Deep breathing

It’s June, and I am tired. Like most teachers, probably. It’s different this year, though; last year I was actually grateful for the credit retrieval class I agreed to teach because it allowed me to ease gently away from the school year. It was, in many ways, one of the best years of my career. This year I’m a flight risk. I want to slam the door and keep running, kind of like the time in first grade when I left class to go to the bathroom and just kept running out the door. That was in December, and I slipped on the ice on the way home. Split my chin wide open and bloodied my coat. I feel similarly battered right now.

And maybe that’s hyperbole, but just the same, I arrived home this afternoon and collapsed on the couch, telling my husband (who, thankfully, worked from home today -- I just need help existing this afternoon) that I needed a twenty-minute power nap before picking up Isaac and taking Suzannah to swimming lessons. I just finished Donald Hall’s Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry, in which he makes a pretty compelling argument in favor of twenty-minute naps. Maybe if I can figure out a way to incorporate more of those into my life, I will be slightly less mentally ill.

I’m done with all of my major grading for the year and I absolutely refuse to carry any more papers home with me. My sophomores are working on their finals next week, performing Act V of Othello. My lesson plan for the next few days is to bat them irritably away from my desk and say, “Go over there and work.” And then I write down all the ridiculous things I hear them say while they’re rehearsing.

Girl #1: Oh, my God. Can I please be in the slapping scene? I’m super good at fake slaps.
Boy: Well, except that happened in Act IV. Desdemona gets murdered in Act V.
Girl #2: But watch her.
(Girl #2 fake-slaps Girl #1, who is, indeed, quite good at fake slaps -- receiving them, anyway. I suspect they’ll find a way to work that in before Desdemona is murdered.)

And for some reason, all the boys want to be Desdemona.

Boy: I’ll wear a dress if you can find me one that will fit.
Girl: Oh, and I’ll do your hair!
Girl #2: And I’ll do your makeup.
Boy: I am not wearing makeup. You put makeup on me, Imma slap you.

But it’s not all silliness. Today I found myself ranting at a group of kids -- kids I adore, I might add -- who were making snarky comments about a different group of kids.

“You guys are just so mean to each other,” I muttered. “That’s maybe the hardest part about my job sometimes. Seriously. I hate it. I hate watching people I love treat each other so badly. Maybe I should be doing something different with my life.”

They gave me that Oookay, crazy lady look, but one boy said, chastened, “No, don’t stop teaching. Just...try to ignore me when I say mean things. I don’t really mean it.”

I took a deep breathe and reminded myself that it’s not really the kids who are making me feel so defeated this week. I mean, teaching at the end of the year is nothing like teaching in September; teaching in May and June is all whining and grade-grubbing and me freaking out because they’ve decimated my marker collection (what is so difficult about putting the caps back on!?) but I also understand that this is just part of the cycle. We’re all insufferable at the end of the year. It’s much easier for me to accept it from kids; it’s harder when adults behave badly.

So it has been kind of a dreadful week. But. But. It is June, and summer is so close I can taste it. We have a lovely backyard, with a relatively new patio and lots of space for patio furniture, a grill, and a sprinkler. We live near lots of parks (plus a great splash park). We have memberships at the zoo and the Pacific Science Center. Suzannah has started swimming lessons, and next month Isaac will follow after he finishes this session of gymnastics. Suzannah’s birthday party and final show for her gymnastics class both happen next Saturday, and for Father’s Day we plan to get up stupidly early, take Matt to brunch at Easy Street Records, and spend the day hiking. Today I began planning our summer road trip to Montana, dreaming of Glacier National Park, the drive across the Hi-Line and south through Great Falls before arriving in Bozeman -- all the landscapes of my heart. I’m finishing up a writing class I’ve loved (one I’m taking, not one I’m teaching), and I can’t wait to be back in the class in a few months.

The point is that I don’t have to look very far for perspective. The point is that my life is full of simple, beautiful things. The point is that I have more than I need and everything, really, that I want. What I want is the sunshine and the sprinklers, the grubby children in the bath at the end of the day, the books read on the patio while the kids paint or play or run around with the neighbor boys, the road trips with the camping and the hotels, the visits to Grandpa and Grandma.

And in the meantime, even in the midst of all the other crap, this week has blessed me with the reminder that I work with people I like, people I respect, people who are my friends. I teach some great kids. My work is never dull, never a drudge. The price is that I reach a point of burnout, even crisis (or so it feels sometimes), but I always manage to find my fumbling way back, and even now, tonight, on the edge of wanting to slam the door, I believe that will happen again.