“No ideas but in things.” -William Carlos Williams

There is a yellow fire hydrant just outside my classroom window.  I never really noticed it until a few months ago.  We were outside on a mask break (who ever thought that would become a term that needed no explanation?) when another teacher and I noticed our big 8th grade boys huddled in a tight circle around it.  What nefarious shenanigans were they up to?  We watched, neither one of us feeling particularly inclined to approach them and follow through on whatever discipline might be required; they are 8th grade boys, after all.  In reality, the need for discipline has been almost nonexistent this year.  Masks and distancing have taken all of the energy once used for bullying, pranks and showboating (the culprits usually responsible for igniting trouble in a middle school).  

The source of the boys’ fascination with the hydrant was the small, but continuous, flow of water coming from the nut at the top.  A slight arc of water, maybe two or three inches high, was coming from the previously static object in our school’s side field.  A substantial puddle had formed at the base and the boys were, for some reason, dipping the tips of their shoes in and then trying to push one another over.  A strange game of chicken?  

The hydrant kept flowing and as temperatures plunged here in upstate New York, the ice began to grow.  It took over the hydrant, one side seeming to be permanently encased while the other side would occasionally look a bit more defrosted.  This was clearly the result of some weather-science-sun something or other phenomenon.  The puddle, too, became a tiny ice rink.  On our twice daily outdoor excursions, the boys would gather at the hydrant while we chose to stay out of earshot, still keeping our teacher’s eye on them.  Occasionally, one of them would try to make another one slip or someone would dare to throw a snowball, but for most of this winter, the hydrant provided the measured entertainment that they needed.  

Looking at the hydrant today, glistening in the sun, water still spouting faithfully from the top, I am struck by what this pandemic has created.  The students have more freedom and leeway than ever before….they go outside during class, sometimes even unsupervised.  Formerly banished phones sit unabashedly on desks; backpacks and coats once typically shoved into lockers are now strewn at their feet; earbuds no longer hide under long hair, but peek out from knit hats and hoodies.  There is a sense that we are all in this together, surviving, and that shared survival mode has allowed us to silently agree to ignore the things that are no longer important.  It is a weird version of Maslow.  

Yes, you can go outside to breathe fresh air and I will trust you to not hurt each other, physically or emotionally.  Yes, you can have your phone out “just in case” and I will trust you not to text your friends in math class.  I no longer suspect hidden drugs or weapons in your bags and coats, and I agree that maybe listening to music during workshop is actually beneficial to your teenage brain.  We share the uncertainty and the loneliness that has rearranged our priorities.  We share the welcomed distraction from the yellow hydrant.  

Drowning. That is how I feel in this meeting. I come up for air and am hit by another wave.

Test scores. High school recommendations. CSE meetings.

Drowning. The air is sucked out of my lungs and the chance for words is gone. I just focus on breathing. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Grades. Late work. Missing work. No work.

Drowning. I can see the other heads bobbing around me. A few go under.

New schedule. Building construction. Layoffs and resignations. Details I am privy to because?

Drowning. Drowning. Swimming feels too hard. Giving up is tempting.

Veteran teacher. Union representative. Lone workshop wolf in a flock of standards sheep.

Drowning in the words that fill up the air in this room. Drowning in the words that are missing.

I slowly begin to release and allow myself to drift away.

I am sitting in my fifteen year old’s bedroom, on the hand-me-down couch that had finally become too worn for our living room.  He adopted it a few months ago, despite the fact that it blocks his closet door and three quarters of his bookshelves; it is a small room with a lot of books!  In fact, his room is wall to wall “stuff” that is two and, in some spots, three layers deep.  A lot of it is predictable teenage detritus: dirty laundry, sports equipment, musical instruments–a lot of music, instruments & production equipment…music and books are definitely the defining themes in here– and then there are the small, seemingly random items that hold some private meaning for him, an inside joke with his friends or a reminder of a time that will resonate in his memory, perhaps forever.    Behind it all, on every wall remains the Dr. Suess mural that Aaron created when I was in my third trimester.  We always offer to paint the walls, but he has, so far, grunted in his monosyllabic teenage aloofness something that conveys that he is not yet ready to make that total leap out of his childhood.  

This room has seen a lot.  I remember how it echoed with emptiness and expectations during my pregnancy.  We followed the Jewish tradition (superstition?) of not buying anything for the baby until he was born, except for the carseat, which came as part of a stroller.  For months, the room was empty, except for the paint cans & brushes, and the untouched stroller in one corner that watched the room fill up with bright colors and characters.  I can see myself on his first night home, as I sat alone in Aaron’s grandmother’s chair trying to nurse and feeling my body betraying me, once again, all the insecurities of my life leading to this one complete failure.  I remember the transitions: moving from crib to toddler bed, the evolution of nightly routines, the closed door that requested permission.  Sitting here, now, I see the years like a film montage…I wonder what soundtrack would fit best?  And there are things I won’t write about…can’t write.  Images that transcend words (or at least any words that I can push together); emotions that surround me now because they seem to have penetrated every atom of my existence, tattooing my soul & marking it indelibly.  Private moments of growth for both of us.  

In fewer years than I care to acknowledge, he will leave.  I have witnessed this leaving before, all of those first moments of independence, but this ultimate step into the world is one he will take fully & completely.  I don’t know what that will look like.  I don’t know what that will feel like.  But I do know that it will be a different leaving than anything we’ve experienced so far.

The room grew, apparently, as the boy grew.  And, as the boy grew, so did I.  How is it that so much growth can happen in such a short space of time?

Early morning, dark & quiet.  I listen to the breathing of the house:  the clock that ticks too loudly, highlighting the solitude like a bad movie scene; the myriad of “sleep” sounds needed by –and created by– the four sleeping people down the hall; my own body creaking in its skin, reminding me that I am closer to old than to young.

Opening up my computer to begin writing and making a decision about which path to take, I am more cautious.  Today I have an audience.  Who will notice my overuse of the ellipses?  Who will see the blank spaces between my words?  The people who know me (or think they know me)… how will they digest my musings?  Am I writing the beginnings of conversations that I have always avoided or am I ending the potential for them to ever begin?  Will the painfully slow selection of words and phrases find their form in the world?  And, ultimately, does this all beg the bigger question from my years studying Reader Response Theory:  who controls the meaning, the author or the reader?

This act of writing forces me to not only sit with my thoughts and follow their dancing, random interactions, but to give them my full attention.  The choice to settle on one each day, for 31 days, is a choice to dive deeper into myself and to do it publicly, allowing my words to move out into the world and, perhaps, find their meaning somewhere else.  Readers will, hopefully, read, but they will not take my first steps into Thurston Hall, they will not hear my father’s gravelly praise tinged with hidden criticism, they will not sit at my mother’s table and watch the hawk watching her.  Instead, they will recall their own initiation into true independence, wrestle with their own childhood demons, and consider their own passage of time. 

And, beneath it all, even as I race to completion for today, there are the truths that emerge from my own personal Pandora’s box.  Lying within the carefully placed commas and meticulously selected adjectives are the truths that will pull at me long after I think I am done.

Spaces to share, without apprehension:

• ice skating with Jamie Roy in his front yard, a transformation of a city yard at 7 years old
• late nights on Circle Drive, safe & belonging until it was no longer safe and I did not belong
• Popponesset: summers of freedom; summers of premature adulthood
• most of my childhood: meals, friends, family…but skating on the surface, just like the Roy’s front yard
• incomplete dreams (careful of ones that reveal hope, leaning in to the lessons of failure)
• philosophical contemplation informed by popular Buddhist culture (it’s a thing, I’m sure of it) and thoughts about quotes, memes and (short) poems

Spaces that are risky, potentially revealing something for those that care to look closely:

• teaching 
• learning
• living
• wondering
• considering
• hoping
• accepting

Spaces that are off-limits, even to myself:

• Life choices & different paths…visions of the life I’m not living     

I didn’t think it could get any worse. In a world when everything is sucked into the vortex of technology, I am still amazed that anyone thinks that the Real World can somehow be replicated digitally. I know that I am a confirmed luddite and that I was dragged kicking and screaming into technology long before Covid forced my hand, but I also know that there are just some things that cannot be done through a screen, no matter how much we want to believe that it can.

Watching my students go on a virtual tour of the Negro League Baseball Museum, I am struck by how detrimental it is when we just… miss. This tour has all of the pieces in place: a docent to guide and orient, the ability for visitors to navigate the halls and exhibits, a workbook compendium to help students interact with the information, and even a fireside chat. The timing is purposeful, allowing visitors to browse and explore at their own pace, and the exhibits are fascinating, retelling the history of the Negro League through the voices of those who lived it. The museum is amazing. Except we’re not there.

We watch from my classroom, on my big screen with its scratchy volume. They watch from home, on their own individual chromebooks that lag and freeze without warning. We watch and try to imagine it, try to hear it, try to see it. But, like all things virtual, it is just slightly off. The voices are just slightly out of sync with the moving lips. The glitches are surprising and somewhat jarring. We are left wondering about what is just out of the screenshot. We have no idea how the halls echo or how the seats feel when you sit. We have no idea what it smells like or where the bathrooms are located. We’re not there.

The passion for this piece of our history is in every detail, carefully constructed to entice students as we continue to slowly move from honoring Black History Month to celebrating the incredible history of Black Americans. I am impressed with everything about this virtual field trip, from the museum itself to the minds at Microsoft who figured out how to transport it out to the world to my own administration that is not just talking the talk, but beginning to walk the walk. I want to hold on to all of the good and keep it front and center in my memory of today.

But I am sad. I am sad that this experience will be remembered as a waste of two hours, by students and teachers alike. I am sad that we missed an incredible journey into a unique part of our American history. I am sad that in a moment of hope I am, once again, forced to add one more thing to the list of what has been lost this year.

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”
― Gloria Steinem

I have found a bit of joy. I’ve been looking for some time now, peering into cracks and squinting through uncertainty…a practice that has revealed a deeper darkness than I care to admit and a blurry reality that doesn’t respond to corrective lenses. I was looking inward and doing some Important Work, for sure, but it is exhausting and often overwhelming and, for now, was not all that joyful. But then, by accident, I found joy.

Like most of us in traditional education, I just completed the first half of this school year and was contemplating the second half (trying hard to see March as just another month along the way). I started thinking about my students and where they were at this point in the year. What had sparked their creative juices and what was just another “assignment”? What prompts had ignited a flurry of pens scurrying across notebook pages and what had left us all listening to the clock tick? I was feeling sad that, despite my best efforts, I just didn’t know them the way they deserved to be known at this point in the year, but I was also feeling a strange determination to Fix It.

And so I dove in. I searched my computer files and explored web sites and I read read read. I looked at what I had done in the past and I searched out what other teachers were doing now and I read read read. I watched hip and sleek YouTube videos and even found myself lost down the dangerous rabbit hole that is TikTok and, of course, I kept reading. I put together new folders, new prompts, new ideas…..I capitalized on the digital world I was stuck in and found shortcuts and longcuts and mediumcuts that would bring my students to explore in ways that would not be possible without the technology. I planned.

On Monday, it all fell flat. (Of course it did, because teaching in the pandemic is awful.) But this particular failure was different. For the first time in almost a year, my disappointment, fatigue and frustration was surprisingly short lived, replace by the memory of hope. The hope I had when I was planning. It is the hope that we all have when we plan: the anticipation that we may have discovered the just right poem or prompt or scaffolding of ideas that will light the spark. Planning is hope and hope is joyful.

Lately, I find myself crying. A lot. More than usual. Everything hurts. Everything cuts deep to the very center of my being and I wonder how I will possibly survive the latest wound. Sometimes, it is simply a stinging paper-cut, but others are lacerations that will undoubtedly scar. And then it all becomes too much. Too big.

So, I am done … not in a tragic swan song sort of way, but more in a immabeoverherehibernatinglikeabearuntilthisshitisover kind of way.

I read a piece this morning by a woman, musing over her coffee mugs. That was it. Simple musings about the mugs. She even had pictures. It was lovely. And simple. And present. Each mug had a story and each time she held it, the story came alive. It reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from Zora Neale Hurston and I wondered if, like the years that Hurston reflected upon, there are mugs that ask questions and mugs that answer?

I have been drinking coffee for as long as I can remember. I can still see my parents’ overflowing cabinet in the kitchen of my childhood, back when their mugs sat unassumingly side by side. My mother’s mugs still push the limits of her cabinet, but now they are all hers, gathered up from artisans and thoughtful gift-givers in the decades since their marriage finally crumbled. Moving through my life, there have been many cabinets (yes, all overflowing) and many mugs. Right now, a small, white one given to me by a former student sits at my elbow, in danger of being knocked to oblivion by a careless moment. No one mug stands out with its own story but they definitely have always had a presence in my life; I have always had an overflowing cabinet somewhere nearby.

I am sure that there is a metaphor hidden amongst my mugs. I am sure that if I stop and pay attention to the weight of the mug, the feel of the ceramic, the heat warming my hands, I will find the simplicity and the beauty. I am also sure that if I stop and look carefully at the sharp points that seem to be surrounding me these days, I just might see the softness in the spaces in between.

The weight of this world is crushing. It seems to bear down on all of the pressure points at the same time, never allowing for a reprieve or a chance to adjust or shift. Just a stubbornly persistent piling-on and piling-up of everything. I feel this. My partner feels this. My colleagues feel this. And, of course, our students feel this.

I am struck by the constant background noise about what will come next….what life will be like after. Nowhere is the noise louder than amongst educators. As we slog slowly toward the halfway point for this school year, there appears to be a renewed sense of urgency and, at times, panic. How are we preparing our students? What has become of the rigor we are used to demanding of our students? Where are the (often unreasonably) high expectations we have for ourselves?

How will they measure up when they enter in the fall?

But there is also the recognition that we can’t give them any more than we are already giving them. Rigor has shrunk next to the perilous state of our collective mental and physical health. Tests are secondary to students’ wellbeing. Our expectations are that they simply show up; do their best. Often, we congratulate one another because we simply show up; do our best. We can’t demand any more from them and there isn’t much left of ourselves to give.

How will we measure up when they enter in the fall?

I am concerned that our energy is misdirected. We have so little control right now, but perhaps we need to look forward. What would this look like if we began to have a conversation about how to bring them in next year instead of how we send them out this year? We know what a student should look like when they enter in a normal year…..how are we going to greet them when they show up after a global pandemic? Instead of trying to stop the current bleed, maybe we need to consider how to nourish the broken body?

In focusing on the repair and the regrowth, we may find the hope that has been elusive for so long.

It is late. I am still in my classroom, trying to put all the puzzle pieces together to create the picture that I don’t fully see in my mind just yet. I think I know the edges, but the image is still wrapped up in the pieces scattered all about me. And, for the record, I hate puzzles.

I am, still, my own jumbled mix of diametrically opposed thoughts and ideals. There does not seem to be a middle ground; there is no balance. I seesaw between knowing–not just believing, but knowing–that there is a light at the end of this dark tunnel, and wondering if I will ultimately put down my resistance and accept my fate like the wife in The Road. Exuberant promise of renewed life or dismal, grey slogging to more of the same. I’m telling you: I have lost all ability to see the proverbial glass as either half full or half empty….it is either overflowing or bone dry.

Maybe this is leftover from the winter break, which was full of emotional contrasts: the juxtaposition of cheery, holiday warmth against the backdrop of masked loved ones sitting more than an arms length away; the freedom from daily attempts at teaching alongside the constraints that come from living in pandemic isolation; the need to rest and indulge in comfort foods holding hands with the promise of resolutions and new beginnings. Every moment seemed to offer me a choice and that was exhausting during a time that typically is full of restoration.

When I settled down to think about my One Little Word, I gravitated to the word Joy. I need joy. I seek joy. I crave joy. I was going to immerse myself in joy and find it in all the smallest moments. I was determined to make this my sole focus. My determination, while not what anyone could consider joyful, was laser focused. I need joy.

But then I came across another word: unfurl. I fell instantly in love. I breathed an audible sigh. I pictured myself…unfurling. Stretching out all of my parts and showing what is inside. Rising up to my fullest height and owning the space all around me. Unfurling 50 years of growth, 50 years of good and bad and everything in between. Embracing the child, the awkward teen, the years spent wandering and the years when roots finally began to emerge; the years of rebellion and the years subsumed by others. I am all of the contradictions and contrasts and opposing forces wrapped up in this body that has carried me this far. I think I may just be beginning to understand what Mr. Whitman was trying to say….I am large. I do contain multitudes. And yes, I do contradict myself.