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
truth
Cover Me Up
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.
Neither Here Nor There
rain-forced overtime
and a club cancellation
poured on my evening
frazzled two incomes
shuffle life like laundry loads:
nothing’s ever clean
quick pasta in pan
(middle one waits for boil)
i mad-dash the town
make my appointment
where my essay’s dissected
by native speaker
who can’t tell me why
subjunctive is needed here
yet, not here (nor there)
disgruntled, i sit
choose the last row, and listen–
same two birds chirping
pecking the rest out
our Spanish words now swallowed
by extroversion
and i can’t do it
i cannot sit in this class
with my girls at home
i can’t speak Spanish
or use subjunctive bullshit
—just say what it is—
it’s like our lunch talk:
Midwest culture won’t allow
taking last cookie
and if you offer,
offer three times before, ‘Yes’
(no cookie for me)
so i leave the class
i walk out, i give up, lose
(win time with my girls
who ask for reading
aloud, in poems stories,
mine and theirs and ours)
and we read Spain poems
remember Gaudí’s madness
in place of our own
and that’s my Thursday
just like any other: lost,
but not forgotten
Crying for no Reason
First ice skating lesson after nearly a year break. After he lost his job and my dad paid for skiing and I didn’t think we’d have the time or desire for such an activity again. But they’ve been begging for months, and I finally conceded.
It’s a rush of a Wednesday saved only by the fact that Isabella gets out of school early for once and we’ve miraculously arranged a ride home for her. By the time I pick up the younger two and arrive home, we have just shy of an hour for chores, homework, piano practice and dinner to be on the table, all prior to Daddy coming home, in order for us to leave on time, drive through rush hour, spend fifteen minutes circling streets for a meter, run through the rain, and lace up three pairs of too-long-laces ice skates. All three girls beg me to stand by the glass as they practice for thirty minutes before the lesson, but I want to use what little time I have to fit in a walk and a listen to my Spanish book. I concede to ten minutes of watching them flash by me full of grins, squeeze in twenty minutes of walking, and sit through their lesson intermittently looking up while I write my weekly Spanish essay.
Mythili ends up not having a single kid in class with her. The young DU teachers group her with Isabella, one level up, which she seems to accept for the time being. But as soon as the lesson’s over, she puts her pouty face on. “Ice skating is BORING if I have to take a lesson by myself.” She whines about her skates not coming off, about how thirsty she is, and falls into a teary-eyed slump on the chaise lounge as soon as we enter the door, no “Hello Daddy” or hugs to pass around.
Before bed, tears still creeping into the corners of her eyes, she begs me to cancel, to change her lesson, to bump her up to the next level so she doesn’t have to be alone. I try to reason with her: it’s like having a private lesson, like piano, and what a deal! But there is no reasoning with Mythili. All I can do is promise (likely to no avail) to beg the teacher next week to let her join the other class, or I will, I kid you not (because I know this kid), have eight weeks of pouting and complaining in my future.
Their school pictures came in today. I waste no time in changing them out, and, sadly, all three look only slightly differently than they did last year. Does this mean they’re growing more slowly? I wish. As I walk through our new home and see their chubby faces pass me by in photos from the toddler years, my heart aches. I remember when they were so young, and their needs were so simple: eat, sleep, cuddle, read, bed. Yes, there were those random times when they would cry, cry, cry for no reason. (Perhaps there was a reason… but none of us will ever know).
But now? They have so many reasons to cry, to fight, to whine, complain… I can’t get dinner on the table without backtalk about setting it or the dustpan being lost or homework not being done or an argument about who did what last. They no longer need the simple list of eat, sleep, cuddle, read, bed. They need to be told that their voice matters. That their needs are important. That I need to look up from my writing to look at them. To fully look at them. To know that when they cry, they cry for a reason. A million reasons. Just like the rest of us.
And I wish I could turn back time, when their needs were so simple. I wish I could be the mother that I was, when I didn’t have to fight the battle of who needs what, from homework help to where the fuck is the dustpan-well-you-might-as-well-grab-some-paper-towels.
But I am a mother. I signed up for that battle of trying to figure out why that baby wouldn’t stop crying, of carrying each one of them in varying positions across the room, rocking, consoling, patting, singing, praying for silence. And I signed up for these battles too, however disheartening or day-cringing they make me.
Because when they cry, there’s always a reason. And as their mother, it’s my job to figure out how to make the crying stop.
Reminder
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)
Cliques
called out, then ignored
hard work and dedication
lost under five words
but these aren’t students!
high school politics burn best
(i thought we’d grown up)
i can be silent
hold fast to my ideas
whatever works, “team”
no bitter step forth
because life is too damn short
to give them my days
Hoods
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.
Fill in the Blank
blank pages, blank screens
blocked by self-doubt, fleeting hope
that this will lessen
but will it lessen?
parent/teach/coach/clean/cook/fail
how it feels sometimes
no break, no reward
just a messy classroom, house
just kids who talk back
and sometimes i cringe
at how much i live for them
how i love them so
and never myself
Small Town Education (Day One)
Modeled after “Indian Education” by Sherman Alexie
Kindergarten
Before she went out to her garage, poured a gallon of gasoline all over herself and lit herself on fire to die a fiery death, I already didn’t like Mrs. Mumby. It was my first year of school and she hated me.
It all started with cutting a picture of Baby Jesus and the moon. She gave us only a few minutes and I rushed through, trying to cut the moon as fast as I could. She snuck up behind me like she always did and before I knew it her gray-curly-headed face was inches from mine. I could smell the after effects of too-black coffee as she spat the words at me:
“I told you how to cut, slowly and carefully. Now come outside.” And she grabbed my upper arm and yanked me into the hallway.
“You need a lesson on listening.” She dug her fingernails into my arm. “Never rush through your work or you’ll be useless all your life.”
The tears were streaming down my dumbfounded face. This was worse than the spanking and the “extra pinch for an inch” she’d given me on my birthday. I was afraid of her and I wanted to finish first to make her proud.
So when my mother had to stay home from work two days later because my teacher had killed herself, I didn’t know what to think of school. It sure as hell was one mean place.
First Grade
My mother spent six weeks drawing Venus Fly Traps for a book she never received credit for, and that $650 was just enough to drive us for a camping trip to Disney World where we were allowed a singular souvenir. And what did I pick with my $3? A huge pencil, two feet long that I could barely wrap my just-turned-seven fingers around, with vibrant drawings of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck all around its core.
Sadly, spring break came to an end and my parents had to go back to working at the small town newspaper, where between them both they earned $10 an hour and could barely put food on the table, let alone give us girls a trip to Disney. My sister and I had to return to school, where the mundane Mrs. Healthferdy’s main goal in life was to have a silent first grade classroom. I wanted to play games and do science experiments, but she wanted us to copy the date exactly the same way every day: Today is Monday, April 27, 1985. BOR-ING!
But I was so excited to use my pencil that I didn’t even care! I proudly pulled my souvenir out of my backpack and started writing the day, not making a peep, just like Mrs. Healthferdy wanted. I was all the way to 1985 when she came up behind me, leaned over, and brushed my cheek with her bad-dye-job blond hair.
“Karen, you cannot use this pencil. It is much too distracting to the other students.”
I briefly glanced around the room, where the other first graders were also painstakingly writing out the date. No one was even looking at me, let alone my prized possession. But I certainly didn’t want another trip to the hall like Mrs. Mumby had offered me so many times, so I relinquished the pencil, never returned to Disney, and still don’t have a singular souvenir.
Second Grade
It wasn’t that I had spilled six cups of boiling water on myself, causing a second degree burn and a night in the emergency room. It wasn’t that my mother freaked out and let me stand there in a two-inch-thick sweatshirt for two minutes too long. It wasn’t that it was the day before Halloween, my favorite holiday, where I’d miss the costume parade at school.
It was Mrs. Gridley, my gym teacher. Snarky. Mean. Uncompromising.
On November 1st, it was time to go back to school. I was covered in bandages from my left arm all the way to my belly, and even had a small red mark on my chin where the water had splashed. November 1st, a Friday. Gym class. Which began each day with Mrs. Gridley, all four-feet-ten-of-her, screaming at us to raise our arms up higher for pushups. And I couldn’t raise my left arm at all. I was on a series of pain medications for the most painful thing I’d ever experienced.
But I didn’t have a doctor’s note.
“I have to do gym tomorrow if I don’t have a doctor’s note,” I pleaded with my parents.
“Are you kidding me?” My father shot back. “Just lift up your shirt and show her the bandages. You don’t need a note.”
I was desperate and afraid. I rushed into my sister Elizabeth’s room. Eighteen months older than me, she was much more knowledgeable about the world, and most importantly, knew how to write in cursive.
“Can you please write a note pretending like you’re the doctor?” I begged her.
And on a tiny notepad, in precarious, light pencil, she scrawled a note in her fourth grade cursive handwriting. It was barely legible, barely visible under Mrs. Gridley’s thick bottle-bottomed reading glasses the next morning.
“What does this SAY?” she demanded, peeking her eyes over her glasses at me.
“I—I can’t do gym today. I—I burned myself.”
“Well, I can barely read this. Is it from the doctor?”
“Y-yes…” I looked down, horrified at the idea of having to pull up my shirt, to expose to her and the rest of the world a stomach full of blisters and scars.
“Well, go sit down then and do your other homework.”
And that’s the first time I ever got away with something with a teacher.
Third Grade
“What do you mean, you’re leaving??” we all recited the same chorus. Mrs. Emerson, my sister’s favorite teacher to date, and now mine, had taken a principal job at another school in a different town. Mrs. Emerson, who gave me all the most challenging spelling words and math sheets, who let me curl up in her walled-off reading nook with a book when I finished my work early (and I always finished it early), who let me sit with my best friend, Kellie, even though we stole whispered conversations every chance we got.
Finally! A great teacher! And she was leaving right after Christmas?
At our class Christmas party, all the kids with the stay-at-home moms brought treats. Venison someone’s dad had hunted. Rice Krispie treats decorated with Red Hots. Gingerbread cookies that crumbled into brown bits on the floor.
We had a Secret Santa, and I pulled my crush’s name! I was so excited to buy him a book about Ziggy, his favorite comic.
It was the saddest, most bittersweet day. At the end, Mrs. Emerson went to the tree and started opening presents that students had brought. Just like all the other school years, I thought only a few students would bring her a gift. But as she opened up one picture frame or bottle of perfume or ornament after another, I began to realize that every student in the class had brought her something.
Every student but me.
I began to sweat. I put my palms under my butt and moved to the back of the crowd on the carpet. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, but neither did any of the other kids in that blue-collar, no-work town. And she was the best teacher ever! I was mortified. I felt selfish and sick.
I wanted more than anything to have the guts to go up to her after the last bell and tell her she was my favorite, tell her how much I’d miss her, tell her how sorry I was that I didn’t buy her a gift. But my small pulled-in-hallway kindergarten self took over, and I bolted out the door and into the freezing cold New York winter, barely able to breathe by the time I ran down the hill and into my babysitter’s living room.
Six weeks later, when everyone else in the class received a thank you card from Mrs. Emerson for the nice Christmas gift, she sent me a letter too, thanking me for being such a great student.
She was still my favorite teacher.
My Friday Night
a red solo cup
atop a stack of boxes
life is moving on
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