Raspberry Leaf Tea

October 2019

OH my goodness.

I just took a sip of some raspberry leaf tea and almost started weeping. Emotional mommy tears. Not a bad thing.

Why, you ask, did I have this reaction?

Because I drank Raspberry Leaf tea all through my pregnancy with you. I was bound and determined to have a faster experience.

I had read somewhere that it would do miracles and miracles it did, boy.

I acknowledge that the second birth is always easier. But I even went so far as to make a really strong cup of it to drink once I realized I was in labor. (actually it was a canning jar)

I drank it all the way there, and insisted on finishing it off before I went into the hospital! :) It's so funny to remember. Mother was there with me, holding my hand. Your dad was driving the LTD in some scary weather. There was plenty of snow that year.

Anyway. When I was checking in, the lady who called up to the maternity ward say "She's in transition right now!" She said that because I was ripping off my sweater because I was hot. I didn't realize I was so far along, but I was very happy to hear it.

Anyway, not only did you and I have a very fast labor and delivery, but the raspberry leaf tea, I am convinced, stopped my contractions immediately after you were born. This could have been a problem. What it meant is that the dr. had to go in after the afterbirth. Usually it delivers after the baby. He said he did not often see a situation like this, where contractions just stopped. So what is normally a VERY painful part of it--delivering the afterbirth- was nothing. That could have been dangerous-but the dr. handled it.

I really believe that raspberry leaf tea made the difference. I never had it again, because frankly I was never a big tea drinker, and I had to go to an apothocary in SEATTLE to get it. Remember this was before amazon!

So, now I just drank a really, really delicious tea and replayed our pregnancy and birth process.

You were there, buddy!

I thought about ccing Sarah on this, but I don't know if I have permission to do that at this point. Would that be ok for me to talk to both of you at the same time, or keep it just you?

xo

Mom

Giver of life through raspberry tea leaves.

I re-enter brick and mortar -Three months in 2018

 I wrote in hope of relief on October 7, 2018:

I am worn down from it, yet can’t sleep.  I cry uncontrollably after school, and can’t, because of the shame of it, talk about it with friends.  

From the day I began at Wahluke, a heat has gripped my chest, strangling my breaths, burning in the background above my words.   Not in one small spot so I can call it heartburn, but the whole upper trunk in a vice grip. A tight clenching that steps into the background when I listen to a friend tell her tale or read a book or fall asleep. But upon wakening (often at 3:30 am), or hanging up the phone, or closing the book, the clenching punisher greets me again. Why?

 There is the jargon of education that offends me constantly; and the voice that delivers it, of the child who is the department head. She noisily chides us, her elders all, and theoretically offers to help.  And she squeaks out words like ‘scaffolding’ and ‘support’ and ‘kiddos’. 

But the harshest words are my own, what is my problem?

 I am having difficulty reaching and connecting with students.  This used to be the easiest part of being a teacher, now the most perplexing.  Each student that I’m not able to understand is a rubix cube to my mind, and I am unable to solve it, so around and around and around the thoughts go. Beowulf. The Scarlett Letter. Student who doesn’t speak English and may not be literate in Spanish. How do you scaffold literature whose language is hardly recognizable to the native English speaker? This is a problem I grapple with all night.

Everything is coming at me, warp speed. A highschool runs at warp speed and it is a teacher’s job to find the right words to listen to, the right words to say and to let the rest run past like a stream in the mountains. But I can’t. Every whooosh of  each student’s energy hits me. Every word, both English and Spanish, challenges me to understand and respond appropriately. But they slap my mind back and forth like a ping pong ball, and my mind shuts down. Your mind cannot be shut down when you are a teacher in a high school. 

I  have been in pain almost every moment of the day, and I have been for 30 days now.

As a whole, in my life, I have been competent.  I have earned MA+90, and I have 23 years of experience teaching English in junior high and high school. I finally earn a rewarding salary.

But by November, my knuckles, wrist and knee were swollen and painful, in an RA flare. Incompetent and sick.

 Now, with a year to rest, I can see in retrospect what was happening.  Why didn’t I get help? Wahluke, like most schools, is full of adults who are unavailable for anything but relaying nano bits of information while passing in the halls, smiling and pretending that everything in the classroom makes complete sense, when in fact very little does. 

But I did find respite felt at the oddest times. Students entering the classroom, greeting me with a smile, calmed me greatly, and I looked forward to that. The students in their desks, looking at me, waiting for a bit of new information, relaxed me-- until we both realized simultaneously that I had nothing coherent to offer them. I could not give them information that made sense, because to me, very little of the required curriculum made sense. 

When one class period ended, my mind began desperately trying to remove the confusion over that concept, trying to imagine how I could re-teach it. Meanwhile, next wave of hopeful students entered the room, and I turned to be with them 100%.  Replay that over and over with hope always dancing in their eyes upon entering the room, and with anger, confusion, and disdain always stuffed into their gullets on the way out. 

November 26 was my final day.

On December 26th 2018 I started working as a legal assistant for Deborah King and transitioned back into teaching full time by August 20th, 2019.

I am very, very, very happy to be able to work with students again, in Edgenuity, online.

  My Hero Essay

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Diane Rubie, my sister-- born just two years and three months before me is heroic on a daily basis.  She is just a person. A mom, a sister, a wife and a daughter. What makes her a hero?  There are so many stories I could relay—but I will tell you one from our childhood that encapsulates her heroism.  It starts with the words:

“Surprise! Happy Birthday Cheryl!”

It was my first birthday party in the 13 years of my life—I was surrounded by my best friends—it was a slumber party, and there was a cake and GIFTS for ME. A birthday party for ME! First. Ever.  She had treacherously plotted with my best friends, behind our mother’s back. We were raised with the rule that a birthday party is an unacceptable act of worshiping mankind over God. In retrospect I see that with five children in our tribe, it was a financially prudent belief.

In organizing that party for me, she made me feel like a SPARKLY person. Although I had never felt friendless, unloved or unlucky, I had accepted the family ‘no birthday’ policy.   When I bloated my mother’s uterus in 1963, it was her fifth and final pregnancy and the beginning of her devotion to Herbert W. Armstrong, or at least his Plain Truth that life is not fun.
But Diane showed me that we have choices. Diane had risked a ‘good paddling’ with the well worn piece of wood, nicknamed  “The Board of Education”.  She was always more courageous, independent, and sure of herself than I was. While I have no doubt she was doing what came naturally to her—( expressing her own unique version of life in a way that pleased her), she was a hero to me.   

Over the years, it has been  her refusal to blindly abide by society’s accepted rules, her commitment to doing  what feels RIGHT rather than what is easy, and her absolutely dogged devotion to making life more sparkly wherever she is, that I not only admire, but I advocate for, daily.
From writing this essay, assigned in my 12th grade Edgenuity course, I see that our heroes teach us who we are. They are heroic to us because they display traits we value—and that makes us who we are…and that’s why we need them!

My badness begins

March 2013

 I was awake half the night worrying about the trap we have set for our youth in society.

“No child left behind” doesn’t address any real issues. Reading the latest essays from my juniors, it is clear to me that the nightmarish instability they face when they step off campus is beyond imagination.

Knowledge is important, but mental health is equally important, isn’t it? Couple of nights ago, I woke up in a horror from a dream that homeless people were sleeping right outside my place and they were in an exaggerated state of despair, physically deteriorating in front of me while I continue to promise kids that education will give them a better life. Not with the current focus of our society, it won’t. Not while we move homeless camps from one location to another so the stench doesn’t reach the nose of the taxpayer and cause them to have bad dreams.  We need mental help. We need to care about the “adults being left behind”. Another suicide yesterday in our community, that’s three in three months that I’m aware of.

People hear that money is being thrown at schools to better them.  What they don’t know is how that money is being spent. It is spent to demean all kids equally.  The ‘great’ are fed the same pabulum as the ‘deviant’. The rabble rousers are screaming into the ears of the polite and earnest pleasers. Both are injured by the current system. Neither is given what they are due.

What are they due? Self direction.  Self respect.  Self. Where do they get that?

Why do we cast them around because they smell bad? Withhold an education from them because of misbehavior?    Are they are right to be discontent??

When I began teaching, sixteen years ago, I felt as though the rigid march of the bells was worth doing, because I had the chance to change ONE hour of even ONE student’s life, but now I believe I am unable to do even that. The classrooms are overflowing with anger, and everyone is hurt.

I want to say something positive right now, but I cannot.

I want to suggest an answer, but I’m not that smart. So I will take my criticism to bed with me and dream of it, half the night.

Cheryl L. Ray 3/7/13

Who Are You?

Ms. Ray 2013

I have a name, but it is not important here. My story is your story. And your story starts on an innocent leg. The sun rises in the East and sets in the West. Always. No matter what.

Oh, what a thrill when we witness it at just the right moment, twice a day. A catch in our chest, our helixes respond to a wordless message called nature. We stumble through our lives, following or not following these inherent strains that play silently in the background . But as it turns out, these missive melodies are but fragmented pieces of a grand orchestra that plays within us. No. It is not part of us. It is us.

I know this because nature came crashing through my intellect recently, tearing a hole in the dense epidermis that is the face of this dimension, and I must walk you through that opening, if you will come.

 Using Shakespeare’s words: “How stale, flat and unprofitable seems to me this world”, where man makes buildings rise up to touch the clouds, purposed intently to hold men who bend into desks, where expensive rugs sit askew and rumpled on the smooth fake wood floor; this dimension where touch is as important to our human heart as fruits and vegetables are to the colon. It turns out that we, as Hamlet, truly have no need for any of it, and like Hamlet, ‘we must hold our life at a pin’s fee, or be fooled ceaselessly’. And if we are fooled into it, we daily live in the horrific fabled hell, and we continue to reside there until recognition sets in.  So close we are to the flames that we are engulfed and do not recognize them for what they are, the sulfurous prison walls of our mind.

Look at me, I have a name, and my name is you.

On Gardens

C. Ray 2013

During my time off, I am reading, writing, exercising, playing with the dogs, and…..trying to act normal.

Let’s keep track of the books I have read during this time:

First I read several education reform books which only served to aggravate the nerves.

Then I moved to biographies. One of my favorite topics: How does everybody else seem to get through life without as much struggle as me?

Don’t be daft. Everyone has their own struggles! The best I can hope for in the way of an answer is this:  We are human. Humans have problems, THAT’S WHAT WE DO!!! It’s like everyone lives through the same thing, but they make different choices and have different wisdom and foolishnesses around which they build their lives.

·         I see us as naïve little children, stuck in the middle of a garden, with no choice but to step on some of the beautiful flowers in order to get to the bathroom.

Remind me to draw that. Or have someone draw that. Back to the point—I like to read biographies to see what kind of plants other people have had to trample and how they decided which plants to trample on their trip to dispose of their waste.  I love to see how they enjoyed the remaining flora, and appreciated it. It helps me to look at my beautiful garden and feel more grateful than frightened. I’m not alone in the garden, AND (this is going to be tough to wrap my head around, due to the various dimensions it may involve) AND it helps me realize that I am foliage in other humankinds’ gardens. Let me extend this metaphor so it makes sense even to me.

1.       Everyone around us is living their life the way they have chosen to.

2.       To some people, we are simply the beautiful flower that had to get tromped on so they could get to the bathroom.

3.       To our loved ones and friends, we are the beautiful flowers that they chose to preserve, for one reason or another. (Isn’t that something to be grateful for right there?)

4.       Sometimes, some of us think that horrid weeds, that threaten to choke the life out of the garden, are pretty, and we let them grow. (I am referring to toxic loves in my case)

5.       Sometimes, there are beautiful flowers that we decide to tromp on, because we have to make the decision quickly, because we have to get to the bathroom!   Those tromped on flowers? OURLOSS.

oNE DAY, AFTER TWO MONTHS OF DISAPPOINTING THOUGHTS ABOUT EDUCATION, i HAPPENED TO BE WALKING THROUGH THE PARK NEAR rOGERS HIGH SCHOOL.  a STUDENT NAMED aLYSSA CALLED OUT TO ME FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE. sHE AFFECTED ME.

Alyssa

Her hand went up and reached

Toward my smile.

The crisscrossed steel fencing

Halted her progress and divided us

In two separate worlds:

Student and Teacher.

my teacher heart soared to see the wide smile and earnest eyes

That i did not know i missed.

Happy to see her.

This is why I teach.

And for one day, Alyssa

Made the teacher smile

To feel needed is the thing:

The human thing.

And so

Who was it that made this teacher want to

Scale the fence and

 Destroy the barrier

Between students and teachers?

It was Alyssa.

CLR May 2013