rearranging seats
can be the best or worst choice
for worn-out teachers
but today it worked
they successfully showed me
how smart they can be
these small daily gifts
help brighten my autumn mood
that’s dropped like the leaves
i remember why:
to see progress, light and gold
falling from the sky
and you won’t have this:
spinning autumnal joy swing
her trapped in between
and you’ll never know
what it’s like to live for them
(to live inside joy)
and you just can’t see
how losing this would mean all:
girls, home, husband… life
’cause it’s not a park
with green lawns, blue skies, red leaves:
it’s my livelihood
you’re a pic undone
where the sidewalk ends, my friend:
(leaves fall. i blossom.)
midnight wake up call
evaluation nightmares
(scores that don’t suit me)
early morning grades
rush to school to hide from kids
and try to catch up
small knock at entry:
“Teacher, may I please enter?”
(a small scared boy waits)
“Are you new today?”
and his brother trails behind
with soft pink gloves on
“From Uganda, yes.”
my papers sit in piles
forgotten on desk
i show them downstairs
where free breakfast awaits them:
eyes big and grateful
“What brings you here, boys?”
they exchange frightened glances.
“For a better life.”
ungraded papers,
nightmares–they’re all meaningless
in comparison
at least they are here–
where with beauty they’ll begin
the life we all want
My small poet is lost in the world of text citations, a phrase I never heard until I was a junior in high school… Not as a fourth grader. And while my fifth grader keeps the world laughing with her dry humor and is at or above par in every subject, I can only imagine how Rio feels when she hears from the fourth teacher in her life, “She is so shy.”
It is the label of introversion. The stamp on her personality. And as she sits there in the hard plastic chair, her whole body shrinks underneath the shawl Heather made all those years back. She presses her knees tight against her chest and her eyes redden in her quiet attempt to hold back tears.
How did they end up with the same teachers, and why did we have to bring the kids with us? These are things that go through my mind as I see the 1’s and 0’s on her paper. As the English teacher lowers her voice to just above a whisper, almost mocking the small voice of my youngest; as the math teacher blatantly tells her she needs to speak up in science since there aren’t tests and that’s the way she can prove what she knows.
“It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be,” he assures me when we arrive home.
Not two minutes later, Rio asks me to cuddle with her in bed. I read her part of her book, then close it and wait. She has that pouty I-want-to-tell-you-something look. “Is it the conferences? Is it someone at school? Is it something you don’t understand? Is it your daddy?” (Because dark thoughts enter when I am so, so scared for her.) She negates all questions, and finally, in a barely-audible whisper, tells me, “I’m scared to go to sleep. I have scary dreams.”
It took her twenty minutes to divulge this to me, so I don’t press her for more. I talk about the weekend, about carving pumpkins, about me taking her trick-or-treating all by herself, just with me, as her older sisters have outgrown going with Mama and Daddy and have friend plans. Her red eyes soften when I ask her to think about these things, to dream about them.
But I will never know what’s really going on inside her mind. She will never tell me. It could be the disgruntled drive over to conferences when I discussed with her daddy an allowance-and-all-other-activity cutoff after so much backtalk about chores this evening. It could be the teacher’s tiny voice mocking her small soul. It could be Isabella’s snide remark when she asked her if she wanted to listen to her read her poems aloud last night, and the teary rush into the other room when it looked like she’d offered a voice to someone who didn’t want to hear it. (Isabella made up for it later when Mythili asked for a full reading and Izzy complimented–and was quite impressed by–every last one of her poems). And it could be… that she’s just having scary dreams.
But I will never know. Just like her teachers will only know her as the “shy girl.” Her sisters will always think of her as the “easygoing one.” And her mother? Everything about her–her dark hazel eyes, her small smile, her desperate need to wrap her entire body around mine when she wakes in the morning–will always be an endless mystery to me. One with clues I will pick up as she grows–from those sweet lines of poetry to late-night whispers of fear–as I try to find the meaning behind the poetry that is my small, shy, loving angel.
a grumpy Monday
drained by rudeness, overtime
but brightened by girls
science fair success
anthology finally done
we can breathe… for now
go to sleep with grins
knowing we tried our best try
to get through this day
It is Sunday night, and I haven’t thought about you all weekend. You have been sitting in ungraded piles on the tables by the door of my classroom. You have been unread and unmarked emails that I have chosen to ignore. Because I am raising three kids. And I am raising thousands of kids. And I have to have a balance between the two.
Because Saturday was running from store to store to party to party to house to house to out to dinner to home/friends/love/hate.
Because Sunday was more running (to the Lego store) to appease my middle child who always feels a bit left out. And another party, and another set of meals to make.
Because I need to breathe for a moment and think about what is most important. Is it my administrator telling me she’s tracking our usage of tablets that don’t work half the time so she can send the data to the district? Is it the kids in my first period who have been pushed into lockers and called faggot/whore/freak/thot [that ho over there]/cunt and causing me to stop the entire lesson to beg me to listen?
Or is it my girls, who beg me to teach them cross-stitch and ask me to stay at the advisory party and want me to skate with them and want me to wake them up at 6:15 so that I can make pumpkin spice bagels and vanilla chai tea and spend a moment before work with them?
You tell me. Tell me how to decide. Tell me how I am supposed to carry the weight of a thousand students inside the hazel eyes of the three girls I gave birth to.
Because thirteen years in, I am still not sure.
Because it’s Sunday night, and I am sitting in my dream house, that, thirteen years in, I can afford. Because the candles are burning and the music is playing and my girls have gone to bed. Because I’ve had a few glasses of wine and I have thank-you cards to write and grocery lists to make and weekend plans to destroy and a thousand kids, including my own, to raise.
Because there is never enough time.
And that is why I write. Why I love them. Why I hate how much they take from me. Why I live for how much they GIVE me.
And why I will not live by administrative threats. By school district doomsdays. Why I choose to live by these small requests that pile up around me like leaves falling in autumn. “Do something, Miss.” “Listen to us.” “Take me to the mall even if you hate it.” “Stay at my party, please?!” “I need you to cover me up.”
Because we all need that soft touch. That quilt of love wrapped around all that is evil in the world. That mother’s love. For all the thousands of kids who have it, who will never have it, who long to have it.
That is why.
what angers me now
is her quick accusation
that we just don’t care
bullied confessions
took control of my first class
(undocumented)
yet, she’s tracking us–
collecting district data
to prove we’re worth it
you cannot track kids
who’ve been shoved into lockers
with tablet data
one day she’ll see this
or continue on her path
of domination
either way, we win:
My lesson’s lost, i tell them
—but we needed this—
i actually hear
the harsh words they say to me
i truly listen
but she can’t see that
it’s not in her statistics
and therefore i fail
what angers me most
is how i love, love, love them
and how she doesn’t
no meetings today
lest you count the beauty of
parent conferences
no colleagues’ remarks
to make me question my choice
(my work here, for kids)
just concerned parents
who love the kids i, too, love
(what it’s all about)
Sunday’s errands done
topped with spun October gold
touched by a rainbow
Because I’m supposed to be watching a Spanish crap TV show right now and reading a Spanish book. Because I have a moment. The first one in ten weeks. Where I can sit back and breathe… And suck it all in. And think about all I haven’t done, all I have ever wanted to do. Because life is supposed to be perfect now that I live in this castle.
Never mind the kid who mumbled, “I hate this class.”
The daughter who dropped the garage door to the netherworld, the never-to-be-opened-again purgatory we’re all trapped in.
The Internet that wouldn’t work for half the day, ruining my entire team’s lessons and setting our high expectations for student success back three weeks… because that’s the next time the computers are free.
The youngest, in fourth grade, who has to do a full-on science fair project, a poetry anthology with twenty poems completely analyzed, illustrated, and with a Works Cited MLA-formatted bibliography … AND read 57 pages in a novel a week, do twenty math problems a night, and fight with her tiny face in the mirror at the top of her alley-product “desk” about what she can accomplish at the ripe old age of nine.
That kid in my class who comes every day and won’t even lift a pencil. Who won’t respond to questions. Who won’t look me in the eye. Who won’t, who won’t, who won’t.
And the part of me that will never understand why he and she and they don’t have it built into their capillaries this work, work, work ethic.
Because I’ve failed. I’m failing. I’m failing at this. This teacherhood. This motherhood. This homeownership-hood. This hood that masks our lives, that covers up who we really are as we place ourselves into tiny boxes that will never quite close.
And it’s only Wednesday.
And I want to go to bed tonight thinking about M, the boy in my class who sat head down for half the lesson, and wouldn’t write down a single question. Yet I called on him anyway, and he glared at me, and snapped back, “Why me? You know I don’t have any questions.” And D, the Afghani-trek-across-Iraq-to-Turkey-survivor, shouting across, “Come on, M, you can do it,” and the smile I forced on my face as I said, “But I know you CAN make good questions” and all twenty-seven of them waited, and he asked, “What would the world be like without guns?” and I thanked him and moved onto the next kid and by the end of class, he came up to me proudly, all ten questions filled in, even answers, to show me he could do it… Which I already knew he could.
And I want to go to bed tonight thinking about their goofy faces. Spoons over eyes waiting to lap up Bonnie Brae Ice Cream at this new restaurant in my new ‘hood… because BBIC follows me everywhere, and because they are kids. Kids who slam down garage doors and fail math tests and forget to bring home books and play with dolls and fight each other over who gets to see the mirror in the restaurant bathroom and race each other to the car and put spoons over their eyes like aliens. Kids who live, fully live, their childhood.
And this ‘hood is my ‘hood, my home, my home.
And I want to go to bed tonight thinking about El Amante Turco, and all the hours I’ve spent listening to Esmeralda Santiago’s soothing Puerto Rican accent, and all the words I’ve learned and bilingualism I’ve infused, morning noon and night, even if it isn’t what my Spanish teacher told me to listen to.
And I want to go to bed tonight underneath a hood big enough to cover my broken-down, brand-spankin-new, seventeen-year-wait king size bed. One that will cover me up, block out the light, and remind me of the dawn that will break through tomorrow.
Because there’s always tomorrow.
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