This post isn't anybody's business. I shouldn't even post it. So. If you choose to go on this journey with me, do your best to let it be whatever thing it is.
(Incidentally, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got was one of the first two CDs that I owned, my cassette tape of the same having been ruined during our annual class field trip to the Indiana Dunes. The tape got filled with sand and never played again. But that's a snippet having nothing to do with anything, within a post we can accuse of having the same problem.)
The woman who calls herself my "heterosexual life partner" because our friendship is devastatingly codependent refers to her students as her babies, which is totally cool for her. I do not refer to mine that way, because for the past 22.5 years my brain has been under the profound influence of the potentially-disgusting, definitely-depressing and infinitely soothing song "Three Babies." The song says:
"...for myself/I ask no one else/will be mother/to these three."
I also have this thing about the Whole Child and personal agency and besides, who could possibly take on the burden of having (roughly) 1,477 babies in just 6.5 short years? Of course that's impossible. Not all of the children make that kind of an impression. It is my hope that they make their impressions on other teachers, so that there will always be a mentor who is cheerleading silently for them from their own personal sidelines.
"and of course/I'm like a wild horse/but there's no other way/I could be."
Last night was our school's Hispanic Fest. I invited Gokey to come and eat nachos with meh, but she was already en route to Faith Lutheran to watch a soccer game.
*slight onset of social anxiety*
I sent a message to my former student aide, C1, and invited him.
Gokey doesn't tweet much, but she is brilliant when she does, and there's a particular tweet from 4/27/11 which reads, "Hmm...not enough time to do anything yet too much time to do nothing." That was the situation in which I found myself yesterday afternoon, so I decided to grab some McDonald's and joyride around the parking lot until I had burned enough time to feel comfortable returning to school for Hispanic Fest. I was in charge of the between-entertainers playlist and also the selling of water and pop.
"Each of these/my three babies I/was not willing to leave..."
I got my food and sat gobbling french fries whilst trolling the social medias and listening to my special playlist entitled, "My Commute Sucks Even Harder Than It Ever Has Before EVER." The last song on the playlist is One Republic's "Good Life." Seeing as this was the song that was played as we mourners filed out of my Key Club advisee Stephan Ripsom(1991-2011)'s funeral on January 6, 2012, I oscillate between it making me feel joyful that he lived and that I knew him and it making me gasp and cry because he doesn't anymore and I never will again.
"Each of these/my three babies/I was not willing to leave
Though I tried/I blasphemed and denied/I know
They will be returned to me."
Except of course the one that won't.
And every day I look to find the thing about each kid that will make it OK that they still get to live and learn while he does not.
I made my way back to Hispanic Fest and soon received a text from C1 that he was on his way. He didn't go to the middle school where I teach. He went to a different one with the exact same footprint. One where I have never taught, but maybe next year...LOL hahahahahahaha. My heart was warmed that he and his devastatingly codependent friend (or "girlfriend," whichever) would choose to spend an hour with their former teacher.
After about 10 minutes of this hour had passed, in walked another former student, C2, with his little brother and his girlfriend. (C2's girlfriend, not the tiny brother's.) There was an initial awkward moment of shuffling around (to hug or not to hug?), then finally the hug, and then a questioning process like pulling teeth to try to get at what we'd both been up to in the intervening two years. "I heard that you were here, but I didn't know..."
It probably wasn't him, it was probably me. C2 ran away and went off to experience Hispanic Fest while C1 stayed and said the words that every teacher longs to hear from her grown man of a once-upon-a-student: "What should I do with my life?" The contrast was instructive. As student aide, it was C1's job to clean up my mess, comfort me when I was in tears, and calm me in my panic. Once, I even put him in the extremely awkward position of having to type in my One True Password, which at the time was an eloquent string of words no minor should have ever had to see, much less type.
C2's helping role in my life was different, and it occurs to me just now that it is still his charge cord that I use to juice up my iPod, which occasionally sings to me,
"[you] proved things I never believed..."
I can only hope these two are happy, and that I was once able to help them through their own daily crises, as well.
I am happy to announce that C1 does not blame me for his struggles in his college science class, and I'm proud to say he's doing well in his politics class.
So there you are. The mixed-up story of three of my grown-up "babies," converging in the rainy quad of my current place of employ. I am beginning to suspect the quad may be a vortex.
Somewhere in this jumble, there has to be an apocalypse. And so I pull my own lessons from it but deny you them, therefore offering to you personal agency as a Whole Child of the Universe. Don't expect the agency I give you to last long. Despite this rant and others, I'm still committed to my previous resolution: "Give the people what they pay for." Next time...Bangladesh. Maybe.
"no longer mad like a horse/
I'm still wild but not lost/
from the thing that I've/
chosen to be."
No comments:
Post a Comment