Blonde Moment, with Apologies to Paulo Coelho

In The Alchemist, a book my ex-husband recommended to me because both he and his grandmother liked it, a book I now teach to juniors in high school, a book about following dreams and pursuing personal legends, there is a prologue I have never been able to figure out.

In the prologue, the Alchemist reads a legend in which the Greek character Narcissus falls in love with himself and withers away, so transfixed by his own reflection in a nearby lake that he cannot leave. But the legend does not end with Narcissus' transformation into a flower. It ends with the lake transforming from freshwater to saltwater after weeping for the loss of Narcissus.

"Well, he was very beautiful," say the woodland nymphs.

"Was he?" asks the lake. "I only cry now because in his eyes I could see my own beauty reflected."

And the Alchemist, upon reading this, thinks to himself, "What a lovely story."

I have never quite been able to figure this prologue out. I understand that alchemy is about transformation and the novel is about transforming into something greater than what you were, and about connecting to the pulse of the universe, but this story seems out of sync. It seems to be a story about vanity. A lake so vain it doesn't miss what was gone, but only the reflection of itself.

It's a thought that worries me.

A thought much like the worry love causes me. In my mind, all miracles are somehow linked. If love exists, it must mean God exists. But how can God exist? If we are merely particles buzzing with energy in a world so filled with practicality, how can God be real? And if God cannot be real, as all logic dictates, how can a romantic soul-mate kind of love in this universe? We must be just x's and y's linking with other x's and y's in a frenzy to find the right phermone. How can anyone trust the little voice inside saying yes or no upon dating someone? Shouldn't love, in this world of practicality and energy, be based on decisions, compatibility, and values? Can't we train passion to follow logic? Fend off heart-ache for friendship?

And if that is true, as it must be, why do I so stubbornly resist believing it?

Sigh.

But back to the prologue. Maybe it's about the idea of reflection? Of seeing something of ourselves in others? Of seeing God in surfaces shiny like bus windows and fragile as desire?

I am not sure I will ever be done worrying about the prologue. Or God. Or Love.

But the prologue strikes chords with me at odd times. This is what happens after teaching a book four or five times in a row. It seems to travel always with you. To ring bells at odd moments.

A bell rang in my mind upon reading an essay one of my students wrote.

Keep in mind, this is a student that brings a tornado of emotion into the classroom with her each day. A student who cannot avoid conflict with peers or teachers. A student who is as loud as she is angry, as loud as she might be sad.

We have butted heads. But now we get along.

In her essay, she describes the day her mother tried to kill her. She explains how her mother and mother's boyfriend were drunk as usual and how a disagreement escalated to physical blows. How she escaped and ran into the hall of her apartment screaming for help. How no one came or helped. How only the woman upstairs called her mom saying she didn't want her to go to jail, so keep it down.

She also describes how she went to the principal later for help. How, when her mom attacked her a second time, she went to her room and called the police. How she stayed in a shelter for teens.

She concludes her essay with a quote from Marilyn Monroe that reads:

"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

When I read her essay, feeling the weight of each syllable press into my heart, I came to the quote and heard a bell.

"What a lovely story," I thought.

Because a Friend Told Me I Should Be Writing More Blogs...

It is December.

A million December blogs run through my head-- about a season so draining it frays nerves like split ends down strands of blonde hair, a season filled with memories behind twinkling lights, banks of snow, poinsettias, weddings, friends who remember the anniversaries you are no longer allowed to talk about, and who toast your anniversary of independence, and of realizing that that being lonely while single is so much better than being lonely while lying next to someone who cannot love you, because being lonely while single means only that-- that you are alone, while being lonely while lying next to the man you are trying to love and knowing he does not love you means (possibly? probably?) you are unlovable, and of secret December lives, and lies, and people dying, and birthdays, and Rudolph's nose lighting the way home from Grandma's house along every radio tower in St. Paul, and drawing with your finger against the frozen molecules of the car window, and your mom telling stories about how she worked in the 1st bank downtown and turned the flashing light that dots the skyline on and off, and on and off, because she didn't think you understood, at seven, what statistics meant. And a Santa who knocks on Grandma's door when you are three because he sees you waving in the window and hands you a wooden toy car that has wheels you can take apart, and later, how you learn no one knew who this Santa was, that he appeared out of nowhere, and how somehow you brought that Santa down the aisle with you in December, twenty one years later, and how now both memories slide along the ventricles of your heart with slow, easy, deliberate serrated blade edges.

This is my December.

There are a million December blogs that dance in my mind, like sugarplums laced with acid.

But the blog I will write is my December 29th, the day after yesterday. And today I took a step forward only to have to go back, but stepped forward again, and, after visiting the phone store three times in one day, after making friends with gay, Jewish salesman Bill, the Somali couple buying a phone from the Somali salesman who recognizes me by the third visit, and after somehow offering to bring lunch tomorrow, two days after yesterday, to everyone in the office, I purchased a new phone. Finally.

Today, December 29th, I abandoned the flip phone I had borrowed to replace a much loved and dramatic Blackberry with another. Which meant I had to reenter all of my contacts. One. At. A Time. Phone. Number. By. Phone. Number.

So what I learned was this-- in the middle of My December, my emotional mini-drama, my endless lists of school work and course work and syllabi and syllables, I pushed everything aside to sit on my couch next to my yorkie-poo, watch Sandra Bullock in The Proposal, and type digits into my phone one by one--that while the first ten minutes felt tedious, suddenly a shift occurred. I learned that entering phone numbers into a phone, remembering birth dates, figuring out birth years and anniversaries, brought all of these people into my living room. All of these happy memories and people got my undivided attention as I thought about them and their important dates and numbers. I couldn't help but feel happy as I thought about each and every one. My favorite numbers went into my phone, right alongside my favorite people.

And everything felt right.

And that is why I wrote this blog, this, the day after yesterday. This is my blog for December 29.

Everything just feels right.

The Day after Yesterday

Today I am blowing off the mountains of schoolwork I am supposed to be grading.

Today is a slow morning and singing "Winter Wonderland" in my best lounge singer impersonation.

Today is addressing Christmas cards and buying groceries.

Today is yoga and holiday parties.

Today is remembering newspapers and coffee and French toast for two made with one egg per piece of bread, vanilla, cream, brown sugar and toasted pecans.

Today is smiling at the memory.

Today is making French toast for one and thinking it still tastes pretty damn good.

But Maybe Wear a Helmet

There is something I have lost. Something that recently has gone out of my life. It is the something that lets me send words out into the world without care and with a sort of blind faith that somehow my fingers know better than my mind what needs to land on a page.

Thus, (to borrow a transition word from the list of transitions I gave to my 9th graders the other day), I haven't been writing much.

And for a couple months this was fine. I was busy. I was moving. I was teaching and going to school and applying for another teaching position and training for teaching online and getting sick every other day and THUS, thus- I left writing.

So now my fingers don't know quite what to do. They start. They delete. They second guess. They worry. They pause...

But today, well- today I was walking through my office at school, eyes glued to the assignment I was about to copy for the students restlessly awaiting instruction in the computer lab, when I slammed my leg right into a file cabinet with a noise that startled at least two of the three co-workers that were in the office at the time.

"Katie!" said one of these dear co-workers, "are you ok?!"

"Yeah," I replied, but in my head I thought no. No. Something is very wrong with this picture. What am I doing here? What has happened to my life? Obviously there is a reason my eyes have been causing me problems for the last two months. Obviously there is something I am not seeing.

"I'm fine," I said to my co-worker. "It sounded worse than it was." In my head, though, I was saying, "Nice job. How clumsy can one person be? Who runs into a file cabinet?" And a story a student wrote in a creative writing class I taught one year long ago came to mind, one that featured a teacher who tripped over cords and bumped into things. I sighed.

It wasn't until I bumped into my stove for the second time later on the same night that I thought of my blog, and the tagline about being clumsy and running into things in an adorable way.

Thus, now that I am sitting on the couch with my hound beside me, watching Julie and Julia and trying not to be envious of the blog writer in the movie who became successful by writing about recipes and cooking. I am thinking maybe I should stop being jealous of someone in a movie and start doing work of my own. I am thinking maybe I can be successful writing about collisions? Accidents? Embarrassing mishaps?

Since there is no telling how many embarrassing mishaps I will encounter in my life, no telling how many slightly painful collisions I will have, since I am bound to run into objects and people for the rest of my life, I might as well keep writing.

Thus, I might as well let my fingers run as they will.

And just wait to see what will happen next.

No pausing, no second-guessing. No more worrying.

From New Toy to Skin Horse--Comments on the English classroom

Well- here I am. In a coffee shop. On a school day. Feeling like the world's worst teacher, yet again.

My body has been rebelling against teaching this year. It's only November and already I've called in SEVEN sick days this year, made a trip to urgent care, the minute clinic, two visits to my own doctor, and one trip to a fancy opthamologist in a skyscraping building downtown. Not exactly a personal best. But I want to put aside my rebellious immune system issues, the possibility that my body is telling me to quit teaching, and the pain I am feeling from a golfball sized pus-filled lymph node that is irritating the left side of my throat and making me squinch both shoulders up in a painful wince each time I swallow.

I want to put aside the physical for a moment and think about teaching.

I have to create an assignment for composition students for a course I am taking on composition and pedagogy. Conveniently, I teach composition and so this assignment will be pulling double duty for me- once when I turn it in for my grad class and then again when I use it on my unsuspecting students in a couple weeks.

I felt a little reluctant taking a grad school class on teaching composition while working on my MFA in writing, because, having already earned an M.Ed, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about teaching already. But it has turned out to be surprisingly helpful, and, even more surprising, I am starting to feel as though I am exiting the shiny, new toy stage of teaching and entering into the shabby, worn skin horse part of the profession. I don't profess to be "real" yet, as the Velveteen rabbit wanted to be in the story, the one in which he sought wisdom from the skin horse who explained about the passing of flashy, new toys. But I do think nine years in the profession has changed my thinking about what I do.

I began teaching as a shiny, new toy right out of grad school, one year after under-grad. I was a ferris wheel of activities and lesson plans and games and exciting things to DO in class. But I think now that I DO a lot less and my students are learning a lot more. Or at least I hope so. I'm learning more, anyhow.

So here are some thoughts and lessons I've been considering in my evolution to skin horse composition teacher:

1. It is better to not do everything but to do certain things really well. It's better to scrap the day's activity in favor of going over the one you gave yesterday. Students want to do assignments that have meaning and they will put more effort into it if they see the meaning in what you do. By going over the materials, you illustrate the importance of the assignment for them.

2. The less I am involved in the assignment, the more they learn. My view of myself as a teacher has changed--I am not the expert telling them what to do, but I am a scholar, asking what we can learn from what is in front of us. I see my students learning the most when I introduce materials and ask them questions, when I say "what can we learn from this piece?" and "how does the writer make her point?" rather than "This is what we learn," and "This is how the writer makes her point." I ask my students to come up with grading criteria for their assignments. I ask them to tell me what a good narrative essay should do. They have to engage more critically with the work and, hopefully, start to think like scholars, rather than as students waiting for instruction from the teacher.

3. Learn from them. I used to be so nervous to pass out class evaluations, and not without reason. Handing a volatile 17 year-old an evaluation form can be seriously devastating for a 23 year-old newbie teacher. Now I learn from my students by asking them to reflect on their own process as writers, or by asking which assignments were most helpful. I am more willing to change and less fearful about their reaction to me. My thinking has gone from "do they like me?" to "are they learning?"

4. Page requirements are for suckers. One lesson learned from the self-reflections I had my students do is that for many, the thing they were most pleased with was the length of their essay. The requirement had been to write a 2-5 page essay and one student wrote "I am pleased with the length of the paper. Usually I am at the minimum but this time I was right in the middle." As a teacher, I found I could actually care less about the length of the paper. And that, in fact, when the students tried to stretch their stories to make them longer, usually the writing became worse. The papers lost their focus, became too wordy, and contained so many details that there was no climax to the story. In the narrative essay, I found the papers that were about a page and a half long tended to be the strongest. And, furthermore, I decided that I didn't want my students to worry about the length of the essay for a second. I wanted them to think about content, voice, and organization. I scrapped the length requirement for future narrative essays.

5. Not everyone likes to write. As a writer, I found this shocking. Having never struggled for topic and being the sort who could ramble on and on for five pages just introducing my topic, it never occurred to me that some people might simply not enjoy writing or might struggle to think of what to say and how to say it. I grew up in a family where my dad was an English teacher and my mom, a businesswoman, loved writing limericks and poems and lengthy, comical Christmas letters. We discussed grammar at the dinner table. We wrote skits to perform at Christmas parties. I had no idea there was a whole culture of people who didn't enjoy reading and writing.

Having made friends with people more mathematically or business-world inclined, I have learned a new perspective. Some people feel frustrated by the subjectivity of English courses, by the hazy guidelines and criteria; there are no answer keys to say you are right or wrong: there is only the teacher with her red pen. Suddenly I could understand why students take the comments and grades on their papers so personally; they are personal. Of course, not to the instructor, but, if you are student who doesn't understand the concepts being explained, you aren't going to receive the comments written on your essay as anything but a message that you are inadequate in this world where other people belong and you don't.

6. Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a great battle. Plato said this, first of all, not me, but it is a lesson that has been the most painful for me to learn. As a new teacher, I took students' failures personally. Why wouldn't they learn? Why wouldn't they try? Why did they insist on failing? But there's always a reason and it usually has little to do with me.

For instance, there was the student I scolded in front of others for skipping class who stormed away from me in a huff. Months later I learned her two year-old nephew had just been beaten to death by her sister's boyfriend. Of course I had no clue, but I will never forget that I shamed her (and not too harshly, to be fair to myself) in front of other people while she was dealing with that. Or there was Tyler, the student who pierced his own eyebrow with a giant safety pin and promptly lost every assignment I gave him. Or Alan, a student who NEVER brought a pencil to class and would chew the ones I let him use for the period... and lose them before class the next day. Or Mary, a student who always dressed impeccably said to me when I asked about her failing grade "I don't know, I just can't concentrate. My dad and step-mom always fight, so I just want to hang out with my friends." Or Jereme, who said, when I asked him about his failing grades that his grandma, his only caretaker since his mom died the month before, had been hospitalized for a stroke and so he had to take over her dog-walking business while she was in the hospital.

No wonder he wasn't turning in his assignments.

7. Or else they are on drugs. Seriously. I've caught at least three kids using in my classroom over the years and I know that's just the kids dumb enough to get caught. Deals are going down in high school halls all over the place. But if students are choosing to be high in school, imagine how pointless they must see school in their lives. Some students will learn later on, some will go on to become addicts, some will have no long term consequences for their choices, but either way ultimately this is the student's choice.

I'm not really sure how this revelation fits into my personal pedagogy for teaching, other than to remember it is an element in the classroom that is never in the textbooks. When you are learning how to write a lesson plan there is never any guidance for what to do if your students are tripping, or stoned, or high out of their minds. And sometimes, when I am beating myself up for a being a failure of a teacher, for letting one or two of the children get left behind, it is slightly helpful to remember that one or two of them might be stubbornly planting their feet in the ground and refusing to move ahead with the plan. That it might not have anything to do with me at all.

8. Everyone wants to do well. Everyone. A peer in my composition class once told me that to get an F on an assignment, even one he didn't care about doing when he turned it in, was like "watching a video of being kicked in the face in slow motion." All students want to do well. All students want approval. All students care about the end results even if they show it by getting mad at the teacher, being hostile, challenging, demanding, apathetic, disinterested, or flippant.

This revelation has shaped the way I meet with students. I try to remember that their efforts on an assignment are their best efforts based on what they understood of the assignment. Even those students who waited until the last minute and rushed through it-- why did they wait? Why didn't they put more into it? Why did they sabotage their own efforts? What were they fearful of? What didn't they understand?

I have decided I don't want to be a teacher who crushes writers. I don't hand out A's but I try to simply remember to honor my students for their efforts and meet them where they are. I try not to shame or belittle my students.

9. You never know what they take with them. It's true. And especially with high school students. There are fewer pictures and cards made for high school teachers. Which is fine. Mostly it will seem like no one appreciates you. That is just the nature of being a high school teacher, especially if you have high expectations for your students and a reputation for being a little tough.

But sometimes a student will surprise you, and the student you thought cared less about school, will thank you for your efforts. Once in a while they will even buy you a shot, as a student of mine from my first year of teaching did when I was with friends at a bar downtown. He was a bartender and, in addition to giving me a drink, he turned to my friend and told her that I was the one of the few teacher at the high school who actually cared about what I was doing, the few that made a difference to him, a student notoriously late to class, usually inclined to goof off, and rarely inclined to finish homework. I would never have thought he would remember me any more than another student, Deshaun, one I worked with twice in an after school program and saw frequently in the halls.

Deshaun was frequently in trouble, mostly failing his classes, and often getting into confrontations with his teachers. I complimented his creative writing in the after school program and would ask him about the rhymes he was making up. Now he works at the Walgreen's by my apartment and is going to a community college in January. He greets me reverently as "Ms. Fuller" when he sees me and keeps me updated on his life, that he's working full time, planning to go to school, and getting his diploma on Monday at our high school because he finally finished his credits. I'm pleased he is succeeding now and surprised he remembers me; I never even had him as a student.

I'm telling these stories not to boost my ego for being an amazing teacher. (Well, maybe a little for ego-boosting. This is a pretty thankless job, so maybe I am just a little bit patting myself on the back for once instead of beating myself up for my many failures.) Mostly I am telling these stories to illustrate that teachers will hear the complaints instantly from the students they have pissed off, but that they rarely will hear the positive feedback. So it's a profession that requires a certain quality of faith, a certain skin horse toughness.

And finally...

10. There is nothing more satisfying than playing tricks on your students. It's so fun. On Friday I promised a taste test for an analysis unit we've been working on and I told my students we would be taste-testing broccoli, liver, and pig's hooves. For some dumb reason they believed me. Another classic joke is to write QUIZ! on the board on April 1st. They never catch on. Seven periods in a row- the joke works!

I say this because teaching can be fun, too. These are not mean-spirited jokes; they are harmless pranks and bring levity and life to the classroom. And, in a classroom where I will be largely unappreciated and teaching crabby students on drugs, I might as well amuse myself.

There are 800,000 variables I cannot control in the classroom (golf ball sized, pus-filled lymph nodes being one of them), but I can control my attitude. And I can find ways to amuse myself. To bring levity to the classroom. So I make bad jokes (for instance I asked my students which character in To Kill a Mockingbird said very little, which character said boo. Ha ha.) and I do not mock students, but I play tricks when I can. I tell my students embarrassing and amusing anecdotes about my family's obsession with jello. They don't laugh, but I don't care. It's not cool to laugh at your teacher's jokes when you are 15. Luckily, I am not 15. I can laugh at myself all I want.

So, an hour later into my sick day, I guess my conclusions are this: Am I an amazing teacher? Probably not. Am I a good teacher? Maybe. Am I doing my best? Yes. Have I learned anything in my nine years at this? Definitely. Is the journey from new toy to skin horse over?

Chances are, it's just beginning.

My October Paradox

This morning I stepped out of my apartment at 5:45 in the morning into the just-frozen October morning to see the glint of ice on my windshield greet me. And despite the irritation I felt knowing I would have to begin a life of scraping my window now that I no longer live at the cushy studio apartment with the heated garage, I couldn’t help but notice the clear air filling my lungs, the belt of Orion gleaming in the black sky above me. I breathed in and also cursed the harsh beauty around me pressing the rubber straight edge of my window scraper against the film of ice on the glass.

 

An October paradox.

 

By mid-morning the frost was gone and by late afternoon I was wearing my hoodie without a coat out for a walk. But now it is night and I suppose frost is here again, just outside my door.

 

I just finished watching The Wrestler and so I cannot escape the idea of loneliness, of tragic ex-heroes of the 80’s, of men who end up alone clinging to their armor even as they realize behind it they touch no one.

 

My uncle died this summer. His grown-up biological children and stepchildren showed up like vets who had gone through a civil war of sorts, a bloodbath of divorce and abandonment that left scars that still smart when the weather isn’t right. They mourned not their father, but the relationship, the treaty lines that sent them scattering in different directions around the country. They wanted him back, it back, that life before the war.

 

We all did.

 

My once-upon-a-time husband lost his father to a similar war. I don’t know where his scars are or how they are doing now, but I know they must have ached when he rolled over in bed next to me years ago. I was no Nightengale, had no skills to treat his wounds, but I knew they were there, hidden below the surface. I could hear it in the tears he didn’t cry at the funeral.

 

My ninth graders just finished reading of Mice and Men and on a test I asked them to explain which theme in the novel was most important. “I think loneliness was the most important idea in the novel,” wrote one student named Patrick, “in the fact that it affected everyone in the story. I can relate to this theme because I have been lonely most of my life.”

 

“I think everyone has moments when they feel lonely,” I wrote on his test, because- what else could I say?

 

Loneliness crouches over me right now from the ropes at a ring. On this frost-filled night it is the wrestler in lime green pants and I am afraid that Mickey Rourke is about to “Ram Jam” me right into the floor.

 

I think this wrestler must visit other apartments as well. On Saturday, I went out for dinner with a man who said to me, “Don’t get me wrong, I love living alone. But I’m ready to have a relationship—it’s boring being single, and lonely.”

 

“What are you doing for Christmas?” asked another male friend of my mine on the phone the other day. His mom had been asking him about his plans and I think he felt the wrestler breathing down his neck when she did.

 

And these conversations make me worry because even in the face of the frost, even under the shadow of the wrestler, a part of me hears these comments as requests, as needs, and I want to hang up the phone and say good night early. The worry is not about these men. They are not saying anything wrong. They are being honest, which I like. What worries me is my own reaction.

 

“You’re kind of hard to reach,” said a man I went to a movie with this summer. “It’s hard to explain but it’s like there’s a wall around you.”

 

Am I one of the tragic ex-heroes of the 80’s? Am I clinging desperately to my armor?

 

I go to the place in my memory of funerals. Of armored knights on platforms in front of the people who tried to love them.

 

I am thinking of my uncle again.

 

He lost the war with some of his children. He loved them but couldn’t find a way to share that love with them. But he didn’t die alone.

 

In the end he adopted a third ex-wife’s daughter as his own and provided for her and her son, his grandson. He still spoke with his ex-wife (who was his daughter’s age), and her parents (who were his age). He still joked around with the people in his new life. He still pulled out a gun to shoot at rabbits in his front yard in Sauk Rapids. (A story shared that soothed the battle wounds at the funeral.)

 

I may have walls around me some of the time but I do not push everyone out of my life. There are people in my life with whom I can be completely honest, completely myself. There are friends who stop by for dinner, who help me when I need it, who call me every night at 10:02 to discuss the occurrences of the day. There are family members who are not perfect but who are as imperfect as myself and willing to learn how to connect.

 

Love is everywhere. It is all around us. Sometimes we mess it up. Sometimes we find ourselves fighting against something simple, we find ourselves fighting our own civil wars, but love never leaves. It is the starlight bouncing off the frost on a cold October morning, a beauty so harsh we aren’t sure what to do with it. 

My Relationship to Pain

Just below the orangish-red, newly painted toes of my pedicured foot, there is a puffy purple mark emerging.

 

I played soccer today. I played soccer during the 43-degree weather of a Minnesota October Sunday evening. I played soccer with a man who had a French accent and gray hair; a man who planted the entire weight of his body on cleats on the top of my foot.

 

I limped down the stairs tonight to let the yorkie-poo out.

 

This is not an uncommon occurrence for a soccer player. Even one who plays on a co-ed league for old folks, men over 35 and women over 30. Last week I went to school with a giant bruise on my elbow and a thumbprint bruise on my bicep. There was a purple olive on my thigh from a fist or a cleat. I don’t even want to tell you the number of toenails I’ve lost over the years to this game. Or the number of times I’ve rolled an ankle.

 

 

Many summers ago, my friend Emily once asked pointedly, lovingly, and mockingly, after seeing me hobble on yet another sprained ankle, “Do you have to play soccer? Would you like to just lay down on the ground while I beat you with a stick instead?”

 

“Would there be a way to win?” I asked earnestly, seriously considering the new sport, to the laughter of another soccer-playing friend.

 

 

 

I don’t know what my problem is.

 

I don’t know exactly what sort of crazy I am that makes me love this sport, makes me love the contact, the competition, the jostling and elbowing in front of the net. Why can’t I just be content to run? To swim? To move in a straight line without running into other people?

 

Ironically enough, in life, I find, I am trying hard to do just that—to move in a straight line, and avoid other people. I am finding myself so disinterested in men, at least the ones that are safe and doing all the right things, like calling in person promptly after getting my number, inviting me to dinner, and pursuing master’s degrees.

 

But then again, I am also avoiding the men not doing the right thing—the ones who are insincere or half-hearted or only half-interested.

 

I’m tempted, as the inwardly-introspective, prone to over-rumnination sort of person that I am, to focus only on the way I am disinterested in the nice guys who have asked me out. I am tempted declare myself masochistic- sadistically interested in inflicting pain on myself. I’m tempted to compare my dating life to my love for soccer, to classify myself as one of those women who loves bad boys and troubled relationships. I’m tempted to chastise and criticize and shame myself for bad choices and hasty decisions.

 

However, after careful consideration, I realize I am not shunning good guys in favor of bad. I’m not disinterested in someone just because he is nice. I’m also not dating a man who treats me like crap. I’m somewhere in dating limbo and mostly just waiting to see how things shake out.

 

 Maybe I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want.

 

I know I don’t want to talk myself into anything. I know I don’t want to date a man because I feel like I should. Tell myself that he’s cute and other people admire him and I know he’s really a good guy.  I would never want to be the woman some guy convinced himself to date and so I respect these cute, nice men enough not to be that girl convincing herself to like them.

 

I know I won’t tolerate being lied to, I know I won’t tolerate being treated disrespectfully, and so I know I’m not just drawn to the bad boys either. I know I want someone who communicates sincerely, who listens with his ears, his mouth, and his heart.

 

Some men I have dated have said they hear me, but I don’t always feel it. I have tried to talk myself into feeling it, into trusting them, but in the end, I just can’t.  I did that for a decade once already.

 

So I have decided I am done arguing with my gut—I have decided to just accept that it’s right. I am not interested the men asking me out on dates, not because I am sadistically hoping for a man who treats me badly, but because nothing so far has felt right.

 

Thus I continue, in life, moving in a straight line, avoiding people, men, for the time being.

 

Maybe this is why I love soccer so much. Maybe the field is where I let the wild girl out- the one who loves the collisions.

 

Soccer has been showing up in my dreams lately. I’m taking penalty kicks on goals on a field of white carpet. I’m throwing the ball in bounds to myself because no one else is checking to me.

 

There is a woman inside me who loves fighting. One who loves puffy bruises below orangish-red, newly-painted toes. But she only seeks pain on the turf, or the field. Never after walking away from the game.

 

Maybe that’s because she’s been down that road already. 

New Nest

One of my many nicknames, my favorite nickname, given to me by my mother—a significant thing in my life, as my relationship with my mother is not always a peaceful one, and so it comforts me eternally to know always that at least she coined this most special name for me—is Bird.

 

Lately I’ve been in the mood for nesting.

 

And getting ready to migrate.

 

 

In fact, there are only a handful of nights left in my current roost, the studio apartment with nine foot ceilings, blue walls, bookshelves and granite countertops, where I’ve been living for the past two years. The place I moved into while under stress, under attack, during my divorce, during my personal ground zero moment.

 

At the time I wanted something safe and clean. The building was brand new. The hallways weren’t even painted. No one else had used my bathtub. I could see everything I owned from my bed. This felt comforting. This gave me peace. I felt safe enough to break apart. To weep on the bathroom floor until I was empty. To scotch tape my pieces back into place.

 

This place, this apartment, provided me with space enough to heal, no walls to hide emotions in other rooms.

 

But now-

 

Well, now I realize these four walls contain room enough only for me (and the yorkie-poo just barely). There is no room for other people in this space. Perhaps to visit. Perhaps to share a drink and a conversation. But there is no room, for instance, for a boyfriend in this apartment.

 

So I guess it’s time to move.

 

I don’t know if I’m ready for a boyfriend, but I’ve decided I’m ready for at least a bedroom. I’m ready for a dining room table and chairs instead of the four unevenly matched stools I bought for $14 a piece at IKEA. I’m ready for a desk in the second bedroom, a futon for friends who visit, a room entirely for curling up on a couch and watching a movie. I’m ready for rooms, living, family, and otherwise.

 

I visited the new two-bedroom apartment I will be living in—and by new, I only mean new to me because it lives in a building containing just three other apartments built in 1909- one hundred years ago. I stood in the living room wishing for different paint choices and getting used to the space. I picture this place full of life- full of other people- full of so much more than myself.

 

The mental nesting begins in the way of plans, my most comfortable tool, and leafing through catalogues, imagining what colors need to go where, picturing photos from trips decorating the walls. I see plants and rugs and a white enamel desk sitting in a room full of windows facing the coffee shop across the street. I hear music. I smell food. It’s like I can imagine my chosen family of various friends materializing in certain corners of the apartment. I am mentally buying a comfortable chair- one I would never want to get out of- to rest in the living room of my new place. The place where I want to not just stay, not just use to recover, but the place where I plan truly to live.

 

And in this mood, in the new apartment, I can’t help but feel that by finding a new roost, one big enough for more than just my sorrow, one big enough for my life, my joy, surely another person will appear in the space.

 

“Are you going to get a roommate?” a friend asked as I told him about the new two-bedroom place.

 

“No,” I say, “it’s not really big enough for a roommate. I mean, it’s big enough for something like a boyfriend to share it with, but not really a roommate.”

 

“Oh, so what, you have a boyfriend now?”

 

“No,” I say sheepishly. “But, you know, I figure I get the apartment and the boyfriend will appear eventually.”

 

“You’re planning ahead,” he said. “I like that.”

 

I do too.

 

 

 

Back at the studio, though, I think about the new spot and I wonder if I will be able to fill the space. What if there are no friends? No gatherings? No dinners? No boyfriends to make the walls of my new apartment burst with life? What if I wander lonely from room to room? What if I rattle and spin like a quarter through the empty, echoing walls, on the ancient, faded hardwood floors?

 

I can’t pretend that writing this has eased my mind. I can’t pretend that it makes me confident that I will suddenly be open to new relationships in my life.

 

But I guess I can trust the nickname. I guess I can trust those instincts stirring me to move and migrate, nestle and nest. I guess I can trust my mom knew me when she named me Bird. How do they find it? The place in the south where they need to fly? How do they know when it is time to leave? I’m pretty sure they don’t overanalyze it. I’m sure they don’t write lists and weigh pros and cons. It can’t be that they call friends and ask for advice. Or that they make appointments with their therapists.

 

I’m pretty sure they just go, just because something inside says fly. And so will I- not looking back over my wing.

The most heartbreaking blog yet...

I’m being haunted.

 

It’s October, so I suppose it’s only fitting, but the haunter is not a ghost or phantom, sadly not a monster or a zombie.

 

Instead it is a pile of white papers all trailing me from dawn to dusk and even into the night. A stack of the 150 narrative essays from my five classes of high school students this year- my year after the sabbatical.

 

They are in my car. They are on my counter. They are at my desk at school. I can’t go anywhere without seeing this gigantic collection of personal narratives reminding me that grading needs to happen. I estimate it will take twenty-seven hours to grade the essays, these essays about getting a dog, falling off of a horse, stepping onto the basketball court, hitting a homerun. Giving birth to a son. Finding out a friend has died in a car accident.

 

Despite the fact that I am moving to a new apartment and still taking a class at grad school and working full time and trying to have a life, I need to find an additional 27 hours to get this work done. And the problem is that my body is rejecting my plan to dutifully grade these papers and get them back quickly to my students. It keeps getting sick. It took me three weeks to get over a cold. I’m losing weight. I carry this giant stack of essays like a pack of sins from childhood around with me from coffee shop to apartment to school and it weighs me down with its guilt. I feel like a stick, unsteady and anxious, carrying a burden that keeps me off balance. 

 

It’s not a good situation.

 

Today I called in sick to work in order to spend eight hours grading these specters and writing comments in the margins, but my body had other plans.

 

“Lan,” I said last night to my friend. “I’m feeling so sniffly and I keep trying to pretend that it’s allergies but I think it might be another cold!”

 

“I think it probably is,” she said sagely, in an uncharacteristically pessimistic, yet pithy declamation. “I think this will be the year of the colds.”

 

And sure enough- this morning I woke feeling totally congested and miserable. I think the allergy my body cannot tolerate is my career.

 

My illnesses are not my only problem.

The other problem is that, unfortunately, I am a pretty good teacher.

 

I plan lessons, I design quizzes that build on skills we’ve worked on in class, I call parents, I post grades, I enter scores into the gradebook quickly. I design assignments that will be beneficial to students. I read what they write. I respect their efforts in my class. I greet each student personally when she walks in the room.

 

And it’s just killing me.

 

“How’s Cody Peterson doing in class?” asked my co-worker when I walked into the office at 6:30 am on Thursday morning.

 

“Pretty good so far,” I said, thinking of the cheerful, skinny boy who wears skinny jeans with sandy hair always in his face. The one I had put in the front row after he spent the first two days in class talking to friends. The one who lost his drafts of his essay and had to start over. The one who comes late at least once a week. Who reads clearly and competently, but softly. The one who raises his hand often and listens well now that he is in the front.

 

“Take him under your wing,” she said to me. “He’s a good kid and if he likes you he’ll do anything.”

 

“Ok,” I said, thinking about the many tasks I had to accomplish before class started at 7:20 and not really in the mood to adopt another student. There is already quite a collection living under my wing.

 

“He has a son,” she said.

 

He has a son? I think. Suddenly I am very tired.

 

“Yeah,” she said, “and he’s such a great kid. Last year was a lot of chaos and the mom wouldn’t let him see the baby, but things are better this year. Anyhow, we were talking about grades in advisory class and I asked him how English was going. He said, ‘I like Fuller. She’s really nice. It’s going good.’”

 

I nod.

 

“He’s happy in your classroom,” she says.

 

“Oh, great- that’s good to hear,” I say, but in my head I think I wish I was.

 

The truth is that even though Cody Peterson is a lovable kid, even though I am touched that he likes my class, even though I sincerely wish him success and happiness, I just can’t. I just can’t. I don’t know how to articulate this, but all I know is that I can’t teach without caring and doing a fairly decent job, but if I am doing a fairly decent job at teaching, it usually means I am doing a pretty awful job of living myself. I am getting sick, getting skinny, not writing, not sleeping. I am not well as a teacher.

 

I feel sad saying that.

 

Simply put- it is an impossible task. To teach students to write means thoughtful conversation one-on-one in which you are acting as coach/mentor/teacher and explaining complicated concepts like how to link ideas and be concise. In a room of 35 14 year-olds during a 47 minute class, I get one minute per student to do this. 

 

Two years ago, as a teacher going through the battle of divorce, I was a safety net for the bleeding hearts. I cared so deeply for the kids in my classroom that this year they beam when they see me and greet me with a hug. I don’t have room to take care of more students if I also want to take care of myself.

 

Who’s taking me under their wing? I thought after the conversation with my co-worker. I need help! I’m a mess too--  I thought about the ways I fail to take care of myself, the way I skip breakfast each day, the way I  sometimes skip lunch, the way I don’t get enough sleep. I thought about the unhealthy excitement of my weekend, the not-so-classy way in which I had repeatedly called a friend who pissed me off (at 3 a.m, and by repeatedly I mean about twelve times in a row), the way I continuously (adorably?) crash into my surroundings, the people in my life, and occasionally even stationary objects. Who am I to be a model of responsibility for my students? Who am I to be any kind of example? Who am I to be a mentor? To take someone under my wing?

 

I married and divorced a sex-addict. I attend a twelve-step program for codependents of sex addicts. Everything that I attained in my 20’s is lost. I have spent the last two years dredging up the skeletons of my past. I am clumsy and troubled and sensitive and honest. I’m not sure Cody Peterson would even want to be taken under my wing.

 

Thus I went to a coffee shop with my stack of papers and sat down to try to focus. I pressed on the sinus pressure on my face. I ordered breakfast. I graded an essay- I checked email. I graded an essay- I checked my bank statements. I graded an essay- I took an online quiz about whether or not “he” was more than just a friend.  I graded a dozen of the papers and couldn’t do any more. I needed to eat lunch. I needed more cold medicine.

 

I need to accept my limitations.

 

I need to find another way to do this.

 

I love teaching, but it doesn’t love me. I see this in the way I am getting sick constantly. I know I need to write more. I know I need a new plan for a career.

 

I need to not be haunted by these papers anymore.