Guard Your Heart

Good grief, look at this picture.  It looks like I have seen a ghost.  Or someone just killed my best friend.  Or my best friend has been killed and I am being haunted by their ghost.  What caused this haunted, tight, vaguely constipated face?  It was not a ghost or a death that left my face like this, it was simply surviving my first two weeks of working at a high school.  This picture was taken early in the morning after our usual crowd of 150-200 or so left and I had some time to sit for a yearbook picture.  I think it does a great job of conveying how totally overwhelmed and slightly scared I felt being surrounded by teenagers.  It also does a great job of showing that I should not wear a scoop neck anything, ever.  I think if they were to take the picture today, it would be difficult to get one of me looking at the camera as I would be having two separate conversations going on and probably handing someone something and telling someone else that yes that they could use my computer to print.

Those first few weeks of school were a blur.  I will now admit to feeling very nervous about being surrounded by teenagers at first.  There were just crowds of them and I didn't know any of them and I was not a teacher so I didn't carry the weight of being in control of their grades.  I was also initially hesitant to tell them to stop bad behavior. I sicced my librarian on them because it made me feel icky.  Eventually I got over my fear of confrontation and engaged.  Enough so that I feel confident that the very image at the top of the page is being defaced by Sharpies in many yearbooks as we speak.

Adding to my sense of HOLYCRAP, was the fact that there were Juniors and Seniors assigned as Library Aides to us almost every period.  I was trying to figure out what I was supposed to do every day and now I had kids I was in charge of as well.  I had kids who loved the library and loved to read and happily shelved.  I had kids who were killing time to graduation and would push in chairs and then fall asleep for the rest of the period.  I had kids I didn't know what to do with and kids who could be a lot to handle.  The good thing about these kids is that they showed me that teenagers are like awkward adults.  Slowly I began to realize that if I felt uncomfortable engaging them in conversation, that they were wishing I wouldn't even try.  This made me talk to them even more. And slowly,they would engage in conversation back with me. I learned about their classes,their jobs, their plans for college and they learned that I was someone who would listen, someone who was not shocked by their language and someone who laughed alot and let them use the period to do their homework.  Other kids became familiar as they checked out books all the time or asked me what was a good book to read.  There were siblings of kids who told them to go to the library, it was a good place to hang out.  We accumulated a motley sort of crew who began to know each other and us and made the day a lot of fun.  

And now that we are eight school days from graduation, I am feeling a little verklempt thinking of these kids flying out of my safe little library nest.  They are more than ready: they are skipping classes, rolling their eyes at assignments, weary of their nestmates and just ready.  They are too big for the nest, too big for the halls of high school, they are ready to go.  Remember that feeling of knowing that the rest of your life was just days away?  I have talked about my favorites before and I have some perched and ready to go.  One I totally got ripped off on because she is a freshman and I should have three more years with her, but she is moving.  Rude. 

I promise I fed them mostly cookies, no worms.

As I begin to feel very sad about watching these favorites graduate and move on, instead of acknowledging that it has been a good year and that I will miss them, I keep saying next year I will not invest in anyone.  Especially not seniors.  Come in and get you involved in their lives, get you to care and to worry and to laugh and cry with them and then they are gone?  Who signs up for that? I told the few Juniors I have that I will carry them over into next year but no new kids let into the fold.  They say "yeah right Ms McMahon".  As if they know me better than me.  That I will still be feeding the ones who I overhear are hungry or running interference for ones who need it. That I would be willing to help with History and English homework but just still stare at the Math homework along side them.   

Maybe because it was my first year I just cannonballed into the deep end of the pool with these kids.  I never stopped to think that they wouldn't still be there.  They have made me laugh and cry, taught me new words as I tell them which ones they cannot say in front of me.  They have made me remember what it is like to be 16 or 18 or just a teen.  I have watched them fall in love and break up.  I have seen them pass without trying and fail miserably.  They have been named in our family dinner conversations and in our extreme cases, offered up in our prayers.  And now they are on their way to the rest of their lives and I am so happy for them and sad at the same time.  I will miss them.  I will miss knowing what is going on in their lives and miss knowing that I can help.  They have brought out the very best and the very worst in me and I hope I did a little of the same for them.  (the best anyway)  Next year, I will wade in a little more slowly, especially with seniors, because this time I didn't know to guard my heart and they have left their mark on it.    

To Clean or Have Cleaned

If cleanliness is next to holiness, then as for me and my house, we are knocking on the gates of hell.  I should be too embarrassed to write about how dirty my house is, but somehow I am not.  We pick up, we straighten, we vacuum and wipe things down but never all at once and not with great enthusiasm.  Dog hair is accumulating, dust has taken over and I don't even want to think about the bathrooms.  The other night on my way up the stairs I noticed that they had not been vacuumed in a very long time.  So long that I was able to scrape the dog hair into a pile on each step as I walked up.  That counts as cleaning, right?  The kids come in and dump everything in the kitchen.  It is so much fun to cook dinner while stepping over backpacks and trying to put clean dishes away.  It normally takes so long to put things where they belong that any intention I had to clean was wiped out.  

Hmm, perhaps I am guilty of kitchen cluttering as well.

Bill will go into white tornado mode where he cleans everything in his path with bleach and pure muscle.  He doesn't stop until every scrap piece of paper has been trashed, he has lost half a lung from bleach fumes and he is exhausted.  The kids and I know that there is no helping the tornado.  Just stay low and out of his way and when he stops muttering how disgusting we are and sits down it is safe to come out.  He is working six days a week lately so the tornado doesn't have time to come out.  I have attempted my own tornado but my spins out a lot faster than his does.  He and I both refuse to ever clean the kids' bathroom again.  Dirty.  Dirty, messy, toothpaste and soap everywhere disgusting children.  The boy is the worst of them all.  Boys under twenty should be allowed in outhouses only, I am not really sure that they deserve indoor plumbing.

I know, all these kids living here, they should be put on cleaning, right?  My mom used to enforce the Saturday morning march on us as kids.  As soon as cartoons ended at 10am, she was right there pushing a dust cloth in our hands or a vacuum or sending someone upstairs to clean the bathroom.  We would try to limp our way through, but she would actually check and make us clean again if it was not done right.  No one went anywhere until the house smelled like Pledge and  sparkled.  We showed her though; whoever was dusting with the Pledge would make sure to accidentally spray the wooden stairs as well.  Good luck staying upright when you hit the bottom two stairs with your sock feet!  We have tried the march here with the kids but they are craftier than we were as kids, or lazier or smarter or our house is too big, and it just doesn't work.  

When I stayed at home, I felt it was my job to keep the house clean and now that I am working I feel like someone else should be cleaning it but somehow that person is still me or Bill and we are tired.  I guess it is time to hire someone to clean it but I struggle a little with paying money we sort of have to have someone do something we could do ourselves.  I know Dave Ramsey would be shouting "SAVE YOUR MONEY, CLEAN AS A FAMILY."  He also advises never buying a coffee out and finding joy in paying off debt.  I am sure being debt free would be lovely but I also don't want to live without joy or Starbucks trying to get there.  

Summer is upon us and that means kids at home using a different glass ten times a day.  Pool towels and wet swimsuits strewn throughout the house in varying piles of dampness.  Shoes kicked off at the front door, the back door, in the middle of the living room and not always as a pair.  That seems like enough to stay on top of without adding toilet cleaning and dusting, right?  I would like to enjoy the kids this summer and not be a total screaming shrew about how messy and disgusting they are.  I have daydreams about being out with them having fun while cleaning people clean our house and coming home to clean.  Clean kitchen, clean bathrooms and a clean house all at once.  That would be a happy, happy day.

I guess it is time then to pull the plug and hire someone.  Time to admit that while I like a clean house, I just am not getting it done on my own.  The kids will have roommates or spouses one day that will get onto them about their mess and they will learn.  That will be about the time Bill and I downsize into something we can white tornado together.  Until then I guess we pay for the peace of mind a clean house can bring, even if it makes me feel a little guilty. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to clean before I can have cleaning people over.

Weary

This first year of working at a high school has been a year of learning for me.  I have learned words I hope to never hear again. I have learned that I am a good listener and that kids like to talk to me.  I have learned that I have strong opinions about mandated testing but that I can't share them because I would like to continue my career in education.    I have learned more new things this year than in the past five years combined.

Currently I am learning that May = Weary.  Everyone is weary.  Kids are testing and are weary.  It is beautiful outside and they are weary of being cooped up indoors.  They are weary of their friends, they are weary of their teachers, their parents, themselves.  The kids who are failing are weary of being told they are failing. The adults are weary too.  They are weary of trying, of reaching out, of extending and helping.  They are weary of each other and conversations have gone a little stilted and stale.  They too are weary of being cooped up inside and I think every one of them has a tally of exactly how many hours are left in the school year.  I used to only wear jeans on Friday at the beginning of the year.  I am wearing jeans almost every day and I am not alone.  Last week we had alumni T-shirt day and I picked my alumni Tshirt out of the laundry hamper and wore it.  At the beginning of the year, I would have picked it out and washed it, but I didn't even see if it passed the sniff test.  Weary, and gross.

Her shirt looks clean.

I have also had a hard time leaving my work kids at work.  Their problems stay with me and I want to help, I want to fix it and I want them to be better.  Happier.  Healthier.  Stronger.  Lately their problems have been more than I know what to do with.  These problems have been bigger than my knowledge, bigger than my carefully chosen words and advice can help and definitely bigger than my soft heart can handle.  My emotional weariness has been evident to everyone.  I guess I could not get involved or invested, but what is the point of working with kids if you are not invested or involved with them? 

I thought that I might just creep through the rest of the school year with weariness as my new uniform, but that changed today.  Today I had off.  I needed to use up some personal time and I have made the most of it.  I have had two appointments taken care of, lunch with my handsome husband, cleaned a bathroom, prepped dinner and will bake at some point.  That is a productive day! Being productive didn't change my mind set from weary though, it was something my trainer at appointment one said.  I was explaining how weary I have been feeling and she said "isn't it all about effort?".  Isn't it all about effort?  We have to try, we have to put things in if we expect to get things out.  Life can get us to where we just muddle through, where we stop trying or challenging ourselves and where we endure rather than exceed.  This made me remember that when you make a little effort, it will snowball and grow into bigger efforts.  That things don't get better or easier all at once, but slowly, over time.  

I don't want to endure the next twenty one days of school, I want to live them.  I want my kids to make an effort and live theirs too. I want my school kids to tell me all their terrible things and I want to hug them and tell them yes, life does suck, but it will always, eventually get better.  It has been a long year, but it is not over and I will stop dragging myself around and wearing weary as an accessory.    Wearing weary around is exhausting and I think I can do better.  I will start small, like not wearing shirts out of the hamper and let it grow bigger, like maybe wearing a skirt.  (double effort as that requires shaving).   

I overheard colleagues talking about their own weariness last week and one said "Yes, but that is why we are professionals".  Weary made me forget that. Effort, professional, twenty one more days.  Let's get it done!