we could turn back on this pacific adventure...

but we might find ourselves dried up...
below is a poem i'll be using for a lesson my first week of teaching:


Harlem (A Dream Deferred) by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

we. are. moving. to. a. pacific. island. far. far. away.

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' ... You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

(above: photo of fog in the iao valley, maui, taken during our 2010 summer vacation)

i accepted a job to teach english/language arts to 8th graders in maui. hawaii. papa p is leaving his lucrative law job. baby o is leaving his tonka trucks and his terrible-two gang of friends to follow us on this rocky path. no, not just rocky. fog-covered. and steep. and it's a toll road (ever checked out moving costs to maui?) and my family is at the bottom of the road with a bull-horn yelling: "wait!" "come back!" "where are you going!?" "what are you doing?" "who will pay the bills?". and then at the end of the road there is another group. a group of 120 adolescent polynesian kids saying "hi miss." "don't tell me what to do miss!" "can i have a pencil?" "i need to go to the bathroom. noowwwwww." maybe along the road the fog will lift and my heart will reposition itself back into its proper chamber, out of the pit of my stomach. and i can start thinking straight and with greater clarity, and maybe write without relying on the "road of life" metaphor/cliche.