Teaching Out Loud
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
You will ask:
Did she go willingly or was she taken? The story goes, at least the one version we’ve all heard, the one we tell and retell, that she was kidnapped… that the maiden Persephone was out in a field picking flowers, narcissus blooms as it is told, when the earth opened up and she fell into a pit, led into the Underworld by Hades, the King of the Dead and forced to stay there against her will.
Today is a good day to be born.
I write this in my journal every day for a week as I sit anxiously across from my daughter Ali, who at 40 weeks is more pregnant than she’s ever been.
Her first child, Tyler, was due on May 31, 2012, only he arrived two months early. Ali called me in Philadelphia from her home in Boston late in March to tell me that she thought she’d peed herself.
Father’s Day is always rough for people who have had difficult relationships with their fathers. But this year was particularly difficult for me because of Facebook.
First, I posted my daily haiku as part of a challenge I had take on January 1stto write a haiku a day for a year. Here is what I posted. I called it Father’s Day.
There was a very special commercial sponsored by the NFL during the Superbowl XLIX. It was a public service announcement against domestic violence. It was a pretty chilling spot and it was very effective too. Only thing is, not that many people saw it.
It aired right before the halftime show, immediately following Seattle’s touchdown with 2 seconds left in the second quarter that left everyone I was watching the game with screaming for joy or in disgust, depending on which team they were rooting for.
But I saw it.