Last week, I traveled to my daughter’s college to watch her dance, which is always amazing. While I was in town, I met up with my high school choir director and a friend to practice a song we’ll be singing in an upcoming alumni pops concert.
While I was visiting with my former teacher, she told me she always loves reading my blog. She said she appreciates that I write about what’s real and that I don’t try to gloss over everything; I’m honest about how hard it can be.
And, dang, it’s hard.
It’s hard to work full time outside the home in a job with a lot of inherent stress. It’s hard to navigate being a mom. It’s hard being with the same person for over 30 years. It’s all hard. And sometimes all that hard just makes you tired.
I’ve been tired a lot lately.
If I write about the “real” of last week, I get to share the joy in seeing my daughter dance, in singing show tunes, in meeting up with an old friend to watch a college baseball game in the sun. But I also need to share that by the time I got home Saturday evening, all I wanted to do was lie in bed, and that feeling didn’t change when I woke up Sunday morning. I was lethargic and unmotivated and sad, mostly because of work stuff, but also just everything.
Finally, as I lay on the couch Sunday morning with the sun streaming through the windows, I said to myself: You need to get up and do something.
So I did.
I thought that my husband and I should work on our FillingTime relationship by actually finding things to do together, so I decided we should go biking. I’m not sure the two of us had been on bikes together since our children initially learned to ride. In fact, neither of our bikes was actually rideable (needing some major TLC), so after I convinced my husband this was a good idea, we hauled out the kids’ bikes, cleaned them off, pumped up the tires, and set off on a Sunday adventure.
We entered a local rail-trail around noon, along with a gaggle of hikers and bikers who also felt the need to get outside on one of the first beautiful Sundays of spring. We quickly realized that our normal workout routines did not prepare us for biking. It was work! By the time we biked to the next town and back (about 10 miles total), my legs were screaming, my abs were twitching, and my butt hurt.
But I was out of bed and off the couch. I had worked through the hard, and I didn’t want to go home. So I suggested that we hit the local cider mill on the way back to the house. We hadn’t been there in a long time, and it was the perfect, sunny day to join everyone in a 20 mile radius who was thinking that cider would be the perfect afternoon drink.
After ordering our drinks, we found a single picnic table in the sun where there was room to sit. My husband asked the couple who had occupied it if we could join them, and we sat down on the opposite end and started chatting. We talked about work and the kids and where/when we want to retire.
Then I noticed someone sitting on a picnic blanket wearing a shirt from my son’s college, so I wandered over to ask if he was an alum. While I was talking to him, my husband made friends with the couple sitting at the other end of our table. We talked with them about their relationship, and she asked me for advice. I shared my thoughts with her, and she smiled – a brilliant smile. I joked that I wanted to be invited to the wedding.
Shortly thereafter, a very precocious six year old became my husband’s new best friend, and her mom and I chatted about being moms – and how hard it is. She asked me for some advice, and I shared my thoughts with her. She thanked me with tears in her eyes as the family packed up their blanket to head home for the day.
We stayed at the cider mill for hours, engaging with strangers in authentic conversation. I didn’t seek out these conversations to change lives; I just started talking to people, and what started out as a day of lethargy became a really lovely day of local color, one where I was able to connect with others.
Dang, it’s hard.
And sometimes the way through isn’t big or dramatic. It’s just getting out of bed, touching grass, and opening up, just a little, to whatever might come of it. It’s about letting your inner light out to shine a bit for others so that they can shine back to fuel you.
Last week I straddled the line between past and present in a way I wasn’t expecting.
I started the week by attending the local high school’s baseball season home opener. The date had been on my radar for a while. I still follow the team’s social media, but even more than that, the change in season from winter to spring always marked a change in our family’s routine. My daughter had many performances that filled our weekends, but weekdays revolved around baseball. My husband and I spent many afternoons and evenings on the sidelines – usually freezing — cheering on our son and his teammates.
As February turned to March, my body knew that baseball season was coming. I also started to get more questions from the head of the baseball boosters about what we had done last year, so I was keyed into when tryouts were happening and when the season kicked off. When I saw that the weather for the day of this year’s home opener was going to be relatively moderate, I figured I’d attend. I wanted to cheer on the boys that I had gotten to know last year, sit alongside the parents who had become a baseball family during our Cinderella season, and, perhaps more than anything, fill the hole in my heart that was left after an abrupt end to 13 years of being a baseball mom.
It was a different experience sitting on the sideline as a fan without the pressure of having my son on the mound, playing short stop, or up to bat in a big moment. It was a little like how my mom explains grandparenting – all of the joy without any of the responsibility. All the hellos from parents on the sidelines made me smile, and watching the players I knew filled my heart (a little). I did not get to see them win in a walk off, however, because I had another past-related thing to do.
With my kids going to college and my work responsibilities becoming more complex, I had to step back from some of the volunteer work I have been doing for quite some time. One of those roles involved managing the digital aspects of a major fundraising event, including email correspondence, file sharing, and website updates. Because I had organized and/or created most of the systems related to these tasks, I needed to train my replacements. So after I stepped back in time at the baseball game to touch grass in my past, I stepped forward just a bit by shedding some of my past volunteer role by training people to take over my jobs.
It was an odd combination that made me realize I was straddling a line between past, present – and future. And, quite frankly, it made me ready for some forward movement.
Over Easter weekend, I spent time cleaning outside – wiping down deck furniture, picking up garbage that had made its way into our woods during a windstorm, and generally getting things ready for the kids to come home at the end of the semester. I texted my son to ask if we could throw away his old swing trainer. I sent a message to both of them asking who had left their lunch in the woods (super gross discovery, btw). As I cleaned, I thought about the fact that I was preparing for what might be the last summer I have everyone in the house for an extended time.
At this point in the story, you would think that my outdoor cleanse would be a metaphor for cleansing my past while I discover who I am in this year of FillingTime. Perhaps that was my intent for deciding to spend my Saturday scrubbing, sweeping, and making a welcoming space for my kids. Clearly, it wasn’t. Because when Monday came around again with another home baseball game on the schedule…
Well, I decided to drop by to see how the team was doing. It wasn’t in my plan, so I wasn’t prepared to face the cold and wind that typically whips by the field, but I figured that I had nothing waiting for me at home, so I’d stop for an inning or two.
The game was close, and unlike the game the week before, I felt myself getting truly invested in the outcome. I was nervous for the pitchers. My heart raced when the bases were loaded. I cheered loudly when one boy battled to a full count walk. I was in it, despite my frozen toes, and I high-fived my parent-friends when we won in a walk-off.
I was fully living, just a little bit, in that past that I still haven’t fully let go.
I felt something similar when I took my daughter to the high school musical while she was home over spring break. As we drove to the school, I asked her if it felt weird. She said it didn’t, but it did to me. I said to her, “There is something missing, and I’m just not sure what it is.” In hindsight, I think what was missing was watching my kids do their thing in a place that had become a second home to all of us.
Just as I felt watching the kids I knew perform on the stage few weeks ago, I was happy for the boys on the baseball field this past week. I was present, fully present, in the now. But there was a part of me still living in a year ago, when it was my kids. I felt it viscerally, as if I was straddling a line between past and present, a delicate balance as I prepare to jump into my future.
Every year I move on with the change of seasons. And yet this year I still live, just a little, in the past as this spring begins.
I started driving a tractor when I was old enough to sit on my dad’s or grandfather’s lap and take the steering wheel. This skill came in handy when I was older and my dad “let” me mow our backyard – at least the easy, flat part of it. Perhaps because I proved myself capable of driving in a rectangle, my dad put me behind the wheel of his MG when I was 14. Our country road was the perfect place to teach me how to drive a real car (even before the legal age), and learning to drive a stick shift on that particular car meant I would be able to drive pretty much any vehicle I encountered (#iykyk). Maybe this is why I wasn’t overly concerned when I hopped on an 8-passenger plane on a flight home from a wedding in Maine, and the pilot told me I would be the designated co-pilot. I mean, I could start the MG on a hill without stalling. How hard could it be to land a plane?
My dad restored my mom’s 1962 Corvair for my 16th birthday. It had been waiting for some TLC, and in order to give what Ralph Nader called a “death trap” to his little girl, he fixed every safety issue called out in Unsafe at Any Speed. By the time he restored that car, he had plenty of practice keeping our family “fleet” alive. My parents often owned at least five cars, two of which would actually start on any given day. With two people working outside the home, the game of roulette was not always fun, but my dad learned a lot about engines over the years. By the time I got my license, we had cars that worked until they didn’t (the MG was notorious for this), cars that sat waiting for their day to come again (the 1964 Chevy is still a flower pot on my parents’ farm), and even a car that would only drive in reverse. My parents often inherited my Grandpa Joe’s vehicles at the end of their useful life – and yet they somehow squeezed a few more years out of them.
So I learned to drive on a 1972 MG; I spent my high school days behind the wheel of a 1962 Corvair; and I got a 1975 CJ5 Jeep (also restored by my dad) for my high school graduation. Despite the fact that the maintenance keeping these cars on the road for me to drive happened in our driveway or our garage for my entire life, I never learned how to change the oil or even a tire. When I turned 16, my parents handed me a AAA card and said to call someone else if I ran into trouble, not to try to fix it myself on the side of the road.
Given that both of “my” cars did not have fuel gauges that worked, and I wasn’t great about doing the math that told me when I needed to fill up, I did end up stranded a few times when I was a teen. My dad always saved me. It wasn’t until I was an adult and on my own that I needed to use that AAA card, and every time I’ve done so has been related to a tire problem.
My husband and I also have a fleet of cars. With the kids off at school, we have to rotate which car we drive so that none of them sit for too long, especially in the winter. Ironically, since we’ve been empty nesters, we have had more tire issues than in the last decade combined. We blew out a tire as we drove into town for my son’s family weekend in the fall. AAA to the rescue! Not too long after that, my husband lost one on his way to work. Then, when my daughter was home for spring break, she called to say that her indicator light was on and there was a huge screw in her tire. Run flat tires to the rescue!
I figured dealing with three different cars with three different tire issues in less than four months meant that we were in the clear for a while. Even so, as I got in the car to drive to see my son last week, I wondered whether I should check the tire pressure. I was leaving home, headed south to an appointment before I planned to get on the highway for a 5.5 hour ride. I didn’t get an indicator light, so I didn’t check.
And then…
As I got into the car after my appointment, I saw the dreaded yellow tire pressure light. I groaned and started planning my what-to-dos. The pressure was about 10 below the other tires, but I didn’t see a nail or anything in the tire, and it was still in drivable range – so I gambled. I headed toward the turnpike, hoping the nearest rest area was not too far away. I figured if all went south, at least I had my AAA card!
I made it to the rest stop, where I was pleasantly surprised to find free air! The tire and I had a nice talk about how it needed to keep itself inflated for the next 375 miles — and back again – and it listened.
Last week I spent 11 hours in the car, listening to podcasts and books and generally vegging in my own mind, as I travelled between my son’s school and my home. I also spent time visiting my son, wandering the campus, and listening to presentations by upper-level administrators about the future of the school and the opportunities available to students. The trip filled my heart – so much so that I almost forgot that it started with a tire-pressure warning. The drive was absolutely worth the time.
Me, as an adult, in the MG, which my dad restored (surprise!), and sitting on the lawn I used to mow.
Ironically, I’m an English teacher who hates to read. Also ironically, I’m a published author that doesn’t love to write.
So much to say here about what may or may not fill my time in the future, but I want to focus on the reading this week since that’s how I filled my time – kind of.
This semester, I’ve been professionally developing as I step back into teaching adolescents. Though I’m not in a high school setting, the teens and early twenty-somethings I’m working with this semester are a different generation than the ones I taught in the early 2000s as an English and social studies teacher, the NYC students I visited and interviewed in the in-between-generations that had a smartphone for the first time, and the 8th graders I taught during my sabbatical in the 2010s. With my professional hat I can say that reading and writing have changed a lot since I personally learned how to do both, and I’m constantly thinking about me as a high school and college student – who literally hated to read and figured out the formula for how to write – and how I may or may not have survived formal education in our current era.
My basic philosophy is that in order to improve yourself, you need to read and write. But what that means to me is probably not what it means to you (reader).
Reading and writing has changed, even though school doesn’t (at large) accept it. Take this conversation I had with a student last week as evidence. We were discussing his final project in the course, which would bring together personal narrative, library research, interviews, and his ideas for how to chart a path forward. We were working on the personal narrative, and I asked him to create a “life map” and talk me through what he created.
He had sketched out some images and added some words, just as I had suggested he do for this brainstorm session. As he talked, I started to imagine his sketches and words as a combined product, rather than a traditional narrative essay, and I invited him to create it. I suggested an art form or even a comic book form, to which he responded, “Really? I can do that? That would be so much easier for me!”
And why shouldn’t he be able to express his ideas in a form that works for him, especially in an era where most of what we consume (i.e., “read”) is based in image, video, and short snippets? All this to say that my approach as a teacher this semester is to count everything, and moments like the one I had with this student affirm that stance.
At the same time, I’m definitely still learning. In fact, I am always learning. I’m not the expert in the room, but I am a lead learner, so despite the fact I don’t like to read, I know that I learn from other perspectives. As I try to model learning for my students, I decided I needed to do what I was asking them to do.
The second portion of their project was to “read” at least five sources in order to ask “big questions” that might fuel their future inquiries. We spent a class session roaming the stacks in the library – mostly because one of my students did not know that the library existed (yes, you read that correctly). I asked them to find a book that looked interesting and to read it – perhaps abandon it if warranted.
And now back to how I filled some time last week – especially because this blog is not supposed to be about my work life. After work hours that same day that my students explored the library stacks, I attended a panel presentation titled Pioneers in Dance: Celebrating Black Women Who Have Made History. This is exactly the kind of event I would have been interested in attending before my life of FillingTime – and that I would not have done because I would have been on a baseball field, at a dance recital, or otherwise attending to my kiddos’ lives. With nothing but time to fill after work last week, however, I decided I could finally just say “yes.”
And I am glad I did. The panelists included the first African American Rockette, as well as one of the founding Black ballerinas of the Dance Theater of Harlem. Their stories about discrimination, the devaluing of Black bodies, and breaking color barriers were new to me, and as I thought about my own dancer now off at college continuing to dance, a girl who had access to a school that allowed her to dance every year on the Alvin Ailey stage, I began to wonder about access to the arts for every child, especially those who do not grow up in a community where access is easy.
At the panel I learned that the Swans were a group of five women who are reclaiming the historical narrative of Black ballerinas, one that was complicated not that long ago when Misty Copeland became the first African American woman to become principal dancer at the American Ballet Theater. Lost in the celebration of breaking the 75 -year history of ABT was the fact that she was not actually the first Black female principal dancer of a dance company.
The Swans’ story is now a book, which I bought at the event I attended and then spent some time reading over the weekend. I’m reading the book in print – something I haven’t done in quite a while – to engage my brain differently and to, perhaps, mirror the discomfort my students might feel while they walk the stacks in a library they didn’t know existed on campus.
I “read” a lot. I’ve been in book clubs in the past, mostly for social/political conversation. But to participate, I almost always listened to the assigned books. In fact, nowadays I almost always listen. It’s doable on my commute (to fill the time), and it’s easier on my middle-aged eyes when I’m at home. I can also multitask, engaging my brain in a book while I cook, clean, or organize my always quiet house. This weekend, I listened to two fluff books. And I started reading a print book that I bought at an event. I read – in multiple modes and for multiple purposes – to fill time. But also to learn and to grow, which is a pretty good way to spend time.
I opened the junk drawer looking for the back to the remote, which had gone missing in the week when my kids were home for spring break – overlapping for only 24 hours. I could barely get the drawer open, let alone look through it. It was completely overwhelming.
Ice packs used for childhood boo boos but somehow forgotten during four years of after-game pitcher’s elbow care
Hand warmers lost during a ski season way in the past, hiding so that we had to buy a whole new box
Empty ziplocks that I faithfully cleaned with hopes of up-cycling them
A hodge-podge collection of furniture pads, command hooks, and velcro strips
More cheap sunglasses than one family could possibly use
And sauces. SO. MANY. SAUCES.
I started dumping it all into boxes, deciding to tackle it right then and there.
Cleaning with the lens of “the kids aren’t here, so why on earth might I possibly ever need that?” made it easy to fill the trash and empty the drawer.
I still have too many pairs of sunglasses, and I probably won’t need the “6 or 7” candles that I used as a joke last year, but I engaged in productive time filled!
I spent 13 years of my life driving into New York City. Because I grew up in Central PA, pretty far from any city, the thought that over a decade of my life was intimately connected to NYC, still awes me. Though my husband likes to joke that I’m now a Jersey girl, I’m not. I grew up living next door to Old Order Amish (a community that is not well-represented by the various reality shows that exist about being Amish), celebrating “Doe Day” and “Buck Day” with days off from school, and literally eating the farm animals my friends tended and then butchered for family meals.
Then, after college, I moved to a town featured on the Sopranos. I realized this when I drove home from practice the first summer I coached high school soccer to see my street blocked off because they were filming there. Uncle Junior’s kitchen was my apartment’s kitchen. The funeral home was the one just around the corner. So many scenes in the show were visible on my commute to work. I moved from Amish-world to Mob-land.
But none of that impacted me as much as seeing the Empire State Building every day as I commuted home from my first teaching job. I literally sucked in my breath each time it appeared on the horizon. Perhaps it was because NYC always loomed large in my life. My mom had talked about her trips there as a child; I had travelled there as a child for momentous visits to Annie, Cats, and 42nd Street; and some of my best college relationships (including my future husband) were formed with NYC as a base.
My uncle, who lived in northeast NJ, had taken my family into the city once, where he drove the streets, calling out “my turn” at each light in order to get us to our destination. “My Turn” became family lore, but it also became ingrained in my head; driving in NYC isn’t for the faint of heart. You need to be confident.
When I attended Columbia for grad school, I was nervous to drive so I initially started by commuting by train. I learned a lot about public transit – including that I could get there faster if I just shucked my central PA mindset and adopted my uncle’s “my turn” attitude.
The first time I drove to class was on a Saturday morning. This was a good time for a newbie NYC driver. For anyone thinking I had Google Maps to guide me – nope. I had written directions collated from an early version of Yahoo Maps and a hard copy map. The Saturday morning (lack of) traffic made it seem doable. So I ditched the public transit, took a deep breath, and drove across the bridge. I made it, exhaled, and started driving to class regularly, even on weekdays after I finished my high school teaching commitments and commuted just in time to get to graduate class.
This early experience made it all the more possible for me to drive from west NJ to midtown when I started commuting in earnest to my first tenure-track university job. I learned when to take the train because it gave me alone time yet still put me at home, in bed, not-too-late. I learned when to leave the house so that I didn’t wait in tunnel traffic. I learned shortcuts. I learned to call my mom to check traffic online when I got stuck (because Google Maps still wasn’t a thing in the car and she could look it up on her computer). I learned that being an NYC commuter wasn’t all that scary – if you had gumption and a “my turn” mindset. There are a couple of things I learned from my uncle, but I think this is perhaps the one that influenced me the most.
I became an NYC commuter. At its best, it took me 55 minutes to get the 50 miles from garage to garage. At worst, it took me the better part of 3 hours. I learned to navigate this spread, and it’s why I checked the Google maps time at least four times this past weekend before we left the house to head to the city with my mom and daughter to see a Broadway show.
It’s been nearly a decade since I did the commute, but as I drove, it came back to me. It’s been a while since I’ve been with my mom at the Broadway theater. It’s something she introduced me to – way back with Annie, Cats and 42nd Street – a gift she gave me that I’ve tried to pass on to my children. She and I tried to see the city – and often a show – at least twice per year while I was commuting there. This weekend was the first trip we took together to see a Broadway show in a long time.
So as I drove her – and my daughter – along the highway that had defined my work commute for so many years, I couldn’t help but reflect on that drive. It felt familiar, but different. Something of another life.
Walking around the city felt the same. I took the lead, because I knew the timing – we had places we wanted to go and see, and I knew, instinctively, how much time it would take. I knew the city. It was part of me, even if it wasn’t really me. I am, after all, a PA girl.
As we sat in our seats, waiting for the show to start, I felt at peace, wondering which part of the day was the best part of filling time. Time with my kid? Time with my mom? Time with both of them? Time watching a Broadway show?
Perhaps all of the above. And though I know all of the above is a way I want to spend time, I’m wondering if a Broadway show group is something I want to cultivate locally.
As a side note, after my experience this weekend, given the commute, I prefer matinees, and honestly, I’d probably prefer Saturday to Sunday at this point in my life – because damn, I’m tired after all that driving, and I appreciate a day of somewhat rest after travelling before jumping back into the work zone. So this is my first FillingTime invitation – do you want to form a Broadway group with me? What can we make of it?
I didn’t think that filling time by sitting on the couch would be fulfilling. But after two weeks of travel, it’s what I needed. I was worn down from days spent moving from hotel rooms to sleeping on a blow up mattress at my brother’s, and after the “two planes, three trains, and an automobile” adventure to get home during a blizzard, my half-century body gave in. I got sick.
As I returned home, my son texted to say his Friday class got cancelled, and he was trying to take an earlier train home for spring break. I literally got giddy with excitement. Originally, I wasn’t really going to see him. He and my husband had planned a long-awaited spring break trip because, as a baseball player, he had not had the opportunity to really enjoy spring break during high school. He was always at the school, even while his friends (and twin sister) had time away. Even though they both pressured me to join them in their short getaway, I knew that I couldn’t. I couldn’t sneak another few days away from work after being remote for two weeks.
So I resigned myself to missing my kiddo while he had his adventure with his dad. Which is why it was so much sweeter when he said he was coming home early! Unfortunately, I got hit with a bug, which limited my capacity to “play,” but I did enjoy his presence before the two of them set off on their bonding adventure.
I was filled with multiple emotions – grateful to be in his presence when I didn’t expect it; jealous that they were headed to warmer weather and a true vacation; and an overwhelming feeling of loss, or as I expressed to them, “missing you.”
In reality, after I got past all of that, I dug into my status of “solo lady” (different from single lady, to be sure). This shift was made easier because I physically felt like crap. There’s not a lot I can say about filling time other than that I did what needed to be done, what couldn’t be put off, and what made me forget how bad I was feeling while I was sick. The couch and I became intimate. The phone and I became friends. I conquered many levels in my stupid game, and I accomplished what needed to be accomplished – and nothing more – at work.
I had alone time while also navigating what it truly means to be alone.
I’m still taking it all in and reflecting on what it means. But I think what I ultimately learned is that I need some alone time – with no commitments, no expectations, no mundane tasks, and no freezing weather. I have experienced this kind of time in my past – on the lake, in particular – and it’s becoming clearer to me what makes it all worth filling my time.
My dad texted to say that he and my mom had just seen the planets in alignment, which prompted me to get off the couch and go outside. The sky was beautiful, and the night held the kind of warmth that predicts spring is coming. It was a nice outing off the couch.
I’m sitting in an airport, filling time by reflecting on the last week. Until yesterday, I expected to write about how I filled time with my brother, going to the gym, watching Paridisus, continuing to design the thing we have been talking about for nearly two decades. I was staying with him between work events in California, and I could not fill time by enjoying the weather (it was awful), so we just filled time in each other’s presence. It was good. It was natural. It’s something I’d like more of in my future.
And then a blizzard hit the northeast, so I ended up stranded in California longer than I had anticipated. Luckily, the weather turned, so I had a day full of sun in downtown LA, which opened up new opportunities to fill time.
I wrote last week about the Waymo, self-driving cars that I saw everywhere in San Francisco. They both fascinated and terrified me. The fact that one of my friends found them preferable to human powered ride-shares convinced me I should try one while I was on the West Coast, but I had neither the guts nor the opportunity.
A moment to reflect on the guts part of this equation –
When I was 7, my parents took my brother and me to Sesame Place. One of the attractions was a rope jungle gym designed for climbing to the top. It was probably about 5 feet in reality, but in my mind it was the height of the Empire State building. In hindsight, it was the first time I recognized my fear of heights, which lives with me till today. In fact, after my brother dropped me off at the train station last week, I almost had a panic attack crossing to the other side of the tracks. I texted him this picture to show him where I nearly broke down – the open stairway nearly did me in.
At Sesame Place, the open ropes did me in. While my two-year-old brother climbed to the top, I froze mid-climb. My parents told me I didn’t need to go further and let me head back down – absolutely the right decision, by the way – but my failure to push past the fear has stuck with me. I never wanted fear to hold me back again. It’s why I pushed back the tears when I was stuck on the side of Seneca Rocks and climbed my way to the top when I was 17. I was not backing down again.
So, I knew that if I had the chance to ride in a robot car, despite my fear, I had to at least try it. And I knew I would have the chance on the ride from the train station to my hotel in LA. I told my brother I was going to do it. I downloaded the app. I prepared mentally.
And then when I got off the train, I faced pouring rain. The crappy California weather was giving my already tired soul another challenge, and I reverted to my comfort zone. I called an Uber.
I didn’t regret it at the moment, but I kept thinking about the robot car all weekend, especially because I was steeped in conversation about AI in education with some of my closest colleagues in the field. We are the ones who experiment with technology. We encourage others to do so. We say, “If you don’t play, you don’t know the possibilities or the limitations.” We push past our fears and jump in to do the things.
How could I possibly leave the West Coast after nearly two weeks, stranded in the middle of the rope gymnasium?
The first night, my group talked about Waymo. Only one person had done it. They loved it, just like my friend. They recommended it. They said they would go with me. A bunch of us said we would try together. The herd mentality made it easy to say “yes, I will.”
But we were tired from travel so we didn’t want to do it that night. We promised to go somewhere via Waymo the next night. That night, after we had spent all day in deep thinking and conversation about AI, we were even more tired. We could not fathom an hour round trip to see the Hollywood sign (this was our solution to where we should take the Waymo), when our beds were about four blocks away from the restaurant where we were eating. We thought about taking the Waymo back to the hotel (I mean, it couldn’t kill us in a 4-block ride, right?), but the cost didn’t seem worth the experience.
Without a gang, I gave in. But I was still thinking about the damn ropes at Sesame Place. How could I leave LA without trying the Waymo?
Luckily (yes, I’m saying that right now), a blizzard hit the East Coast, and I was stranded in LA. Also luckily, one of my friends had some extra time before his flight. He was the only member of our group to download the Waymo app besides me. I knew he was committed. We designed a plan that would allow us to take a Waymo to see the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame, the epitome of touring in LA, with just enough time for him to get to the airport.
The rest of this (longer than usual) post is co-written with Bud Hunt (@budtheteacher) and ChatGPT. Bud and I narrated our Waymo ride in real time, and ChatGPT took that transcript and cleaned it up, organizing our thinking just a bit. I filled in the details of the story. The main points Bud and I want to share are that (1) we saw something new, (2) we jumped in to try it, (3) we reflected on our experience AND what it might mean for society, and (4) we are somehow different because of it. I’ll leave you to ponder those points by reading our Waymo journey.
Standing in the hotel lobby, Bud called the Waymo on the app, very similar to Uber/Lyft. He looked at the map and said we need to walk to the street and turn left. He double checked a few times, zooming in on the app to verify we were in the right place. We waited, chatting amiably about our experience during the weekend. We were both just a bit nervous and also excited for this adventure. If Bud missed his flight, no problem. It was an adventure worth it. We could fail, and he would be ok.
The Waymo pulled up to the curb. Bud pushed “unlock door” in the app, and we discussed whether he should put his luggage in the trunk. Would he be able to get it back out later? I devised a plan that at the end of our ride, I would stay in the car and leave the door open until he figured out how to get his luggage. He opened the trunk manually and put his luggage inside.
We climbed in, pushed the button to start the drive, and the Waymo started the turn signal. Click, click. Click, click. It moved into traffic. And we were on our way.
We immediately noticed something obvious: this car was driving itself. Definite Captain Obvious statement.
It took us about ninety seconds to forget that.
We pulled up to a red light to take a left turn. When the light turned green, the car (a robot) waited for a food delivery robot to cross the street. A robot waiting for a robot wasn’t lost on us in that moment.
After marveling at what had just happened, we started chatting, and we completely forgot there wasn’t a human driver. We enjoyed the freedom to converse without the mediation of another human. It took less than ninety seconds to forget our fears – and to forget the novelty of it all.
However, we didn’t forget our wonder and our curiosity. As we came into a log-jam, a situation that would have been difficult for a human to navigate, the Waymo snuck around the car in front of us, threading a needle between it and a car parked on the side of the street with ease. It was the third time we said, “Okay, good move.” Earlier it yellow-lighted into a smooth stop where I noted that Waymo drove like me, honoring PA yellow lights, as compared to my husband, who loves the Jersey yellow. In other words, Waymo stopped at the yellow light rather than trying to beat it, and it did so with more finesse than I would have.
Then, ahead of us, there was another robot car. The street was narrow, a side residential street lined on both sides with parked cars. The Waymo in front of us approached. It was a robot game of chicken. The two cars somehow knew which one would yield, and it maneuvered into an open hole in the line of parked cars, just enough for us to drive past.
We immediately saw a human driven car in front of us. Who would yield this time, we wondered? The human lost the game of chicken.
We marveled at the technology, and we realized something about ourselves: we are practicing what we preach.
We encounter a technology that makes us uncomfortable. So what do we do?
We jump in.
We push buttons. We poke things. We explore. We try it. That’s how we learn. That’s what we encourage teachers to do. That’s what we allow students to do.
We learn by inhabiting the discomfort.
Overall, we liked the Waymo. We felt less anxious overall riding in a Waymo than we do in a normal rideshare. We hypothesized that it was because we did not have to worry about interacting with an unknown human; rather, we just existed. We took the ride and enjoyed the process.
Despite that, some discomforts remained. We asked some of these questions during our ride:
How do these cars get recharged? What’s the community impact of charging stations? Who bears that infrastructure cost?
And what about the loss of the human driver? That’s real. That’s economic and social displacement.
There was also the more immediate fear lurking at the back of our minds: Would Bud be able to get his luggage out of the trunk before the car drove away?
After a 30-minute ride, we arrived on Hollywood Boulevard and hi-fived for conquering the Waymo. We were proud of stepping in and experimenting, and we are just a little smarter about the world because of our experience.
And yes, Bud got his luggage. In fact, the robot car opened the trunk for him as it said goodbye and thanked us for riding.
I embarked on an extended trip to the West Coast last week, perhaps blessed by two invitations to speak on two consecutive weekends in California. Because it made sense to visit my brother between visits rather than fly home, I decided to make an adventure of it. Of course, being physically away from work for so long posed challenges, somewhat easily solved by Zoom technology and understanding colleagues, but my angst about leaving was amplified when I was informed that I had to move buildings at work – NOW! – with about two working days notice before I left.
So the first part of my week was really filled with getting ready to leave. But once I arrived in San Francisco, I realized I could fill my workday with virtual work while also slowing down a bit to simply notice.
My noticing began on the ride from the airport to the city, where I saw in person for the first time a Waymo car. In fact, I saw a many during my stay, and I was fascinated. I knew about them, of course, but seeing them in action became part of my mental documentation of the trip. I watched one pull next to the curb, stop, turn on its turn signal, and wait for four other cars to pass before pulling into line. I wouldn’t have known there was nobody in the car if it hadn’t been labeled as Waymo and I hadn’t peered inside. This kind of driving was somewhat routine (though impressive), and I reflected on the first Waymo I had seen on the ride from the airport. It pulled up beside my Uber, waiting patiently at the red light. As my Uber driver extraordinaire worked his way to my hotel, I wondered whether Waymo could do what he did. Seriously, I tipped my human driver extra in cash because he was amazing at navigating city traffic efficiently while making me feel safe. Could the robot driver do that? Or would it just follow the programmed route without trying to switch lanes and work its way forward more efficiently?
This line of questioning – robots (AI) vs. human competencies – dominates my professional life, and since I was speaking at a conference about AI in education over the weekend, it’s not surprising that it dominated my time last week. In fact, the Waymo car made its way into the talk of one of the other speakers. Think about this for a minute – the taxi business was upended by Uber about 15 years ago in the city that now is being taken over by driverless cars. In other words, Uber may be out of business soon in the city where it started, less than two decades before it made taxis nearly obsolete.
Much of my time in San Francisco was pondering the effects of technological change on society – and therefore on education – but even though my work days extended into the weekend conference days, I had a lot of time to fill.
So I noticed.
I noticed the art in the street – both commissioned and evoked.
I noticed the sun, giving enough warmth for me to wander without a jacket, so unlike the Northeast this winter, and making my hair seem blonder than it is in the dreary days of winter.
I noticed the landscape with its beauty of human and natural elements.
I filled time with noticing, reflection — AND still somehow committed to my goal of (re)connecting with women from my past, present, and hopefully, future.
Perhaps ironically, I had dinner with my first friend (literally, we met when I was 2ish), who actually doesn’t live in San Francisco but happened to be there on business, and I had breakfast with a relatively new friend, who lives outside the city and whom I’ve found through my professional network but has become more than just a professional colleague to me. At both of these shared meals, I ended up reflecting on my project of filling time. How do I want to fill time is a question that is linked to what fulfills me as an individual – especially if it’s not about my kids and not about my profession. One of my two friends has a clear answer to that. She has for years. She owns who she is and she leans into the thing(s) that make her whole outside of work. I admire her. The other friend was less sure, and she helped me to realize that I’m on a journey that may continue for quite some time. I admire her too.
My friends help me reflect on myself, and for now, I realize that in the mean(filling)time, I’m committed to noticing – because that practice may help me to figure out what fills my time in the future.
My Nana loved baseball. When I visited her house as a child, the sounds of the Baltimore Orioles filled the air, sometimes coming from the TV, but more often than not from her small, portable radio with its big black dials. At night the voices of the announcers, full of static, lulled me to sleep as I stared at a shrine of Orioles memorabilia on the shelf in the guest room. A signed baseball, a pennant, an orange and black pom-pom, and a Cabbage Patch doll in a Baltimore uniform all testified to the fact that my Nana was a true fan. She loved the Orioles and her “sons” (as my mom called them), Rick Dempsey and Cal Ripken, and she also loved the game.
Because my parents did not follow professional sports, it was Nana who took me to my first baseball game, where the nine-year-old in me sat, bored by the rain delay and the incessant “removal and replacement of the tarp” on the field. That game ended after several interminable hours in an unimpressive 1-0 score, and it would be nearly two decades until I attended another game. My personal apathy, however, never deterred Nana from talking to me about baseball, and I learned a lot from her that eventually led to my watching Cal Ripken, Jr. break Lou Gherig’s record for consecutive games played with my college boyfriend. A few years later I married that boy, and I became a Mets fan by association.
My husband adopted the Mets in the 1980s, the heyday of Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling, and a slew of other great players. Like my Nana, my husband was (and is) a true fan – of the team and also of the game. I often joke that anyone who is a Mets fan is actually a true baseball fan; you must love the sport to be disappointed year after year after year and still come back to cheer the team (IYKYK).
I joined the club in the mid-2000s when another round of great players made it fun to watch the game. Wright, Reyes, Beltran, and Delgado kept me company during a summer of bedrest at the beginning of TwinLife, and even though the Mets ended in an incredible collapse that year, I crossed over into true fandom. My son is now carrying the torch, and watching the Mets is a family affair. My husband and I even trekked into Queens to see a game during our very first weekend of FillingTime as empty-nesters.
Because we are fans, when I learned that Gary, Keith and Ron, the great announcers for the Mets, would be speaking in our area, I bought tickets. I figured it would be a great way to fill time. And it was.
For a little over an hour, we listened to them share stories about the Mets. Their lives as Mets players and announcers paralleled my husband’s fandom, as well as my own. We laughed at their sibling-like relationship, reminisced alongside them, and I even teared up a bit when they described moments – like Santana’s no hitter – that were important in my family’s history. They were honest, down-to-earth, and joyful, and it made being an insufferable Mets fan simply Amazin’.
I know that the Mets will be part of FillingTime for years to come. I’m sure my Nana is smiling down at me. I know she would be pleased I turned into a baseball fan, and I know she would be elated that I root against the Yankees — just like she did!
Filling Time: TwinLife Empty-Nesting 