all patience is lost
in last moments before bed
when i need quiet
like i need to breathe;
and the moment i grab her,
we’ve all gone too far.
days filled with backtalk
backfire in waning light
where i lose myself
gentle goodnight kiss
only mimics my remorse
as tears touch her eyes
forgiveness now saved
for dawn’s awakening touch
as gentle as dreams
humanity
Global Village
the world lives here
where i spend half of my life
blessed to share this space
There’s Always a Reason…
I haven’t had a drink in nearly four months. I’ve been filling my mug with a variety of teas creamed with coconut milk, as dairy is also something I’m trying to give up. I have survived the dark winter months without much of a craving at all, but now that patio and beach season are upon me, I think it might be a bit more challenging.
Once you get into the habit of drinking, there is always a reason to drink. I still remember when I first went to college and all the freshmen gathered in the auditorium to hear what we at first groaned about but what in turn was one of the most important speeches of my life: alcoholism warnings from a recovered alcoholic, twenty-two years sober and funny as fuck. He spoke for about an hour and told us many stories, many of which I still remember today. But two things he said to us really struck me.
First: “How many of you have ever had a drinking problem?” To which the audience of 400 eighteen-year-olds kept their hands happily in their laps. “OK. How many of you have ever prayed to a porcelain God, gotten into a fight, had a horrible hangover, or passed out after drinking?”
A handful of somewhat guilty hands shot into the air.
“And you don’t think those things are a problem?”
I will never forget that line. The term drinking problem becomes so synonymous with serious alcoholics, with homeless men and abusive fathers and people screaming in parks on the middle of a Saturday afternoon. But isn’t every problem one has related to the consumption of alcohol a drinking problem?
Second: He gave us a handout that listed virtually every reason you could think of to drink. Celebrations like holidays, birthdays, promotions, new jobs, children being born, marriages, etc. Sad moments like losing a job, a friend, a partner, a spouse. Bad days at work. Bad days at home. Sporting events. Parties for no reason.
“This is only a page, front and back,” he declared. “But it could be 365 pages. A reason for every damn day. There’s always a reason, an excuse, to drink. But do you really want to drink every day?”
Among my generation, drinking seems to be much more of a go-to coping choice than it was for my parents’ generation. I know virtually no one who doesn’t drink, other than a few due to religious beliefs. And most people I know drink with such regularity that they hardly go two days without it. Yet, the statistics are alarming, especially for women. I have read so many articles about the danger of drinking more than three to four drinks in a week, let alone three to four in one night (my usual amount). And just the other day I read an article on NPR saying that white women’s mortality rate has actually decreased, and one of the major factors is the increase of alcoholism among white women.
Reading about it, seeing myself surrounded by people who always have a reason to have a drink, and the way my life has become since I stopped is really what’s keeping me going right now. I have changed my daily habits. Instead of coming home after a stressful day at work and a long carpool and pouring myself a beer while I fix dinner, I now start up an exercise video. In four months, I have lost five pounds and three and a half inches off my waist. Instead of waking up before dawn with a grumbling stomach, GI issues, and sitting on the toilet for twenty minutes, I wake up fully rested, have clean bowel movements, and no stomach aches.
Instead of thinking of a reason to drink, I begin to think of reasons why I shouldn’t. Of the progress I have made thus far with my health. Of my girls who watch everything I do. Of my students who I hope don’t turn into statistics.
Of my writing, no longer spiteful and full of that angry inner voice that I only let escape with too many craft beers.
Most of all, I think of all the reasons why not drinking has made my life easier. I can go to happy hour and drive guilt-free to pick up my children after I’ve had my iced tea. I can go grocery shopping on a Saturday night. I can experience life with virtually no headaches.
I can have all the celebrations I want: holidays, birthdays, finding a tenant. I can be as sad or as angry as I was before about testing schedules or horrible days at work or Prince dying. And I can feel all of those emotions, the joy, the sorrow, with every capillary of every vein unpolluted by a mind-altering drug.
And sometimes it sucks. And I want to sit out in the sun and feel that numbness creep into my soul and watch my children grin and splash in delight.
And I want to forget what that teenager in my class said to me by drowning out his voice with a shot of tequila.
And I want to be brutally honest in all that I write and be fearless about it.
But.
The sun is so much brighter when I’m fully there to live their joy.
The harsh sounds of teenage angst will never disappear; will never make me a better or worse person; why drown them? Why not accept they are who they are, I am who I am, and we can move on from this moment?
And my writing. Perhaps it has suffered the most, or perhaps I have found a new voice. Only time will tell. And time will tell, because nothing, nothing will keep me from being the writer I have always been. Not a bottle, motherhood, teacherhood, or failure in all its forms.
And that is what this is all about. Rediscovering myself. Celebrating myself. The joys, the sorrows, the failures. All the reasons in the world to have a drink.
All the reasons in the world not to.
Seasonal Affect Disorder
testing never ends
we March April into May
snow, sleet, hail… and hell
All I Can Muster
petals pushing through
fighting winter with color
for Testing Tuesday
Branching Out
Spanglish park play date
joy found amongst las ramas
friend language rooted
(questionable choice–
my student’s family, my girls–
here we cross borders)
Butterflies
a sound of thunder
beats down truer every day
good lord save us all
Before the Last Bell
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.
When We’re Ready
thirteen has arrived,
rearing its ugly head with back talk
and tormenting sibling rivalry,
with GPA pressure in seventh grade
and the desperate need of a young girl
to isolate herself from her family
(for a film in her “genre,”
to write her story,
to paint silver nail polish on
my mother’s-her-ladylike nails,
alone, alone in her room)
alone, alone as a mother
i brought her home from the hospital,
and she wouldn’t open her eyes for ten days,
so infused with jaundice-yellow skin
and the vast ordeal of
a long and painful labor,
and i could barely walk,
and she would barely eat,
yet she was mine, mine,
my first take at motherhood,
my first trial at real,
gut-opening, visceral
pain
from my heart into my groin
from my heart i have raised her,
one failed attempt at control
after another, her bar as the oldest
set higher than her sisters would
ever hope to even catch
in their strained glimpse
beneath her slender shadow,
me always asking more than what
she wants to offer,
fighting through tears we’ve
shared on too many nights
fighting through to become this
surreal force that connects
her face to mine,
the picture that sits on my
windowsill at work always bringing the same comment,
“That one, that one looks like you,”
the only one of three to be my twin,
too high-spirited to capture,
too strong-willed to be anything less
than my firstborn
my firstborn turns thirteen today,
placing a moratorium on that dwindling youth
i tried to trap years ago
when she couldn’t sit still on the naughty step,
at the dinner table,
or in between my endless kisses
on her chubby cheeks–
nor now, as she bursts through doors, breaks ceramic pots
i’ve had her whole life,
spins circles on skates
and chases,
chases,
chases that dream we all still hold in our hearts when we are thirteen,
when we still think the world is ours,
that we will be the best kid,
student, friend, daughter….
knowing that we will open our eyes when we’re ready,
sit still when the time is right,
back talk to find our voice,
and never, never, never
be anyone other than ourselves
Double Vision
the clinging pain of a head cold
carries me to my new optometrist
(my colleague’s twin: spiky hair,
flamboyant twerks, bow tie over stripes)
he misses my eye flaw
and rushes through the exam
till i catch his mistake
with my lack of double vision
off to parental/political-talk visit
and doldrum Saturday errands:
two-store grocery shopping
to pad our pockets with savings
home to walk under spring-sun skies
before slew of sleepover requests
inundate our three-day,
never-a-break weekend
i work out with Jillian
’cause she’s made me “big promises,”
pushing my runny nose and sore throat
under my double-vision life
the life that is filled with
everything i always wanted
and emptied with all i must give up
to have it
Step Write Up 