yards from my house to my daughter’s. I remember my running days, though, and my muscles remember. They remember how it felt to explode from the starting blocks, to make up distance on the first curve, to lengthen my strides on the backstretch, and to run the final curve of the 400 meters into a headwind. They remember the slap of a baton into my palm and the urgent lean across the finish line. In her novel, Dearly, Margaret Atwood writes: You’ll be here but not here, a muscle memory, like hanging a hat on a hook that’s not there any longer. This is it exactly. Unbeknownst to the spectators around me, for years, I’ve been running races from my stadium seat. I’ve been there with them, but not there at all. My muscle memory transports me to the many track meets—high school and collegiate—where I braced myself against the wind, set my starting blocks, and flew down the track.

As we learn and practice a skill, our brains create neural pathways and connections controlling the associated muscles. The more we practice, the more efficient these connections become. Muscle memory, then, is more about brain-building than actual muscle-building. Athletes, musicians, and other professionals testify to how they’ve improved their performance as they’ve strengthened the neural connections created from repetition. I haven’t played the piano for decades, but my fingers still remember how to play the major scales. When I first began taking lessons in elementary school, I often practiced these scales in bed at night, moving my fingers across my percale pillow case as if it were a keyboard, deftly tucking my thumb under my middle finger when I reached F to continue the C major scale. Even though I haven’t practiced or played for years, the neural connections are still there. If I were to sit down at a piano today, I’d be no virtuoso, but my muscle memory would carry me through the scales, one note, one finger at a time.

As we age, muscle memory is both wonderful and awful. Our synapses twitch, our neurons fire, and our muscles remember the way. For a few glorious moments, we feel as though we still have it. We could still run 400 meters in under 60 seconds, no problem. We could still turn a perfect cartwheel, easy peasy. We could still march and play an entire band show, bring it on. For these moments, we remember how it feels to rely on muscle memory. And then, we’re reminded our muscles aren’t what they used to be. Years ago, when my best friend and I chaperoned a group of teenage boys to a Christian music festival, they kept encouraging her to crowd surf. “Do it!” they said. “You know you want to! Just fall back and let yourself be carried along.” For a moment, we both could remember the freedom, how it feels to fall back and float above the heads of concert-goers. Until I broke the reverie with caution. “You really don’t want to break bones and face orthopedic surgery,” I warned. “I speak from experience—don’t do it. You don’t want to be pinned and screwed back together.” Age often does this. It rides in with common sense and caution. It tames a moment of wild glory into a lap dog.

Regardless of our age and muscle condition, however, we can take heart. In her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, Krista Tippett tells us that “hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a habit that becomes spiritual muscle memory.” I like this notion of practicing a virtue until it becomes spiritual muscle memory. To do this, you don’t have to have a strong core or biceps. You can do this even if you can no longer play your favorite recital piece or make a lay-up. This is a different kind of muscle memory, neither dependent on age nor physical ability. And consider the smorgasbord of virtues from which you can choose: hope, gratitude, humility, generosity, compassion. Fill your plate, and then go back for seconds. Create new neural pathways and practice until habit becomes spiritual muscle memory.

Some might argue that today, more than ever, a healthy diet of virtues would go a long way toward creating and sustaining a better world. They might argue—and rightfully so—that this is easier said than done, though. It’s likely we all remember the pain and tedium of practicing the same skills again and again. I recall the hours I spent running my fingers through scales when I desperately wanted to play from my Jackson 5 Greatest Hits book for piano beginners. I’m reminded of the hours I spent with relay partners, running through handoffs long after our teammates had gone to the locker rooms. The proverbial words of coaches and teachers still ring true: No pain, no gain. Trusting that temporary pain and tedium will ultimately benefit us, we muscle on through challenging practices.

Whether we’re creating muscle memory or spiritual muscle memory, there’s always a cost. Despite my best intentions, I often struggle to greet the day with gratitude or hope. It doesn’t come easily. The neural pathways I counted on one day are weak—or nonexistent—the next. The spiritual muscle memory I’d previously trusted is gone. When this happens, it’s back to the scales. When my spiritual muscle memory fails me, it’s back to repeated practice. This may take the form of prayer, meditation, or guided reading. I’m reminded of Mother Teresa’s decades-long struggle to feel the presence of God. And yet, she rose each day, and faithfully served India’s most neglected populations, trusting in the God she could neither feel nor see. Through these seasons of darkness, she moved through each day, fully trusting her spiritual muscle memory.

American cellist Yo-Yo Ma reminds us that “your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.” I can imagine myself doing a passable cartwheel, but truthfully, I’m not going to risk it. It could, likely would, end badly. But spiritual muscle memory is another matter. And Yo-Yo Ma reminds us there’s good news. For even when, perhaps especially when, we fail to practice the virtues we’d like to live, we can imagine ourselves practicing them. We can rise each day and imagine moving through the hours with hope, gratitude, generosity, and humility. We can build—or rebuild—these neural pathways by first imagining them. And then? Well, we can trust where our imaginations will take us.

“Perhaps that is the best way to say it: printed books are magical, and real bookshops keep that magic alive.”
― Jen Campbell, The Bookshop Book

In the past month, I’ve held book signings at two remarkable Iowa independent bookstores: By the Hearth Bookshop and Coffee House in Bloomfield and Beaverdale Books in Des Moines. These bookstores are two of the country’s 2,844 independent bookstores, according to The American Booksellers Association. Like their fellow bookshops, they’re keeping the magic alive.

In his blog post, “How Bookstores in America are Thriving in 2025,” John Roberts cites how these shops create and nurture a sense of community:

One of the most significant ways bookstores are thriving in 2025 is by fostering a sense of community. Stores are hosting author talks, book signings, and writing workshops that bring readers and writers together. These events not only drive foot traffic but also create a loyal customer base that values the bookstore as a cultural hub.

While I was talking with employees from Beaverdale Books before my book signing, they spoke passionately of their loyal customers who supported the store during the pandemic. Although the store was closed for months, many customers phoned in their book orders and gratefully received them in the parking lot. Others made donations to ensure the business stayed alive. All felt bound by the sense of community their favorite bookstore offered and eagerly returned when it reopened. In my community of Bloomfield, I’ve heard so many residents confess how much they love By the Hearth Bookshop and how it has blessed our community. The bookshop hosts book signings, book clubs, writing classes, Bible studies, and children’s events. It also offers exceptional food and coffee. Like so many other independent bookstores, it serves as a cultural hub.

During the past decade, I’ve read many books about bookstores: historical and contemporary fiction, fantasy, best-sellers, and debut novels. In these works, the bookstore is a place to fall in love, to pass and receive secret messages, to meet with other spies and resistance workers, and to find refuge and delight when life takes us to the mat. Although most of us don’t visit bookstores to drop off coded messages, we do come for the sensory experience: the smell of so many books in their neat stacks, the feel of a book spine in our hands, the sound of customers murmuring recommendations for future reading—or the absence of sound, the beneficent quiet that invites browsing and soulful wandering. You can’t get these sensations from a Kindle or phone. It’s the tangible book in hand. It’s the way your fingers know the way through pages. It’s the way you can talk easily with anyone in the store about the characters in your favorite series, the way you can openly lament finishing a book and bidding farewell to characters who’ve become like family to you. It’s the way you move through the shelves in wonder, eager to discover a book that will make your day and likely change your life.

It’s all this and so much more writes editor and publisher Jason Epstein:

A civilization without retail bookstores is unimaginable. Like shrines and other sacred meeting places, bookstores are essential artifacts of human nature. The feel of a book taken from the shelf and held in the hand is a magical experience, linking writer to reader.

For me and many others, a bookstore is a sanctuary, a sacred meeting place. Like the best poetry, it offers us, in the words of Robert Frost, a “temporary stay against confusion.” In her book, Tilly and the Bookwanderers, Anna James writes that a bookshop “is like a map of the world. There are infinite paths you can take through it and none of them are right or wrong.” Amidst life’s confusion, a bookshop, James contends, gives readers “landmarks to help them find their way.”

As we navigate our loud and increasingly divisive world, we might consider the words of author Jane Smiley:

A bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order, and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.

In a bookstore, competing voices live within the pages of its books, and we’re free to pick our poison—or not. Smiley is right: a bookstore is one of the few places where all these voices—traditional and progressive, spiritual and material, real and fantastical—live companionably within the same walls.

Writers have a particular love affair with bookstores. In Stephen King’s Wasteland, he describes the smell of entering a bookstore as “coming home.” Author Anna Quindlen believes many writers and readers feel about bookstores “the way some people feel about jewelers.” In Paris by the Book, Liam Callanan describes a bookstore as “a safe-deposit box for civilization.” Novelist Nicole Krauss describes a bookstore experience as “a little bit like studying a single photograph out of the infinite number of photographs that could be taken of the world: It offers the reader a frame.” And writer Jen Campbell claims, “bookshops are dreams built of wood and paper. They are time travel and escape and knowledge and power. They are, simply put, the best of places.”

Before we sold our family home in Kearney, Nebraska, we investigated the possibility of transforming it from a home to a bookstore. Two of my sisters’ friends were hunting for a bookstore location, and located a few blocks from the university, our house seemed a perfect site. I was thrilled with the prospect of others browsing, reading, and drinking coffee in the places my family had enjoyed for years. But an architect delivered bad news: our home lacked the structural bones to hold the weight of so many shelves and books. Still, these entrepreneurs continued the search and secured a wonderful location. Soon, they will join the family of independent bookstore owners as they launch their new store, Open Book, where they will keep the magic of printed books alive.

As I was packing up to leave Beaverdale Books, I discovered both employees were ardent Elizabeth Strout fans. Within moments, we shared our mutual respect for Strout’s ability to craft characters who felt like real friends. We spoke of the loss we felt as we finished her books. We confessed our great hope that Strout would continue writing, giving us more of the characters and settings we loved. We shared a sense of community: with each other, with these fictional characters, and with the world of booklovers at large. I left the store inordinately happy.

In his novel, American Gods, British writer Neil Gaiman confirms what many of us believe:

What I say is, a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it’s got a bookstore, it knows it’s not foolin’ a soul.

So, here’s to the independent bookstore, the heart and hub of our communities! And let’s not fool a soul: a town isn’t a town without a bookstore. Perhaps now more than ever, we need the magic of printed books. A bookstore is vital in keeping this magic alive.

for Gracyn

On April 30th, my granddaughter, Gracyn, will celebrate the birthday that’s traditionally marked as an adolescent’s coming of age, a transition from the innocence of childhood into the realities of adulthood. Culturally, we mark the 16th birthday with an official driver’s license and all its ensuing freedoms and responsibilities. I think we can say this about coming of age: it comes–a little or a lot, sooner or later–to all of us. But it’s an entirely different experience when you’re not coming of age but rather witnessing it.

Before Gracyn was born, I made the decision to leave my full-time high school English position to take a position as a literacy consultant. After decades of devoting all my evening and weekend hours to grading student essays, I wanted to devote them to her. I wanted to be a grandma who could say, “Yes, I’m free! I can babysit–whenever and for however long you need me. I’m absolutely available!” I wanted to be a grandma who turned her dining room into a playroom, who was always scouting garage sales for dolls and dollhouses, books and puzzles. I wanted to be a grandma who singlehandedly perfected the Slime recipe that had gone internet viral, one who knew when and where to find the newest Squishmallows (and would wait as long as it took for the weekly delivery truck to pull into the Walgreen’s parking lot). I wanted to be a grandma who was always up for “recreational baths” that lasted a full 60 minutes, that required several “warm-ups” to keep the water at least tepid and involved a legion of plastic mermaids with shiny, pastel hair. I wanted to be a grandma who’d spend the better part of a morning or afternoon on her knees beside the tub or in front of the dollhouse and who could eventually stand up with little assistance and some feeling still present in her legs. I wanted to be a grandma who was a joyful regular at the Dollar Store and made semi-annual trips to the outlet mall, returning triumphantly with bags of new summer or school clothes. I wanted to be that grandma.

I wanted to take a lead role in my granddaughter’s life, standing straight and true on center stage. As the years have gone by, however, I’ve seen how much life goes on beyond me, and I’ve realized–as parents and grandparents inevitably do–that I’ve become more of an understudy, waiting in the wings, ready and willing to take the lead again if called upon. I know the part so well. I’ve played it for years: the playmate, the helper, the confidente, the mentor and protector. This is a once-in-a-lifetime role, and I’m continually astounded that I’m a grandma to such an incredible human being.

During the pandemic, I was fortunate to homeschool Gracyn, a sixth-grader, and her brother, Griffin, a second-grader. I planned lessons for her, sat beside her as we read and discussed, marveled over science experiments, and laughed as we attempted to speak the Spanish we were learning. I will never again have this dedicated time with her, and I count this as one of my greatest blessings.

When I received word that I’d been awarded a 3-week writing residency in another state, I prepared weekly packets of work for both grandkids and made plans for my husband to take over their schooling. On the morning of my departure, I moved my suitcases from the bedroom to the foyer and mentally reviewed my checklist of things to do before I left. When Gracyn pushed open the front door at 8:00 A. M., her face fell as she surveyed my suitcases. While I gave last minute instructions and made one last sweep through the house, she was painfully quiet. Finally, when I turned to say my goodbyes, she couldn’t even look at me as tears spilled down her cheeks. In that moment, my heart broke. All of my false bravado, my cheery assurances I’d be back before they knew it, left me in a violent sob. Neither of us could speak as we desperately tried to gather our wits. And for a few precious moments, neither of us moved, rooted as we were to the familiarity of the kitchen and each other.

The March wind buffeted my car as I pulled down the drive. I stopped by our mailbox and wondered if I could actually leave. When I finally pulled onto the highway, I knew I’d always remember this moment. And I have. In this moment, Gracyn and I both came to understand how we’d become more than grandmother and granddaughter; over the course of that pandemic year, we’d become true friends as we homeschooled and sheltered in our rural neighborhood. Saying goodbye was terrible–and wonderful. Parting was, indeed, such sweet sorrow.

Coming of age may be a universal rite of passage, but it’s also uniquely individual. As we watch those we love grow up, we understand their days will be fraught with challenges which will shape their lives. These challenges may be similar to or very different from our own. As we watch others take on these challenges, we recall the times we were knocked down and struggled to begin again, the times we were hurt and deceived, the times our optimism was tempered or destroyed. As witnesses, we’d like to prevent loved ones from pain and disillusionment, but we can’t. Too often, we can only stand on the sidelines and wait to pick up the pieces.

I can’t say much about the poignancy of a child or grandchild’s coming of age that hasn’t been said and felt before. I am just one grandma in centuries of grandmas who’ve lived and loved fiercely. And most days, I’m without words to describe the tsunami of emotions that crash over me. As Facebook memories pop up with photos of and sweet posts about the little girl who stole my heart, I find myself wishing for a “do-over,” just an hour or two with the Dora the Explorer dollhouse or an afternoon of slime-making. But then as I see her take the track to begin the 3000 meter run, I find myself marveling at the young woman whose dedication and discipine during the winter months has prepared her for this moment. I watch her round the far curve, blond pony tail streaming behind her, resolve evident in each stride, and I think it can’t get much better than this.

But it can–and it will. This, too, I know. For it will be a pleasure and privilege to witness her growth through each season of life. And so, on the occasion of Gracyn’s 16th birthday, I wish her many blessings–now and always.

Why I Am Without Words
 for Gracyn

Rooted to the kitchen floor, I stand before you
as sobs crash against your tight-lipped resolve,
your tongue useless to stay the flow
of something dark and cold that rises within
and threatens to undo you.

I’m leaving for three weeks,
and you’ve just helped me load my suitcases for the trip. 
We can’t bear to look at each other,
and shoulder to shoulder as we close the car door,
we quake, our fragile souls quiver.
It’s not for long, I say, just a couple weeks.
But the March wind seizes my words 
and whips them away like chaff.

Today, you’ve sent me a photo of the hyacinth
blooming in my garden.
Because I know you were waiting for them to bloom, you say,
because they might die before you get back.
Miles away, you think of how I’ve waited for these first blossoms
and how I might be missing you as much as you miss me.
Best friends do such things.
For eleven years, you’ve been my granddaughter,
but now—

Now, I’m without words.
I have no language to speak this mercurial joy that washes over me
each time I think of you thinking of me.

What can I say but that the blossoms here are lovely enough;
that time crawls on as it must;
and that even if all the hyacinths wither and die,
my best friend is watching the road
waiting for me to come home.

Take a walk with a turtle. And behold the world in pause. –Bruce Feiler

As I walk at the nature preserve, I play a shell game. In the western corner of one pond, a dead limb has fallen into the water, and turtles happily sun themselves here. Each time I pass this spot, I hold my breath and try to walk so quietly, so unobtrusively that not a single turtle panics and dives for safety back into the pond. So, this is my shell game: to keep each algae-slicked shell in place on the limb.

I’ve counted as many as 14 turtles shuffled across the limb in neat stacks. And as I walk by, I smile recalling one of my favorite Dr. Seuss books, Yertle the Turtle. Although there’s a heavy moral in Seuss’s book, one reminding us of the follies of pride and the consequences of climbing to the top (literally and figuratively) at the expense of others, as a child, I was originally fascinated with the illustrations. Seuss stacked turtles on top of each other, creating a pyramid of shells reaching into the sky. The turtles at the base of this pyramid were selfless souls, for they bore the weight and responsibility for maintaining the entire structure. In preparing to teach poet Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese,” my father had written these notes:

Oliver says we can become good—or better—by giving ourselves up to the natural family of things, to things in nature who are vitally celebrating themselves, calling us out of our loneliness and despair to join them in a sacrament of elemental communion. We only have to give up the unnatural and enter the world of the natural, and in the words of Romantic poet William Wordsworth, to “come forth into the light of things and let Nature be your healer.”

The nature preseve turtles are”vitally celebrating themselves” each spring. As members of the “natural family of things,” they’re holding their weight in our environmental structure and doing their part to help us maintain our natural health.

Too often, we walk through the world carrying a big stick. We mark our territory and leave indelible footprints. Today as I walked the trail, I shuffled through remnants of a bridal shower held in the community barn over the weekend. Artificial flower petals in every pastel color had blown from the tables onto the trail and into the meadow beyond. Plastic bags littered the pond’s edge and flew like banners from several branches. So how do we walk so softly that we leave little footprint, softly enough that we might slip–like a breath on the breeze, like a ray of sunlight between the reeds–without notice? How do we join “the natural family of things”?

Perhaps this is the greatest shell game of all. We work to sustain and protect one environmental element, and invariably we impact another–sometimes a little and sometimes a lot. We lift the shell under which we’re certain the solution lies only to discover we’re wrong and must look again. This is often a frustrating sleight of hand. For example, as we build up grey wolf populations in Rocky Mountain states to restore environmental equilibrium, we also face inevitable losses in livestock, elk, herd dog, and pet populations. We implement CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) to prevent soil erosion, improve water quality, and create wildlife habitat. Despite the obvious benefits, however, there are potential drawbacks. Planting native vegetation and protecting wildlife habitat aren’t requirements of the program. Farmers may choose to plant introduced species that provide little to no benefit to native wildlife. They can actively farm adjacent fields–a common practice–leaving smaller wildlife who live in the CRP ground vulnerable to predators. Years ago, a neighbor sold her farm to an individual from the East coast who wanted to create a “deer refuge.” Anyone familiar with southeast Iowa understands the folly (and tragedy) of this, for our deer population is more than healthy. Iowa routinely manages this population through regulated hunting. Chronic waste disease spreads more quickly through larger populations, which also reduces the numbers. All of this is to say that it may sound virtuous and environmentally kind to create refuges for deer, but it’s unnecessary and ultimately detrimental.

Today, I zipped my jacket to my neck and braved the blustery April wind as I took to the trail. I counted a dozen turtles on the fallen limb as I rounded the corner of the pond. Fifty yards out, I slowed my pace. I watched where I stepped, avoiding sticks and rocks on the path which would signal my approach. I willed my shadow to cast its long body to my left and not my right over the water. Finally, I held my breath. But to no avail. All but three turtles dove back into the pond in a choreographed move that looked much like synchronized swimmers leaving the pool deck for the water. Bummer, I thought. Not a good day for my shell game stats.

But each day as I walk with my turtles, I “behold the world in pause.” To the extent that I can, momentarily I become more of the natural world and less of myself. I think about a world without turtles. I’m grateful for this nature preserve and its 2,000 acres of protected land. As I consider efforts to preserve and maintain our environment, I’m painfully aware that this is a kind of shell game. We find one solution, only to find we have to mitigate its effects. And so, we keep searching for better, more environmentally beneficial solutions. Although some contend we’re not winning this shell game, others argue we should be playing the long game, one marked by a lot of misses and near-misses. They insist we keep up the good fight. As a self-appointed turtle advocate, I couldn’t agree more.