Inside Me

                                                       Inside Me

Inside me is Mother Nature's friend

   who struggles with making good environmental choices.

Inside me is a vegetarian

   who loves a great cheeseburger.

Inside me is an animal lover

   who doesn't think twice about killing a spider.

Inside me is a  bird lover

   who thinks starlings should be shot.

Inside me is a recycling genius

   who has been known to use paper plates for parties.

Inside me is an organic gardener

   who will treat roses with systemic insecticide.

Inside me is an opponent of genetic modification

   who loves her golden doodle.

Inside me is a person who wants to do right

   who is really just a human struggling with choices.

Where I Am From

Where I Am From

                 Deb Covey

I am from my grandmother's lap and my grandfather's alcoholism.

I am from having a brain that questioned the rules of a small conservative town that was diverse-less.

I am from a very generous, caring  family that thought I was a weirdo hippy.

I am from a high school where freshman initiation was applauded and included debasement.

I am from a town of girls that thought having a boyfriend was more important than academics.

I am from a college that embraced me, even when I turned my back on it to have too much fun.

I am from the school where I met the guy who changed my life.

I am from young love and yearning that went too far.

I am from young motherhood and marriage where I learned to "deal with it".

I am from a marriage with a husband that works too late and loves too little.

I am from children who paid attention and had good manners and loved their mother with all of their hearts.

I am from the heartbreak of children moving away to the big city.

I am from the worry of the mother of a gay child.

I am from reinvention in my later years.

I am from a father who empowered me by his love and left me to die.

I am from all of the women before me who made me who I am.

Memoir Writing

 

 

                                                                             Reinvention

     Preparation for the trip was enough to jar me senseless.  Why is it that there is always twice as much work to do prior and post travel for work.  Considering I am a fairly organized person I should be able to get this easily.   Maybe it was the excitement of the chase, or the vision of freedom from dull work-a-day business at hand.  Fear might be a factor as well.  I pulled up my bootstraps and got ready to embark on a mission that five years prior I would have never imagined for myself.

     The plane smelled awful, the seats were tight, and the lady next to me was a clown.  Really, she was a clown. She had her trunk packed and ready to go to her own convention in New York City. Unaccustomed to wearing suits here to fore I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the jacket while on the plane.  Never in my life time did I imagine that I would be travelling to New York, alone, for the world’s largest book convention, Book Expo.  The trip was a short two hours, that clown was interesting!  We were served lasagna, yes that was when they served you meals on planes and your luggage got to ride for free. When we weren’t talking, I looked around the plane to enjoy a little people watching, I love to watch people.  Although this was only 15 years ago it was before we had to check out all of our “plane neighbors” to be sure they didn’t intend to send our plane into a tower or oblivion.  It was a simpler time.  As we began our descent I began to get really anxious, ok, I got to the airport and got on the plane, but now how would I ever find a taxi and get to the hotel?  And where on earth was the hotel, I began to pull my little map out so that I could feel somewhat in charge of my travel.

     Leaving the plane I noticed a stream of people walking toward something quickly, maybe baggage or food, I decided to follow because I didn’t know what else I would do.  We did end up in Baggage Claim so all was well.  Having grown up in a very small town, I don’t know a stranger, so instead of walking around and searching the huge, gray airport to look for a taxi, I just asked someone.

     Entering the cab I felt like I was stepping into someone from Ghana’s home.  The air was tinged with the smell of a forward incense and decorations abounded.  Please take me to Chelsea I said, here is the address.  The smile that met my request was so sweet and open that I felt at ease immediately.  “Are you here for a vacation?” my driver asked. “No, I’m here for a business trip.” I returned, as I felt little shivers all over me.  Was I excited or nervous, or both I asked myself.  Who would have dreamed that my love of books could have brought me to this moment?  Sure, I felt trepidation also I was very proud of my accomplishments.

     My bio might have read; first decade - small town girl meets boy and after graduation gets married, has three children, and becomes a crazy-stay-at home mom; second decade- kids want to go to college mom has to work, what will I do with myself?  I love reading so how about working in a bookstore? Great, applied for a job, was hired, had a good work ethic and gift for matching the right book with the right person.  Rather surprisingly in six months I became the buyer of half of the books for a 50K title store.  I loved it.

     Settled in to my hotel I decided it was time to hit the streets and find the Javits Center and Book Mecca.  Walking was my choice of transport because I wanted to see everything, and do everything.  At the Javits, on the escalator looking down on the publishers wares and the hundreds of other book people I thought, wow you really made it.  I have to confess to a little Mary Tyler Moore moment there.  I surprised myself and everyone who knew me as the quiet stay-at-home mom from a small town.

     Decade three: Amazon kills the books business and I again have to reinvent myself by asking myself what I loved most about being an executive.  Was it the money, the travel, or the suits?  Was it free dinners, conventions, free books?  No, I am, and always have been driven by a love for reading.  A few zillion courses and I will soon have my reading licensure and my Masters of Literacy and I couldn’t be more proud.

 

 

 

 

Deb

Deb

caring, stubborn, tenacious, positive

wife and mother who deeply loves her family

lover of big people, little people and dogs of all sizes

who feels happy, sometimes sad and mostly calm

who fears death, cancer, and highway driving

proud to have accomplished a major career change

who would like to visit France, Italy and England

resided in Springboro, Ohio

Covey

bookseller turned teacher

Destined to Teach Reading

I had to think back a long, long way to identify what drove me to be a teacher.  My parents always told me that I should be a teacher, that it was a perfect career fit for me.  Unfortunately at the time that these decisions are actually made, I was at the height of my teenage angst. There was no way I was going to follow the career path that my parents had been suggesting to me for so many years.  My mother was a teacher, and at that point in my life I could only see myself as the polar opposite of my mother.  On the other hand, my grandmother whom I dearly loved was a teacher before she became a business woman.  I began my quest for a career or a husband, whichever came first, in the mid-seventies, when it was still a little bit strange for women to be taking a career path. 
     I knew that I loved English and I was drawn to kids, so I decided to become a child psychologist. Three years later I had a BA in Psychology, but they changed the requirements for a license to "hang a shingle on your office" to practice as a psychologist. So, I married my college sweetheart and followed his career and began a family.
     Years later my kids were grown and I yearned for a career.  I entered the publishing business and became a book buyer manager executive.  When books became numbers or widgits to some, and the meaningful discussion of literature succumbed to the pressure of the bottom line, I had to look myself in the eye and ask what I really loved about my career.
     My passion is for reading and sharing my love of reading with others.  On further reflection I remembered teaching my little brother to talk, and read, and write and I had an AHA moment as I realized that I wanted to spend he rest of my life sharing that love for the written word with children and young adults.  I have been teaching for three years now and I love every minute of it!

English Immersion

I was fortunate enough to be hired for a long term position teaching 9th and 10th grade English.  Of course I was a liitle worried when I found out that we would be beginning with Midsummer Nights' Dream in 10th grade and The Odyssey in 9th grade.

Second semester at the University of Dayton was keeping me busy as well as I studied for reading licensure.  It helped though because I knew how important background knowledge was going to be to the students before reading these texts.

In order to prepare the 10th grade we read about Shakepeare's background, the Globe Theater, Sonnets 18 and 130 (so we could compare and contrast them), Iambic Pentameter, we wrote our own sonnets, and had a Shakespeare festival so that we could understand the entertainment of the period.

The prep for 9th grade involved background on epic poems, gods and goddesses, mythology background, creating a poster about one god or goddess, and having dicussions about our favorite gods/goddesses/

After working on vocabulary for both readings our next step would be reading the texts!

I am looking forward to that but, the students are not!

Deb