To Really Live

Friday nights are so full when you're a teacher. When the day ends, my lungs expand to accommodate the biggest breath I've taken all week. Inhale. I can breathe. Exhale. Relief. Inhale. Hope. Exhale. Gratitude.

Relief. Breathing space.

Hope. Things are starting to click with these kids. They might be starting to trust me.

Gratitude. In any setting, remote or otherwise, I haven't lost sight of my purpose, because on most days I remember it isn't tied to a place, to a building. It's embodied in the kids I serve every day, exactly where they are, where we all are.

Friday nights are everything right now. And sure. I ended my work day in my own house today. I walked into the bedroom, changed my shirt, and went out into the breezy, damp afternoon -- just an hour after the rain stopped -- to go for a walk. I needed, desperately, to clear my head.

Clear my head of the comments on literally every single news article about schools and whether they're reopening or not. The comments demanding I get back to work.

Do my job.

Earn my paycheck.

Clear my head of the comments from some of my own friends and family on social media. (Friends, maybe you don't know that when you comment on news articles, it shows up on my feed. If you wonder whether I'm talking about you, rest assured, I absolutely am.)

I'm so tired. I do not know how to explain to people in my life who are not teachers how much harder this is than it has ever been before. I have enough experience in this career -- in this calling -- to make this claim, and to be believed.

This week I drove to a close friend's house to drink wine and snack on appetizers from Trader Joe's in her backyard, on her covered porch. Four of us met there, four of us who have been friends for nearly two decades now. We sat outside wrapped in blankets and hoodies and shared stories and solidarity in the evening breeze. 

We're all teachers, in four different schools, in four different districts. And still, they're my safe space to land. I don't trust many other spaces anymore.

Despite the fact that the four of us are probably as careful as anyone we know, we're still not really doing indoor gatherings. According to some of you, that means we're not really living. But the four of us also believe that 200,000 dead matters, that it's unacceptable, that it shouldn't have to be anywhere near 200,000 dead before we declare it unacceptable, and so we're okay with "sacrificing" a bit of what we're used to. Sharing appetizers on an outdoor porch, even after a storm, is a blessing and a joy, not a hardship. I love eating out on Saturday nights with my family! Love! And we've enjoyed outdoor patio seating many times over the summer. But eating takeout from our favorite places around our own table, while not "the same," is not a hardship. Losing someone you love to a virus that could be controlled so much better if people could prioritize human life over going to the gym or to the bar? That's a hardship. (I feel like pro-lifers should agree with me, but I also think most of us should understand that the pro-life platform is not about valuing human life, and I wish we'd start calling it something else.)

To my non-teacher friends who have extended your kindness and empathy, please believe me, it has not gone unnoticed. Please extend that to the teachers of your own children--they need it, no matter what their current context looks like. Face-to-face seems impossible. (If schools reopening is so crucial, where's our bailout? Do you think I've ever had sanitizing wipes provided for me? Let alone enough pencils, highlighters, paper, notebooks, markers? Nope, I buy those myself. And I would love to know if you can buy enough for your own family right now, let alone a full class load of students, and for a full-time high school teacher in my district that's 180 kids. Can we hire enough teachers to safely teach so many kids?) Hybrid seems so much worse. Prepare for face-to-face and remote learning? Where your in-person kids can't interact safely in student-centered ways that truly support best practices in education? When you still have to do all the work for remote learning, because you can't see all your kids at once? Because your classes have 35 kids or more, and your classroom space allows for sixteen at the absolute most, if you're maintaining anything resembling a safe distance? My kids are going to be able to do a lot more collaborative work, have more productive discussions, and form better connections with each other in breakout rooms online than they are in a classroom right now and that is the heartbreaking truth. This is a pandemic. There is no going safely back to normal, and normal is what we're asking teachers to provide. I'm so sorry. I truly am. I want that, too. But that's not possible in our current context.

To my non-teacher friends who are quick to point out that this is hard for everyone, believe me, we know. Many of us are parents ourselves. I am extraordinarily lucky in that my kids are old enough to manage quite well without needing me to be very hands-on during our school hours, but many of my colleagues have very young children at home, and teaching a class while you have a baby or a preschooler or a restless third-grader or a child with special needs who attends school in a different district that is also currently remote feels, quite simply, impossible. We get it. This is a Pandemic. It's not something that is happening unfairly to you because teachers are sitting around collecting an easy paycheck at your expense.

And to my non-teacher friends who are quick to point out the challenges they face in their own jobs while they're complaining about teachers (we're all allowed to freak out; I just think we should avoid doing the whole "Well, I have to______ so why shouldn't you______" when we don't have anything approaching an understanding for the person we're pointing our finger at), I would like to point out that I cannot open a single news article online -- from any source -- about education or the return to schools that does not include absolute vitriol directed at teachers in its comments. And make no mistake, public school teachers are pretty used to this, but usually I just ignore FOX news, where teachers are used to being screamed at. Now, though, it is incredibly demoralizing and personal in a way I've never experienced, largely because folks who have claimed to support us in the past are chiming in with their disgust now, now, as we're working harder than we ever have. Maybe we're an easy target, a faceless entity to absorb people's real need to vent (I understand so much of folks' frustration, I do). But we're not a faceless entity. Stop pretending you support the teachers in your life while ranting about us online. We see you.

On that note, if anyone wants to challenge me on this and send me an article about this very charged topic of schools reopening that doesn't include reams of comments explaining to me what a piece of shit I am, I'd love to see it. I don't think it exists. I'd love to be proven wrong.

***

I started writing this on Friday night; it's Sunday evening now.

This weekend, I finished reading one novel and started another. I played so many games of UNO and Blokus with my family. I walked thirteen miles around my neighborhood, winding through my favorite streets with the stunning views of Puget Sound and the Olympic mountains. I waved at my neighbors, the ones who have waved to me all summer while I walked in the morning hours. I haven't seen much of them this month because of the smoke and because I'm adjusting to a new schedule, and yesterday when a friendly grandpa who hikes around the same streets I do waved jauntily from a distance and said, "Haven't see you in a little while!" I grinned and grinned, because walking daily through this streets in the morning hours, meeting neighbors I've never known, has been an unexpected and beautiful blessing in quarantine.

Walking this same route every day over the past six months means I've noticed the seasons in an entirely new and intimate way. Spring. Summer. Fall. The way things bloom. The scents of different trees in different seasons. I've learned to name some of them. I've walked through the seasons of baby rabbits scurrying over the streets at dawn, and I've shared that with my kids. Now the squirrels are out in full force, as well as the neighborhood cats, hunting them. Yesterday I watched a black-and-white cat stalk a squirrel across a driveway, through a yard, and into the woods. I stopped and watched, just because I could. Just because I've become accustomed to noticing these small, ordinary moments that used to pass me by.

Maybe this is what it means to "really live" even while "sheltering in place." (I'm still curious about those folks who think they can't do that, to be honest, now that pretty much everything is open in some capacity. I asked that question last week and was answered with having the question deleted.)

Matt drove down to McMenamins and picked up takeout. We've enjoyed eating outdoors there, but the weather has been too tempestuous for the past two weeks (wildfires, rain) to open up patio seating this weekend. My burger was still delicious.

We had family movie night (The Art of Racing in the Rain, which checks all of the boxes for Dog Movies and it meant I cried a lot). Matt and I watched a few more episodes of Cobra Kai.

I had some face-to-face time with one of my best friends who teaches on the other side of the country, and we laughed and shared stories and flailed onscreen because everything is ridiculous and absurd. Becca and I haven't taught together in way too many years but every time we talk it's like we transport ourselves back to the same space, the space where we're planning a unit on The Great Gatsby or Purple Hibiscus together during a roundtable session for MYP and the world can be what it is but how amazing is it that we get to do this work?

I believe it's possible--and critically necessary--to stay present in the moment we're in, to notice the seasons, to care about each other, to practice self-care, and that's what "really living" means.

I miss people, desperately. Even people who disagree with me.

I miss the things I loved about our "normal" life. Desperately.

I miss teaching in the way I know how. I miss what I'm losing when I can't see my kids face-to-face.

But I also understand that we can't have normal. I believe that maybe, if we stop and listen, if we can try to be present, we can live deeply and fully and tap into our empathy for each other, that maybe we can be grateful for what we've learned and what we've gained, and maybe--maybe--that can make us better.

Anyway, it's the work of my life to try.