Cosmic Prose

Natasha Regehr

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You asked…

May 28, 2021 / / 2 Comments

14 months since our first school closure in March 2020, my government has finally asked for my opinion about the matter. Here it is.

Dear Mr. Ford,

Thank-you for your recent letter inviting responses to your questions regarding school re-opening in Ontario.  

I am an elementary educator and have seen firsthand the effects of crowded classrooms, inadequate facilities, understaffed buildings and under-funded programs.  Many of these issues predate COVID-19, and their effects have only multiplied under the additional stresses of pandemic conditions.  As teachers we have tried our best under difficult circumstances to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for our students — and we have tried in vain.

I teach in a portable with 28 students.  The desks are so close together that I have to walk sideways to pass between them.  In what other situation would such an environment be considered safe for anyone? I teach in a school of 400 with only two small washrooms.  Most of the classrooms don’t have sinks, and those we do have are unusable because of mould issues.  In what other situation would such facilities be considered hygienic?  We have footsteps painted on our floors and walkways indicating a distance of two metres — and four children lined up in between each one, because a line-up of properly-distanced children would send us around the block.  The masks, the children’s sole remaining layer of protection, come off twice a day while students sit side by side eating their lunches.  How many restaurants are allowed to function right now under similar circumstances?

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A Holiday Sing-Along

April 5, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Twice this year, classes in my school have had to quarantine for the holidays due to positive COVID test results in the building. I wrote this little ditty over the Christmas break, and added a special Easter update today. Feel free to sing along.

 I wore my goggles and my mask: 
   Somebody sneezed on me!
 I sanitized my withered hands: 
   Somebody sneezed on me!
 I don't have plexiglass
 In my cramped, crowded class:
 I stepped sideways, but alas!
   Somebody sneezed on me. 

     Now we're getting COVID for Christmas,
      Students and teachers are mad.
     We're getting COVID for Christmas,
      'Cause Dougie's been nothing but bad.
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Réveillon

December 28, 2020 / / 1 Comment 
 Ce virus minuscule
     se propage
   sur les ailes de notre liberté
 Enferme-le en nous enfermant
    Sans ailes
       nous tous
            tomberont
  
 Cette piqure magique:
      notre seule arme
   contre l'envahissement de notre habitat natal
 Sorciers, sorcières, donnez-la-nous,
    Nous, les becs ouverts
        dans le nid de notre folie
  
 Et puis, ayant été piqués,
     nos corps tremblants se lèveront
   Nos plumes repousseront
          Nous nous percherons
                 vacillant
              au bord de l'inconnu
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2020 Gratitude List: A Covid Thanksgiving

October 14, 2020 / / 3 Comments

Did you know that Daniel Defoe, author of the iconic Robinson Crusoe, also wrote a chilling Journal of the Plague Year? This year’s Gratitude List is a sort of Plague Journal as well, with a five-month preface and a seven-month inventory of hidden kindnesses in changing times.

And so, from 2019’s indoor festivals to 2020’s back yard Thanksgiving, here are 578 tiny treasures from an otherwise tumultuous year:

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Coronaware: A Story of Malaise

May 26, 2020 / / 1 Comment

In the beginning we had Fear.  Fear and Novelty.  And that amounted to a bracing dose of quasi-Solidarity.

The fear was first conceived as mild disinterest in a foreign malady that would never find its way Here.  It gestated in the womb of skepticism (“This will not affect us.  We are different.”) and false reassurance (“We learned from SARS.  We are prepared.”).  And then, suddenly, driving home from a normal day of work, we heard government announcements of a province-wide shut-down.  States of emergency.  Clean out your desk.  Tomorrow will be your last day.

“We heard government announcements of a province-wide shut-down.”

That was when the Fear was birthed, attended by financial panic and the stomach-gutting realization that People Would Die.  Real people.  Our people.  Right here.  Everywhere.  Store shelves emptied as the masses stockpiled toiletries in preparation for Armageddon.  Doors closed.  Everything stopped.  It was Unreality, unfolding in unreal time.  Things changed hour by hour.  We hovered, breathless, over our devices, awaiting the latest statistics.  Following the spread from one network to another, and eventually to Here.  These are “unprecedented times,” said our bewildered advisers.  We slept last night, and woke this morning in a blind Unknown.

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Seasoned Greetings: The Power of One

February 6, 2020 / / 0 Comments

“Happy New Year.”

We say it every year, to pretty much everyone we see, because that’s the thing to say in January.  Do we mean it?

Well, of course, to some extent.  Who doesn’t have a generic sense of goodwill towards the world at large after several weeks of holiday indulgences? Who doesn’t support the idea of a year of happiness to replace the year of whatever-it-was that just concluded?

But really, much like with “How are you?” and other empty social conventions, we aren’t particularly interested in the type of year most people have just had, nor in the particularities of the year ahead of them.  We just want a seasonal alternative to “Hi!”

We may gaze fondly at our dearly beloveds at 11:59 on December 31 and offer them our affectionate good wishes.  We may encourage those closest to us to pursue their dreams with optimism.  But in general, we settle for a blanket “Happy New Year,” spread with equal (dis)interest over great populations of distant acquaintances, and consider our festive duty done.

In my family, this annual dissimulation of goodwill has traditionally taken the form of a “Family Letter” reminding others of our largely unchanging existence; and being a literary type, I am often the one tasked with trying to make our lives sound interesting.  My earnest attempts at creativity have included detailed profiles of each family member, illustrated by elaborate collages and laced with carefully-crafted witticisms.  The resulting epistle was typically sent to Everybody, with instructions to pass it on to Everybody Else.  It was posted on social media, and maybe on my blog.  Just to make sure that Every Possible Person had access to my self-absorbed ramblings. 

But this year I did something different.

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Love in the Form of Snowsuits

December 27, 2019 / / 2 Comments

Substitute teaching in a variety of locations has a way of opening one’s eyes to realities we may overlook when we spend much of our professional life in the same building. Sometimes a trip across town is a greater leap than a voyage abroad. This reflection takes a hard look at issues of equality in Canadian schools.

I recently walked into a Grade 3 French immersion classroom in a rural community.  The students greeted me with rosy cheeks and cheery smiles as they walked in the doors and peeled off their abundant snowsuits.  They immediately went about the serious business of being obedient schoolchildren.  They hung on my every word (partly because I spent a good part of the morning impersonating Red Riding Hood in French, and partly because it was their natural habit of mind). 

The most challenging students in the room were two boys who were obsessed with measuring things and doing puzzles.  I had to confiscate their tape measure at one point because they were estimating and checking when they were supposed to be writing stories.  I commented that one of the mathematicians may want to consider being an engineer one day (at this point he was using the springing function of the tape measure to carefully propel objects across his desk).  “No,” he said.  “I want to be a farmer.  My dad wants to take over my grandpa’s farm, and then I’m going to be a farmer, too.  I really want to be a farmer.”

The picture of wholesomeness.

The next day I walked into a Grade 3 classroom in an English school in an urban neighbourhood on the literal “wrong side of the tracks.”  A little girl in a pink coat was curled up in fetal position on the carpet, and remained there, unmoving, until I left.  “Give me back my g**d**m slime!” exclaimed another girl, flopped on a bean bag, grinning feverishly.  Little boys ran around in their stocking feet, sugaring themselves with Christmas treats at 9am. 

“Is there anything I should know?” I asked the teacher. 

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Arriving at HOME on left: Wordless

November 3, 2019 / / 5 Comments

When I moved to Morocco in 2015, every day held a story that I was eager to share with anyone who cared to read. By contrast, returning to Canada in 2019 has left me largely wordless. I had not written a thing since my return, when I came across a “receiving letter” that my thoughtful employers had written for all departing staff before we left. The idea was to prepare us, and the people who care about us, for the “reverse culture shock” that was about to hit us when we returned to a home that no longer felt like home. Here is that letter, and the thoughts it provoked.

So here it is: all that I have left unsaid since the day four months ago when I made my last voyage between the two places that have been home to me for the last four years: one, the place of my upbringing and my roots, the other, the place of my uprooting, and re-rooting, my redefinition of myself as “one who goes forth.”

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2019 Gratitude List

October 18, 2019 / / 0 Comments

What a year.

So many changes.  So much growth. Such very different lives.

Here, just a few days late, is my annual Gratitude List.  A few items a day, for 365 days, to breathe a little positivity into the last wakeful moments of each evening.  

What varied worlds this list represents, and what unexpected appreciations.  At the beginning, Devan getting me “Mr. Propre” (Moroccan Mr. Clean) to save me an unpleasant outing to the grocery store on a Monday night; at the end, the sounds of laughter around my mom’s table, with all of the family gathered for our first Thanksgiving together in four years.  In between, everything from donkey treats to doodle books.

Intrigued? Walk with me through a year of thankfulness:

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