on Saturdays we cut out grass
and bend bits of metal
and win medals in Tae Kwon Do
and watch weird episodes of a modern drama
while the oldest babysits
and oh how our life has changed
from changing diapers to ours changing diapers
and we go to bed hours after
the joy of slipping off clothes
to slide into fleece pajamas
with kittens in our laps
and just love love love
that we. can. relax.
what we need this June
is blooming summer beauty
to refresh our lives
in this tragic life
whose pain touches all of us
we must find beauty
around the curved path,
falling angel-like from trees,
a blue mountain view,
the eyes of a child,
the joy of family outings–
hope that love will live
Location:S Leyden St,Denver,United States
it’s quite a short list
but somehow you’ve made the top
of the worst. ever.
(June isn’t here yet
but it can’t come fast enough
to save me from them)
One of my former colleagues (now retired) always used to say, “They come, they go,” referring to the endless stream of students we see over the years. It was a way to cope with those awful days or those awful kids. Knowing that yes, it might be difficult in this moment, or even for this entire school year, but soon it will be over, and we will have a new set of faces and a new ten months of opportunities to educate, enrich, and touch their lives… Just as they will ours.
I was thinking about this phrase last night when I was making cards and cookies for my seniors, a set of four girls who have shared my classroom for the past three years, always a bit timid, always a bit unsure, always with a smile on their faces as they asked for help. They come from Nepal and Burma, and though have spent their four years at this high school diligently reading and writing, and rewriting, and rewriting …and rewriting, their English is still only at a high enough level for them to attend the community college. Yet, they are taking the chance, stepping their toes in, and pushing forward with the education their parents risked their lives to give to them. They have come…and now, they’re gone.
When Bruce called, texted, emailed, and left a voice mail at 10:53 this morning telling me that Mythili was sick, I had 17 minutes left in class before lunch and senior check out. “She hasn’t thrown up yet, but the principal said she looked like she could at any moment.” I forlornly looked at my bag of cookies and cards, my special sign-out pen. I waited for class to end and my line of three students to dissipate, one demanding to know why she couldn’t have a grade higher than a B+, one wanting me to forgive an assignment she’d lost, and one who can’t formulate a single word of English after three years, and in her broken, muffled frustration, begged for extra work to bring up her futilely failing grade (this one I’ve recommended to be tested for special education, to no avail… The complexities of the public school system).
I couldn’t just leave. I couldn’t just drop everything to pick up my sick child from school. I know that so many people are trapped by their commitments to work and balancing out their commitment to family, but there is something about teaching that keeps you there even when it feels impossible to stay.
I settled what I could with the girls, grabbed my keys, and rushed over to the elementary school where a very shaky eleven-year-old got into my car. I dug around in the back seat for the plastic nut jar, dumped its contents into another, and held it out to her. “In case you need to puke on the way,” I suggested.
She made it home. Barely. Not two minutes in, she rushed to the bathroom and let it loose. I rushed to the kitchen, grabbed the puke bowl, a towel, and an ice cold glass of water.
“I have to go. Senior check out,” I told her as I tucked her into bed. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes. “OK Mama,” she whispered.
“Do you want the iPad?” I asked, Netflix bribery.
And so I left her. I rushed back to school, heated up my lunch, and waited to sign out and say goodbye to my girls. Just like all the students I’ve ever had, I will likely never see them again. I might hear from one or two from time to time, but once they’re gone… They’re gone. They are not my children. They will get sick and get their hearts broken and fail at jobs or school or possibly life, and I won’t be there to save them or hold their hands or empty out the puke bucket… And so why do I do this?
Because teaching is about balancing out the apathy, the misbehavior, the bad attitudes, the low skills… With those bright spots, those kids who care, those girls who touch your heart and make you feel that the world has the possibility of becoming a better place. And I can’t let go of that. I have to hold onto those moments or all of their apathy will break down my empathy.
Because before Bruce mass communicated with me about my own daughter, I learned about someone else’s daughter. One of my students. A para and another student came searching for one of the boys in my class who has been nothing but trouble for me all semester. He shouts out in class. He makes racist remarks. He ditches. He throws away a perfectly good brain to apathy, something I’ve seen too many times in fifteen years.
“What has he done now?” I asked.
“Oh, he hasn’t done anything. We need to ask about O. Do you know O.?”
“Yes, she’s in my third period… But she hasn’t been here because her grandmother is dying in Illinois.” O. comes in with a jeweled hijab every day, a smile, a dedication to learning. She hadn’t missed a day of school until a week ago.
“Well, she ran away with M.’s brother last night because her parents are making her marry a twenty-seven-year-old on Saturday. And she posted on Facebook that she wanted to kill herself.”
“So… Her parents came in and met with the principal and made up a story about her grandmother dying?”
These were the only words I could muster. They were looking for M., I pulled up his schedule, and they were gone from my room as quickly as they had arrived. I had twenty-three minutes till my next two classes to stew. To wipe away tears. To think about the bright young face that is being robbed of her youth. Of her dignity. Sold.
What could make them do this? What could make them travel the world to bring their daughter away from the poorest country to the richest, where all the opportunities were set out before her, just to give it up, to give in to the old world beliefs that it is acceptable to send a FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD into a trap of a marriage?
When I see M. thirty minutes later, I ask him about her. “Where is she? Is she OK? Is she with your brother?”
“She’s fine Miss. She’s getting married on Saturday. You don’t understand. It’s an Asian thing.” (One of his favorite expressions).
He’s as flippant as if he were talking about his latest rendezvous in the park, his latest date, his latest excuse for not coming to class.
I want to grab his shoulders and look into his eyes and shake him and ask him, “Do you really think it is acceptable for such a young girl to be forced to marry??”
But I don’t. He will leave my class soon (They come, they go) and I will no longer have to hear his ignorant remarks. But O.? She has already gone. Two years older than my oldest daughter, her opportunities for a future have been stripped down and shaped out into a malformed mold of submissiveness.
I carry her home with me. Just like my senior girls who are so kind as they say goodbye, her eyes, her smiling face, come home with me. I check on my daughter who has settled into a nap, puke bucket still empty. I sit in my living room, cat in my lap, wondering why I couldn’t just stay home with her. Why did I go back? Why did I feel I needed to sign a paper for four girls I’ll never see again?
Because ultimately, the truth of this profession is that the students never leave. Each one of them holds a place in my heart, even if it is a hollow place marred by disrespect. Even if it is a broken place marked by abuse and abandonment. Even if it is an unforgiving place where I will forever wonder what I could have done to save them.
And I can’t be the mother I need to be without carrying their stories with me. I can’t come home and exchange silly texts with my nine-year-old and console my forlorn thirteen-year-old whose biggest crisis in life is that she lost her watch, and nurse my eleven-year-old, who’s just a bit weak from a mild stomach flu, without knowing about all that they could be facing.
Rape. War. Abuse. Addiction.
I can’t control who walks into my classroom, or how much it hurts me to accept the pain that trails behind these kids as naturally as a shadow. They come with every story you could ever imagine from the complex rainbow of humanity. Mothers who have died of cancer. Fathers who have never been around. Perfectly happy little families from picket-white-fence yards. Seemingly happy families with closets full of skeletons. Mental illness. Disabilities.
And they go… With all of what they’ve come with. And a little bit of me. Just like I will always carry a little bit of them.
And that is why I hug my girls tight. I wrap Mythili up in her quilt and promise Riona she can buy the terrible chips and tell Isabella she can get a new watch…
I don’t tell them about O. Or M. Not today.
Because I don’t want them to carry that pain. Because I want to shelter them in the love of the perfect little family we’ve created. Because they are girls with the world in front of them, and I want them to know how safe they will be with whatever choice they will make.
Because they have come into my life as my daughters. They are mine. They are not my students. And though I can’t give them every moment of my time, I know that I will never be able to let them go.
Because they are the eyes, the smile, the hope of every student I have ever had… And every student I have yet to meet.
They will come, and they will go.
And I will always be here. For all of them.
when you’re trapped by gloom
and unable to say why
refocus your lens
you might catch a glimpse
of golden sunlit peaks;
a stand-alone tree
spring rain bringing food
(hidden in these rays, raindrops)
to a front range ranch
refocus your lens–
windows will open your eyes
to a clearer view
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.
a sound of thunder
beats down truer every day
good lord save us all
the school door is locked at 5 a.m.
in case you needed to know,
your key card will conjure the green light,
but the door won’t click open.
7-Eleven is open at that hour,
and there’s no traffic on any street.
nothing but a sliver of silver moonlight
competing with the dull yellow glow of city streetlights.
you can walk with fear in your step
(who is that hooded creature?)
while waiting for the door to open.
listen to your audiobook about the
Roosevelt Panama Canal scandal.
(wish you hadn’t heard it, wish Roosevelt could remain the king of conservation you’ve admired atop
Mt. Rushmore, glasses, grin, and all)
you can find yourself at 5 a.m.
piled under papers and planning,
sleep surrendered to 4-prep stress,
solace comes from pre-dawn accomplishments.
(the door clicks open at 5:30.
before the secretary can check you in.
before breakfast lunch carts arrive,
and hundreds of hungry hands hanker for your time)
you can start a day at 5 a.m.
it will be inundated with a quagmire of mother’s guilt and teacher’s helplessness,
all because of a shuttered door.
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