Small Miracles and Soul Friends

“You get a little moody sometimes but I think that's because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.”
― Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

It's May, and things are significantly terrible. I don't want to do this anymore.

I think I say or write or scream some version of those exact words every single May, as years of journals show. And I don't want to be the person who anticipates a month to be terrible every year, just because it's that month. There are teachers who find a way to hate every single month of the year for some reason -- the novelty of good behavior wears off in October, the holidays make everything crazy, January is a slog, February is a slog, March is a slog, April is close to the end but not close enough, and May is a flat-out horror.

But there are also reasons to love every month, and it occurs to me that each month I should really write them down. This year, a couple of my teacher friends made a point of sharing positive teaching stories throughout the month of March and I appreciated that so very much. We need more of that. Look, I don't begrudge any teacher the need to vent sometimes, but it's so easy to descend into negativity, especially when we work in a country that shows nothing but disdain for its public school teachers (not to mention its women, and I don't know if you've noticed, but America isn't a great place to be either of those). It's hard. But we also need each other, to remind ourselves why we chose this and why we love it. Why we choose to stay.

So I feel sure that there are reasons to love May, but Mama, I am struggling.

Last year, I spent May in a state of pure and intense grief; I just wasn't ready for the year to end. I was losing a class of seniors I deeply loved. A friendship that meant a great deal to me was changing irrevocably even as we both tried to pretend otherwise. I knew I would soon lose my grandmother. These things converged all at once, and I was utterly unmoored.

This year I'm struggling for different reasons. In some ways, I'm in a better place. Things feel, somehow, less fraught with such deep sadness, with the inevitability of loss. But perhaps the grief is replaced with anxiety and anger and exhaustion. Am I enough for this anymore? Was I ever? Does it mean anything, does it matter? On top of that, has anyone noticed that the United States of America is a terrifying place to live if you're not a white man? I'm scared and I'm angry, sometimes so angry I don't know how to keep breathing, much less summon enough hope and courage to walk into my classroom and give my students -- what, exactly? The big picture is unbearable. The smaller one, I remind myself, is survivable. (I think. For now.) Even so, I stumble through my days feeling totally inadequate. Two students I've loved for a long time have made no secret of the fact that they're totally done and opting for easier classes next year so this work no longer matters. And even after they lingered to apologize for being so flippant, to tell me that they respect me and it's not my class they're done with, it stings, and honestly, they're still kind of assy about it, which just serves to remind me how little it all matters to them. When I'm all out of perspective, it's hard not to take everything personally. I guess this is a side effect of loving this work, even when I Google jobs for burned-out English teachers.

And I must still believe it matters.

*

I started writing this the other night, not really sure where I was going with it -- perhaps just trusting that eventually, I'd write myself into some perspective and back into love. I guess that's one of the reasons I write here, other than that it keeps me breathing.

And then yesterday a small miracle happened. I went to work wondering why in the world I ever thought teaching would be, as Pat Conroy said, one of the finest ways to spend a human life. However, I absolutely did not have Pat Conroy on the brain when I stood in front of my junior class and tried to talk them through writing their IB Essays, something I just seriously do not actually think I'm good at right now. But! Then I saw it: one of my girls had The Prince of Tides RIGHT THERE on her desk. And my next sentence went something like this: "So remember, the rubric for the IB Essay is different from the rubric for the IB Commentary, and if you look at the example OH MY GOD THAT IS LITERALLY MY FAVORITE BOOK IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, ARE YOU READING IT?"

And she smiled at me and said, "Um, I just started it." And the class laughed, because there goes Winslow, all crazy again, but -- and I may be imagining this -- I think detected relief in their laughter, because I think they've sensed that I haven't been entirely okay lately.

I said, "MY HUSBAND WON'T EVEN READ THAT BOOK BECAUSE HE SAYS THERE'S TOO MUCH PRESSURE and he's worried about how it will affect our marriage if he doesn't love it enough. I literally cried REAL TEARS when Pat Conroy died three years ago. I wrote him a LOVE LETTER sitting in a coffee shop in Portland just weeks before he died, and I never got to send it to him."

The kids said, "What's your favorite quote?" Like some sort of test. Babies, please. I immediately rattled off three of them, including the first line of the book (which I fully intend to have tattooed on my body), and the one that always, always reminds me of the person in this world who is my truest soul-friend and fellow Conroy lover, and of course I had to tell him right away, and talking to him changed the entire tone of my week. To have someone catch the words I fling into the cosmos and respond with love and wisdom is a thing that matters.

(The only word for goodness is goodness, and it is not enough.)

I kept murmuring sentences from that book as I wandered around the room. I didn't really mean to do it out loud, but when I noticed some of the kids watching I said, "Look, I know this book more deeply than I know any book. That book went straight to my soul when I was your age, and the grip it has on my heart is fierce. So I'll share it with you, I'll give you that piece of my heart, but I can't ever teach this book."

For the rest of the period that beautiful group of kids passed that book around -- some of them even read sentences aloud -- until I was all, "Dammit, babies, you should probably work on your essay." But I think it might be a sign, right? That we can stumble on?

Where were you? (Or, Grief and Despair and Teacher Appreciation Week)

Every day, I write in a Gratitude Journal. It's not my regular journal, the notebook I carry with me at all times that catches whatever happens to fall out of my head and onto the paper; it's just a place for me to jot down something every single day. That's all this notebook holds. Because I believe deeply in the importance of practicing daily intentional gratitude, even when things are garbage. Maybe even especially then. It tethers me to hope, I guess, and it also reminds me to notice things, which is essential for a writer. The way the cherry blossoms fall to the sidewalk. The smell of the morning. The increasingly fleeting moments when my son slips his hand into mine, just for a second, when we're crossing a street together. Realizing that we have vegetable spring rolls from Trader Joe's in the freezer after all -- or, even better, that I mentioned offhandedly to my husband that I really wished we had those lava cakes from Trader Joe's, and two days later he slipped some into the freezer without saying anything. He's seriously awesome like that.

I haven't written anything today, even though I have plenty of gratitude welling inside me. But there's something else welling inside me: Fatigue. Heartbreak. Rage. Right now, as I write this, I feel exhausted with the effort of trying not to let it completely and totally consume me, because I'm afraid of what that looks like. If I were to pick up my Gratitude Journal right now, I might write that I'm grateful I got to bring home both of my babies from school today when other parents are waiting in the hospital because their babies were shot at school. And isn't that sick? Isn't that just ridiculous? Rage. Fatigue. I'm so tired of this.

Where were you when you learned about the eleventy billionth mass shooting of 2019, or the eleventy billionth school shooting since Columbine, since Sandy Hook, in the United States of America? I tried to search the actual numbers, but they vary a bit. Basically, it's more than one mass shooting per day, and how many days have there been in 2019 so far? I don't know, I'm too tired and angry to do all that mathing. It all adds up to this: Way Too Fucking Many.

Here's where I was:

I was sitting in my car, waiting for my kids after school. Feeling guilty because I didn't teach well today. Because I haven't parented particularly well today. I've been snappish and tired at all of my kids lately, the kids born of my body and the kids who also share my heart. They all piss me off because that's what happens in May and I am not always good at Rising Above.

I was reading another article about extinction and all the ways we are incinerating the planet. I was reading Mike Pompeo's actual words: “Steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade." This is from our Secretary of State. Are we living a horrible dystopian novel? I think we are.

I was reading about the man in Ohio who raped and impregnated an eleven-year-old child, and because of Ohio's "Heartbeat Bill" (House Bill 493), that child will be forced to carry that pregnancy to term (or as long as her child's body can) unless her family has the resources to get her the hell out of there. A child that is younger than my child. If you think there is ANYTHING okay about that, if you think this is in any way "pro life," then you're a fucking monster. Exit stage left, good-bye, we're done here.

I was reading more posts about Rachel Held Evans. And grieving. Grieving. I would never have guessed that her death could have impacted me on such a visceral level, perhaps because I never could have imagined her death. Not now, not as a writer and wife and mother of two very young children, not as a person I've wished for years was one of my actual real-life friends. I'm just about to start reading her latest book. I'm looking at pictures of her with Nadia Bolz-Weber, and these two women -- this is not an exaggeration -- changed my life and gave me back faith I'd thought I'd lost, women whose words felt like a whisper in my ear when I wasn't sure there was any room left in church for me. Rachel's blog has been on the "Required Reading" list of this blog since I discovered it, way back whenever. (I've been trying to write about her for days. I think I still will.)

I was tired and angry and sad and defeated. It's May, which is the worst time of year to be a teacher. The worst. I don't want to do it anymore. I feel inadequate in every way, exasperated in every way, and utterly convinced I've come to the end of my time of being any good at it. I know this is just what happens in May; I have years of journals to back me up. This is part of the cycle, and I've learned to trust that. But still. Still. The feeling is hard. Add to that the feeling of pressure to just keep up with everything and be competent in other areas of my life, because hey! I'm not just a teacher, I'm a wife and a mother, and when I leave campus I have to enter into a totally different space. Most of the time, that is a deep blessing and I have the privilege of finding a beautiful balance in my life. I have a partner who is wholly involved. I have the privilege to choose to work "part-time." (Which comes with a whole lot of bullshit I've written about and will write about again, but never believe I don't understand the privilege in the choice -- to do the work I love and maximize my time with my family in a way that supports us all.) But today, I was tired of juggling track and Tae Kwon Do and soccer and band and confirmation. Matt and I are chaperoning four field trips in as many weeks. This month we have belt testing and two concerts and I forget how many games and track meets. (These are the things that make me realize that the sources of some of my stress and fatigue are also the things I write about in my Gratitude Journal. This is what it means to be a mother.)

This is the month in which our daughter turns thirteen, and it matters to me, and I am also exhausted already trying to make it matter and be the perfect hostess and make it special for her, because I'm her mother, and so far all I can manage to do is say to Matt, "So, we'll grill food outside over Memorial Weekend one night." What else? How do I do this well? How can I make it matter to my girl, my firstborn? One of the only things that tethers me to any sense of hope? And also, how can I look her in the eye, knowing what a horrible mess we adults are handing her?

That is where I was this afternoon, when I learned of the latest school shooting. How many times have I written about those here? Isn't that absurd? I was angry and tired and sad, sitting in my car, waiting for my children. Compartmentalizing, because I can't be dumping all that on kids who are nine and twelve when they jump in the car bursting with things to say: "Can you sign my field trip form?" and "Let me tell you what happened in Conditioning today." (Please, God, let me never forget the loveliness of these ordinary moments when my children tumble into the car, elbowing each other, arguing over whose backpacks are taking up too much space, one person heaving her trumpet case into the front seat, the other shoving a permission slip in my face and reminding me that Popcorn Day is tomorrow.)

That was four hours ago. Only four hours later, and the school shooting (two suspects in custody, UPDATED ONE STUDENT DEAD, eight others injured) is already way down on the news, underneath "Mueller fought Comey memo release" and "Tax documents show Trump businesses lost more than $1 billion in a decade."

This is where I am now: sitting at my table, after Tae Kwon Do, after soccer, dinner simmering on the stove, trying to write through tears in my eyes while my kids relax in front of the TV, which is a rare treat on a weeknight. I apologized for snapping at them earlier. And I told them: "There was a school shooting today."

And they said, "Another one?"

How does that response not shatter your heart? How can we have that conversation again? Again? But we did. And we will. Hey, America, maybe for Teacher Appreciation Week, instead of free notepads and pens or highlighters and cute little notes in our mailboxes, you can get us some fucking gun control.

So that's where I was, and that's where I am. I wish I lived in a country that cared about its children -- all of them. I expect better. Or maybe I just want better, long for better, dream for better, because to expect implies hope, and frankly, tonight, I'm fresh out of that. The place in my heart that holds hope has been taken over by Despair. And Rage. And Fatigue.

I still believe in practicing intentional gratitude, despite the grief and rage and despair. And maybe that's why I write anything here, too -- because words connect us in our grief and rage and despair, and maybe that's what hope is, the impossibility of holding hands in the darkness, swimming for the light.