another long night
(i’d never lecture this long)
yet my kids judge me
i teach how i learn:
modeling, demonstration,
then application
i plan; over plan
think things through with them in mind
everything for them
yet it doesn’t work
i’ve somehow lost touch with them
and–worse–with myself
i miss the old me
so confident, outspoken
not worried for loss
now i question all:
which kid hates me most, and why?
will i keep my job?
but the worst is dark:
why can’t i be nicer… loved?
why can’t i smile?
i’ll go on, of course–
house bought, girls in school, trap set–
but at what cost? loss?
humanity
Fire… and Ice
to ring in New Year
we drove two hours past home
to make a weekend
we saw A-frame views
and slept in with circle flames
before we ventured
he slid us down hill
and we slid in the new year
with sleds, skis, snowshoes
because life is such:
moments of fear, winter ice
and warm flame endings
The Runs
second thoughts run deep
two hundred dollars later
and him always mad
my bestie takes blame
(her kitten was first, she claims)
but this is my fault
how deep does love run?
for my oldest: no-phone prize
for us all: pet love
sometimes i wonder
how hovering hurt runs deep
to pick our pockets
if i could keep her
(and keep his heart with me too)
we’d run through the depths
Tracks
I remember the first time I encountered poverty. I thought I’d encountered it when I was eight, in my grandmother’s kitchen. We’d just opened our Christmas gifts, and my cousins had their usual wealth of new skis, Patagonia sweaters, and trips to the ski slopes, when I heard my mother say to my father, “I wish we weren’t poor.”
But that wasn’t poverty. That was Christmas in Connecticut where my grandparents flooded us with what they could afford. Where we spent a day in New York standing under the giant tree that took up Rockefeller Center. Where the snow fell and the white, white Christmas shined crystal clear.
I did’t see poverty until three and a half years later, on a bus ride home from my middle school in Denver. And I know (now) it wasn’t the poverty of the third world, that it could have been so, so much worse. But it was as real for me then as it was today, twenty-six years later, walking across those same railroad tracks that I saw that day on that infamous ride home.
I was new to everything: the city, the diversity, the concept of extracurricular activites and late busses. After missing the correct bus home on the first day, I was anxious not to make the mistake again. But I didn’t think to ask anyone in my MathCounts group about the details of the after school activity bus, and three weeks into the school year, I hopped on to one of two busses thinking it didn’t matter.
As the yellow bus made its way across town, nowhere near a neighborhood that looked like mine, I began to hold in my heart a silent panic. I had followed my crush onto this bus, a boy named Schuyler whose name I wrote in my notebook for most of sixth grade. He chatted with friends as we moved from block to block, across rivers and bridges and a trainyard so large it could only have come from a downtrodden version of “The Little Engine That Could”, my favorite childhood book.
But this was no picture book. The houses became more decrepit, the neighborhoods transformed from treelined mansions into ramshackle shacks with dirt yards… And I was nowhere near home.
My “home” at the time being a two-bedroom apartment furnished with secondhand furniture and borrowed dishes while my parents spent their days searching for an opportunity in this city that had promised them the world.
I sat ten rows back from the driver, and as the time ticked by, my frightful silence pounded into my ears with a heart-throbbing vengeance. When the moment arrived for the tall, thin, dark-skinned driver to let out his last passenger, I knew I’d have to speak up. But my small-town New York voice didn’t want to. I wanted to go back to my small town, where my father had failed student teaching and wasted four years on a master’s degree that wouldn’t come to fruition; where my mother had supported us all on $6.25 an hour from the daily newspaper; where I could walk along the singular street that led from my elementary school to my home, and never feel like the village (city) idiot.
“Now, did you miss your stop?”
“I… ”
“Where do you live, honey?”
“I know my stop is Ogden and Ellsworth.”
“Well that was a whole other bus.”
He got on the radio. He made a plan. And I thought about him pulling up to my block of apartment buildings. About the little girl, Valerie Martinez, who had invited me over once and once only. “My mama gets paid on Fridays. Every Friday I get a treat. Last week it was a push pop. This week I might get a set of stickers.” She told me this from the tiny room she shared with her two brothers at the back of the apartment complex. She had a small desk where we played travel Sorry! and I scanned the walls that were filled with pictures torn from magazines and religious idols.
She had lived there her whole life.
I knew my placement in the apartment would be temporary. That my parents would find jobs (they did), that I would live walking distance from the school (I did), in a house we would own after selling our house in New York (we did). That my whole life would never be as dark, as frightening, as the bus ride home across the other side of the tracks. That I wouldn’t have to wait till Friday’s paycheck to get a silly little treat. Or share a room with two brothers for the rest of my life.
“You can tell me where you actually live, honey. You’re the only one left, and I plan on taking you all the way to your doorstep at this point.”
But I didn’t want him to know. That my parents had borrowed money from both sets of grandparents to make the trek across country. That we were living in that tiny, crappy place. That I’d seen the other side of the tracks, with gutted out cars and broken-in windows, and that I was scared. Scared shitless of what my life was at that moment, of what it could become.
I didn’t want him to know that I’d remember that day. How kind he’d been to me. How frightened I’d been. That I would keep track of those disturbing images of poverty like a prized collection at the back of my brain, unsure of what to do with it. That I would understand, years later, just how deep white privilege lies.
Underneath the snow. Between the tracks. Where my city has fallen not into the arms of an unforgiving God, but into the arms of a greedy monster of wealth. Where they have torn down every last remnant of what was real to build cookie-cutter apartments for hipsters overlooking those same tracks. Where the middle class has all but disappeared and I walk with my three girls through a world I couldn’t begin to describe to them because I don’t understand it myself.
Where I am just eleven years old, trapped on a bus, hoping the driver will take me to my stop.
Because without that hope, there is nothing. Just a blue-sky day in the middle of December, a long walk home across tracks I will continue to cross, and a world I am just now beginning to understand.
A Simple Relinquishment
i took back her phone
she cried for thirty minutes
then emerged from room
a week has now passed
i’ve seen her face more this week
than in the past year
she’s on page fifty
of a novel she started…
to write, not to read!
she plays piano
taught herself Star Wars theme songs
Darth Vader and all
she talks to us now
and plays games with her sisters
just like a child
she is my child
and i’ve ended the battle
that would lead to war
The Blaring Results Of…
The fire alarm went off just after the minute bell, thirty seconds before finals were to start. I had already arrived early enough to stand in line and sign out my district final. I had taken the time to organize them name by name on every other desk, ready for the students to walk in, find their place, and write their best essay of this semester.
When the alarm blared into our ears, I told the kids what door to walk out. I grabbed my coat, ready to wrap some warmth around this December Monday. I locked my classroom door, thinking about the security of the tests.
And I entered the line. The students-ready-to-give-up line. The teachers-wondering-if-there’d-be-enough-time-now-for-finals line.
And in their arms, like infants ready to suckle? Tight against their chests like their lives depended upon the survival of a few stacks of lined booklets?
Their district finals.
“Where are your tests? Did you leave them in your room??”
Like I had committed a cardinal sin.
And this moment, more than any other, is why I think our society has completely fallen apart. No way our school, our city, our fire department would plan a fire drill the Monday morning moment before finals would begin.
So this could be REAL. We could be walking out of our school into a bitter cold standstill for hours as we wait for the beautiful firemen to rush five blocks in their blaring white truck to SAVE OUR LIVES.
And I left, God forbid, the tests in that damn room.
(Of course it was an error. Of course they were doing construction in the gym that set off the alarm. Of course they adjusted our schedule, making the day twenty minutes longer than planned, cutting into our lunch, our grading time, our collection of children from school, forcing us to stand in line again, forcing our children to stand like common prostitutes on the corner because their mother couldn’t arrive on time, all because of the security of that damn test.)
Of course I’ll give up my planning period tomorrow to catch up.
But I will not carry that test like it’s my baby. I have enough babies. Three of my own and thousands more. Their words are worth more than what the district (the society) asked them to write in sixty minutes. Their lives are worth more than the security of this test.
Our lives are worth more than the security of a TEST.
Someday, I hope, we will realize this.
Books and Love
On the drive home, we are missing our carpool companions thanks to the relentless militarism of their middle school, and I take advantage of this moment to hop skip and jump just shy of downtown.
Me: “We all need books. This is the only library in the city that has Spanish ones.”
I: “I’m only reading this one.”
R: “That’s MY book borrowed from MY teacher that YOU stole.”
Me: “There are 100,000 books here. Can’t you choose a different one?”
Both: “Not until she gives me that one.”
I give up. I take four escalators to the top floor of the library in the center of the city, the epicenter of the Latino world, where I stare down four shelves of outdated, bindings-falling-off Spanish books, trying to find one that is 1) at my level 2) not a hundred years old 3) interesting. What a bunch of bullshit this is. ¡No me jodas!
We ride home in silence. Semi-silence. They read. I listen to La Busca de Felicydad while R groans about my Spanish audiobooks. We sit in traffic and I miss the turn because I’m listening to how a small fatherless black boy has to witness his stepfather beating the shit out of his poor mother whose education was denied by her father so her brother could go to school and I am thinking about how fucking entitled my white children are and how unentitled my refugee students are who learn the new vocabulary phrase, “take it off” and all the girls write, for their “demonstration of knowledge” sentence, “As soon as I get home, I take off my hijab.” Like it’s a burden, a weight, a freedom they wait all day to release, and my own kids are fighting over a damn book.
But bless them all the same. For loving to read. For fighting over a damn book.
And this is America, I think, as we drive past the wealthiest mall with its block of Christmas-lit trees. As R settles into her hopeful view of the book I will leave for her. As I will rise and teach tomorrow, perhaps a new phrase such as, “What gives us hope?” And they will post pictures of their childhood in the refugee camp and my girls will ask me to read them a story (because they’re never too old) and I will drive the carpool home and hope for a better America. One without militarism. Without fear.
With books and love. Books and love. Where we can all learn what it means to “take it off.”
To find a Spanish book on the fourth floor of the library. To read. To give in to sisterly needs. To remember that we are all refugees.
That we all seek shelter. In a book. A drive. A removal of a hijab.
In each other’s arms.
Code 411
we walk seven blocks
in the semi-melted snow
to visit police
there is no jail time
no judgment of rainbow kids
as they ask questions
an open forum
for them to see the whole truth
(media won’t share)
they talk about peace
how some never used a gun
or even raised one
the kids question them
with patience, honesty… doubt
and they all. listen.
does doubt follow them?
they cast shadows on the streets
in the midday sun
their bright faces grin
pepper me with more questions
upon our return
thanks for taking us
the one thing i need to hear
from today’s visit
(they’ll remember this–
not the snow, the sun–the walk
the walk towards peace, hope)
In the Middle
They come into two classes to tell them the (what I think will be simple) news: they will have a new English teacher next semester, and it won’t be me. The AP describes it in her usual convoluted fashion: “We are growing as a school, and we need your teacher’s skills to teach another class, and you’re going to have a different teacher.”
Z shouts out (as always–no one scares him)–“Wait. So we have the teacher with the best skills and you’re going to give us the teacher with the least?”
She begrudgingly looks at me: “Is that what I just said?”
But I know what he means. I speak his outspoken language.
Another student: “But I like this small class. It’s safe.”
Another: Tears. No words.
Another (different class): “I ain’t doin’ it. I’m still coming here fourth period. Try and stop me.”
AP (to me): “Isn’t it great to be loved?”
And I think, these are the same kids I threw under the bus the other day for not showing up on the “NOT” snow day. These are the kids I was jumping up and down about saying goodbye to because I want to teach immigrants, kids who really care, who are fully invested in wanting to be in my classroom every day. On time. Ready to learn.
And I feel a mix of joy and hatred all in the same moment.
And I think about these things, these fourteen-year-old faces running across my mind as I begin my Thanksgiving break. As I drive the carpool kids home and drop my girls off at piano and put frozen pizza (my Friday cop-out meal) in the oven and cross stitch and listen to my Spanish book and wait until the optimal moment before venturing out into the snow back into my old neighborhood.
I am saying goodbye to these green walls and these three girls and all the kids who have come in and out of my classroom for fifteen years to drive into richville and pretend like I’m someone else.
It is just what I thought and nothing like I thought. One block away from where I grew up, a 1940s war home that (amazingly) hasn’t been torn down… just doubled in size on the backside, granite counters and a peak-through kitchen from the living to dining to family room to breakfast nook. The hostess is a jubilant extroverted redhead with children who are driving up with their father to ski training for a week. She proudly shows us the brownies and fudge they made, the doggie bandanna (“bark scarves”) business her children have developed (web site and all), describes the destruction and reconstruction of her “starter-turned-family” home.
And I make the mistake of telling all the blond and blue-eyed businesswomen-doctor-lawyer-private-school-till-now moms that I teach. At the local high school.
And they want the good. The bad. The ugly.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on it for years.”
“I even hosted a German exchange student a couple years ago to see how it was (and I wasn’t impressed).”
“I heard the principal is leaving.”
“I heard that there’s no accountability.”
“I heard they have a great football team.”
And there I stand. In the middle. I’m not going to lie. And I’m not really going to satisfy their curiosity either. And I’m not going to go home to a mansion. And send my kids to a ski team training. Or use Uber because “it’s better than driving.” I’m not going to be a “CEO recruiter” and tear down half a house because the one I bought wasn’t good enough. I’m not going to find some German kid to “test out the local high school” for me.
And I’m not going to lie.
“It’s apathetic.”
“The administration is mediocre at best.”
“The kids don’t do their homework.”
Everything they want to know. And don’t want to know.
Because I’m in the middle. I am a teacher and a mother. And I constantly ask myself: What is best for my kids? (MY kids.) And: What is best for my kids (THEIR kids). And the answers almost never match up.
Because that kid who cried in my class today told me his story about his mom beating the shit out of him. About social services ripping him away from her broken-bottle alcoholic rants. About the safe haven with grandparents in New Mexico. About how fucking scared he is every time he steps out of his Denver home because his mom lives SOMEWHERE IN THIS STATE.
And he doesn’t want to tell it again.
Because that kid who said he likes the small class can’t quite do work when “he’s going through some emotional tough shit, Miss,” and I let him have extra time.
Because that kid who said, “I ain’t gonna do it” has lingered into lunch on five occasions, emptying my wallet for a few bucks to have a meal.
Because I can’t lie. And I can’t tell the truth. And I can’t be a CEO recruiter who could never understand why a day filled with luncheons and a flexible schedule will never be my day. I can’t fit in with the blond-and-blue-eyed bitches just as well as I can’t fit my kids in with kids who won’t do their fucking homework (and yet I love them anyway).
There is no middle ground. There is no balance to what I face every day (tears and joy, tears and joy) and what I want my kids to see (apathy mixed with perseverance???).
And there is no way in hell a single one of these women would understand where I’m coming from anyway.
So why am I here? Why am I asking these questions?
I put my coat on and the hostess begins a story about running out of gas at the top of a pass on the way to a camping trip and coasting down the mountain into the only gas station in town.
I tell my story of driving 5000 miles in a Prius and running out gas in a no-cell-phone range and putting on my bike helmet and riding my bike down I-70 for six miles at 21:30 and my husband guarding the three kids in the back seat.
“I like your story better,” she admits as she walks me to the door. “I think I might steal it and call it my own.”
She’d be just like those other teachers who Z thinks “don’t have the skills” to teach him. Just like my kids who I can’t quite fit in to this frenzied life of private schools and ski team training.
Just like me. Stuck in the middle, good story in hand, just not quite the right place to publish it.
They Smile
The refugee question:
A firestorm all over social media. National media. International media. One that’s asking us to question our faith, that’s asking us to question our humanity. One that suddenly, after hundreds of years of terrorist violence from all corners of the globe, screams for an answer.
I have one.
First: open your eyes and call yourself a Christian. It starts first with forgiveness. With love. With hope. With faith. The same faith that these refugees have sought to protect for themselves. The same hope that they carried in rafts across the Mediterranean Sea at the risk of their tiny children being washed upon the shore, lifeless and in the arms of a forgiving God. The same love that ties together their families, that protects them from all that is evil in the world, the same love they see on those long walks across he Middle East and Europe, the love for the gift of another sunrise, the joy of another meal, the peace that comes from one set of open arms.
“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Corinthians 13:13
Second: Meet a refugee. A Muslim. Have you… Ever? Because I have a classroom full. Every day. They smile and call me by my full and formal name. They do their homework and ask to fix every error on every test they didn’t quite pass. They come before and after school for help. They smile. They thank me. They are polite and reserved, jubilant and chatty. When Denver Public Schools wouldn’t call a snow day and more than two thirds of my American-born students who live closer apathetically didn’t show up to show their consternation, my refugees took two or three busses from the suburb that had the most snow to be here. On time. Ready to learn. And every last one of them from a place where they’d never seen a snowflake before entering this country.
That’s how BRAVE they are. That’s how much they CARE. About everything. They will miss religious holidays, fast all day and finish projects, beg me for more work because they are so desperate to be as proficient in English as a native speaker…. Their parents will work in meat factories and drive taxis and pick up your garbage and do everything you never were willing to do because your American righteousness makes you too good for it…
And you haven’t even met one, have you? You’ve never even had a conversation, let alone spent an hour a day together for two or three years straight.
Third: Protect yourself. The hate that lives inside of you for people who are trying to flee to the promised land with nothing but the shirts on their backs is the SAME HATE the extreme terrorists carry inside themselves when they light the bombs that blow up everyone within their circle. Protect yourself. For you are the enemy: the enemy that lies within. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to evil. Evil leads to terrorism.
What are you afraid of? Hard work? Tenacity? Dedication? Faith? Hope?
Love?
Fourth: Open your mind. Your door. Your heart. Be the person who lights red, white, and blue across the sky to ask for a better world. The person who wants your children to be safe. Who wants a better tomorrow for everyone who ever set foot in or was born in this country… This world. Be the good you want to see in this world.
Be the smile. Because if you met one, you would know:
They smile.
Step Write Up 