Writing on the Wind

A light breeze teased at the corner of Tara’s paper. A clock hung on the fence. Afternoon drifted toward pleasant as the warm but gusty day whorled colored chalk dust from the blackboard and smudged the periphery of our senses.

Wind is a primary feature of our classroom. After toying at the page for several minutes, a healthy gust took Tara’s paper, filled with cursive and print, and sent it swirling into the garden. “Wah!” she gasped, one eye full of wonder, the other consternation. Reflexively, she slapped her pencil to her desk and thrust out her hand.

It was too late.

Sixteen eyes followed, perhaps more. Landing on the path, the blue-lined paper tarried for a brief second amongst the woodchips, creamy brown, and the butterscotch dust, then tumbled and rolled into a green bed of fuchsia-tipped yarrow.

“I’ll get it!” shouted Alex, tugging free of his desk like a wrestler wearing too many clothes.

“Go!” beckoned Kathryn.

“There!”

“No!”

Shouts gave way to laughter as a third and final gust took our wandering eyes up, then over the sun-bleached fence, where the story hovered for a brief moment midair, and drifted down the other side.

“The chickens! Get it!”

“That’s my fifth chapter!” moaned Tara.

“I’ll get it,” offered Christopher, who dutifully walked out the gate, around the outer fence, and into the chicken yard. Giggles pursued him. The chickens, though surely curious, were not tempted by this leafy un-green vegetable.

The paper restored, we turned those sixteen eyes back to our writing, the wind having given it a taste of something…uncomfortably fresh.

In conventional settings, this little sideshow may have felt like a distraction. But it wasn’t. It was an addition. We were, of course, in class. And I, their teacher, did care. We have time commitments like everyone else. The kids were nearing completion of their end of year projects, a book drafted and edited that contains a story – any story – of their creation. It was the third or fourth such book for most of them, a task the kids had looked forward to all year.

The stories in these books reveal fascinating details. I plan to share some of their writing in the future. As a teacher I find it enriching, but it’s the human me that really gets captivated. I like good writing, but I like terrible writing too. I like dark corners, incomplete sentences, and forgotten characters that return unbeckoned. At the time of our breezy interlude, the children had been writing for nearly six weeks, but the stories have been in the womb of creation much longer than that.

Suspend disbelief for a just a moment, and I’ll go so far as to suggest that these stories were being fledged when atmosphere first gave rise to wind.

If you look at a child’s drawing today and give your attention to the aesthetics, whether good or ill, there’s a chance you’ll miss the deeper story. Even a two-year-old’s scribbles speak something fantastic and rich when we take the time to see it through their eyes. Some of us know to admire this, but stories are told in almost everything a child does – whether written, drawn, spoken or played.

It's these stories I’m most interested in, not the medium – though I have a taste for the written form. When we listen or look at a deep and patient level, it’s not so absurd to hear the wind coursing through their pages. I won’t pretend that every child is delighted to write in my class. Some are motivated such that they work on it independently, outside of class, and develop plans that reach into summer. Others follow willingly, sharing my own excitement and that of their classmates, but are content to leave it behind when the bell rings.

And there is a bell. An old copper bell that chimes with the wind. This chiming enters through the pen. Our lessons and thoughts. The changing of weather. The movement of atmosphere. Skies gray, white, and irreverent.

These elements teach us. They have something to say, and it may be more relevant than we like to admit. They write our distractions. Our engagements. It’s much the same thing. Whether writing third-grade stories, or that of the fifth, it’s sometimes important to draw inspiration from the unsheltered exuberance of the real thing. Imagination is a delight. Reality, a wonder.

And it’s fearsome. Our winds howl in spring. The mountain clime and unforested mesa throw torrents at us. Rattle our windows. Shake our bones. When I listen to this story, it turns majestic corners on calm, sunny days. I find myself intrigued, turning pages. The color of sunshine is crisp and worthy when dull days give way to clear.

So, the engagement of our senses. The wind that whips our thoughts onto paper. The poetry that tugs at our hair. Writing the wind. Feeling the sky. Allowing the garden to beckon.

What is this life? What precisely are we here to learn?

The rapping of the clock against the wooden fence. The wind is picking up and my reverie is broken. It’s been only twenty minutes. I call for papers and folders. Tara has finished chapter five, moving seamlessly into chapter six. Alex has a new drawing for chapter eight. Two kids are bickering about who has written more, that youthful sense that quantity must somehow define achievement. I wrap my arms around their arguments and smile as two cackling ravens trickle into class on a warm breeze.

There are stories alive in the minds and hearts of all children right this very second. Some fictional, some true. There are stories in the minds and hearts of adults, world leaders, ourselves. Tenderness as we listen. Tenderness as we walk our bodies in and out of shelter.