I guess I incurred this risk when we interviewed my fellow teacher and director Linda Smith. At the conclusion of her interview, she took the tape recorder from me and put me in the hot seat. So here I am, unexpectedly being interviewed by the oral history class.

I've been teaching about ten years. I came to teaching a little bit later in life; I was in my forties when I went back to school to get my credential. I went to UC Irvine for my teaching credential, but I've been a student at quite a few schools. I'm from New York, so most of my schooling was there. I eventually got a Master's degree from Syracuse University, and I got my Bachelor's degree at Albany. But I wasn't one of those people who just buzzed right through school. I went, I quit, I worked, I went back. We're talking years.

In the early seventies, I was a receptionist in a big office on North Michigan Avenue. My main job was to sit there lookin' gorgeous. Every now and then I would get up and serve coffee to the men. I was also a secretary at many different places. My typing skills served me very well. And after I got my master's degree in public administration, I was employed by the City of Syracuse and then I went to work for the Central New York Regional Transportation Authority, basically a bus company. Later, I was a consultant for a while.

And I spent plenty of time as a temp. You know what a temp is? It's when you don't want to commit to a real job, but you need money, so you register with an agency, they test you to see what your skills are, and then they call you for a short-term job. It's kind of like being a substitute teacher, except it's for a different kind of job. So I had a lot of very unusual jobs as a temp. One of the weirdest jobs I had was to investigate to see if people were abusing food stamps in Binghamton, New York. They gave me food stamps and I had to go into a market and try to buy cigarettes and luxury items with them to see if the store would allow me to break the rules like that. I thought I was like a secret agent, but in retrospect, it's pretty bizarre.
Other examples? I gave out samples of pizza in a supermarket on Erie Boulevard. I processed orders for plumbing supplies. I typed up building specifications for a couple of architects. I filed medical records and helped people fill out forms for new bank accounts. It was all meaningless.

I worried about it, too. I really didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and I realized I was wasting time. I made jokes about it. People would ask me, "What do you do?" And I'd tell them I was a temporary girl in a temporary life. But let's face it. It wasn't that funny.

To this day, I believe that not everyone can take a direct path to their true calling. Some of us need to flounder around. There's a lot of pressure on kids at an early age. What're you gonna major in? What do you wanna do with your life? God, I don't know! It takes some time. Sometimes you have to try different paths before you know what's right for you.

But I did spend a lot of time being a flake. Looking back, there are so many things I wish I had learned and done during those years. I wish I could make music, for example. I have so much awe and respect for anyone who can play an instrument well. If I had picked up a guitar and started learning back then, I might know something by now. I can't imagine what that would be like…

Well, my daughter takes violin lessons. She gets to do all the things I wish I had. And I'm very proud of her.

Being Italian? My father was Italian, and my mother was Jewish, but my family was very troubled. There were a lot of fights, a lot of sadness. It didn't feel Italian in a very joyful way. My mother's parents wouldn't even speak to her for a long time because she married my father, and my parents were always fighting. My father was a very hard-working man who didn't have much time for fun and festivity. He used to say that he was riding a tiger and couldn't get off.

He was a wonderful cook. He made pizza, pasta…those kinds of things were Italian. And he spoke Italian with my grandfather. I wrote a story about that once called "The Secret Language" because that's what it was to me: it was a magical, secret language, and I wanted access to the world it led to. I didn't get that access until many years later when I found my Italian relatives in Italy and I went to Italy and met them. Sadly, it was long after my father had died, but I went for him and for my grandfather.
The idea is that you rewrite something that was painful for you. That's what I did. I am still in touch with those relatives in Italy. They are the family with whom I have no bad memories. And I love that Italian thing. I love it. But in some ways, it is a fantasy I created later in life.

I never learned to speak Italian, and I still regret that. When my father died, he was the last one in the family to know the language. He didn't think it was that important to pass it on to his kids. We lived in an English-speaking world.

My father was very big on school, God bless him. He felt it was the only way to get ahead. We were poor, but my father's values were: no matter what, you get an education, healthy food on the table, braces if you need 'em. He had good priorities. His life was a struggle and he wanted better for his kids. He thought learning Italian would be nice, sure, but it wasn't important and in fact, it had never helped him. There was a lot of prejudice against Italians when he was growing up.

How did I meet my husband? I met him when I was already thirty-one. This was after I had started working in the transit industry. I came out to California, and I didn't know what I was going to do when I got there. All I knew was that I had to get away from the dark, cold, dreary winters of Syracuse, New York. I was very fortunate. I think I had an angel on my shoulder. Doors opened for me.

Shortly after I arrived in California, I found a newspaper on the floor of a friend's house and started browsing through the want ads. There was an opening for a job that was very similar to what I had been doing in Syracuse. It had to do with transportation for elderly and handicapped people, sort of coordinating social service agencies and getting transportation for people with special needs. I applied for this job and they interviewed me, and I got the job. The boss was walking me around the office introducing me to people, and he introduced me to this man named Monte Ward. He was blonde, blue-eyed, and was very fit and athletic, a cyclist. I thought, "He is so gorgeous, but he would NEVER be interested in someone like me. What would we have in common?" I thought of myself as a plump woman from New York with high heel shoes and too much make-up. I remember I was wearing a blue suit, my job interview suit. I was told I would be taken more seriously if I wore a navy blue suit. This one was cheap and ill-fitting and I was always tugging at the skirt. But that's when I met Monte.

I was literally living out of my car then. I didn't actually have an address at that time. And Monte was very kind. I opened up the trunk of my car and showed him that I had all my stuff back there in trash bags. Hangers on the seat. Extra shoes on the back seat. I think it must have appealed to his protectiveness or something. Or maybe he just felt sorry for me, but he was really nice to me; he offered to show me around and help me get oriented. We started going for walks together because I was really interested in the outdoors, and there were beautiful hills on the periphery of Orange County, most of it part of the Irvine Ranch. And I said, "How do I get out there? I want to go and explore those hills." That really appealed to Monte, 'cause he'd been trespassing out there for years and knew it like the palm of his hand. I guess I just happened to find exactly the right person.

So we started walking together and that's how we became friends. It was very romantic. And then we started riding bikes together, too. Monte helped me get fit. It was like courtship in boot camp.

The story about the hairbrush? You still remember that from sixth grade? Okay. I had a best friend in junior high. I loved her. You know how you love your best friend? It's real love, a wonderful feeling. We did everything together. We used to lean back and look at the sky and think about what we might do in our lives. One of the things was we were gonna travel to Morocco someday. I wasn't sure where it was, but it sounded neat. We had a lot of adventures together. We rode our bikes and took long walks, and we used to make up stories and act them out. We did our homework together and played together.

You see, I was a late bloomer. I was a kid for a long time, not one of those girls who get interested in boys right away. I liked to make up stories and pretend. But I had skipped a grade, and I was younger than my friend. She became interested in boys before I did, and there was this boy named Bruce Morro. He started going out with her, and I felt so abandoned. All of a sudden, she wasn't available to me anymore. She was always doing things with Bruce. I felt very sad…and very angry. Maybe jealous. Finally, as you guys know, it just worked up to a point where I was irrational. We were on a class trip to Jones Beach. I saw them on their beach blanket together. I reached into my bag and pulled out my hairbrush, and I flung it at Bruce really hard! He sputtered at me, "If you weren't a girl…" He was furious, and he had a right to be.

See? One of the nice things about being a teacher is that you have an instant audience to listen to all your stories. I don't know why I remember all these things in such detail. It's like, "Cynthia, get a life. That was a very long time ago!" My childhood and adolescence were so traumatic, I think I'll spend the rest of my life repairing or reliving them in some way. And hopefully learning from them.

I started teaching at Dunn Middle School only last year. You guys were my first class here. Was I nervous? Yeah. I think no matter how long I've been teaching, the first day, the first week…I'll always feel nervous. I wonder, "Are these kids gonna like me?" Did it ever occur to you that your teachers care if you like them? And I always try to have more things planned than we could possibly do. I over-plan. I seem to have an irrational fear that there will suddenly be a block of empty time when there's nothing at all to do. That never happens anyway. There's always more to do than you could ever do. And I over-worry. That's just me.

What made me become a teacher? Well, one of the things was that my brother Eddie died. Well, let me back track. It seems to me that every seven years or so I go through a big change and I reassess. I examine my life a lot. And I wasn't really happy doing public administration. I had gone into that because I thought it would be a practical thing and I would always be able to get a job, but my heart wasn't in it. And then my brother died, and it was very sad for me. I just started thinking about life and wanting to do something more meaningful with my life. My brother Eddie loved kids. He was like a kid himself, in some ways. And I thought it would be neat in my brother's memory to do something that would impact kids in a positive way. I think one of the ways you deal with sorrow is to take that sadness and try to turn it into something good. And a lot of people used to see me reading stories, or just the way I was with my daughter, and they'd say, "You'd be a great teacher." So I thought maybe I would. And I went back to school when Miranda was in kindergarten. And I did it.

I am one of six kids. My oldest brother is twenty-one years older than my youngest brother. My brother Eddie was the second child, and he was a very funny, kind and creative person. He had the worst luck in the world, including being born with a terrible kidney disease. Nothing ever worked out right for him, he just never had a fair chance in life, and yet it never made him mean. He was so unique, and he had a gentle spirit. It's hard for me to talk about him.

The disease he had is called polycystic kidney disease. And it's a weird thing growing up in a family where you feel you're just lucky, and you can't fathom why. In a strange way, it puts pressure on you. I always wondered why it skipped me, and maybe I was supposed to do something really special with my life. It's hard to live up to that. And I never felt carefree. There's a kind of survivor guilt, I guess.

It's hard to lose a sibling. It's like losing a part of your history. I will always have a gap in my heart.

But I think growing up in a family with disease and tragedy made me realize at an early age that life isn't necessarily fair. It's kind of random, and not everyone gets a fair shake. I hope I have learned compassion from that.

My special place? I've had several in my life. When I was little, everything was special. That's the amazing thing about kids. I grew up on a pretty ugly street in Brooklyn: Coney Island Avenue. I went back about two years ago to take a look at it with Miranda and a couple of my friends from Santa Barbara. They were amazed that I grew up in such an ugly place. I was amazed, too! I never saw it that way. For me, that street was a special place. After it rained, it was the deck of a ship. Around the corner there was a lady who had a house where marigolds grew next to an anchor fence. There was a maple tree that I thought was my tree. Where I lived there were big tall buildings on top of stores, but "around the corner" there were nicer homes, and I loved to walk there. My friend and I played on the fire escape or the roof, believe it or not. And there was a beautiful park called Prospect Park. If you ever go to Brooklyn, check it out. It's still there. My sister Marlene and I used to pretend we were princesses in the park.

I remember the old men playing chess in the park, the ladies playing mahjong. Yeah, all that stuff. There were junk men. They would drive around with horse drawn wagons and they would collect old rags and things that people were throwing away. They actually had tin cans rattling around tied to their cart. There were people selling things in the street in the mornings: fish, produce. They would call out in a sing-song voice and you could hear them and gather your coins and go downstairs. Kids played jump rope and potsy and stick ball and giant steps. There was always some old Italian woman with her elbows on the window sill watching everything. There were real neighborhoods. I can't believe how much it's changed. It makes me feel very old.

And what about movie theaters? When I was a little girl, a matinee was about a quarter. I loved the smell of a theater, the cool darkness, the plush velvet seats. And of course I love movies. To this day, going to the movies is my favorite kind of date.

My special place when I worked in Chicago was the Art Institute. I had a room of Renoirs in there. I'd go in there to warm up because the sunlight from those paintings was so real, I could feel it on my skin. If you ever go to Chicago, please go to the Art Institute. It's on Michigan Avenue. Even on a snowy cold day, I would walk over there during my lunch break in my long wool coat and go look at the French Impressionist paintings. I would just stand there and look at these people from the nineteenth century with their rosy skin and sun-dappled worlds.

But you can't believe how cold Chicago gets! Cold is a feeling you forget. You forget how wicked it feels, how much it stings. I would be so cold, it would sting, and I'd have to wait for the bus and the el. I can't fully imagine it, but I know it was bad. Nothing else mattered but getting warm. I hate the cold. I will never live in a cold place again.

And in the city, it's not like this Currier & Ives Christmas print. The snow gets grimy. And slushy. And some of it is yellow. I remember in Brooklyn, my friend Carol and I got into making snowballs and throwing them at passing trucks. One day a guy screeched to a halt and started running after us.

But what is it about snow? You would know before you even opened your eyes in the morning that it had snowed. Quiet takes on a new meaning, and there's a different quality about the light, even under your eyelids and in your sleep. And that's a magic feeling. When you wake up to new snow. That's something you guys don't get here.

And then you listen to the radio and wait for them to call out your
school! P.S. 179 will be closed. SNOW DAY! Oh, what a delicious feeling.

The most amazing experience I ever had? Gosh, there have been so many. And I hope they aren't over. But one of the defining moments of my life was having the courage to come to California by myself. Doing something scary. Eleanor Roosevelt said, "You must do the thing you cannot do." That's what I did. It was very liberating for me. Being alone and not having anyone else to depend on and to figure out how I was going to survive and make a life for myself…

Advice? I never thought about what I'd say if someone asked me that. It's hard, because I'm full of advice. I'm really rather obnoxious in that way. But my advice to you is to do what you feel passionate about, to find that thing inside of you that makes you feel good, even if people tell you that's impractical, or it's a bad idea. If you feel really strongly about it, you should do it anyway. But don't ever forget that life is for learning and giving and sharing, and don't ever forget to have a heart and be kind.

My father worked so hard all his life and put his dreams on a shelf, which I don't think is good. That's why I say you should do what you feel passionate about. Don't neglect your dreams, but don't forget about other people, either. I cannot tell you how much I have been affected by having had two siblings who struggled with disease and illness and yet were wonderful people, and who were so terribly short-changed. That has affected me profoundly. I just don't take things for granted. And in some ways, it's made me very hard on myself. I don't think I contribute enough. That's my thing that I have to struggle with. I deal with that. It all goes back to family history. A lot of sad things happened in my family while I was growing up, and I was all the time watching.

So it makes me feel that life is hard. I've seen enough people be hurt. I don't want to add to the problem. If I can make it a little nicer, I want that to be my net effect.

A dream? I'd like to see the Northern Lights from way up north. I'd like to spend summer solstice in the land of the midnight sun. I want to learn to speak Italian. In fact, I want to have a glass of wine with Linda in a little café in Rome this summer.

This is one of my saving graces, and if I could give you a gift, it would be this: the ability to never stop dreaming, no matter what bad stuff happens to you. To wake up in the morning and say, "It's a new day. It's a new beginning." For some reason, I think when God dealt out the cards to me, that was one of the lucky ones I received. I refuse to be defeated. I am absurdly optimistic. I keep generating dreams. When you don't have something to look forward to, you feel depressed, and feeling depressed is too easy. It's a black hole. Don't go there.

Great moments in teaching? When the kids make me proud. And it ultimately always happens. There are days when everything is humming, and there are days when you feel like you're in the wrong job. But the kids bring you back. You may not realize it, but a real teacher puts his or her heart out there, and that makes you feel very vulnerable.

But in your life and your work, if you make yourself vulnerable and put your heart into it, that's when you reach the higher places. So I hope you find whatever it is for you and put your heart into it. It will be fun to watch you.