Yesterday, I went to the soup kitchen with four kids from school, including Micah. My job was to chop vegetables for a salad while the boys were given sixty pounds of green beans to wash, de-stem and slice.

          After around fifteen minutes, they formed pairs to see who could slice the beans fastest. There were flying stems and the rapid-fire staccato of blades against cutting boards, plus a whole lot of hurled insults and cheers of triumph. I told the boys to keep it down. One of the full-time cooks just smiled. “They’re just having fun.” He had a point, which was that fun and service aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. And in the end, the important part was that that night, people would be enjoying my good and earnest salad along with a side of green beans, heavy on the laughter.

          I’m not going to lie; this has been a miserable weekend. I helped my sister and brother clean out our parents’ house, which required sifting through decades of accumulation. My mother was a saver. There were closets and drawers full of artifacts to excavate. The toughest thing, for me, was when I put the worn corduroys and cotton turtlenecks that still smelled like my mother into plastic bags to bring to Goodwill. I cried, because it all felt so final.

          But then, I started thinking about how her attributes have surfaced in my children.

          There’s her wildly dramatic romantic streak in Hannah, and her loyalty to family in Jake. There’s her gentleness and kindness, as well as her fretfulness, in Rachael, and her ability to always put others ahead of herself in Sarah. I see her sensitivity and love of routine in Eliza, and her fairness and gratitude for everything good in Micah.

          It’s funny; when my mother died, I wanted to be firmly resolute. I wanted to take grief on the chin. To that end, I deliberately spoke of her death without softening it with polite euphemisms. But what if we don’t actually die? What if we do pass on? Maybe it’s more accurate than idealistic to think of death as not the end of the road, but as an intersection. That way, anything’s possible.

          The book I’m teaching in 7^th grade English is The Primrose Way. It’s about a Puritan girl named Rebekah who goes against her faith by befriending members of the native American tribe living nearby.

          Yesterday, we reached a part in the narrative where Qunnequawese, the girl who becomes Rebekah’s best friend, leaves the tribal village during her “woman time.” She tells Rebekah she will return in four or five days. Several of the boys in class seemed confused. What was this mysterious woman time, they asked, and why four or five days?

          I suddenly felt a surge of what can best be described as schoolmarmish modesty. Where to begin? I don’t want to pussyfoot around, but… pussyfoot? I don’t think so. I’m not going to beat around the bush…oh, my God! How was I supposed to frame an explanation when even the most namby-pamby phraseology was booby-trapped (booby!) with double-entendres far more salacious than the subject in question?

          Charles, one of my more mature students, raised his hand.

          “Yes, Charles?” I think he sensed my quandary.

          “Qunnequawese is referring to her menstrual cycle,” he said, matter-of-factly. He turned to his classmates. “Remember, guys? We learned about it in science last year.” I heard murmurs of oh, right.

          That’s when it hit me that teaching is kind of like landing a plane; the best approach is usually the one that is most direct.

          There was a point in our not-so-distant past that people lucky enough to live free of financial travail felt it was their birthright and duty to help those less fortunate. This was known as noblesse oblige, “the inferred obligation of people of high rank or social position to behave nobly or kindly toward others.”

          Admittedly, noblesse oblige was overtly patronizing. After all, it required one to first acknowledge social superiority as a springboard to action. This was kind of a shame, because why couldn’t a person, regardless of his or her background, who truly desires to embrace sacrifice and chooses a life of service to others, be motivated purely by altruism? Even now, suspicion lingers, and people who try to make a difference are targets for charges of egotism and elitism.

          Maybe detractors haven’t gotten the word that noblesse oblige is history, and there are idealistic souls out there whose motivation comes not from thinking they are better, but from hoping to do good.

          Yesterday afternoon Micah, who had been sitting at the kitchen table doing homework most of the day, asked if I wanted to go with him to the top of East Rock. East Rock is the closest thing we’ve got to a mountain here, a modest outcropping with a rock face, set on the eastern edge of New Haven. From the top, there’s an impressive view of the city and environs, including Long Island Sound. I have to admit I was less than enthusiastic (the day was cold and gray, it was getting late, I had work to do) but I decided to be a good sport because Micah and I rarely spend time together.

          Micah took a path he knew and I followed behind. The path ended with frightening abruptness on a rocky ledge. Micah stood there, way too close to the edge for my comfort. I stood behind him, heart racing, because I was logically nervous about standing so close to a sheer 300-foot drop. I realized, after a moment or two of gazing out across the landscape below, that another reason my heart was racing had nothing to do with fear. Between work and family obligations, my life of late has been reduced to going through the motions. Standing at the edge of a cliff was anything but mechanical; it was absolutely counter-intuitive and crazy. As any kid will tell you, danger is a kick in the pants. Throw in some natural beauty and you have a major sensory collision. Standing on a rock ledge high above New Haven, caught between my anxiety and the world below, I felt more alive than I have in months. It was terrifying. It was wonderful.

          I once read something analogizing people, both psychologically and physiologically, to apples. Some let go and fall to the ground, where they promptly soften and bloat, while others cling and wither on the tree.

          I’m in the latter category, which I guess is a tribute to my psychological stamina. But, and this brings me to the point of this post, physiologically, explain to me why it’s considered rude to tell a person that he/she has gotten fat, yet it’s perfectly fine to tell a person that he/she is too thin?

          I am thin. This is nothing new. The fact is, I have trouble eating when I’m stressed or sad or nervous or even excited about something. This is something I can’t help. I wish I could, because I’m quite aware, as a colleague told me the other day, that I look like I could use a sandwich.

          I am astonished at friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who feel free to inform me that I’m too skinny. I know being underweight doesn’t carry the same social stigma as being overweight, but when people tell me I need to put on a few pounds, it’s insulting, like being told I look tired, which is another freely stated opinion I despise.

          I guess my point is, whether I am of the bloating or shriveling variety is my business, and actually, in many ways, beyond my control. All I’m asking is that I will politely continue to keep my comments off other people’s bodies, if they keep theirs off mine.

          The current trend in television programming is to stick to what’s been tried and found even modestly successful. On network television, originality is, for the most part, a thing of the past.

          It wasn’t so long ago that producers actively sought the innovative and dismissed the derivative, in polar opposition to today, when every show seems to be tied to precedent. An even more disturbing trend is television shows that take this one step further, drafting directly behind (or even blatantly alongside) a show that is still running. For instance, there’s Medium, a show about a crime-solving psychic, and The Ghost Whisperer, a show about a crime-solving psychic. Three nights a week, on CSI, you can get the same blend of crime lab schtick; only the location (New York, Las Vegas, or Miami) changes. When I was a kid, copycatting was considered a sign of insecurity, not an effective marketing strategy, and while people may have enjoyed Gilligan’s Island, they would have rejected Flannery’s Atoll as a shameless rip-off.

          Maybe we can lay the blame for creative stagnation at the feet of the struggling economy. Even worse, the recycling of what’s reliable has not been limited to television, but includes recent and emerging movies, books, and music. The fact is, the only way to break new artistic ground is to dare to tread upon it, and frankly, those who drive these industries are afraid. That’s why the networks and their sponsors will continue to sift through the chaff of reality shows, talent competitions, and the formulaic crime shows and sitcoms. They’ve been running the numbers, and now is not the time to risk dazzling the folks out there with a creative breakaway. The prevailing strategy is to look for something that’s already floating and hang on for dear life.

          After a day of school meetings, it occurred to me that people- including those I like and respect-are quick to come up with reasons why not. Even the most positive changes fall victim to so-called careful consideration.

          Reality is a difficult and pervasive thing to disregard, but today, I decided that pretty much every significant social change teeters on one’s heedless commitment to forward motion. Impulsive? Yes. Reckless? Maybe. Hopeful? You bet.

Hannah and Pooh, at home in Palo Alto, California, 1983.

27 years ago on this very day, love took on a whole new meaning.

Happy birthday, Bud. 

          Last night, we got word that Ben, a kid from our neighborhood, was killed in Afghanistan this past week.

          Perhaps, at 32, he was not technically a kid, but knowing him in the context of the neighborhood, in the context of his family, somehow lends him kid status, as does- heartbreakingly- the fact he still had his whole life ahead of him.

          Ben’s death forced me to take a good hard look at my own assumptions about those who serve. Unlike the Vietnam years, when family members and friends were drafted according to their lottery number, having an all-volunteer military has changed the face of the typical serviceman/woman. I was guilty of assuming that soldiers came from military or disadvantaged backgrounds, with internally or externally limited options. I was guilty of assuming soldiers didn’t come from places like our tree-lined neighborhood. Unlike Ben, with his master’s degree from Tufts, I was guilty of assuming soldiers aren’t highly educated, nor avid humanitarians like Ben, who’d founded Clearwater Initiative, a non-profit agency dedicated to providing clean water to refugees and other at-risk populations. But all of these ways in which Ben did not fit my woefully narrow preconceptions doesn’t matter at all, because when he was on the ground in Afghanistan, he was not an anomaly. He was a soldier.

          Ben’s death, for me, stripped away the comfortable emotional distance I’d created. When a combat death occurred, I felt my sorrow in the abstract, as it involved a stranger’s son or daughter, in some other neighborhood far away. It has come as a terrible shock to realize the truth-that the face of this war is our own.