And Up From the Ground Came a Bubbling Pool

I wish that we could all say what we know.  I wish we could be forthright and forthcoming and just say it:

this school year will be a mess.  The biggest mess. The messiest mess.  The hottest mess.  A bubbling

volcano of molten lava spilling, churning and boiling into every aspect of our lives and our kids’ lives

kind of a mess.  

KRAKATOA!

It will be a mess because no one knows exactly what to do.  It will be a mess because every directive

indicated will be challenged.  It will be a mess because no one will agree on what is best for most.  I

t will be a mess because this world is currently a mess. It will be a mess mostly because we all just want

our lives to go back to normal, but normal has changed.  And maybe what we used to think of as normal

won’t be normal again for a long, long time.

It will not be because no one is trying.  So very many people are trying!  I know I will try.  I will try to have

engaging lessons that translate over Zoom.  I will try to get to know the names of 170 kids I have never

met in person and convey to them that I care.  I will try to build rapport and relationships and give feedback

in a timely manner.  While I do this, I will also try to get my own kids to engage in their online learning.  I

will commiserate and say “yes, this sucks” and then I will be a mom and say “Get up and do it.”  

And administrators will be trying.  They will be trying to appease parents and teachers all while knowing that

they cannot do both.  They will try to think about the kids while adhering to our state mandates that change

and change and change again.  But they will be trying.

Teachers will be trying.  They have been trying all summer to think of what they could do better than they did

in the last months of school.  They will be trying to learn new skills and read new books to learn new things. 

They will try to be positive as they are told their job will look like this, no this, no now back to this.  They will

try to remember to breathe.

Parents will be trying.  They will be trying to remember that this is an uncharted world and they will try to

remember that everyone is trying.  I hope that they try to think about all the kids at school and not just what

is good for their own child.  However, that is something that takes considerable effort and time and parents

are tired.  

We are all tired.  We are tired of swimming upstream, tired of treading water, tired of being afloat and adrift. 

We were promised this would be over, life would be normal, and while many of us are so grateful for the things

we do have during this, we are also just tired.  We are tired of the uncertainty and the misgivings and the

rethinking of things that we used to do without thinking.  We are tired of the news and the people in charge

and the way things have gotten worse, and not better.  We are tired of not being able to hug the people we

used to hug and we sometimes get tired of the people we are still allowed to hug.

I just want us to be honest and say “We are tired.”  And I want people to listen and say “I am sorry you are tired. 

We are tired too.”  Then we can sigh collectively and admit we are in this for a long time and think about

how to do our best.  I think part of how we can do our best is to remember that other people are trying to do

their best as well.  Maybe this will give parents patience with teachers and teachers patience with parents. 

And administrators.  And these poor kids who don’t know which way is up.  

So as school gets ready to begin again and people are already social media shouting about all that is wrong,

could we maybe just focus a tiny bit on what could be right?  For me, it will be trying my best, failing more

than once, and remembering that everyone else is doing the same.  Oh, and wine.  Lots and lots of wine.

No Pomp, Just Circumstance

When she was little, she loved horses.  She must have galloped a million miles around our couch watching Spirit or Flicka.  We read all the horse books she could find.  She slept with a stuffed horse and played with plastic horses in a corral made by her Papa.  She loved horses and was going to be a veterinarian when she grew up because she also loved dogs and cats and all the animals.

She went to kindergarten and soon loved not only horses but new friends and teachers and reading!  Oh, she loved to read!  The first book she read on her own was a chapter book and while it wasn't about a horse, it did involve a unicorn.  She loved to make new friends and loved them all fiercely and forever; she was always very loyal.  She loved to learn and excelled and if it wasn't for Math, she would have never doubted how very smart she was.  She still wanted to be a veterinarian because, honestly,  she loved animals more than she loved people.

How do you caption your heart?

She was in the back row of every performance because she was tall.  She would stand up so excitedly, scanning the room, seeing who was there.  She sang her heart out, acted her heart out, and ad-libbed her heart out through every grade school performance.  Even that damn recorder.

She grew and changed but her heart stayed the same.  She loved all animals and most people.  If they hurt, she hurt more.  If they were happy, she was happy too.  If they made her laugh, oh, she threw her head back and her laugh would ring out across the room.  She was joy and wonder and the very embodiment of all that is good in the world.

She hit puberty and middle school and doubts.  She no longer sang as loud or looked as excited.  She withdrew, she hid, she tried to fit in.  Hurts from friends or not friends or boys pierced her heart.  She seemed to grow smaller as she grew taller and that beautiful heart seemed to always be in a million pieces or more.  She said maybe she didn't want to be a veterinarian any more because sometimes animals died.

She went to a new high school knowing just one person and her mom.  She worried about finding friends, she worried about where to eat lunch, she worried about worrying.  Yet, she prevailed.  She found friends.  She found a place to eat lunch.  She found where her mom hid her snacks and ate them and gave them to her friends.  She nurtured and counseled and helped new friends all while finding her footing in this new place.  She took hard classes and excelled.  She took Math and still hated it.  She took Art and her paintings, her drawings, her sketches took on life.  She said maybe she would be a doctor, a psychologist, a crime scene investigator, an artist, a lawyer.  

She got a job, then another job.  She worked hard and smiled and made people happy and when they commented that she was doing a great job, she was shocked and pleased; she was just doing her job.  She learned quickly these were not the jobs she wanted to be doing for a long period of time.

She looked forward to school and friends and change and finally being a Senior. What should have been a year of celebration and laughter turned into a year of sheer endurance.  She endured.  She endured her parent's divorce, moving from her childhood home, break-ups with friends, and with boys who were unworthy. She was sad, she was angry, and she fumed with a world gone wrong and awry and uncertainty about how to fix it.  She was recognizing her value and she talked of moving away, far away.  She wanted to run and fly and even gallop a million miles away.  She wanted to be anything but here.

She watched COVID19 shut the world down and felt relieved to be done with that grind of school.  She watched movies and spent time with her family and settled and healed and sighed.  After a time, she missed normalcy and other people and sighed even more.  She missed the things she would be missing.  She wanted stories of prom or skipping school or those sweet last days when teachers laughed more than they lectured.  She missed the idea of graduation and walking the stage and living that day about her, about her classmates, about what they had done, and the hope of the things they would do.  She wanted pomp but will just get circumstance.

Going forward, she will do great.  She will make mistakes and she will succeed.  She will find love and lose love and vow to never love again and then love again.  She will learn to drive and she will always park too close to the building.  She will befriend the friendless and she will care more than any other person in the world.  She will be loyal, she will work hard, she will grow and shine and be anything she wants to be. She will throw her head back and laugh and when she does, the world will stop.  If you are lucky, you will be the one that caused that laugh and be sure to listen to the joy and happiness and love of humor and life that ring in that laugh.  Notice how her eyes shine and her smile lights up her face because when you do, you will see how she will be anything she wants to be and we will all be better for it.

boredboredboredboredbored

When I was a kid, summer seemed to stretch out forever.  This was before cell phones and for a while, even before cable TV.  Boredom was a real thing.  I remember going to bed at night because I had to but not being tired one bit.  Laying there, too bored to sleep, too underutilized to feel the slightest sense of exhaustion.  Toss, turn, flip, flop while my mind ran around in circles and my sense of discontent with my bed, my room, myself grew and grew.  Eventually falling asleep to wake up and start a similar day again.

I was reminded of this feeling yesterday as I just, for whatever reason, kept circling back to lay on my bed. I wasn’t tired but didn’t know what to do with me and this sense of extreme boredom I had cultivated.  In between languishing on my bed, I did take three walks and super cleaned my bedroom, but there is just so much time in the day.  So much time alone, or nearly alone as my teenagers sleep until noon or later, and I am left talking to the dog, or cats.  They are adorable, but not great conversationalists.

My mother mentioned I must have read one hundred books by now.  I have only read one chapter and set that book down and walked away.  Other than Tiger King, I haven’t watched an entire series of anything.  I graded two essays but seem to be saving the rest.  I thought about writing.  I thought about cleaning the rest of the house.  I have thought about a lot.  I have thought about too many things. So much thinking going on up there.

I guess it is because we are all just waiting. Waiting to see if we are safe enough, waiting to see if we are distant enough, waiting to see if the world gets to start back up.  Will we go back to school?  I realize as time goes on that we probably will not, but I don’t like to think about that.  I don’t like to think about not seeing those kids at least a little bit more.  They made me so crazy before Spring Break that I was counting how many more classes left until Spring Break, but now I miss them.  I miss the interaction and the laughter and the challenge.  I miss their smiles.  I’ve gone from having 182 kids down to 2 and I guess that makes me feel a bit listless.

And honestly?  I feel like I am doing a really bad job with the 2 at home.  We are on totally separate schedules; they sleep until noon or 1 and I wonder if I should wake them?  Then I think why?  They come down and eat and disappear again.  There have been moments of joy and anger and shared boredom, but I feel like we are all more our own islands on a shared archipelago than being on an island of isolation together.  I’m pretty sure there is no “How to Parent During a Pandemic” but I still feel like I am not doing it right.

I am not wallowing in a sea of misery; I see the good in the world and in my life and I am floating on that in my sea of discontent.  I am Rose on the door as the Titanic sinks and Jack slowly freezes and slips away for sure.  But I am bored.  I am so bored. I am insanely bored.  And I feel bad saying that I am bored.  Perhaps my unwillingness to admit boredom comes from my mother’s threats of “Don’t tell me you’re bored, I can find something for you to do” during those long summer days as a kid. That woman could find a heinous chore in two seconds flat. 

That is what I need!  I need a heinous chore.  Something terrible like cleaning grout with a toothbrush, or washing garbage cans, and baseboards!  Yes!  Scrubbing baseboards free of grime and pet hair.  Yes, someone please assign me a heinous chore!  Then I can do exactly what I did during those summers: I will pretend I didn’t hear and go lay on my bed and stare at the ceiling and know that being bored was much better than whatever I was asked to do.