Little Perennials

I've always associated this Indigo Girls song with teaching...

Perennials are the ones that have a new crop come up every year, right?

Back in the long stretch of loneliness

I have come to call a living,
I'm getting something for all this love's labor,
even when I am forgetting.

Oh we oh oh little perennials
where'd you come from?

I look for words to fill the empty spaces,
all the life revealed in these back stages.
I reach for names like little puzzle pieces;
oh perennial, come to me.

Oh we oh oh little perennials
where'd you come from?

I like to hope my stretch of loneliness might be ending now. I like to think it was a noble sacrifice. And more than just making a living.

i hope you dance

Something about the fading light in the back patio of my favorite coffee shop; the sappy country songs on my internet radio station issuing life lessons to all those who will listen; the gentle heat ushering late spring into early summer...

makes me feel nostalgic for a time that hasn't even quite passed yet. Part of me really needs to zip through this last week of school stretching before me, break through the neon tape over the finish line, don my silver heat blanket and begin the recovery and celebration. Put it all behind me.

But the other part of me is reminding me to stop and take a sip from my life's cup and savor the flavor. This year, my 25th, has been one-of-a-kind, unrepeatable, and marks an important shift in my adult life. For the first time since crawling out of college three years ago tender and unaware, I was consciously, sustainedly happy. It's so weird how you often don't realize happiness until after it's been there for a little while. Takes some time to sink in I suppose.

I try to think about the things that have made me happy, what has separated this year, a year I consider successful, from the other two that were, well... less so. I know I'm a broken record, fawning over my newfound friends, but these things, these people, are not to be taken for granted. I am so thankful for having gravitated to them, and they to me. Maybe there is an order in the universe after all, maybe there is some sort of gravitational pull between people who are meant to be together.

Or maybe I was just lucky.

Either way, I would say this is the number one factor in overcoming the isolation I felt in my first 1.7 years of teaching. Identifying my people, zeroing in on them, pouncing, and not letting go for the life of me.

I had the realization, as I was sitting with my posse in Pequena, our favorite after-work watering hole, that this, this was what I will remember when I look back on the year: yucking it up over Henrietta's stories about her wacky family and precocious students, fogging over the day's disappointments with a well-timed class of sangria, a plate of yuca fries (cut small) and sincere commiseration from others who really know.

And the sangria also helps us celebrate our successes, like the Pretzel Club show last Friday. The celebration brought our at-risk students' parents and families to school not to be the recipients of not-good news about their kids' academic shortcomings, but to celebrate the progress they have made and their potential.

J-- taught the audience how to draw a comic. A-- made a quiz on facts he's learned about sharks. D-- and C-- became game show hosts for math games they'd done with Rosie. K-- showed photographs she'd taken with Vee, and S--, a shy, self-conscious struggling reader at the beginning of the year, read a poem she had written based on an R. Kelly song out loud to the entire audience, and beautifully.

After the performance there were awards and pictures and flowers, and when everyone finally left, Corky and I hugged, and my eyes threatened to overflow. I'm going to miss her so much. I have learned so much from her. Her presence has allowed me to become more than I was before.

This year was about empowerment.

The first two years were daily reminders of everything I couldn't do - things I wanted to do but wasn't capable of, or was afraid to try. This year, I felt like I did something. This year, when the kids signed my oversized graduation t-shirt with exclamations that I'm the "best teacher ever," I didn't feel guilt, I didn't feel like a big phony impostor. This year, I felt I had earned the title, subjective and temporary as it might be.

I'm doing it! I'm doing it! It's like riding without training wheels for the first time. It's like flying. Finally: the pay-off. After wading through a shit lagoon that was wide and deep, I've made it to the other side.

And it's nice here.

unwritten

In the grand tradition of graduation songs, the kids' song is extremely corny, and made all the more corny by the choreographed hand motions... I've been overwrought and under-slept with increasing severity as my intensive summer grad class wears on. (5 to 10pm twice a week for four weeks.) So I know this is what's at the root of my weepiness and hyper-sentimentality this week.

But as the kids' graduation gets closer and closer, something about their boisterous enthusiasm, their slightly off-key but extremely earnest belting strikes closer and closer to my heart. We told the kids they had to smile during the happy songs, and S-- seems to have taken it as his personal mission in life to smile the hardest he possibly can for the entirety of the song. His face is contorted, it's almost more of a grimace. But it is so prototypically S-- of him, he is so unselfconscious and innocent and wacky, I get choked up when look at him, even though he does it every single time. It is like he is trying to emote the song through his body, rather than singing it with his voice.

(S-- is pretty unforgettable. He is a tiny kid with a gravelly voice and a lisp, one of these kids that is just a constant hurricane of movement and energy, always falling out of chairs because he sits with his legs gnarled up behind him in seemingly impossible gestures. He is clumsy and uncoordinated, always tripping or walking into things or knocking things over ... His hair is always slicked down sideways on his head, his glasses are always falling down his nose. He talks a mile a minute and never runs out of things to say, and perpetually has some kind of snack food either in his mouth or his hands or on his shirt.)

As a teacher, especially an all-day every-day elementary school teacher, you know kids in a deep, yet in some ways strangely superficial way that is unlike any other human relationship in existence. Looking around at all their faces as they sing their song is just such a window into who they are, now that I know them inside and out. I see I-- with his big goofy smile, eyes wandering around the room, only aware in the very vaguest of sense of what is going on around him. B-- is staring intently at Rosie's conducting, ramrod straight, hands at her sides, and diligently making a note of every instruction we give and carrying out all orders efficiently, silently, obediently. K-- is surreptitiously making eyes at the boys off to her right, whispering secrets that are doubtless of critical importance to her best friend seated a row in front of her, trying her best to evade the steely gaze of the teachers. D-- just singing with his heart and soul.

I'm going to miss them so much. Because after they leave P.S. OO it's entirely possible that I will never see some of them again... these people, who have been at the center of my life for ten months, who I have worried and fretted over and who have made me overflow with pride as much as they've filled me with blind, white-hot rage... I just won't see them anymore. Maybe in passing, maybe out in the neighborhood, maybe they'll come by and say hi or write me an email. But there will be a clean cut. On June 28 this cast of characters will simply be removed from my life. It's a bizarre break. Just the nature of teaching, I guess, spread your wings and fly and all that. But it's a little jarring nonetheless.

The graduation song (best enjoyed if you imagine it sung at top volume by a motley collection of pre-adoloscents all lined up in the auditorium in captivity, wearing red ties and name tags):

Unwritten - Natasha Bedingfield

I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined
I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it
Release your inhibitions
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

Oh, oh, oh

I break tradition, sometimes my tries, are outside the lines
We've been conditioned to not make mistakes, but I can't live that way


Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten
The rest is still unwritten

tag teaming

Once again, my matchless friends come to the rescue.

Today, the first clerical half day, I found myself cankle-deep in unfinished cumulative records and other paperwork that had to be finished TOday, only up the the D's in alphabetical order, with time ticking down before I had to leave before my (5-hour) class.

"I think I'm in trouble," I said to Henrietta as I passed her in the hallway.

And, minutes later, no questions asked, she, Corky and Rosie were assembly-lining through my stack of folders like they were on a mission. Even though they had spent the entire afternoon on their own tedious paperwork (just at a more efficient rate)... In no time, the deed was done. I was stacked, sorted, alphabetized and color-coded, and had just enough time to print my paper and make the train up to Harlem.

I wonder when I might get to a point in my career when I don't have to be bailed out with some time-sensitve, overwhelming task that has me totally marooned... but until then, I am absolutely wordlessly, bottomlessly, inexpressibly grateful for what they did, and what I know they would be willing to do for any one of us, any number of times should the need arise.

next?

The thing that's different about teaching from other jobs is how cyclical it is. There are distinct starting points and end points, and every year there is an opportunity to reinvent yourself.

I keep thinking, "What's next?" There's the cruise then carnival then half day then International Day then graduation... then what?

Then a long delicious expanse of getting to be someone else for a while. And by someone else, I mean me, unfettered by my responsibilities, my 28 ball and chains. I get to be *not* Ms. D for a while. And I think that break will do me good.

The Organization Sheet came out yesterday... Next year I'll be teaching the same grade in the same room, which is great for me because I don't have to pack up my entire classroom and move it down the hall, which I've had to do the past two years now. Only difference is the big bold "Vacancy" next t room 317 where Corky would've been. That and, my roster will be up to 32 kids. Don't even know where I will fit four extra bodies!

letter from a past self about wild geese

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

*****

Dear Self,

You don't have to be good.

You don't have to repent and crawl on your knees.

You don't have to apologize for who you are...

Please don't punish yourself...

Love what you love, trust your instincts.

We are all just human animals.

Tell people what they give to you. Let them know they will be missed.

Bear change gracefully, like the seasons. The wild geese will return. You will find love again, and friendship. You can do it on your own - you always have. Persist. Persistence has paid off manyfold. The most important thing about humans and animals is that they are adaptable. Be brave. Adapt with grace. Make the most of what you have -- you are lucky in that you'll never be alone. Follow the road as it stretches out before you.

finding happiness in a six-foot sub

Of the things I have learned this year, one is that exercise makes me a more productive person... I realize that, somehow, in some way I don't fully understand, if I can make to to the gym or the track first thing in the morning, or if I go on my way home from school before I do anything else, I can accomplish all sorts of important things afterwards that guaranteed would have been pushed under the rug and procrastinated away if I hadn't gone... Good job, me! Perhaps there is hope of becoming a functional human being after all...

I am very excited and happy about my Summer Potluck Picnic/BBQ this weekend. I just ordered a six-foot sub and bought five cases of beer, and this makes me very happy. I am excited to make use of the backyard! I'm excited to prove to myself that, if you think of ways to make yourself happier, and then take steps towards making those things happen, you actually *get* happier!

Exhibit A: my apartment with lovely roommates and natural light and a backyard for barbecuing in a neighborhood where friends are easy to access. (Compare to sad, lonely apartment of last year)

Exhibit B: Fifth grade is awesome. (Compare to grueling hardship of first grade.)

Exhibit C: My new computer is awesome. (Certain happinesses can be bought, especially when they replace frustration and low-grade but persistent rage, as induced by my ancient crazy-making PC)

Exhibit D: Visiting Corky next summer, ALL summer, wherever she ends up, will help me to miss her less.

Score point? Personal happiness: plus four. Anxiety trepidation and doubt: plus zero.

You hear that, life!? I'ma figure you out one of these days!

My smart Twister (twin sister) taught me about the arrival fallacy.

You will never arrive. The destination is a mirage. This, right now, is all you get. Distant Eden will not appear around the corner if you strive harder or wish for it more. Your surroundings will never transform suddenly of their own accord into some sort of utopian dream. No matter what you do to them, even if you are very very patient. The transformation happens from within...

That's what they mean when they say happiness is a choice. You can decide to see the good around you, to appreciate whatever there is to appreciate and just love the bejeezus out of everything you can possibly find to love. Or you can live a life with less love and less good and less light in it. Those are the only choices you get - Believe in the good and let it in. Or refuse to see it and do without.

These musings were inspired by the letter I got from Escape, the "grassroots" Inner Resilience founded by Corky that she holds at her apartment with all the essential elements, plus wine!

We did an exercise where you write about a person or other entity in your life, and you think about what you have received from them (or it), what you have given to them (or it), and what difficulties or troubles you are having with it or them.

It turns out, Corky and I both wrote about each other. Both of us thought we received much more in our relationship than we gave. Which I guess is how you know a friendship is really strong... kind of like synergy, though I know everyone hates the word... we are complements to each other, and simply by being who we are in each other's presence, we make each other better people.

Not a bad deal. Pretty special. in fact.