Feel Like a Number

This week, I have been reminded how much I don’t like numbers.  I am not a numbers person.  I think it all started back in second grade when I just flat out didn’t understand subtraction and spent a good portion of the math time either crying or pretending I needed to use the bathroom.  As I got older, I learned to stay put during math, but I spent my time doodling or writing notes and folding them into complicated squares.  As an adult, I have not liked numbers because numbers typically mean money and budgets and stress.  Also, my children keep bringing home their own sets of numbers to work on, but somehow they are new numbers and there is no way I can help with that.  Well, maybe I could, but I just don’t do numbers.

I was given a number this week on a review which really took me aback and reminded me of the negative influence numbers have had in my life.  I did not agree with this number, I did not like this number and I was saddened, affronted and aggrieved by this number.  A stupid number gave me all of these words and feelings!  I went to bed sad and defeated by this number, but when I woke up in the morning, I was angry at this number.  This number is not me!  I am not this number!  I was able to talk to the person who gave me this number and tell him how this number made me feel.  I told him this number made me feel as though I failed, that this number personally hurt my feelings.  I told him I took umbrage with this number.  Umbrage, like I was Agatha Christie or the Queen of England, I took umbrage.  I did not get him to change his number, but using my words gave me back a sense of who I really am, what it is I am really doing here every day.  That can’t be measured in a number and my words helped remind me of that.  Stupid numbers.

Not the number I was given, but the disdain is relatable.

Yesterday though, I was shown that while numbers might not work for me, sometimes they make other people feel very special.  Yesterday was the boy’s first track meet and he has been working sort of hard towards it.  The boy has a lackadaisical approach to life so it is hard to say what working hard really looks like for him.  We all know that the boy has had a rough life with those crazy eyes and school is hard and he doesn’t do sports and while he is mostly good at trumpet, he’s not the trumpet rock star he’d like to be.  So I was nervous when he approached the blocks.  I was filled with trepidation as he knelt down and I entered into silent pleas with God that he just didn’t trip or fall or that he just ran hard and came in the middle of the pack.  I just wanted him to feel accomplished.  Then the gun fired and they took off and from the very start he was ahead.  He was not only ahead, he was pumping his arms and legs and SAILING ahead of the pack.  He was so far in front that when I tried to take a picture, all I got was the bottom of his foot as he flew past me.  He was all arms, all legs, all fluid motion and I was screaming and jumping and crying as he WON.  HE WON!!!!! 

I ran down to the fence, still yelling, still leaky-eye crying to see if I could get his attention.  He was in the middle of a pack of kids and when I yelled his name for the tenth time, he broke off and held up a blue ribbon in one hand and the number one with his other hand.  He was so damn happy and proud of himself and his number.  I was so damn happy and proud of him and his number.  His face was alit with joy like it used to be when he was little and I found myself so damn grateful for a number that could make him look like that again.  Me, grateful for a number.  A number that made my son feel for the first time in his life, like he could do anything.  That he was important.  That he was good at something.  That someone recognized what it is he can do.  That he was number one. That number, number one for my boy, is finally a number I can really get behind.

Why I March

I thought I would feel morose, despondent or disenfranchised today, but I don’t.  Donald Trump was sworn in as POTUS this morning and while I shudder, I am not sad.  I am not sad because I laughed until I almost cried in the lunchroom today.  I am not sad because my beautiful daughter left inspiring notes on my desk that I then shared with others.  I am definitely not sad because tomorrow, tomorrow I march.

Tomorrow, I march with my daughter, with my co-workers, with my friends and with women and men I have never seen before in my life.  However, if these kindred souls have tears in their eyes, I will know why.  I march because I can. I march, not because my candidate lost an election, but because the one who won must be reminded that the way he treats women is not okay.  I march in solidarity with others who have been made to feel less than a man, who have been talked down to because they are not a man, who have been discredited, discounted or discouraged simply because they are not a man.  I march because I have gone into a business meeting with a brain full of ideas that were not heard because someone was spending more time eyeing the length of my skirt or the fullness of my shirt.  I march because my daughter should never experience this.  I march for those who cannot, or will not, or are too scared to go out but who feel the same.  This, this is why I march.

I march because there are so many others who want to march this feeling out.    We have been beaten, we have been humbled; we have been singled out, called out and laughed out.  We are weary and we are worn, but we are not done.  We are here to be strong for those who need strength, to be wise for those who need wisdom and we are here to give to those who need.  And not because we are women, but because we are human.  Humans who bleed the same red, who cry the same salty tears and who join together to remember this.

and because she marched too.

I march because my daughter sits at the table singing John Lennon and coloring her signs for the march.  I march because her generation sees less of a divide and more equality than mine. I march because this is the time to do it.  This time, I will stand up and say “See me.  All of me.  See us.  Hear us.  All of us.”  I march to collect in my ears the pounding of thousands of feet who march not to change the world, but to acknowledge our part in it.  I march to feel the enthusiasm of like-minded people exercising their constitutional rights.  I march to capture a snapshot of history in my heart to harken me through dark times. I march, and by God, I hope that you march too.

We Hold These Truths

I seriously had the outline for my “HOLY SHIT THERE IS A WOMAN IN THE OVAL OFFICE!!” blog formed in my head.  I watched the posts from the secret Facebook group and I liked, I loved, I sniffled at the beauty this country holds.  I looked at the pictures of long lines waiting to bestow homage at the grave of Susan B. Anthony and I openly cried.  I never, not once, thought that I would wake up to this world today.

But I have indeed woken up in this world.  I sat in disbelief, drinking coffee in the dark and crying, “The World Turned Upside Down” playing in my head.  How is this possible?  How can this be?  What even is this?

I dressed for work like I was dressing for a funeral.  I made lunches and put extra sweets in them because we need them today.  And when my daughter came down and asked who won, I broke her heart.  She burst into immediate, angry tears and asked “What the fuck?” with the same anger and disillusionment I had only recently tamped down in myself.  WTF indeed.

The ride to school was dark due to the rain and due to our thoughts and our hearts.  I told her that there are checks and balances; we elected a President, not a dictator.  I told her to watch the election for the House in two years; watch what rhetoric and mishandling would bring.  I told her it is okay to be angry, to be sad, and to feel adrift.  And then I watched kids shuffle into my first period class and I knew a good majority of them felt the same way she did.  How do you teach to this?  How do you say “yes, this sucks but let’s pick up where we left off on Chapter 3?”  What even is this?

So we journaled.  They wrote fast and furiously and the room was quiet.  And then some shared what they had written, and these kids are scared.  My black, brown, LGBTQ kids are scared and I get it.  I am forty-three years old and I am scared.  And they are angry.  When a Trump supporter shared his views, another kid walked up to him and I felt we were seconds away from a fist fight.  What I realized was that this tension is not just in my classroom; it is all of America.  America is scared and angry and volatile.  What do we do with that?

We react.  We walk between two arguing people and tell them they are both worth listening to.  We redirect and we listen.  We share.  We tell other kids the same things we tell our own kids.  We label what they are feeling as disillusionment, disenchantment and just plain old anger.  And we tell them that it is okay.  We ask the winners to be gracious, to feel good for themselves about the outcome but to remember their glee might be affronting to others.  We put our hand on someone else’s hand that is clenched and say “I know.  I understand.”  We recognize the good and bad that is America and we say we don’t always win.   Good doesn’t always win.  You don’t always get a goddamn medal or ribbon or certificate. Sometimes you get an empty hand and an angry heart. 

I asked some young men in my class if they thought the reason HRC didn’t win was simply because she was a woman and they all said yes.  I was so enamored with a woman being on the ballot I forgot there were people in this world, this country, this America, who think there shouldn’t be.  I saw the respect given to the women who fought our fights and won our wars and forgot those who stood, and stand, in their way.  I was reticent in thinking that all the work has been done, but I remember now how much more there is.

Thank you.

I am no shape to get that work done today or this week or maybe even this month.  I am going to mourn what was lost, what was not and what actually is.  And while I am doing that, I am going to remember that while we didn’t do it this time, we can do it.  And I am going to stand with her – whoever the her will be because I need to support women in this world and they need to support me.  I will listen to people who want to talk about how we make change, especially kids because they are going to be the ones with enough energy and enthusiasm to make these final changes.  Above all, I will remind myself, my kids, and my kids at school to be kind to one another, to respect one another and maybe that is where we can start making a real change.

Teaching is.....

In 1981, at the tender age of eight, I purchased my very first album.  I remember the cost being about $9, so I know I would have had to save allowances for weeks to accumulate that princely sum.  The album?  Smurfing Sing Song.  Ten songs sung in Smurf voices filled the need for a smurfing good time while anxiously awaiting Saturday morning and a new Smurf cartoon.  Along with such cult classics as “You’re a Pink Toothbrush, I’m a Blue Toothbrush”, this album contained a song that I have just now realized is acting as the anthem to my teaching career.  I am not sure the name of the song, but the lyrics went something like this “I’m spinning around, I am up and I am down.  I’m taking a ride on this merry-go-round”.  Come to think of it, the title may have been “Merry-Go-Round” or maybe "Smurfy-Go-Round".

Funny blue creatures or harbingers of insanity?

People have asked me “How’s teaching?” or “Is teaching all that you thought it would be?” and I find that I don’t really have a standard answer.  I find myself answering “Great!” or “All of it and so much more!” because I don’t think I should answer “Soul sucking”.  That sounds defeated and I am not defeated, but I am definitely confused.

Teaching is a teeter-totter of insanity on its very best day.  If my lesson plans rock and kids are engaged, then my grading is behind and it’s a weekend of bending over papers at the kitchen table.  If I am up on my personal and professional development, I am very behind on being open and available to kids who need more help.  If I am stellar at school, I feel like I am sliding downhill at home.  I love the kids, but they drive me crazy.  I laugh reading their journals and want to cry because they make me so frustrated.  I had a kid I taught for six weeks last year tell my daughter that I was his favorite teacher ever and the very same day, someone put a nasty, stepped-on, exploded cheese stick on my desk with a note that read “With Love.”  What is this life??

My days aren’t only going up and down, they are being spun in a circle way too fast.  Any time I feel like I am getting my footing, something will start spinning the whole thing around from the outside.  Solid week of lessons planned out?  Oh, here’s an email saying you are now signed up for mandatory, professional development so scrap those and make sub lessons instead.  Connected with a class that was resistant?  SPINNNNNNNNNN, observation taking place in your worst behaved class later on today.  Acronyms, important and unimportant things relegated to acronyms, are going to be the death of me.  They spin and spin and spin with no foreseeable end.  I no longer have my hands up in the air saying “Wheeeee!” because one is over my nauseated mouth and the other is against my pounding head.

Somedays I drive home and think “What the hell was this day?”  I have left feeling not only ineffective as a teacher, but as a human as well.  But I have also watched that lightbulb come on over a student’s head who was struggling with an idea and that is beautiful.  I have lectured where every pair of eyes was on me and not only did they listen, they got it, and for twenty minutes I feel invincible.  I have gone into classes completely prepared and watch the lessons I so carefully crafted crash and burn and I have also gone in winging it and watched them soar.  Again, I wonder, what is this life????

I guess after a few years of this that perhaps the highs won’t be so high and the lows won’t be so very low and while things won’t ever be centered, they might not be so jarring.  Until then, I am going to find shelter in the presence of my coworkers; these beautifully creative and cynical people who just get it.  They know.  They share their own stories to make me feel better or their lesson plans when I am adrift.  They keep me laughing, they tell me it is okay to cry and assure me I am not going insane.  I will take the nice words of students and use them to build a wall of defense around my heart to shield it from the mean kids who try to pierce it.  I’ll listen to the wise words of my husband who reminds me that I am not ineffective as a human and who remembers how hard I worked to get here.  Maybe I will repurchase the Smurfing Sing Song and see what other gems those wise blue creatures have to share with me.  And the next time someone asks me how teaching is, I will smile and assure them it is so much more than I ever smurfing thought it would be.

A Heart Full of Love

I should really be studying for the test I have on Monday or prepping for my classes that start in two weeks and yet here I am, staring at a screen and doing neither.  I have spent most of this week trapped in a fugue state of denial that summer is over and a whirlwind of last-minute things I meant to get done the past three months.  I have also spent a great deal of time procrastinating: yes! We absolutely need chocolate cake and fresh whipped cream to top it right now, and yes! That laundry room really needs to be organized before I do one more thing.  Oh and the boy’s closet and if his, why not SG’s as well.  This has been a completely bipolar week of frenzied activity and listless, lethargic TV watching. This morning I woke up way too early with a heart full of Buffalo that I feel I have to share before I can get down to all the things I really need to do.  Some may say I am procrastinating yet again, I say I am simply sharing a heart full of love for a place and people I miss.

I was surprised to feel so physically homesick because I was just in Buffalo two weeks ago.  I’m not sure if I was dreaming about it, but I woke up with an actual emptiness in my heart and words swirling in my brain.  Normally I would attribute it to the omnipresent heat of August, but it was hot in Buffalo this trip too.  No shivering in a sweatshirt while the locals wore their shorts and tanks this time.  Maybe it was because I traveled home alone and got to really spend time connecting with all of my people there without worrying if the people I brought with me were having fun too.  I did a lot of visiting. I visited more in six days than I have in six years.  Visits over coffee, pizza, beer, pastries – always some kind of food.  Visits on decks and patios because even though it was hot, you go outside when the sun shines because you know you have winter months of being cooped up indoors.  Scheduled visits and pop up visits and so much talking.  Yes, I was in my element. 

I was overwhelmed at my aunt’s house first because everyone asked to see my kids and I had to keep saying it was “just me, just me”, then because so many people were calling me “Becki” and after a while I kind of wanted to throw up in my mouth about it, and next because of the sheer volume of people.  Out of the twelve, eleven of the Lazarus siblings were there and with them an assortment of their kids and grandkids, but it no way all of us as this was an unofficial reunion, not an official one.  I was so happy to see aunts and uncles and cousins that I had not seen in a long time and to meet new fiancées and babies and see that they were happy to see me as well and I remembered this is family.  This is a big, crazy, loud, talking family.  Oh the words!  The words were tumbling, spilling, carrying over, non-stop and punctuated with laughter, with unshed tears for the sister and husband who weren’t able to make it and with unrestrained joy.  It was amazing, and slightly overwhelming, to be a part of this.

The next day, my sister took a cousin, her husband and me downtown to see what they have done with the waterfront.  Holy cow Buffalo!!  Well done!  I remember you would just go to the waterfront and there was the road and there was water and it was dirty and gross.  Now there are restaurants and bridges and concerts and SUP yoga.  Good for you yoga posers doing your poses on your paddle boards.  We saluted them as we had our first drink of the day and I was so amazed by the transformation I was seeing that I did not even complain when my mule was not served in a copper mug.  We drove around to see other destinations and as we did I was so proud of this city!  Buffalo had quite a heyday back in the Canal Era and the old, historic buildings are architectural wonders and the renovations happening alongside them are inspiring.  I just felt so proud to be part of this even though I am not part of this but I used to live here so I can still be proud, right?

My last day in Buffalo was a day with just my mom and we talked and talked and talked.  We went to breakfast and I ate chicken souvlaki at 9 in the morning because I could and it was as good as I remembered.  We spent the morning at Niagara Falls, Canadian side of course, and the Falls too, were as good as I remembered.  Actually, they were even more amazing.  They roared and misted and hissed and tumbled and their roar drowned out our words and I found that for once, and for only a short time, I didn’t even need words.

Roar, hiss, tumble.

After I posted a picture of mom and me at the Falls, one of my friends commented on how they never appreciated the Falls when they lived close to them but how amazing they find it now.  So true.  Today I am finding that those words apply to everything Buffalo and not just the natural wonders.  I never appreciated being part of such a large and loud family, but now when holidays are sometimes just the four of us, I sure miss it.  I never appreciated the food I was surrounded with until I find myself gorging on pizza, on pastries, on wings that are never as good as they are here.  Tim Horton’s was not a big thing when I lived in Buffalo, but I have to have it all the time despite it being volcanically hot and leaving me with rancid breath.  Got to have it.  I didn’t appreciate the history of the city I lived near, just deplored its decline.  I think what I didn’t take time to appreciate the most is the people.  I didn’t appreciate how nice it is to have all of that family around and invested in you and your life and expecting the same from you.  I didn’t appreciate the generations of people who lived there so that yes, you did always run into someone you knew or kind of knew in the grocery store.  I didn’t appreciate the friendships I made when I was a kid and took for granted but carried through high school and even a few until today.  I was 19 when I left, so you know I didn’t appreciate my parents. 

I guess my heart full of sad this morning is because I appreciate all of those things so very much right now.  I appreciate that beautiful city; I appreciate the friends, the acquaintances, the fact that the creek in town has a lighthouse, the pizzeria on every corner and those tasty pastry hearts.  Mostly though, I appreciate the people: the diehard Bills fans, the people who hate their neighbor but shovel them out in the winter because they know they should, the people who insist on talking to me at the grocery store or the waitress who speaks so candidly I have to ask my mother if she knows her.  I also really,   especially, appreciate my parents.  My wonderful, loving, giving, do-gooder, slightly flawed and beautiful parents.  Or maybe I am sad because it is hard to spend twenty plus years trying to get to Buffalo for vacation and the want to be there is sometimes superseded by a want to see mountains or a beach or the home of your favorite childhood author.  When the kids were little I wanted to move back to Buffalo so badly.  I know we will never move back and that is okay because I like the life we have here and I like the people I have here.  However, I guess no matter how long I am away; there will just be days when I miss all the things I never took the time to appreciate.  

I am right now appreciating my dad's bad perm

Again and Again and Again

When I was a kid, my dad was a cop. I would watch him get ready for work and think it normal that his job involved a bullet-proof vest, handcuffs and a gun.  Surely all dads got ready for work like that.  I never thought about my dad’s gun.  It was just part of his uniform, part of his holster, and part of the counter when he sat down for dinner and took it off.  I never thought that cops and guns were a bad thing, but the world, our world, has certainly shown me that cops and guns aren’t always right. 

Any time I hear about a cop killed in the line of duty, I think about my dad.  I can immediately feel what that family is feeling because I can easily remember what it was like to be part of cop’s family and I know. I know how they worry when they come home late, and I know the way your stomach clenches when you hear someone has been hurt.  I have seen one come home and be so shaken up about what he had seen that he couldn’t talk.  I know this life.  I woke up to the news in Dallas and I wept for those families.  For the wives, the husbands, the kids living that life and hearing that news and knowing that their lives are changed now, today and forever.  I watched the news footage of officers racing towards gunshots again and again and I know my dad would have done the same thing.  When one chooses to serve and protect, they serve and protect.

But, not always.  Sometimes cops make mistakes.  Sometimes they don’t have time to think it through or use rational thought and sometimes they shoot and they kill.  And when it happens again and again and again and it is not in one city or one state, but all over America, something is wrong.  Something is terribly, terribly wrong.  And we are watching it and we are clucking our tongues and we are saying smug things like “well, don’t all lives matter?”  And when no one is held accountable for all those deaths, when no one stands up to say “STOP.”, when no one puts themselves in the shoes of those being shot, we are saying again and again and again “you don’t matter.”

As a woman, I know what it is like to face discrimination.  I know harassment and I know the feeling of being dismissed before being heard. I do not, however, know what prejudice feels like. I don’t know bias.  I have never had anyone cross the street when they saw me walking towards them and I have never been kept from a job by the name on my resume.  This does not, and should not, keep me from imagining what that feels like.  How I would feel if I experienced it again and again and again?  If I can put myself in those cop’s families this morning and feel their pain, should I not be doing the same for the families of the two black men shot by police this week?  And if I am not and you are not, who is?  And if black families aren’t feeling sad for the cops who were killed last night, do we have any right to demand that they do? 

I have been listening to the soundtrack from Hamilton again and again and again this summer and it made me feel proud to be American as I listened to the imaginary rap battles the Founding Fathers had.  “Yo, I’m just like my country: young, scrappy and hungry” made me smile to imagine a time America had it together and was going to do great things.  Great ideas, good intentions, however, they stopped short.  They did great things for some people, but not all people.  A nation built on slavery is not truly a free nation.  All men are created equal should have meant that ALL men and women are created equal; not just the rich, the white, the privileged.  We failed then and we are failing now.  I am so damn tired of failing.

I have spent a lifetime being an avoider of icky things.  Present me with conflict and I will present you with my back as I retreat.  I am tired of retreating.  I am tired of being part of a nation of retreaters, of people afraid to feel someone else’s pain, of people subscribing to stereotypes and bias, and of people getting all of their information from buzzfeed and thinking it is fact.  We need empathy and sympathy and dammit, we need to have respect.  We need to get smart about our world and if we don’t know how to get smart about our world, we need to go to a library and have a librarian help us find facts, real facts, to make educated decisions.  But most of all, we need to start seeing ALL people as people.  Not black people, or brown people, or female people.  People.  Perhaps, if we, the people, looked others in the eyes, we would see not their skin or their religious garb or their uniform; rather we would just see their eyes and remember that they are a person too.  We would know they have feelings, we would understand their feelings, we would try to be better, we would try to make changes and would finally, finally, be the land of the free.

The Last One

Initially I sat down to write about the body builderia everyone in my house is currently suffering from.  If you are not aware of body builderia, it is a condition where when one person says “Look at my arms!” and those suffering with body builderia immediately roll up their shirtsleeves and flex for comparison.  All McMahons are terrible about this; even the boy, who in his sloth-like condition should have absolutely no muscle tone as he lifts nothing heavier than the TV remote, yet has the mostly beautifully sculpted arms around.  And while I could easily pump out a solid thousand words more about body builderia, today I find that maybe I should not.

We had a staff meeting recently about social media, kids, and parents and how everything and anything we say or type or emoji can and will be used against us in the teaching profession.  While I am not teaching yet, I will be and this has started to concern me.  If I type up a blog today with humor and with no ill will about body builderia, will an angry parent somewhere down the line come across this blog and accuse me of being insensitive about eating disorders?  Even though body builderia is entirely made up, will they look at it and say “There!  This is the proof that this woman is insensitive and as such the only reason my child is failing!”  It seems a stretch, but it could happen.  It does happen. I don’t want it to happen to me.

I’ve worked hard to realize my goal of becoming a teacher.  I took the long road to getting here and I am old to be starting a new career.  Well, older anyway.   I think that the goal of teaching is drawing nearer and I keep saying things like “When I am a teacher” or use declarative statements in front of most of the faculty that start “As I will be teaching next year…” and it feels really good.  When I am left in charge of someone’s classroom and I stand up there and explain and talk and teach, I feel like this is where I am supposed to be.  It is almost similar to when I held SG for the first time and knew, quite instantly, that this is what I was meant to do with my life.  This is the work I want to do for the next twenty+ years of my life and I don’t want to feel like I am exposing myself to losing this career because I quickly wrote about something I found amusing at the time. 

I love this blog. I love to write about what is going on in our lives, our things that I think stink or things in our life that stink. I love to reread the ones I wrote three years ago and sigh about what a sad-sack Sally I was.  I love the feedback that I get from you after I blog.  Being a middle child, I need that constant validation.  I love to write, I love to take all of my words and throw them down in a way I think is pleasing to read about.  However, as much as I’d secretly wished my blog would be picked up by Huffington Post or that I would be offered an editorial spot in the Austin American Statesman, neither thing has happened.  This blog might be a happy maker, but it is not a money maker.  So again, teaching wins as they will actually pay me to teach.  A little bit anyway.

So I guess what I am doing here today is retiring from Rebecca Who Always Spoke Loudly.  My words will always be a huge part of me, but I don’t want them to be the undoing of me.  I don’t want to continue writing it in a censored, watered-down, parentally approved version of me either, because that would be an undoing of me as well.  All or nothing, all or nothing.  However, I do know that I will continue to write because it is part of me.  It gives me joy to write, it gives me my sanity back when I write and it gives me peace when I look back and reread the old stuff and see how far we have come.  I will just choose a more private venue.  Maybe this will even force me to send Christmas cards and not assume everyone is reading my blog and knows all about our life.  Maybe I’ll enter writing contests, although I do not like to be limited in the amount of words I am supposed to write in.  Perhaps I will put more thought into what I am writing and somehow put a whole book together.  Maybe I will take the adventures of my first year of teaching and publish it under a pen name and make a million dollars and then let you all know that it was me!  It could actually happen.  Or, much like the sports world, I might announce this retirement only to come back again and again.  I am not one hundred percent sure.  All I know is that I truly want to be a teacher and I am going to focus on that for now.  Rebecca, who always spoke loudly, is going to continue to be shushed in the library, continue to use all of her words and most importantly, Rebecca, who always spoke loudly, is going to teach.

See?!  It says teacher right on it!