Still, I believe in the hope

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.” ― Anne Lamott

I've been thinking about this all week: about hope, and about darkness, and about the strange juxtaposition of the two that I cling to every Advent. I would say particularly this year, but the truth is that every December is dark, and this is something I wrestle with each year. I'm not sure that's much of a comfort, though.

Still, I believe in the hope, in the dawn, in the light, despite everything. It is literally the only way I can live.

Six years ago today, my three-and-a-half year old daughter was supposed to appear in her very first Christmas program. As luck would have it, she spent the entire weekend miserable with a fever, cough, and runny nose, so we hunkered down in our pajamas instead of watching our baby girl in church. Reading over my journal (one written in a fog of late pregnancy, but one I am still so glad I have) I remember that in the midst of our excitement and anticipation for our new little one, I also felt quiet and a little lonely. I had already stopped teaching for the year, finding it impossible to put on my socks by myself, much less manage classes full of teenagers. I didn't see anyone during the day, which is perhaps one reason I loved my visits to my midwife so much--just to connect with another human for awhile, to feel her loving hands on me, to listen to her soothing, authoritative voice.

I spent those last days mostly on the couch, trying to read, trying to write. "Mostly," I wrote, "I'm just waiting."

My son was born on a dark and cold December morning six years ago tomorrow. My water broke shortly after I went to bed on Sunday night. I sang my way to the birth center at two o'clock in the morning, sitting on a folded towel. I alternated between "Float On" by Modest Mouse and "Revelation Song" by Phillips, Craig, & Dean. Both seemed appropriate.

I've told his birth story before, even here. I never grow tired of remembering it, but tonight, on the eve of his sixth birthday, the part I want to remember the most is the rush of pure joy as he was born into his father's hands, and the way I laughed when he was delivered to my chest.

(Is it strange that I can't type that without crying?)

In Hebrew the name Isaac means He laughs. Laughter. On that dark December morning when ice coated the driveway of my midwife's house at the edge of Lake Tapps, my son was born into our family and I laughed. I laughed and I fell in love and that joy carried us home a few hours later, followed us into our own cozy little house where we introduced our baby to his big sister, who was eating waffles with her auntie.

Tomorrow morning, that boy turns six years old, and he is still our light, our joy, our laughter. Even though his birthday falls during the darkest part of the year and I will never be able to completely untangle it from the dark events that surround it, maybe that is the point. Sometimes despair just envelops me these days. I wonder if I'll ever again celebrate his birthday without feeling helpless rage over the Sandy Hook massacre, for instance, which happened the day he turned three. Tomorrow he will be the same age as those children who were executed in their classroom, and I struggle mightily with the fact that my children live in a world where this is a real fear of mine. I have a plenty of irrational fears and I will own those, but this one has struck close to home and I know it will continue to strike. I struggle mightily with raising children to be compassionate allies when it would be so easy to raise them to be a part of the status quo that will continue to serve them at the cost of our humanity. I struggle with feeling completely and utterly inadequate for the job. But my struggles are nothing compared to the struggles of those who have lost their children, their safety, their homes, their dignity, their faith. And the fact that this life is a struggle doesn't give me permission to check out or to build a wall around what I have and hold dear; it calls me to show up and roll up my sleeves and work and, yes, wait, which has never been a particular strength of mine. I'm still figuring out what, exactly, that means.

Today, on his last day of being five years old, my joyful son took on his first speaking role in a Christmas program and he was objectively, totally fabulous--both of my children were--and my heart burst in all the predictable ways. Sometimes I think the entire point of me writing anything ever is just to try to keep and hold these beautiful moments for myself because they pass, and they fade. So quickly. But I also think that maybe this is my own small way of lighting the darkness. To remind myself that darkness will fall, again and again, and sometimes I will just have to sit down in it, but I cannot and will not stay there.

The complicated, irrational in-between

Monday ended terribly this week. I write this down to remember, to remind myself that all Mondays after the long Thanksgiving weekend are terrible, just like all Mondays after winter break are terrible. I try to remember this, so I don't take it so personally when these days just suck. It's just that I ended this particular Monday with my toughest class, and it didn't go well, at all. It's not that these kids are awful, or that they're awful to me; it's not like that. But they're tough in other ways, and it means that I've felt completely unmoored all year in my seeming inability to teach this class well, when it's normally a class I could teach in my sleep. But also, there's my wake-up call, right? If I think I can teach a class in my sleep, clearly it's time to shake things up. And I've tried. I've tried to think of this year as an opportunity to resist complacency, to practice what I preach.

Still, it's hard sometimes, and on Monday it was really hard, and I was so angry and frustrated that I just shut down. I shut the class down. I think it's probably safe to say that every one of us in that room was fairly miserable by the time the bell rang. I was barely holding back tears. I couldn't bring myself to listen to my favorite Christmas music in the car on the way home; I just drove, in sullen silence. I'd thought I might try to squeeze in a jog before I picked up the kids, but suddenly I felt so drained and defeated that I merely changed into pajama pants.

And on Monday night, I didn't sleep. I couldn't turn off my brain -- that dumb old hamster wheel thing again. I mean I really didn't sleep. Sometime around, I don't know, 2:00? 2:30? I left the bedroom and curled up on the living room couch, worried that my tossing and turning would keep Matt awake. Sometime past 3:00 I just gave up. I sat at the dining room table and graded papers, angrily. I crawled into bed forty-five minutes before my alarm was set to go off, and I think I dozed some.

I felt crazy on Tuesday morning. I tried to run a meeting. I think I did a terrible job. I had a somewhat undignified meltdown in front of a colleague/mentor/friend, and she rolled her eyes and sent me gently on my way to teach a couple of sophomore classes. The sophomore classes were fantastic, but not because of me; it's because I've simply been blessed with some incredibly fantastic sophomores this year. I have to remember this, too. I teach about a hundred sophomores and I'd say about ninety-eight of them are really wonderful, and the other two are kind of a pain right now but I also suspect that they will be pretty great by the time they're seniors, and that they will wish they could go back and kick their sophomore selves right in the butt.

Later I learned that my colleague/mentor/friend went to a senior girl that I've taught since her sophomore year and said, "You know how Ms. Winslow was there for you every day last year when you were all, I quit I quit I quit I quit I quit? Well, now you need to go take care of her." And I'm not exactly sure what she told her about my eighth period class, but this girl recruited a friend of hers (also a completely wonderful girl I was lucky enough to teach last year) and they appeared at the beginning of that eighth period class to deliver an impassioned speech about sucking less at their education, respecting themselves and each other and me, not wasting their time, and the importance of giving a damn. It was beautiful. I have no idea if it made any difference to the kids listening to them, although you could have heard a pin drop when they left the room. It did, however, fill me with such deep gratitude, because I have been able to watch these girls grow into fierce young women. And it's beautiful.

The class didn't go terribly after that. All told, it went pretty well. I felt that it might be possible to go on.

On Friday, one of my kids wasn't in class. She's one of my toughest, for sure. She made it clear on day one that she absolutely did not want to be there, and I thought she'd find a way to drop. But she didn't. She stayed, and it turns out I liked her, and she seemed to not hate me, and even though all I'd ever heard about this kid was that she never went to class and never really tried, she never skipped my class. And because I teach with this stupid, unkillable optimism, I kept believing she'd buy in. Not right away, but eventually. Maybe not even this semester, but eventually. I told her recently that I expect her to pass. I just expect it. And she nodded, because I said, look, if I leave that door open you'd damn well better walk through it.

She wasn't in class on Friday, but she poked her head in after school. She didn't have her cell phone in her hand for a change. She walked over to my desk slowly, shyly. I think I greeted her warmly. I hope I did. It's kind of my personal rule for myself: no matter what, when a kid walks into my room, even if they're a perfect shit, I smile and say hello. And this kid isn't a perfect shit; she is, in fact, a good girl who has some things to figure out. And part of her figuring things out right now means that she's dropping out of school to pursue her GED. I felt inexplicably sad. I'm not sure why, because her current high school situation isn't working, and maybe she just needs something different. All the same, I can't help but believe I could have tried to provide that something different. But then she said something that just leveled me.

"I just wanted," she said slowly, "to thank you for trying with me, until the end. No other teacher has kept trying to help me for this long. And I just wanted you to know I really appreciate it."

I had no idea what to say in that moment, other than that I'll miss her, which happens to be true. But as soon as the door closed behind her I lost it. This surprised me. I'm still trying to figure out why, to be honest. Tears leaked out of my eyes the entire way home. I said to my wisest friend last night, "It just feels futile sometimes. I've been crying for a damn hour and I don't even really know why." He replied, "Tears for wins, tears for losses, and sometimes tears for the complicated, irrational in-between." That's about it, I suppose.

But I slept last night. And I know that even if I couldn't help this girl, I can't stop trying to help the ones who show up in my room on Monday, because the fact that it's hard, whatever it may be, doesn't give any of us permission to quit. The fact that none of us can ever be or do enough on our own doesn't mean we get to step away.

Which one now

Tonight in the car I was listening to NPR. More coverage of the San Bernardino shooting. And then I heard my daughter's voice in the backseat: "Wait, which shooting are they talking about now?"

Let that just sink in for a moment. Which. Shooting. Are. They. Talking. About. Now.

Those words, from my nine-year-old. My nine-year-old. My fourth grader. My fourth grader who has to practice lockdown drills. My children live in a world where they understand what an "active shooter" situation is. They are growing up in a world in which they actually have to think about being gunned down in a school, a place of worship, a clinic, a mall, a movie theater, a community center. And that is just totally fucking unacceptable to me. The fetishization of guns in America is unacceptable to me. I'm tired of feeling sick and angry and terrified and powerless. My daughter was six years old when the Sandy Hook massacre occurred and my son will turn six on the third anniversary and it is deeply fucking personal to me. I'm tired of writing the same thing: that if we just continue to say, meh, what're you gonna do after every shooting (more shootings than sunrises this year) it's not. going. to. stop. That my children will continue to exist in a world of lockdown drills that I pray, desperately, remain only drills.