Love & Honey

This morning the kids and I stopped at our usual gas station for coffee. Mike greeted us in the usual manner.

"Good Morning, Princess", to my daughter Lenora.

"Ah, I saw you come in!" Mike and I have a running contest to sneak up on each other when the other least suspects it.

"No school today for Frank?" I reply he's in the car and Lenora says there was a 2hr delay.

"Yeah, I figured that out", he replies.

Mike is a mensch by way of Sierra Leone. He is our banker, confessor, court jester and pal. This morning I ask for $32 on top of the amount I owe for the drinks. This is not a standard sum, so I explain it's to buy some honey.

"You're going to buy a hunny?" Mike's eyes are bulging and brows are high! But there is also a twinkle in his eye.

"No, buy some honey!"

Lenora starts to explain that we buy raw honey from a history teacher , beekeeper friend of mine, and the health properties of the honey, especially during the cold months. This only increases the twinkle in his eye!

Did I mention it was -9 degrees and that was the reason for the 2hr delay of both school districts?

Mike pulls off his hat, scratches his newly shaved noggin, shakes his head and repeats, "You're going to buy a Hunny?!"

I say Honey. He says A Hunny. This ping-pong match goes on as long as it takes from me to enter my pin number, him to open the draw and hand me the bills.

We leave and I drop the kids at their school campus.

Driving West on Route 2, I listen to NPR and the updates on the attack in Paris. Another police person has been killed, this time a woman. Then they mention a street sweeper is in critical condition. I think of the men and women with their stick brooms in the '80s.

My mind keeps bouncing back to Mike teasing me about buying a hunny. I visualize my one indulgence, a monthly massage, which I don't always manage to take. I think I have three waiting for me now. I haven't been intimately touched or held by a man in easily five years. So maybe I am, in a chaste way, buying my hunny.

I think about the lessons I'm going to teach around All Quiet on the Western Front ( Regular Juniors and Junior Honors World Studies) and Thelma & Louise ( Senior Honors Women's Lit).

The young German men, the Lost Generation, will never know lasting love. They have only just experienced their first carnal lust. That exchange happened with the French girls because the boys could pay for it with food...Bread! Only in war and poverty do people sell themselves for food.

In Thelma and Louise there is love and honor but it is complex and not conventional. That is probably why I love to teach it and the student's, who have little knowledge of it prior to my class, tend to say it's their favorite film all year. I'm prepared to have them successfully make connections between that film, written by Callie Khourie, and works written by these other women: Maxine Hong Kingston, Kate Chopin, Zora Neal Hurston, Angela Carter, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Helen Keller, Boudicca, Malala, Emma Watson, and Barbara Charline Jordan. They will do it.

I'm surprised by how many students actually made it to school, given the numbers of cars unable to start, insufficient clothing, and knowledge that delay days often have short-choppy classes.

Also, now that it's been 24hrs, how many ask me what I know about what happened in Paris. In their eyes I'm an expert, you see, as I was just there and "read a lot".

We discuss that facts as I know them. They ask many questions....mostly about "why". I remind each class (5 today), that Europeans came to America primarily for religious freedom and the pursuit of happiness, which inevitably meant better living conditions, quality of life and not material possessions. There is a pause... I explain that our Constitution is based closely from the French Constitution (I don't muddy the waters with the Iroquois). I explain that theirs has been more of a socialist democracy, while ours is capitalist. This sinks in slowly. Then I remind them that France has been a culture and society longer that it has been a Country with established borders. Where as America likes to pride itself on being a "melting pot", France has closely guarded it's culture and only in my lifetime grown tolerant of accepting the potential for a multi-cultural society.

I have students of many faiths and races in my classes. I mention Ferguson. We talk about how boys of color feel like they've been born with targets on their foreheads. We've talked about "the talk". Some of my students can't and don't observe holidays that most "Americans" would. Halloween is one of the trickiest, for example. But that is another story.

We discuss how faith can be a unifier and divider. I say that France has been traditionally a Catholic country. Leominster  the city where I teach, was originally put on the map by the French and Italian Plastic factory workers. The families with French and Italian names tend to be more well off and educated to this day in the city. But Leominster, like France has changed. The mills and factories are gone. Malls and restaurants have taken their place and immigrants from around the world move there for the service jobs, affordable housing and reasonable schools. There are 64 languages under the High School's roof.

So when I mention that the Muslims in have not lived in France for centuries, but generations, a knowing look comes over the classroom. The look of the old Leominster vs new Leominster divide. I try to explain that if you're poor, Muslim and French (but it may not be your first language) and how the young men often feel like they have targets on their heads, like African-Americans have felt for hundreds of years, with now only 50 years of de-segreation to show for it, they get it. They understand bad choices that can lead you to jail. How in jail you can be influenced by the persuasive and polarizing forces that surround you. How having your faith challenged can make your already fragile self respect fracture, and by so doing, let hate enter you soul. They've seen it. Many of them know it. Most of them manage it very well.

I explain that at least one of the shooters was "radicalized" in jail. Then trained abroad. They are all French and Muslim. But I'm quick to add that just like we don't think all Christians are members of the KKK, all Muslims are not Terrorists. They quickly agree, and say, "of course".

My mind flashes back to Mike. I'm sure that is not his given name. I'm sure his given name would be a proper Muslim name. I think of the Civil War he must have fled to come to America. I think of how hard he works and yet couldn't afford to  fly to Atlanta to see his niece before she died last summer.  I think how he gives the kids candy when they seem blue and once bought Frank a telescope for his birthday. I think about how he gives me simple lines of encouragement on rough mornings. I think about how the titanium in my wrist might have come from his home country.

I share with the class a Banksy Instagram image of "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow". I remind them that we are our choices and that in this world that moves at the speed of x's an o's we need to be mindful.

We now living in a global society with all of our actions, reactions, and energies intertwined. I'm trying to raise global citizens in my home and under my school roof.

Later I walk down to my friend, Eli's, classroom to pay him for the honey. I'm going to keep one jar and give the other three to friends. Maybe I should by another for Mike, as he chooses to be sweet as honey no matter how bad his day is going. It is liquid gold and good will in a jar. I wish I could send a jar of love and honey to every person on earth with a spoon and a note saying : You are respected and loved, enjoy.

(picture of Eli's Honey)