A Foggy Perspective: A Slice of Life

Writing teachers need to write themselves.

I am participating in the Slice of Life 2015 Challenge, 

where I attempt to write stories and narratives about moments in my life.

I apologize if this blog post veers off the informative "literacy lens" I usually write through.

This month I am pretending to be a writer, for my students' benefit (and my own).

Writers write. 

#SOL15

     Every morning, my kids and I drive back to my childhood home.  They call it Grandma's house, but it will always be my old house.  I drive the same streets that I drove back when I first got my license, and before that the same same streets I roller-skated down.  I know these streets very well.  

     This morning, they seemed unknown.  

     "Mommy, where is everything?" my son asked while looking out the window.

      It did seem as if a giant blanket of gray was covering the old neighborhood.  Fog had turned our normal drive into a slightly surreal experience.  We quite literally had our heads in the clouds.  Streets mysteriously stopped right before my eyes, but then appeared if we went a little farther.  The trees by the "big hill" seemed more like woods from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.  The most unusual sight, though, was when I was getting my kids out of the car and a train came by on its regular schedule.  Yet, when I turned my head, the train was completely invisible.  How does an entire train still thunder down the tracks but get hidden from sight?  Fog.  

     It made me think about perspective.  The perspective that we have is based around the experiences we have had, and the schema we hold.  It is affected by the information we have about a topic, just as much as by the information we are missing.  When we read a story and find a strong character voice, or find thoughts or feelings of the characters and can see through their eyes, we are often noticing their perspective.  

     This morning, those streets that I have lived on for years seemed foreign to me.  They were strange and unknown, and they seemed different.  My perspective had temporarily changed.  And then, the fog lifted.  By the time I got home, they were back to normal.  They became my old neighborhood once again.

      It made me stop and think.  How often does my perspective get clouded, and I don't even notice it?  How many times have I seen things one way, because a fog was over my eyes due to stress, or weariness, or pride?  What helps me keep the fog at bay so that I can see the perspective of others?  Beyond the fog lies clarity. I hope that I have the patience to wait for it to lift and see things with a clear mind when it matters the most.