Month: January 2026

January 8, 2026

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

I step into the crowded kindergarten room and close the door. I glance over at the snippy snappy little one sitting in the corner who is watching me as I enter; the same girl who questioned whether or not I was possibly, ‘God’ or maybe just ‘old’ back in the halcyon days of September.

She looks at me and says, ‘Mrs. Algarin, you again?’

I sigh and look at the ceiling. I respond, ‘Child, I am here to the bitter end’. My response sounds weary. I am weary.

‘Oh’ she answers. She also sounds tired.

I suspect she is severely disappointed.

January 7, 2026

~ 690saintpaul ~ Leave a comment

A hearty voice booms out a cheery greeting to someone I can’t see…a conversation continues down the hallway and fades. I can’t know the outcome because I am in the other room. Who spoke? Are there plans for lunch?

January lunch; we charge against the wall of grey cold with strong food. Armed with only a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich on rye crisped in curried butter, a bowl of cold and snappy sharp vinegary coleslaw served up with a mug of black coffee with fresh cream; we drink the boiled strong liquid and click the metal spoon against the bowl.

This is a gut cleansing lunch meted out in bits and bursts and bayonets, heated up with friendship and all the talk of the upcoming storm, politics and the football playoffs.

Back in the other empty room where I remain alone, I imagine the winter battlefield…good eats and caffeinated steam rising up beyond the window and over the dirty edge of the Genesee River.

We ready ourselves for January’s continued onslaught.

January 6, 2026

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This is how I remember feeling most of the time growing up; the long January stretch during the winter’s duration when activities slowed down, retreat hung heavily on the branches of the bending trees, and the sounds of a lone neighbor chopping at the ice on a sidewalk were the only street noise.

Life was an odd combination of terror and invigoration…wanting to remain forever under thick blankets while at the same time wanting to stand outside late at night, when the snow actually crackled and split with cold; on those bitter evenings when I stood in the driveway for as long as I could; watching the empty chairs seated in the warm interior of the house, steam freezing on the windows; the porch screen door blanketed in sheets of white frozen wisp and stuck against the jamb.

Watching blue snow glitter brightly under the moon…eating scalding French fries with spicy mustard out of a paper cup as I walked home over the bridge; listening for the single strand of water still surging under the frozen water.

I could not feel the tips of my fingers while my tongue burned…lonely, under a winter white orb.

January 5, 2026

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I glance at this new group of children planted in a neat and gentle circle around me. I look down at my paper. There are nine names on a list. Five students stare quietly at me. Four are missing. I don’t know any of them. They have no idea who I am. We are nearing the end of September and it has taken this amount of time to meet them.

Their lunch schedule was set and then altered and then an additional school meeting was added and the schedule changed again just for Wednesdays…and then one more burdensome change piled on because of logistics and support and crowding and the usual ‘what all’. ‘What all’…that beleaguered phenomenon which leaves everyone exhausted and young innocent bystanders under educated.

So here we are on a cold Friday afternoon in the final days of the month, all looking at each other.

A half hour earlier, I waited at the edge of the door and heard the name ‘Maria!’ float out of the classroom. I chose not to help myself and I immediately broke out into song. ‘Maria! I just met a girl named Maria!’…the classroom teacher, a pleasant newcomer from Brazil glanced nervously over at me; very puzzled. I attempted an explanation. ‘Do you know that song from ‘Westside Story’? It’s very famous’. He shook his head quietly and continued to call out the names of those students condemned to follow the strange singing teacher out into the hallway.

I continued to try. ‘I can break into song, anytime, anywhere and I don’t care what anyone thinks’. ‘Ah’ he responded simply. Too much. Too many hurdles and crossed wires for this new teacher to grasp. I gambled with creative social interaction and lost.

A little one joined my growing line of children and said softly, ‘I’m Maria’.

Finally seated at the circular table in my room, my eyes fall on two beautiful boys whose appearance is significantly different than the others. I prod carefully, stepping cautiously through and around the English language to figure out where they are from. ‘No Puerto Rico…Ecuador. We are from Ecuador’. They look so similar and I inquire again. ‘Are you brothers?’ The one wearing the grey sweatshirt takes the lead in speaking for the duo. ‘No, we are friends’. ‘Friends!’ repeats the other. The thicker one points to his chest with his thumb. His eyes are onyx and his hair jet black. His buddy has a shockingly thick black curl in the middle of his forehead. The two boys share mountain blood; thickened with cold, pristine air, climbers…ancient Andean highlands….such a long, long way from home. Brothers indeed.

I’m searching madly for a point of connection. I look at Maria and burst out into song again. She grins shyly. ‘You sure you never heard it?’ She shakes her head and I continue. ‘Well, if you go to New York you can see it in a show. You’re famous, you know’. Bingo. I’ve found the connecting thread between all of us…all of a sudden. She looks up at me and responds with enthusiasm. ‘Hey. All of my family lives in New York’. ‘They do?’ I inquire. ‘In Washington Heights? Brooklyn? Manhattan?’ Her eyes light up. ‘Yes! Yes, Manhattan!’ The boy with the onyx eyes jumps in, ‘Brooklyn!’ I look at him. ‘You came from Brooklyn?’ He places his chubby, strong thumb on the table. ‘Ecuador. Brooklyn. Ro CHESTER’. He looks much more secure and comfortable now that we have this geographic question cleared up. I look at the others and we go around the circle…’Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Puerto Rico…’ The children have visibly relaxed and settled in their chairs.

We have everyone labeled now…the briefest glimpse into how they are here. In my circle. On a cold September Friday afternoon when the sun has turned into amber shades and the sweatshirts have come out. ‘I used to live in Manhattan, too’ I smile. ‘So now we are all friends…brothers’ and we begin the lesson…

January 4, 2026

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‘Mrs. Algarin! Mrs. Algarin!’ I hear a small voice screaming through the wind across the parking lot as I exit my car. I turn around. I see him, this chunky wonderful little boy on his bike. It is an exceptionally cold day to ride a bike.

He wobbles and propels himself forward on his machine. The bike is a bright green hornet sheen. He uses training wheels; a third grader with training wheels. But then, he is new to all of this.

He’s landed here in the midst of a stranger world; the world of Campbell Street and urban chaos and the failing vagaries of public education. He comes from far, far away. So far, far away.

‘Good morning! How are you?’ I call out. ‘Yes’ he answers. His father, small in stature and bent over his phone, holding up mightily against the wind, this man who only recently resided in mountainous lands with the winds and skies of a thousand years, greets me carefully. ‘Good morning’.

I hold my breath as the little boy teeters on the edge of the sidewalk, coming far too close to the edge where cars slide quickly by. The drivers see him but it’s still unsettling for me to watch.

He speeds up, peddling as fast as his chubby legs will carry him and he careens into the school parking lot.

Now he’s to the right of me and I get a better look at him. He’s wrapped up well against the cold. He’s wearing trendy sneakers, a down jacket and he is riding that cool bike. This family appears to have blended quickly into the new and strange culture; for survival and pleasure.

‘Hello again!’ I say. ‘Is that a new bike?’ He looks directly at me and answers, ‘Yes!’ ‘Well I really like it” I answer. ‘Thank you’ he responds. So we have obviously made some progress with English.

I look back and wave to his Dad before I head to the entrance door; but he is still hunched over his phone, this man from the mountains and a thousand years.

The boy steers left with the bike, heading toward the fence which opens onto the playground; so, so close to where there was a deadly shooting last weekend.

‘See you later, alligator!’ I yell out and against the early morning dank and the cement and wind and the empty playground with the swings.

He is silent. Why would the teacher be talking about an alligator?

January 3, 2026

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‘My goodness, you’re tall!’ he said while reaching across the table length for a cocktail napkin. ‘I mean tall in a good way, I mean’. He faltered slightly.

‘Thank you’, she replied. ‘I work hard at it’.

He looked at her.

“Work hard at what?’ He seemed genuinely puzzled.

‘At being tall’, she countered, reaching for her own napkin.

‘I work hard at being tall’.

He looked down at his plate and spent what felt to him to be an inordinate amount of time working out the patterns of food spread in front of him.

Dip, chips, mini-sandwiches, over priced water crackers; a glob of cheese spread at the plate’s edge. Looking up at her sheepishly, he tried again.

‘So, what do you do?’

She turned slightly to the left of him and glanced out over his shoulder at nothing. ‘I work at being tall’, she said. ‘I work very hard’.

It was the sort of conversation which at the root of it, lay far down the twisting rabbit trail of wanting to be anywhere else.

She stared out the large window at the edge of the snow covered balcony; the sloping yard sliding down to the edge of the grey crusted road edge. A lone bird swooped in the distance; buffeted against an icy wind.

It was the usual wintry day in January.

Perhaps today might be the day to learn to begin to spin sugar webs.

Standing resignedly at this rather vaguely appointed cocktail party, she decided it was time to leave.

She drifted quietly, web like…away from the table.

January 2, 2026

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In the icy cold dawn, I dreamt of Norway and found myself suddenly, willingly back on that train.

And you were there, of course. Opening and closing your wallet. The leather billfold shifting between your hands, as you kept us nervously in hand. Cajoling, convincing us to eat the freshly prepared reindeer in the dining car; meat marinating in gamey red peppers, and we could barely bring ourselves to do it.

And then, as the train rumbled along the length of the slowly rising mountainous track you called out, ‘Look! Look over there. Look!’ And we two siblings shoved over to the window and there in the middle of a brilliantly sage kiwi grassy meadow, rising out of sunny mists by the fjords…those stunning fjords…there was a child standing and waving madly at the train.

A blond headed cherub wearing a bright red woolen sweater; stood firm in a ray of Norwegian sunshine, watching and waving madly with abandon.

‘Wave! Wave back!’ and we obediently motioned back with all our might. Our happy efforts flowed out to him a split second before our long black train slid deftly into the cavernous mountains and I knew then as I know now that it was a snapshot I would never take.

I will never see that child again.

And as for you…well, for now you are gone; resting quietly on the other side of the veil and the darkened mirror.

But this is temporary of course, and the long black train still runs.

I reside in the Empire State, but I would rather be, for all the world riding on that line winding between Oslo and Bergen, waving madly at the child in the bright red sweater; the little one I can no longer see.

January 1, 2026

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Driving the edge of the white flattened field; the tires hug the fine line between road and sloping dirt, tar and frozen earth.

The wide stretch of empty land is dotted with sharp beige stubs of cut corn stalks and vegetation, remnants of the past growing season, silent and dead as they lie stiff under the birthing sky of the new year.

A brutal burst of frigid air rises up rapidly from the ground and disperses frantically, widely…churning up mini whirly waughs of swirling snow, spinning like miniature tornadoes over patches of earth. To observe, to peer even for a moment inside the power of the icy gyrating air is to be witness to one of the mysteries of winter.

The road widens ahead of the car, leading toward the dark and jagged line of black and bare trees; the icy steam of frozen ozone rises into the sky; the tree line celebrates the beginning of the new year, clad in a smoking jacket, the upper growth puffing amiably above the earth’s flooring.

Sentinels rising up against the line of the field; the blackened trees put a stop, present an obstacle to the eternal spread of abandoned white fields and flatness.

They are our friends, these trees standing firm on this first day of the new year; planted decades ago by good souls; those determined individuals nurturing woodlands under whose shade they knew they would never take repose. These trees and those far away people; excellent beginnings today when the morning temperature rests at a chilly negative one; as the wind chill snarls around seeking whom it may devour.

Heading for the blackened tree line where our kindred spirits await…as the road widens ahead, leaving behind that which we know.