bills

This Is Why I Will Strike

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

I just want to think about how hard-won this moment is. This day. This five of us skiing down a mountain together. This money we didn’t have before that we have now.

This fresh powder.

This view. Could you beat that view if you went anywhere else in the world? Well, could you?

I don’t want to think about the five years we, a family of five, lived on a frozen, constituents-unwilling-to-vote-on-a-mill-levy teacher’s salary of $48,000. The $10,000 out-of-pocket expenses we paid to give birth to our third child. The penny-pinching. The laying-out-$400-every-three-months to earn those goddamn fifteen credits so I could get a raise if I … changed school districts.

I don’t want to think about how Spain screwed me out of a decent salary and we came home afterward with $19,000 in debt, more than any we’ve had as a married couple.

I don’t want to think about the TWO 1998 cars we have outside our house right now, car-payment free.

I don’t want to think about a teacher’s strike. I don’t want to think about my refugees trekking across town on two buses and being huddled into the auditorium to wait, without teachers, the long seven hours until they trek back, because if they don’t wait, they might not have a meal that day.

About the hundreds of hours I, and every teacher I know, has put into grading, planning, meeting, educating (ourselves and them), in the ten months between August and June. Hundreds of hours outside our contract day listening to students tell us their traumas that are greater than any soul could bear, listening to our admin and school district rate us as failures when we wake before dawn and go home after dusk to bring our best selves into that classroom every day, listening to our coworkers decide between renting a slumlord shithole or buying a house an hour away…

Listening.

I don’t want to think about the thousands of union workers who died for this day. For this choice. For a society where corporate greed is not the only answer.

I just want to see my husband and my three girls gliding down this Colorado slope, this Colorado hope.

I want to ski. To smile. To rejoice.

I don’t want to go on strike.

But I will.

Just like I walked in and out of Manual High School in 1994 when my teachers asked me to support them.

Just like I lived on pittance pay for the early part of my children’s lives.

Just like every other union member everywhere who’s looking to find empathy in the eyes of the corporate monsters that rule our society.

I will strike.

And I will ski.

And we will win ourselves a bluebird day.

Cussing Colloquialisms

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At the elevator, brace still on, crutch still under his arm, he tells me he thinks that a good return-to-work date would be June 4, five days before we leave for Spain. He seems optimistic as he hobbles down the tiled hallway, as we enter the carpeted office, as we check in and he holds the door open for a woman with a walker, pointing out, “It’s kind of strange they don’t have an automatic door in the orthopedic’s office,” to which she adamantly agrees.

On the plastic, paper-coated bed, he hands me the folder while the PA takes him for x-rays. After just a few minutes, the doctor enters with the films. He has photographs of the entire procedure. He intricately describes the meniscus (intact), the bones (drilled into), the ACL (torn and then repaired). Bruce and I lift our eyebrows at each other, barely able to distinguish the tiny details he points out in each picture.

In his cozy spinning chair, the doctor is also optimistic. “I think you can ditch the brace right now and ditch the crutches by Friday. Use the stationary bike on Sunday. By Monday, you should be walking around the block. Maybe driving.”

From the green paper folder, I begin to pull out the forms. First: short-term disability approval. A list of lines with dates, surgery and medication verification. Affably, he takes them in stride: “I’ll be sure to get these to the right people to fill them out.” Because he has people. Because he charged the insurance company $36,000, more than half of what I earn in a year, for an outpatient surgery that took less than 90 minutes. Because we live in the land of the free.

From the green paper folder, I continue to pull out forms. Bruce begins to tell him–without ever being able to finish because of the doctor’s rambling explanations, the doctor’s defense of his procedures, the doctor’s justification for not filling out anything–about wanting to return to work before Spain. I pull out The Form, the one that CenturyLink requires for him to be able to work: a release of liability for driving a company vehicle, an “if-something-happens-it’s-not-on-us, your-injury-better-not-affect-your-work” form.

From his throne, he glances at the wording. He throws in more anecdotes peppered with cussing colloquialisms. “In twenty-six years of doing this, I have never seen a company require a form like this. What if you’re a shitty driver? How can I, as your medical doctor, determine if you’re OK to drive? I won’t sign a form like that. If you get in an accident and hurt someone and I’ve signed this form, then it’s all on me.”

From my plastic chair, I listen to the tone of my twenty-years-spouse change from respectful to grainy. I can almost feel the lump at the back of his throat as he tries to go on. “Well, my supervisor is willing to let me come back on light duty…”

From his throne, the doctor interrupts: “What you’re going to be dealing with is HR, not your supervisor, and if HR says you can’t work, that’s where things get muddy when I start putting my name on these forms.”

From my plastic chair, I am counting down the hours in my mind until the moment I can let these tears actually fall. First I have to continue listening to this white-haired, privileged surgeon continue rambling on about lawsuits. Then, we have to make Bruce’s appointments for physical therapy. Next, we have to drive home and track Mythili’s progress on her bicycle, as I had no way to pick her up today. After that, I have to take her to her doctor’s appointment, where they will make commentary about how my thirteen-year-old hasn’t had her period yet.

From my plastic chair, I am frozen and without words. The doctor turns to me. “You look frustrated.”

Is that the word you would use? Do you think frustration sums up the past six weeks of my life?

“The thing is…” Bruce begins, “… I’m probably going to get laid off on July 30.”

The doctor has finished listening. “That’s why we have to be so careful when filling out these forms. This happens all the time, when companies decide you can’t work.”

“No, it’s unrelated…” he begins again, that painful lump sitting on top of his beautiful, sexy voice.

“Are you really not going to fill out the form?” is the only thing I can muster. The doctor hands it back to Bruce, asks if there’s anyone he can call, anyone he can talk to, any way he can go back to work without it.

From the tiny patient meeting room, he stands. He shuffles us out the door. He guides us to his people who will make the next appointment. I place The Form neatly back inside the green paper folder.

I think of a few cussing colloquialisms I could shout. I think of hindsight, all of it. Of next year’s ski passes we wasted $2300 on. Of the thousands we’ve already spent in this office. Of the four weeks at seventy-percent-pay he’ll get for short-term disability. Of the thousands we’ve spent on Spain that is gone and tarnished before boarding the plane.

But I have no words in these moments when I have bowed down to our litigate society, our corporations’ fear of liability, our doctors’ refusal to help the little man other than spurting cussing colloquialisms while trying to relate to us.

At the elevator, his brace in my hand, crutch still under his arm, I don’t speak. Picking up Mythili, exhausted from her bike ride, I don’t speak. At the following doctor’s appointment, where, as usual, we only get to see the PA, I cross my arms and don’t speak, forcing Mythili to respond to questions about who she lives with, how she likes her sisters, what kinds of food she eats.

From my recliner at home, I do have a few cussing colloquialisms for the orthopedic surgeon. I could spout them all day, all night, every waking moment of the past twenty years of marriage, every waking moment of my life as a not-quite-middle-class American who just needs A GODDAMN FORM SIGNED SO WE HAVE A FEW PENNIES TO OUR NAME…

From my recliner at home, the words are useless. All the words, all the work, all the life we have put into living, everything feels useless.

And there is no cussing colloquialism that will bring me that doctor’s signature, bring my husband his job, bring me some peace. So why bother spouting them at all?

 

Before the Last Bell

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Friday, seventh period, fifteen minutes before the last bell:

“The reason we are reading all these picture books is because we’re going to walk over to an elementary school next week, interview kindergarteners, and create books for them. I did this in middle and high school and it was one of my most memorable classroom experiences. And a couple years ago I met a new DPS teacher who had gone to that elementary school. He not only still had his handmade book, but also said it was one of his most memorable school experiences and one of the reasons he became a teacher.”

“I’m going to ditch that day. Who’s with me?”

No one will ever tell you this when you’re in college. They’ll pump teaching up, make you think it’s your dream job, make you think you can change the world. That you can be there for one student or two or a thousand, and that you’re going to make a difference.

You’ll believe them. You’ll have small glimpses of hope and happiness every day. Kids who come in an hour early to clean out all your poor-urban-handout, made-for-elementary desks that have shelves underneath that high schoolers can barely fit their legs under and spend the entire school year filling with trash from vending machines that are open all day, and hiding and losing phones and tablets in, and leaving grant-requested precious books inside.

Or the kid who brings you spicy Eritrean food with his mom’s homemade injera bread to dip your tongue into another continent after all the hours you’ve spent helping him write essays for three years running, before dawn and after dark and every lunch in between. It all melts away with saffron and perfectly spongey texture soaking up the lost moments of planning, grading… Of other parts of your life.

Or the Nepali girls who play their fairy-like music after school, pushing all the desks to the side to practice their modern mashup dance of a culture you couldn’t begin to understand for the CultureFest that brings the quilt of your students together in an unforgettable annual celebration.

But.

It takes SO. MANY. Of those bright moments to erase the daily apathy, rudeness, and downright disregard that SO. MANY. Students have.

So I send him out. “You don’t want to develop a relationship with our community, participate with a kid, make a difference, and fulfill a promise to the kindergarten teachers who I told I would bring twenty-one students to interview? You want me to disappoint a five-year-old child?”

“You do whatever you want, Miss,” he says, packing up his backpack and walking out, fifteen minutes before the last bell on a Friday afternoon.

“Whatever I want” is to enjoy this weekend I have promised my just-turned-thirteen-year-old for six months. To get the hell out of this city, drive like a maniac into blue skies and snow, and participate in life with the children I hold closest to my heart.

But first there was a rock slide. I-70 closed ten miles before our destination. Then I arrive at the elementary school and my middle child is pouting like she’s two, refusing to tell me why. I leave her and her sister at piano to fulfill my carpool duties and get stuck at a string of red lights. Bruce comes coughing home after working in a knee-deep-in-mud manhole all day, takes a shower, and water leaks through the second-floor ceiling onto our beautiful wood floors, leaving a crack in the drywall and a repair-bill question yet to be answered. When he comes downstairs, he is shivering like a wet chihuahua, goes straight to bed, and informs me he has the flu. My middle child still pouts, has picked up the cold the other three of us have had all week, and has a canker sore the size of Idaho.

The two remaining children complete the two-hour ordeal of grocery shopping with me, picking out swimsuits for all. We return home to frantically make eight sandwiches, do two loads of laundry, pack up five people’s crap to fill the topper, and I lay my head down close to midnight only to be disturbed by the buzzing dryer, the curious kitten, and the Dowling need to clean the entire house before I leave.

But wait, since Bruce is sick, I now have to sacrifice two hours of this pressed-for-time morning to sit with Isabella in her Dumb Friends League volunteering orientation. I rush to Walgreens, the only close store, to get ice before our looming six-hour drive, and the goddamn store is out of ice.

Izzy’s friend finally arrives after Bruce officially declares he isn’t up for it, and I don’t even take the time to call my mother to ask her to come in his place. I hit the road like a woman on fire and blast my way through half the state, circumventing the rock slide by 140 miles, blue sky and snow, blue sky and snow.

We stop only two times. To get gas and load up on caffeine. And to avoid a mule deer who jumps in front of our two-lane trek. The girls minimally whine about how much longer and are we halfway there yet, but not enough to even raise the hairs on my neck. I’ve got a great playlist blasting U2, Bruce Springsteen, Usher, Adele, and Lennon, views worth a million bucks, and an open road.

I’ve got a thirteen-year-old whose aunt calls later to wish her a happy birthday and ask her if she was miserable about the double-time drive: “No way. I got to come to Glenwood for my birthday.”

I’ve got a middle child who is chipper today and takes blurry pictures for me and learns how to program the GPS to five different destinations as we navigate the back way.

I’ve got a baby girl who spends the entire six-hour drive happily drawing on and erasing her whiteboard to start all over again.

I’ve got a glimpse of that hope again. When we finally reach the exit from the circled-back, eastbound side of I-70, after passing twenty signs, taking three side routes, and talking about the rockslide all week, a Colorado State Trooper parks in front of two rows of orange cones that guide every car off at this exit.

“Look, this is where the highway is shut down,” I announce, taking a glance around the bright young faces that surround me as we have made a “record” time of five hours forty minutes when Google said 6.5.

“I wonder why,” Mythili ponders.

“Oh, Mythili,” but I can’t finish because I am laughing so hard, I am so deliriously happy that tears are streaming down my cheeks as I try to hold in spurts of laughter and joy that have been bottled up inside me since fifteen minutes before the last bell on Friday afternoon.

But I don’t need a bell to set me free. I just need a glimpse. A glimpse of blue sky over snow, of students who love me for how hard I work for them, of children who are grateful and humorous and quirky in these small moments that make a life, whether they are the fifteen minutes before the last bell or the fifteen tears that just need to fall.

Just a glimpse, a glimpse.

Two Too Many

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end of day feet up
 hours on end of walking
 then pickup, dinner…
 
 day two of two jobs
 the runaround’s new to me
 exhaustion takes time
 
 the girls say it best:
 hang the dolls on bike rack noose
 and call it a day
 
 

Sunny Skies Ahead

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he comes home with clouds
 hovering over new joy
 (where we could be free)
 
 but then i must ask:
 is freedom found in money?
 so hard to answer
 
 those without know best:
 lack of money’s a prison
 choking month to month
 
 those with all know best:
 too much money is a trap
 biting claws of greed
 
 it was just enough
 for shoes, road trips, water parks
 just enough to breathe
 
 i want that freedom–
 monthly-cycle jail-cell break
 so far from the clouds
 
 

Actual Advice Please

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

one more blog bragging
 about money saving tips
 i’m gonna lose it
 
 it’s easy to save
 when your salary’s double
 what a teacher earns
 
 i can just get by
 three kids, two jobs, zero debt
 yet no spare nickel
 
 a livable wage
 is all i am asking for
 not a useless post
 
 try living on this:
 string of broken promises
 thin enough to break
 
 
 

Inbox

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inbox second chance
 two weeks too late, money spent
 hope revealed, heart lost
 
 i want to find home
 with work that’s my second home
 please just show me how
 
 no more promises
 that crush dreams i’ve long carried
 with your inbox lies
 
 i came home to you
 my city, my youth, my school
 don’t betray me now
 
 show me you have grown
 built truths from these high prices
 that surround me now
 
 please just show me how
 fill my inbox with one hope:
 second chance success
 
 

Promotion

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his day and week off
waits before there’d be a bell
how can i say no?

pi day a success
although she tries to wreck it
doesn’t understand

(the lure of baked goods
can’t be wantonly handed
to palette-less grunts)

my interview fails
but why would i waste my time
on a blurred vision?

must. pass. Spanish test.
first? awards ceremony
(at least she’s honored)

then, family dinner
and Spanish happy hour
to close my chaos

never a moment
without a need, a desire
all for them, for us

My Truths Are Their Truths

/ lovizmytrio / 2 Comments

I’m angry because even a good day with the kids can end as a hard day of being a parent. Because I fight for those closest to me, I put them first, and I still feel like I am driven into hell in the process. Because I love them so fiercely that it hurts, and their tears are my tears and my truths are their truths.

I’m angry because I am a friend, a true friend. I AM the one you can call on drink number four in the airport on your way to rehab after your family’s intervention, and I will listen to every damn slurred word and offer my condolences and love you and be right damn there for you when you come back and fight for you and defend you and take fucking sides for you and build up my enemies like walls against my progress in this life. Because I am your friend.

My loyalties are fierce and my bitterness is fiercer.

I would never beg to make plans and then cancel them. Twice. I would never rearrange my entire schedule to be absentmindedly forgotten for a snooze button. I would never let my best friend go, though she hated me off and on for years, because I knew she was meant for me, and I fucking fought for her, and I got her back, and I damn well will never lose her again. I would never say I am too busy for the person I once swore I loved as much as my husband of seventeen years.

Instead, this Saturday, we play Life. It lasts too long, he rushes us through the end, and Mythili wins (OF COURSE). We go to the park, the Perk, sip tea and nibble scones, Isabella does her interminable homework with her blue-collar Bud-Light-neon-signs-in-house best friend and my mother texts me wondering why we never ask her to come to the park since they live so close now. I offer the zoo for tomorrow and after an existential pause that lasts between two doses of learning the yoga headstand from Adriene, three piano songs played alongside my baby, and reenacting our Oxford memories with a hacky sack we toss across the living room knocking over pictures and plants, she replies with, “Your father isn’t interested in the zoo.” Though they live ten blocks from it. “Is he interested in seeing his granddaughters?” I die to text back. But I’ve learned to hold my tongue. And my fingers.

I’m angry because when I put them to bed there is a flashlight fight and search and a reminder of two nights ago. And I pull the Target bag off the top shelf and dig through the bug spray, the spare brush, the sunblock, the sweat-wicking longsleeved shirt, the set-aside items for a summer camp that’s never going to happen and find the fucking flashlights because Mythili will NOT go to bed without her book.

I’m angry because he murmurs from the room about my tenacity in setting aside these items, never to be touched between June and June and the baby going to her first summer camp this year, and because my dumb semi-drunk mouth just spills it all out in front of them: “It doesn’t matter because they’re not going to camp this year anyway since we don’t have the money.”

I’m angry because my mother sends these random texts such as: “I’m just wondering about life” and tells me about her millionaire uncle dying without a will and how tracking down his thirty-three nieces and nephews will take years as most of them don’t talk to each other and I have put nothing but Love and Love and Hugs and Cuddles into the lives of my three girls and I do NOT. Do NOT. Want to put my baby to bed crying tonight because she doesn’t even get to go to camp for her first year because I don’t have the damn money and we spent it all on a fucking car and my millionaire mom is going to inherit another thirty thousand but won’t even come to the goddamn zoo even when I offer her a free ticket.

I’m angry because I try so hard to be there. To find joy in those small moments that make up a day, like spinning them on a tire swing or singing along to Taylor Swift videos or opening up the yoga book or cuddling with our books in the corner of the couch or piling on top of each other in an array of pink to red.

And I would be there for the friends who ditch me. For the colleague who won’t even eat lunch in my presence. For any task at any job anyone would ever ask me to do.

And why can’t they? Why can’t you?

Just be there. Fucking. Be. There.



Fluff 

/ lovizmytrio / Leave a comment

cold and fluffy snow

commute like walking on clouds

fluff trickles from sky 

observation day

my kids ask, why so often?

my job scrutinized

Into the Wild

fills my ears as i walk home

rich white sacrifice 

fluff has turned to ice

girls bicker hours till bed

we face budget truths

and we’ve worked so hard

seventeen years later, this?

progress turns to fluff

tomorrow i’ll step 

on fresh fluff from full moon sky

find my clouds again