Lesson Plans

Lesson 1: Friendship

Journal Prompt: Is it possible to become forever friends after just one lunch at Pizza Hut? Explain…
 
With toddler daughters in tow under the guise of a playgroup lunch we found ourselves seated next to each other. You and I traded mom-bits and new found wisdom while our two year old daughters, Hannah and Emily, traded olives and cheese.
 
Lesson: Connections are made in the unlikeliest places.
 
Practice: In your dusty blue Taurus we took the girls to Greensboro. I can’t remember why. On the way home they slept securely in car-seats, Big Bird and Barney clutched tightly in sticky toddler hands. The lump in my breast was undiagnosed when I reluctantly told you, my new best friend, my fear of what the doctor could find. You said, “Cancer won’t scare me away. I just want you to know that.”
 
Exit ticket: Define the word benign

Lesson 2: Birth

Journal prompt: Whose life begins at birth, the mother’s or the child’s?
 
You offered to help me birth my last child, to support and encourage me, guide me drug free on my last trip through the wormhole.
 
Lesson: Strength isn’t about muscles, or reps, or steel. No, it’s breath and blood and the tight cord that binds women who walk the same journey.
 
Practice: You in my face, bright green eyes locked on mine. “Breathe” you chanted over and over. You held my hand and cried when Sophie drew in her first lung full of air and wailed the pitiful sweet sound of new life. Then you were gone. You let a new family join – connect.
 
Extension: I cannot look at Sophie without thinking about you – “Breathe”.

Lesson 3: Loss
Journal prompt: Write about someone you’re afraid to lose.

You grew up alongside the Missouri river. In the river, you played. In the river, an arrogant corporation dumped their chemicals and those chemicals altered your white blood cells, left you fighting, frightened, and bald.
 
Lesson: Your hair is growing back, soft and silky. Your determination to live and sue the shit out of that company sustains the fire in your belly. I know what courage looks like.
 
Practice: I wanted to tell you that cancer won’t scare me away, but we live too far from each other now and contact and connections are sporadic and brief. Last night I dreamt of you and me. I got to hold you in my arms and we wept. In my dream, you were small and blonde like Sophie when she was born.
 
Extension: I’m sorry I can’t be there to help you through your wormhole.