Three years ago, on a weekend when I desperately needed the comfort of nostalgia, I ordered The Baby-Sitters Club Retro Set -- the first six books of my beloved childhood series, the one I gave away decades ago when I thought I had well outgrown them. The books arrived in a pale blue tin case, with the original covers. I appreciated the satisfying heft of it. And then I tucked it away.
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Last weekend, I wanted to curl up with Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead's new book. I've been looking forward to this since the Millions Most Anticipated list came out. I think Colson Whitehead is one of our most brilliant, most versatile writers. But while The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys are phenomenal and important works of literature, I am absolutely here for a novel described as "a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in the 1960s." That's what I want right now. Sign me up.
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Friday afternoons have always been sacred. I leave school full of energy, full of love for my job and my students, full of optimism, full of absolute certainty that my job is the best there is. Friday afternoons are when I feel the freedom of the weekend stretching before me, so I do not feel conflicted in any way about indulging in a few hours of reading after changing immediately into sweatpants. Sometimes I go for a walk or a jog first and soak in a bubble bath. Sometimes I skip it. But there is always a book and comfy clothes, followed by a cozy dinner and Family Movie Night.
In the early days of our marriage, before we had kids and when Matt was still working in West Seattle or Kirkland, I liked to go to a local coffee shop on Friday nights in the fall and read on a cushioned corner chair as the afternoon turned to dusk. I read Fingersmith by Sarah Waters on a dark October afternoon, sipping a huckleberry mocha. I thought of that moment yesterday as I drove home through the rain; it's one of my coziest reading memories. The coffee shop is closed, now. And anyway, driving to it requires commitment I can't muster at the moment.
Last weekend I tried to read Harlem Shuffle, but my brain couldn't process it. I couldn't process Colson Whitehead's perfect sentences, couldn't process the story I'd wanted for weeks - one as far removed from my own life as I could get.
I picked up the Baby-Sitters Club instead.
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Fridays are different this year. I leave school feeling defeated and exhausted in a way that is deeply unmooring for me. I'm not used to this. I'm not used to this sadness, this anger, this diminished energy. The pervasiveness of it all. The aloneness of it all.
I wrote a lot about remote teaching last year; it was the strangest word I'd ever done. There were glimmers of pure magic from my students that somehow, somehow, reminded me that all was not lost. But it was so much work with so little of the joy.
There is undoubtedly more joy this year; I end every single day with it, truly. My seniors have no idea what a gift it is for me to be in person with them. And I tell them that often, but I don't tell them that they are the reason -- sometimes it feels like the only reason -- that I keep breathing in and out. I don't tell them that, because it's an unfair burden to place upon a kid. They have enough burdens of their own, and I truly believe that they should not feel like they need to be a teacher's source of emotional support. When we develop these relationships with kids, it can be easy to forget that, but I also believe it's critically important. I'll cry on my last day with my seniors, but they also need to trust that I won't fall apart every time we talk about something difficult. (I teach literature. We talk about "difficult" a lot. And they need to feel safe doing that.)
But where, then, does that support come from? Because I have never in my career felt so low, or so utterly isolated.
It's been a long time since I could tick off literally all the boxes on the "High-Functioning Depression" test. Years. And for a long time, I've felt pretty good about my ability to manage it. But now the coping skills I've developed after years of learning how (with a lot of help) are fracturing, and it is all I can do to hold it together at school, where there is absolutely no place for me to feel anything. No place, no time, no room. No space for me, really. It just is not there. So I swallow it back. And who the hell cares, anyway? Everyone has their trauma right now. We're all traumatized by teaching, and some of us have other things going on, but there is nowhere I feel like I can go with that, so here I am, typing alone at my table while my children sleep, or sneaking back into my office space when everyone has gone home and I'm waiting to collect a child from an after-school function, or driving in my car after I drop off another child at school, or having a panic attack in my bathroom at home because that feels like the only space for me right now.
I don't need advice. I know. I just need a space. A place. So I guess I'm taking it here. As for the rest? Well, life goes on. It always does.
I don't say that flippantly. Please believe that.
*
I read all six BSC books last weekend, straight through.
As much as I wanted to be Claudia, I'm more of a combination of Mallory and Dawn, I think. Always writing in a journal, a little klutzy -- I have tripped over my own Danskos and torn my jeans at school too many times to count -- and prone to moping under a tree. But also organized, mostly vegetarian. Too sensitive and easily annoyed. Practical. Fearful. But mostly perfectly okay being herself.
Reading those books felt like wrapping myself in a weighted blanket. That kind of comfort -- I needed that. I finished the first one and started the second (Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls). I thought I should stop then, ration the books a bit, but I couldn't make myself care about anything more than submerging myself in The Truth About Stacey and Mary Anne Saves the Day.
What does it mean to be a teacher, a mother of a teenager, a mother of a sixth-grader, muddling through school after a year-and-a-half of remote learning? How can these books speak to me where I am right now? Why do I want nothing else than to pull a blanket over my head and retreat into this world of novels written when I was in fourth, fifth, sixth grade?
But it's what I needed. I read the first, the second, the third. I read all six, all in a row.
If I were in a different state of mind, I would write entire essays about reading the BSC books again in 2021. As it stands, I'm grateful to tuck them back into their tin and maybe browse the internet for copies of the Super Specials.
Life goes on, as it does.
But tonight, I'm carving out this little space that's mine, where for a minute it matters, where I can try to catch my breath after losing it in so many secret spaces.
I picked up Harlem Shuffle again last night and read for awhile. I'm ready to keep going this time, I think. At least there's that.
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