One of my former colleagues (now retired) always used to say, “They come, they go,” referring to the endless stream of students we see over the years. It was a way to cope with those awful days or those awful kids. Knowing that yes, it might be difficult in this moment, or even for this entire school year, but soon it will be over, and we will have a new set of faces and a new ten months of opportunities to educate, enrich, and touch their lives… Just as they will ours.
 
 I was thinking about this phrase last night when I was making cards and cookies for my seniors, a set of four girls who have shared my classroom for the past three years, always a bit timid, always a bit unsure, always with a smile on their faces as they asked for help. They come from Nepal and Burma, and though have spent their four years at this high school diligently reading and writing, and rewriting, and rewriting …and rewriting, their English is still only at a high enough level for them to attend the community college. Yet, they are taking the chance, stepping their toes in, and pushing forward with the education their parents risked their lives to give to them. They have come…and now, they’re gone.
 
 When Bruce called, texted, emailed, and left a voice mail at 10:53 this morning telling me that Mythili was sick, I had 17 minutes left in class before lunch and senior check out. “She hasn’t thrown up yet, but the principal said she looked like she could at any moment.” I forlornly looked at my bag of cookies and cards, my special sign-out pen. I waited for class to end and my line of three students to dissipate, one demanding to know why she couldn’t have a grade higher than a B+, one wanting me to forgive an assignment she’d lost, and one who can’t formulate a single word of English after three years, and in her broken, muffled frustration, begged for extra work to bring up her futilely failing grade (this one I’ve recommended to be tested for special education, to no avail… The complexities of the public school system).
 
 I couldn’t just leave. I couldn’t just drop everything to pick up my sick child from school. I know that so many people are trapped by their commitments to work and balancing out their commitment to family, but there is something about teaching that keeps you there even when it feels impossible to stay.
 
 I settled what I could with the girls, grabbed my keys, and rushed over to the elementary school where a very shaky eleven-year-old got into my car. I dug around in the back seat for the plastic nut jar, dumped its contents into another, and held it out to her. “In case you need to puke on the way,” I suggested.
 
 She made it home. Barely. Not two minutes in, she rushed to the bathroom and let it loose. I rushed to the kitchen, grabbed the puke bowl, a towel, and an ice cold glass of water.
 
 “I have to go. Senior check out,” I told her as I tucked her into bed. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “OK Mama,” she whispered.
 
 “Do you want the iPad?” I asked, Netflix bribery.
 
 And so I left her. I rushed back to school, heated up my lunch, and waited to sign out and say goodbye to my girls. Just like all the students I’ve ever had, I will likely never see them again. I might hear from one or two from time to time, but once they’re gone… They’re gone. They are not my children. They will get sick and get their hearts broken and fail at jobs or school or possibly life, and I won’t be there to save them or hold their hands or empty out the puke bucket… And so why do I do this?
 
 Because teaching is about balancing out the apathy, the misbehavior, the bad attitudes, the low skills… With those bright spots, those kids who care, those girls who touch your heart and make you feel that the world has the possibility of becoming a better place. And I can’t let go of that. I have to hold onto those moments or all of their apathy will break down my empathy.
 
 Because before Bruce mass communicated with me about my own daughter, I learned about someone else’s daughter. One of my students. A para and another student came searching for one of the boys in my class who has been nothing but trouble for me all semester. He shouts out in class. He makes racist remarks. He ditches. He throws away a perfectly good brain to apathy, something I’ve seen too many times in fifteen years.
 
 “What has he done now?” I asked.
 
 “Oh, he hasn’t done anything. We need to ask about O. Do you know O.?”
 
 “Yes, she’s in my third period… But she hasn’t been here because her grandmother is dying in Illinois.” O. comes in with a jeweled hijab every day, a smile, a dedication to learning. She hadn’t missed a day of school until a week ago.
 
 “Well, she ran away with M.’s brother last night because her parents are making her marry a twenty-seven-year-old on Saturday. And she posted on Facebook that she wanted to kill herself.”
 
 “So… Her parents came in and met with the principal and made up a story about her grandmother dying?”
 
 These were the only words I could muster. They were looking for M., I pulled up his schedule, and they were gone from my room as quickly as they had arrived. I had twenty-three minutes till my next two classes to stew. To wipe away tears. To think about the bright young face that is being robbed of her youth. Of her dignity. Sold.
 
 What could make them do this? What could make them travel the world to bring their daughter away from the poorest country to the richest, where all the opportunities were set out before her, just to give it up, to give in to the old world beliefs that it is acceptable to send a FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD into a trap of a marriage?
 
 When I see M. thirty minutes later, I ask him about her. “Where is she? Is she OK? Is she with your brother?”
 
 “She’s fine Miss. She’s getting married on Saturday. You don’t understand. It’s an Asian thing.” (One of his favorite expressions).
 
 He’s as flippant as if he were talking about his latest rendezvous in the park, his latest date, his latest excuse for not coming to class.
 
 I want to grab his shoulders and look into his eyes and shake him and ask him, “Do you really think it is acceptable for such a young girl to be forced to marry??”
 
 But I don’t. He will leave my class soon (They come, they go) and I will no longer have to hear his ignorant remarks. But O.? She has already gone. Two years older than my oldest daughter, her opportunities for a future have been stripped down and shaped out into a malformed mold of submissiveness.
 
 I carry her home with me. Just like my senior girls who are so kind as they say goodbye, her eyes, her smiling face, come home with me. I check on my daughter who has settled into a nap, puke bucket still empty. I sit in my living room, cat in my lap, wondering why I couldn’t just stay home with her. Why did I go back? Why did I feel I needed to sign a paper for four girls I’ll never see again?
 
 Because ultimately, the truth of this profession is that the students never leave. Each one of them holds a place in my heart, even if it is a hollow place marred by disrespect. Even if it is a broken place marked by abuse and abandonment. Even if it is an unforgiving place where I will forever wonder what I could have done to save them.
 
 And I can’t be the mother I need to be without carrying their stories with me. I can’t come home and exchange silly texts with my nine-year-old and console my forlorn thirteen-year-old whose biggest crisis in life is that she lost her watch, and nurse my eleven-year-old, who’s just a bit weak from a mild stomach flu, without knowing about all that they could be facing.
 
 Rape. War. Abuse. Addiction.
 
 I can’t control who walks into my classroom, or how much it hurts me to accept the pain that trails behind these kids as naturally as a shadow. They come with every story you could ever imagine from the complex rainbow of humanity. Mothers who have died of cancer. Fathers who have never been around. Perfectly happy little families from picket-white-fence yards. Seemingly happy families with closets full of skeletons. Mental illness. Disabilities.
 
 And they go… With all of what they’ve come with. And a little bit of me. Just like I will always carry a little bit of them.
 
 And that is why I hug my girls tight. I wrap Mythili up in her quilt and promise Riona she can buy the terrible chips and tell Isabella she can get a new watch…
 
 I don’t tell them about O. Or M. Not today.
 
 Because I don’t want them to carry that pain. Because I want to shelter them in the love of the perfect little family we’ve created. Because they are girls with the world in front of them, and I want them to know how safe they will be with whatever choice they will make.
 
 Because they have come into my life as my daughters. They are mine. They are not my students. And though I can’t give them every moment of my time, I know that I will never be able to let them go.
 
 Because they are the eyes, the smile, the hope of every student I have ever had… And every student I have yet to meet.
 
 They will come, and they will go.
 
 And I will always be here. For all of them.