People are People

If you are at all like me, you might find yourself growing more and more disgusted with the world and people.  It is hard to imagine that there is good in the world when we are told the bad morning, noon and night. I like to watch ABC World News Tonight with David Muir because while he reports on casualties, disasters, war and general insanity, he does it in such an earnest way, just brimming with integrity and concern, that I know he is disappointed in the world too.   He also ends each half hour with an uplifting little piece about “America Strong” or look at this show of human kindness.  He knows after twenty-nine minutes of bad that he better air one minute of good to get us to tomorrow. 

I know that in my own writings, I tend to work through the bad or the negative or what the heck is happening much more than joy, than happiness and the good I see.  However, on our recent trip to NYC, I had such a connection with three random strangers that I have to share it to show you the good out there; the commonality and the humanity that still exists.

The day we went to Battery Park and Wall Street, we took the subway. We were very proud of ourselves for embarking on this unknown and even survived the ride back with no AC and an angry homeless man.  When we got off the train and went to go upstairs, we noticed that there was a mob of people waiting on the stairs. We walked right by them because we just completed our first subway ride and knew things and knew we were smarter than these people gathering on the stairs.  Actually, they were much, much smarter.  It was pouring rain.  Streaming rain.  The skies opened and every drop of water in the universe fell on NYC.  Do we wait it out or run for it?  Oh, we ran for it.  Fast-walked for it.  We were soaked in seconds.  Hair plastered to our heads, feet squelching in wet sneakers with every step.  Miserably, uncomfortably wet and heading as fast as we could to our hotel.  I cradled our cell phones in a bag under my shirt thinking that if my stomach kept my kids safe for nine months, perhaps it could do the same for our technology.  We made it to the hotel and squeak-walked through the beautiful lobby crammed with a million people, water streaming behind us.  We ran into an open elevator, not caring who was in there or how crowded it could be. Funnily enough, there was another family of four in the elevator with us and they were as wet as we were. Their daughter lifted up and lowered a foot, squelch.  The son stared stonily ahead as water dripped from his nose.  The father plucked at his shirt that thwopmed away from his skin and said a bad word in German.  I thought about trying to speak to them with my high-school German, but decided that we had all suffered enough that day.  The mom and I locked eyes and laughed.  I laughed in English and she laughed in German and it was this wonderful, international moment of two families sharing a ridiculously wet elevator ride.  Here was this family from across the world experiencing the exact same thing as us.  Soaking wet clothes, chilled to the bone and laughter in an elevator.  It seems small, but that laughter has stayed with me. Laughter really is a language everyone understands.

The next time I felt a connection to a complete stranger was on our bus ride from NYC to Newark Airport to pick up our car.  I could not help thinking how much I would hate driving in NYC and then thinking how much more I would hate trying to drive a bus in NYC.  I drove a pick-up truck once and always parked a mile away from everything and tried as hard as I could to never have to put it in reverse. And here was our bus driver, smiling, chatty, telling us not to buy tickets in the store, that they would overcharge us. He asked us not to eat on his bus, we complied and he got us moving. I thought what a boring day he must have driving to and from the airport all day long. He provided a lot of commentary on our ride, not looking for a response, but just talking out loud.  When a man stepped in front of his bus, he remarked “Oh, there goes Superman.  Not afraid of this bus.  There he go.  There go Superman.”  I found him hilarious.  However, it was when he admonished a woman for eating that I really felt a connection.  He had asked her not to eat when she got on the bus, she said alright and ten minutes later was devouring some sort of tasty taco.  He locked eyes with her in his mirror and said “I asked you not to eat. All I ask is that you do not eat on my bus and here you are, eating on my bus.” She muttered she was sorry with a mouthful of taco and he kept on railing against eating on his bus. What really caught my attention was as he continued his rant against this woman he said “Aren’t we all grown?” Aren’t we all grown? Can’t he just explain the rules once and expect us to follow through? It made me think of the 17,000 times a day I ask kids to put their phones away or to do their work or just stop.  I am using this as my one and only classroom rule this year.

The last time I really knew what another person was feeling was in Virginia/West Virginia/Virginia as we were driving back.  (We crossed state lines about ten times, so I can’t definitively say where it was.). We drove by the Potomac River and it was gorgeous and rocky and moving fast and there were signs for white-water rafting and we commented that we should go white-water rafting.  And then we turned the corner and came upon this family of four standing on the side of the road, soaking wet and holding an inner tube. They were all standing as far away from each other as possible and as I looked at the mom with her rigidly set shoulders, her angry back and her pissed-off jaw, I knew how she felt. She was soaking wet, standing on the side of the road and looked like maybe white-water rafting was not as much fun as we thought it should be.  We commented on how I am often that angry mom and the kids and Bill laughed at how she was probably pissed that the snacks were all wet and she was just hungry and when we passed the truck carrying other tubers and tubes back we knew that someone in that family had not moved fast enough and they had just missed their ride back.  And I totally felt that mom’s anger at vacation things that should be fun but can be more work or that sometimes you just want to eat or go to the bathroom like a normal person. I felt that. I honestly cannot get that woman out of my head and have named her Wendy and have the start of a short-story about her brewing in my brain.  Hang tight Wendy, I got you.

Beautiful or disgusting?  We'll let Wendy tell.

I share these stories with you because these complete strangers reminded me that we are more alike than unalike (head nod to Maya Angelou).  We might hear more about the bad, but there are normal people and good still out there in our world.  We are all just people living our lives and trying our best and getting wet or frustrated or laughing out loud with strangers in an elevator, and that people and this life are a beautiful thing. 

New York State of Mind

It is funny to think that twenty years of my life I lived only 373 miles away from New York City and never once went there.  Until this month, I had only been to NYC once and it was for about two hours where I ate dinner with a friend and gawked at Times Square with all its lights and noise and people.  As we planned our trip, I was nervous thinking about the crowds, thinking about how overwhelming it would be and wondering if we would enjoy it.  I have to tell you, I loved it!  The crowds didn’t bother me, you grow used to the noise and there is so, so much to do!

Most of our plan was to see as much as we could see.  See the things!  We were here pictures!  We walked and saw Central Park, Times Square, Wall St., Madison Ave. Our hotel had a very central Manhattan location and was .5 miles from this, .7 from that.  I think it was built in the 1920’s at the height of Jazz and flappers and so very resplendent that I kept waiting for Jay Gatsby himself to walk through the lobby and say “Hey there, old sport.”  The room we stayed in was pretty small and nondescript other than amazing water pressure in the shower, but that lobby had it going on!

The two things that we saw that amazed me the most had to be the Statue of Liberty and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  We took the subway to Battery Park and did not sign up for any guided tour of the Statue.  It was super- hot and I did not need to be part of the teeming masses trying to get in.  We could see her from shore!  I was moved, moved, to see her in person.  My grandfather came through Ellis Island from Sicily as a four-year-old and I kept picturing him seeing her and knowing he was almost to his new home.  Then I thought, no, he was four, so instead I pictured my great-grandmother probably dressed in a black shroudy thing and having spent the last few months down in steerage.  What a relief it must have been to for her to see that Statue and know they were almost there. America in the 1920’s was awash with immigrants from Southern Europe trying to find a better life and as a result was saying things like “Hey, no more swarthy immigrants!” (sound familiar?)  But not that statue.  She was saying welcome, we will have you, you are safe now.  And that she is still standing and still offering that hope to immigrants, well, I cried. And then we boarded the FREE Staten Island ferry that provided up close views and a very needed breeze and thought nothing could top this.  But, this is NYC, topping things it was it does best!

really need to figure out this sideways thing, but still beautiful!

The day we went to the Met, the boys opted out and just Sophie and I went. We walked two miles to get there and my girl powered ahead, she was so excited to see all the art. The Met was huge so we tried to plan what we could actually see and what we would be okay skipping. You go in and are awed by the sweet air conditioning and start looking at paintings and thinking, okay.  And then you get closer and see, Botticelli.  Alright.  Monet.  Renoir.  Van Gogh.  Well, we didn’t actually see Van Gogh, but he is there.  When Sophie mentioned we missed Van Gogh, I showed her a Van Gogh magnet in the museum store; she was not amused.  I have to tell you though it was Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” that made me take a step back and a breath in.  It is giant and takes up an entire wall and every single detail so expertly painted, you can feel how cold it was, how determined the men were.  I was rendered speechless and we know how rare a thing that is.

I did leave NYC convinced of a few things I think I should share with you and a few questions I still have that I am hoping a native NYCer can answer for me. 

1.      People in NYC must die at least 7 times a day.  They have no fear of moving vehicles and possess a complete disregard for what the crosswalk light tells them to do.

2.     Blocking the box is not only common, it is highly encouraged in order to move your car two inches forward and make the light ten lights from now.  Also, when someone cuts you off in traffic, the rule is lay on your horn for a solid ten seconds while pumping your brakes and inching up as close as you can to the offender.

3.     People in NYC are really nice.  Except for the man working in the subway station and to be fair, he works underground in a glass box and we did interrupt his private tete a tete with a woman subway worker to buy tickets.  Everyone keeps to themselves but is pretty friendly.  Especially when your son is making weird enough cooing noises to pigeons that these native NYers will look you in the eye and smile and think both you and your son are kind of weird.

4.     People in NYC have grown so accustomed to the people and noise around them that they no longer think anything of screaming all their conversations into their phones as they walk.  We overheard a very lively conversation in Little Italy and another in Central Park as a man was sexting, over Siri.  “Siri, I have no shirt on.”  He actually did have a shirt on and I will admit to slowing down to see where the rest of that text was going.

5.     People in NYC must be constantly dehydrated or wear Depends because bottles of water cost $4 each and there is nowhere to use a bathroom.  There are no public restrooms!  Where are the restrooms?!?  Even eating in a restaurant doesn’t guarantee they have a restroom you can use. 

6.     It is easy to be a vegetarian in NYC; Sophie had great eating choices the entire time.  Halal food and a vegan tent popped up right as Bill said “Well, it’s not like a vegetarian place is just going to pop up”. 

7.     Where do people in NYC buy gas?  I would never in a million years want to drive there, but people do and I never once saw a gas station.

8.     Does anyone grocery shop in NYC?  Is it all Instacart?  Can Instacart even deliver?  Those people should definitely be tipped heavily if there are fighting that traffic and running upstairs with your toilet paper.

I am so glad that we made this trip and so amazed by all the things we were able to see, but I definitely need to go back.  I want to see Central Park aflame in autumn splendor or in December when the city is dressed up for Christmas.  I want to see a Broadway show.  I want to eat in Little Italy.  There’s just so much more to see and do here!    I learned a lot about NYC on this trip and can’t wait to come back and experience more.  I know to purposefully dehydrate myself all day long, I know to walk when everyone else is walking and I definitely know we should fly there and back.

The Road Always Taken

There is a rumor going around that some families get on planes and travel to their summer locations and that they arrive at their locations the exact same day they left.  The exact same day!!! Is this true?  What?! People go on vacation without enduring cross-country road trips?  They can arrive at their vacation spot without deep-vein thrombosis ticking in their thighs and their happy family still intact?  What kind of witchcraft is this?! 

As it is summer, we have once again returned from a vacation filled with cross-country travel, mini meltdowns, mile markers emblazoned on our retinas and potential renal failure.  Ahhh, summer.  Summer and a McMahon road trip.  Old as time itself.  Pack everyone and snacks and set out on an adventure across America.  Sounds noble or empowering.  Sounds like we are pioneers setting forth across new land.  Really we are just trying to save a buck and might be a little crazy. 

This year’s road travel clocked in at a mere 3,400 miles as compared to last year’s expeditious 4,261.  This is the first time we have driven this far without a relative at the other end and it was as ridiculously far away: Austin Texas to New York City.  Well, actually Newark.  God bless Mark Miller and his help from the road where he steered our weary selves to the Newark airport to park and then shuttle into the city.  Day One was relatively easy and we joked about how every stop we stopped at looked familiar.  We have driven the same way once a year for 25 years, so yes, good chance we have stopped everywhere along the way.  On Day One, we always make great time, we sing, we listen to podcasts, we talk, I categorize the road kill by state, fun things.  (Armadillo and raccoon tied for most kills, Arkansas for the most road kill in a state.) Day One is always fine; miles click by, we think this is fun.  It is Day Two that kicks your ass.

Day Two saw us in Virginia.  This is a new state and that was nice for a while.  But interstate is interstate and we had a stupid amount of interstate to go. Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania.  Day Two is a long day as everyone is tired of driving, tired of music, of car food, of having to wait to pee.  Weariness sets in and you feel all the miles. But then, Eastern Pennsylvania was beautiful.  Like, ohmygod, beautiful.  Green, rolling, lush. Bucolic. Amazing.  Even in a Day Two road stupor, we enjoyed the beauty of eastern PA.  I kept looking for Amish, but as it was a Sunday, they were home doing good Amish things: going to church, eating strudel, raising a barn.  Thoughts of the Amish kept my mind busy and before long we were in Newark and managed to park, get a bus and get into the city.  We made it!

Not sure why is is sideways, but we were here!

We were in New York City!  We walked everywhere.  We managed about 8 miles a day and saw all the things and ate the food and only got in a car once to Uber.  It was nice not being in a car.  Even the subway and the ferry were nice because they were not cars.  But then, as always, there is the ride home.  Our plan was to stop in Philadelphia and do some fun things and break up the trip going back and then go to DC and do the same.  In my mind, I believed Philly to be the same size as Buffalo and that everything we wanted to do would be easy peasy.   Let me tell you, I stand corrected, Philly is not the same size as Buffalo.  More comparable to the NYC we just left and parking was impossible, traffic was snarled and angry and slow and I was possessed by a gremlin that rendered me mean and hating everything about Philly.  I hated that we couldn’t park and run up the Rocky steps.  I hated that it took twenty minutes to get three miles down the road.  I hated that I was hungry.  I hated that I had to pee and that there was nowhere to pee.  I hated everything like I have never hated before.  My kind family tried to console me with their words and I wanted to karate chop their kindness out of the air.  I wanted to throat punch the entire city.  I was angry and hungry and still had to pee.  Bill bought a beer at a bar across from Pat’s and Geno’s so we could all pee.  I have never seen the man enjoy a beer more.  Eventually we got our cheesesteaks and declared Pat’s better than Geno’s and decided no way to DC.  Enough with cities with no bathrooms or parking, it was just time to go home.

That drive was so interminable I am not sure if I can ever plan a road trip longer than one day again.  Truly.  We saw some beautiful things and I have some great stories to share in the next blog of people on this trip, but that car ride crushed me.  Bill, stalwart trucker’s son, drove and drove and remained whole until about Little Rock.  That is when he started answering us in grunts and clicks and I knew that the road had claimed him as well.  We made it home, showered and looked at each other with eyes that said “Never, ever again.”

I really would like to think that we will start flying everywhere we need to go.  That we will be among those families who get to their travel destinations in mere hours.  I would like to think that, but I can’t help but think of the lady driving a golf cart down the side of I-40 with her hair streaming behind her and an RV following her with its hazards on and I know you don’t get to see that level of crazy on a plane.  I also clicked off four new states visited and the kids clicked off five and there are so many more to go.  So, I do like to think never again, but I know, you know, we will do it again.  I’ll be here next summer writing about how I ruined another city by being hungry and having to pee and how it was the time of our lives.

In a Tiny Room

In my parent’s house in Buffalo, there is a bedroom at the top of the stairs.  It’s a tiny room and normal-sized people find it hard to stand up anywhere but in the middle of the room as the ceiling and walls are slanted on both sides.  This room is shaped by the angled roof and the way it was squeezed into being at the front of the house.  I love this tiny room and insist on staying in it every time I visit.  To me, once I step inside that tiny room with its slanted ceilings and window that faces the street, all my adult responsibilities seem to slide off my shoulders and pool in the depth of the carpet. 

In that tiny room, I know that down the street there is the elementary school where I still picture my 5^th grade teacher’s room to know which way north is. Further down the street is the middle school and my sister’s old house. And a little further down and to the right is the Village and the Opera House where I spent a summer as a wench in “Once Upon a Mattress”.  This makes my daughter laugh when I tell her, and emboldened, I share the spot I fell off my bike, or walked when I was angry or kissed a boy after a dance.  The buildings, the road, the town become familiar to her as the stories change them into events, occurrences, and history.

In that tiny room, I relax knowing that I will get to spend a lot of time with my parents. That for this week, they are just outside the door and not 1,500 miles away.  We will drink our shared coffee and talk.  We will eat our meals together. We will live together again for this short time.  We will sit on porches and decks and patios and use up all the words that seem to get twisted in phone lines and not as easy to get out.  They will revel in how big the kids are and make connections with them as young adults.  And the kids will laugh with them and talk to them and open up in ways I don’t ever see coming.  There is a comfort for them as well in Grammie and Papa’s house.

The porch is right under the tiny room and my favorite outdoor spot.

In that tiny room, I will make plans to see friends that I have known forever.  We will get together and talk and laugh and remember and share and whisper and scream and confide and reminisce.  We will be fifteen again for the night.  I will see family: aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews, brothers, sisters, and someone’s new baby.  They will marvel at my kids and make them feel instantly connected into this amazing behemoth of a family.  My kids and Bill will marvel at all the people we are related to and ask now who is this?  How are we related?  Why is this stranger hugging me?  My daughter will ask if the party we are going to is large and I will say yes as my mother says no at the same time.  For her, it is small, for us it is gigantic.  A gargantuan grouping of people related by blood and past and love. 

In that tiny room, I will lay awake on my last night and wonder how long it will be until I lay under the slanted ceilings again.  I admit that some summers, I want to travel somewhere else.  Someplace exotic or unknown; somewhere I have only seen in pictures and want to see first-hand.  But I know that all of these places inevitably lose out to the internal compass pointing me always to Buffalo.  To family and friends and to that tiny room.  That tiny room with its slanted ceilings and window facing the street, where my heart no longer feels divided between the home of my youth and the home of the last twenty-five years; it just feels whole.

Baby. You Can Drive My Car.

One thing that I like about summer is that I have a lot of time to think about things other than all the things I have to get done during the day.  There is plenty of time to get everything done and nothing has to be done right then.  It is a nice thing to experience.  A normal person would really give into the relaxation and just become languid and fluid and be. However, that normal person is not me.  I take this time to really focus all my worry and concern on one or two special topics I have may have ignored during the year.  Previous years have seen me angsting over whether or not I would ever find a job combined with wide-awake worry wondering if this is the year that the A/C finally gives up.   I also like to flush out those unresolved issues I’ve tucked into the dark recesses of my mind and replay embarrassing scenarios from my youth.  I could clean the house, but I prefer unearthing dusty memories packed in cobwebs and shame.

Right here is where I like to keep how I misspelled rutabaga and lost the 5th grade spelling bee.

This summer, I have focused my penchant for worry and obsessive thoughts onto two things: fitness and how big my kids are getting.  I have a lot of words about fitness and nutrition, but I think they will take up their own post and the big kids are really weighing on my heart, so they go first.

I have found over the last year or so that I am that creepy old woman who smiles at babies and toddlers and even comments out loud how adorable they are.  I watch the little kids swim next door and hear their happy laughs and splashes and sigh.  Not because I want a small child of my own, but I think because it feels like it has been so long since my kids were little.  When they came in the house with a sweaty head that smelled like sunshine and puppies and tag and didn’t make me recoil and say things like “Shower!” or “You stink!”  Now I cannot even put a name to the odor that emanates from the boy’s room.  I just open the door, shoot some Febreeze in there and close it before it can infect the rest of the house.

At sixteen and fourteen, these kids of mine are adult-ish every day.  Oh, I know there is a lot of parenting to go here, but I am looking at them and seeing adults more than kids.  The boy is huge.  Giant.  He is a man-sized child living in my house.  Eating all the food, taking up all the room on the furniture, leaving giant shoes everywhere for us to trip on and flexing.  So much flexing.  But it is not just physical; it is how they handle situations or their dry, obnoxious humor.  Or the fact that we can have prolonged, intelligent conversations about things other than video games and horses.  And that they are really getting interesting and I seek them out to see what they think rather than hide in my closet for just two seconds alone.  This stage of parenting seems to be a lot of waiting, followed by helping to extinguish the fires of a teen crisis, followed by more waiting, a whole lot of talking, more waiting and plenty of time to sit and wait and think.

This week, the girl got her permit.  We are late to the game here as many of her friends are already driving, but we weren’t in a hurry.  Teaching a kid to drive really sucks!  It is hard to explain what she should do based on something I do and never think about.  I made weird “Oooh-ooh-AHHH” noises that I haven’t heard since my mother made those noises as I was learning to drive. It was an eye-opening day, and I realized that not only did I step out of the driver’s seat and into the passenger seat of the Prius, but in her life as well.  I am not longer buckling her up and taking her where she needs to go.  For now, I get to sit alongside her and watch as she decides what to do.  I can offer advice, suggestions and my thoughts, but I am not moving her forward, she is.  I can say “Watch for this”, “Be careful here” and make all the ooh-ooh-AHH noises, but ultimately, she decides what she is going to do.  It is pretty amazing and humbling to realize that this is where we are in her life now.  It makes me ooh and ahh and sigh over babies.  It makes me want to adopt a cat with crossed eyes because it reminds me of the boy when he was little.  It made me crow over Jack-Jack in Incredibles 2 to the point where Bill leaned over and asked if my milk had let down.  

This whole stage of parenting makes me a little nostalgic and a little nervous and a little sad over how fast the other stages have gone by.  It also makes me glad that I have the summer to realize all of this, obsess about it properly and prepare my heart for how quickly the rest will go too.

It's the End of the Year....

In an all-time teaching low, I started off third period by saying “Everyone stop and stare at the pimple on my forehead.  Yes, it is a pimple.  Yes, you can get pimples when you are old.”  And they did.  They stopped and stared and the table that instigated it laughed until they died and I am sure my pimple-rage is on Snapchat and all I could think is that this school year needs to end now. 

This has been a very hard year.  In addition to the normal working with teenagers: break ups, bad home lives, hunger, cheating, apathy and anxiety, we had some really big stuff happen this year.  Let’s list it:

. 

●     Two suicide attempts, on campus

●     A racial incident off campus, but widely talked about on campus

●     A student was paralyzed in a drive-by shooting

●     Another student died from a drug overdose

●     One student was arrested after I reported him under the influence

●     One student came to me from jail and is now back on his way to jail because he just couldn’t acclimate.

●     A coworker resigned suddenly.

Exhausting stuff at work and some exhausting stuff at home too.  Bill has had two terrible melanomas removed and just recently underwent radiation for metastatic tumors in his chest.  I am incredibly relieved and grateful to say that the radiation worked and the tumors are gone, but cancer is some scary stuff.  We didn’t tell a lot of people because we wanted to wait and see what we were dealing with.  We also didn’t tell a lot of people because when you have cancer, you still have to do life and maybe you are going on about your life and for three minutes forget you have cancer and then someone will remind you by saying “Hey, how’s your cancer?”.

Based on all of the above, I think that I encased my heart in a petrified sort of shell and have been trudging through the past few months.  I found I was impatient with my kids at school and my kids at home.  I enjoyed teaching, but not as much.  I laughed, but not as loud.  I worried about everything until I got to where I worried about nothing.  This is not the best way to do life and I was worried I was never going to shake the fugue.

However, today I went to a cording ceremony for AVID students and I felt a shift start to take place. I am not going to say that my Grinch-like heart grew three sizes because in reality, I have a ridiculously big heart; it is just tired from caring so damn much about people.  What I will say, is that petrified shell I encased my heart in definitely began to crack and fissure.  AVID is a class for kids who will be first-generation college attendees.  They might even be first-generation high school graduates.  They work hard, they go through four years of high school together in their AVID class and they make up a little AVID family.  I watched kids I have in my class or have had in class walk across to get the cords they will wear to graduation next week and I smiled.  I watched the parents I didn’t know hoot and holler and I felt their excitement.  I could feel the pride in my chest for them. Then one speaker talked about his mom, how as an immigrant she worked terrible jobs so that he and his siblings could do better and that was beautiful.  But when he, sniff, asked her to, sniff, stand, sniff, and he applauded her?  TEARS!  Wet tears from my eyes!  I can emote!  I can feel!  I am ALIVE!!!!!!

I tell you all of these things because I have to believe that other people out there are overwhelmed with the world at large and their smaller worlds at home.  School shootings, collusion, volcanoes, tariffs, tornadoes, hateful this, hateful that.  And that maybe you have locked your heart up tightly too.  You will get no lecture from me.  What I do hope though, is that like me, you will be surprised with some sort of good in your world.. Some joy.  Some pride or beauty or pure emotion that catches your eye, your ear, your heart.  Let it in. It feels so good to be reminded that there is good in the world.  It makes you want to shake off that crispy crust around your heart and get back into doing the things you do well: caring about kids, encouraging friends, loving your people.     

I sometimes struggle wondering what it is I am doing with this life, but as I watched those kids yesterday, I knew that along the way various teachers had truly impacted those kids and helped them along in their lives.  I really hope that I am doing some of that too and that I can continue to break down that crunchy casing surrounding my heart. There is only about one week of school to go and I now feel confident that I can get to the end of it with a little bit of grace.  And,  at the very least, I know that third period will never doubt that adults can get pimples too.