Trying again

A letter came while I was away, from my former self, care of Inner Resilience:

Dear Self, ( I wrote, some 27 days ago...)

Have you sat with stillness today?

Have you let yourself feel silence?

Have you let yourself realize what you have accomplished?

Some days, like today, you are strong and brave and powerful, like a volcano erupting or a match igniting. Some days you can take on the world. Some days, like today, you are enough.

***

Again, the letter from myself has come at an apt time, because I've been thinking about my past and future selves.

A couple years ago, (after the particularly long and dark winter of my first year of teaching, when I really needed something to look forward to) I started a yearly ritual of life goal-setting in March or April, from a book called Best Year Yet. It’s the perfect time of year to do it, because looking ahead comes naturally, and you can believe it when you tell yourself the worst is behind you now.

April really is the start of a new year, not January. There’s nothing new about January or February. Snow gets old, cold gets old – the calendar might be new but winter keeps getting older by the day. Things are dead and dark, inside and out. March is the end.

And after the end, comes the beginning, again: the yearly miracle. No less miraculous for having rescued us the same way every year.

Spring is relief (we shall live to see another day) and promise (a full round golden summer on its way).

My favorite poet says of spring,

even though

it was hard times sometimes it’s nice

to know I can depend on the crazy

yellow of that forsythia to remind me

of how much I can forget in a year.

I've been thinking about everything that's changed in a year, how many things I've gained. Around this time last year things were looking pretty different. I was still suffering through first grade, drilling letter-sounds and sight words, resolving petty disputes, losing my patience and wearing myself thin day after day. I'd started to know Jafa and Corky and Shanaynay and Jade through last year's Pretzel Club, but we were still just familiar strangers and I had no idea they'd become pillars, centerpieces in my life.

I didn't know I'd do a triathlon and start to like running a little bit. I didn't know I'd move to Brooklyn to find a livelier neighborhood and escape my sad, empty Queens apartment. I didn't even know I was empty and sad at the time (though in retrospect, it should've been obvious.)

I didn't know how quickly or how fully my mom would recover from her surgery, or my dad from his. I didn't know if their business would get booming once again. I didn't know I was going to teach fifth grade, and that it would feel completely different. I didn't know how much my life would change in a year, though now if feels as if it has always been this way.

It's nice to know that I finally feel like I am enough sometimes...

I remember so clearly having lunch that first year with my officially assigned mentor, and breaking down in spite of myself. I remember trying to talk through pressurized tears, saying that even if I could do everything "they" wanted me to do, even if it weren't so impossible, it still wouldn't be enough. I felt, back then, that the kids had so much working against them -- I was a broken band-aid on a severed arm, a pathetic defense against unfathomably larger and stronger forces. Though I wanted to, I didn't know how to help them. I felt I was making matters worse, that my inexperience and ineffectiveness were robbing them of the education they truly needed and should've been entitled to.

So it's like this gorgeous Japanese magnolia the neighbors were kind enough to plant outside my window long ago. I've seen it in wind and rain, I've seen the branches bare and weighted with sleet and snow and covered in sleeves of ice. I noticed the buds when they first came out and now I see the blossoms fully, richly, thickly blooming. Today, the tree is exploding with possibilities and potential. Today it is brave and strong and powerful like a volcano or a match igniting. Does it know what it has accomplished? But that strength is always in there, just sometimes you don't see it... it's the same tree whether its branches are green or pink or white or bare. The same potential exists in the dead of winter as does in the height of spring... it's just a matter of sticking around long enough to see it.

So yeah. I'm the tree, the tree is me and all that.

It's not that the kids have changed, or their challenges, or the dark forces that are working against them. I know all that's still there. But I've changed in that I see things differently now, or maybe it's that I feel things differently now. I don't let immutable, immovable things like that hurt me in the same way. I don't care about the dark forces; dark forces be damned. Dark forces can go jump in a lake. I only care about me, and my kids, and my classroom.

So, take-home message: keep going. You cannot know what lies ahead. All will be well - the proof is there, under the surface. You will reap the rewards of what you sow. You are strong and brave. Today, you are enough.

Keep going.

It’s like my favorite poet says: there is something in this time of year that wants me to try again.