oldest Florida site
enthralls us like we’re in Spain
(memories abound)
coquina fortress
built on the sweat from slaves’ backs
(engineering feat)
defense of this sight:
gleaming harbor colony
(worth the protection)
a dogged day’s drive
at the end of this journey
(worth the distraction)
history, not mice:
Florida is more than Disney
(all they need to know)
i waited four years
to have my Kitchenaid back
too bad you’re broken
this last, lost moment
before i burnt the cookies
will be remembered
goodbye, my mixer,
my flourless-chocolate King,
my sweet-tooth master
i’ve missed your batches,
your easy whipping of eggs,
your strength to knead bread.
but i let you live
in the cold hands of strangers
who kneaded your death
alas, we all die
and it’s time for us to part
forever now, love
may you rest in peace
while i strengthen my right arm
while mixing by hand
Another year is over, and it ends with a tinge of the same sinking feeling that every year begins with. The constant question all teachers ask themselves as they tackle this challenging career: Is this worth it?
Sometimes it is just a small thing that can make you sad or frustrated or feeling burned out. A student who didn’t come back to make up the final he blew off. An administrator who wouldn’t renew a colleague’s contract. A message from admin that our keys, checkout form, rooms, and us, are all being carefully micro-managed. (We can be trusted to instill knowledge and take charge over 150 students in a year, but god forbid we leave without being checked to ensure we followed through and cleaned out our damn desks).
But for me this year, after three years of teaching at the same school, it is the hollow disappointment of not having any real friends where I work.
While the thought crosses my mind off and on throughout the year as colleagues gather together for happy hours that I cannot attend because of childcare needs, or weekend parties or outings where a group of all the people I work most closely with have all attended and I only see the event posted on Facebook (not invited myself), today, on the last day of the year, the smallest event brought me to tears.
I had just heated up my lunch and was sitting alone in the office. A colleague came in and asked me to watch a student who was taking a test in the next room because she was going out to lunch. And while she offered to get me something while she was out, since I’d already brought my lunch, I said I’d be fine to eat in the classroom with the student.
But when I walked into the hall, it hit me: There they all were, in their too-cool-for-high-school clique, purses in hand, chatting and giggling their way to their outing together.
They had already made plans.
I sat alone with the student and then graded her final, texting her teacher that she was done (a text–one of several in the past few months, including accolades toward him and gratitude for one thing or another–he did not respond to).
I brought the test up to the assessment coordinator and went back down to my lonely, empty classroom, and cried.
Because this job is hard enough. Because I fight every day for these kids just like they do. Because I try to reach out to them, invite them to things, and get outright blacklisted. Because I don’t know why I’ve been blacklisted–is it because I have an opinion? Because I’m a “cynic”? Because I don’t fit into their mold of single and alcoholic?
Because it would be nice to have a friend, even a singular friend, who could support me in this constant battle that is teacherhood.
Because it’s the end of the year, and I won’t see or hear from any of them all summer, and … I guess it doesn’t matter.
At my former school, I had so many great colleagues. We ate lunch together every day and laughed so hard that someone literally started choking once and another teacher had to perform the Heimlich to save him. We’d go to happy hour, occasionally, or children’s events, occasionally, or parties. A couple of them I would get together with during the summer, just for kicks, because we were FRIENDS.
And on days like this, when there were no students? There wasn’t a soul in the building who stayed inside eating lunch alone. We’d gather in groups, ride together to a local restaurant to have lunch, and see the rest of the crew there anyway, and we’d make a giant table and laugh until we cried.
And I knew that going to Spain was going to change all that and that I wouldn’t be going back there.
But, three years in, on the last day of school, it just. Fucking. Hurts.
So this is how my year ends. With a pity party.
Looking forward to a summer with my family, a real party with my actual friends this weekend, and a break from this place. God knows I need one.
two days of labor
(grunt work for those unwilling
to use elbow grease)
and yet, it’s Christmas:
mixer, platters, and dishes
we’ve lived years without
back to our dream house
where toil pays us back
with soft purring fur
in mineral baths
i mock a tropical life
(yet i’m still so cold)
the snow drives us home
a lion-like March exit
to freeze my failure
nothing can replace
all the hours without them
now bathed with worse score
Cartagena dream
brought to me by bicycle,
fate, and Friday luck
burst from these dark days
of post-holiday winter
news to change a life
(or ten thousand lives)
cause that’s how many she’ll touch
in her tenure here
this comes full circle
(the young-mother sacrifice,
the risky Spain year)
to work with passion
to be led with compassion
to love, love my school
it’s all i’ve wanted
thirteen years waiting for strength
to be my leader
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.
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
weekend leftovers
murmur an early Monday
in my groaning gut
technology blues
plague two classes, one meeting
forced into nonsense
data collection
begins my singular plan
till phone rings: sick kid
frazzled packing up
for a stomach flu faker
then two extra kids
but that is not all!
cross country registration
at the last moment
my middle girl runs!
two days a week, a new plan:
laps around the park
(he can cook dinner–
we’ll eat late like back in Spain,
shed this U.S. stress)
and i will run too–
take tree-lined tech-free views home
(run free, not ragged)
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