This life

If a sophomore boy near the back of class next to the window suddenly starts to snicker with one of his buddies, especially if that sophomore boy hasn’t bothered to check out the book he’s supposed to have for your class and so clearly isn’t spending this time reading it, be suspicious. Trust me, if he seems happy, it’s not a good thing. Maybe next time instead of merely raising your eyebrows at him (to which he shrugs dramatically and goes, “What?”) you might casually stroll over to his desk, and you will see his artwork before he stealthily tapes it to the window behind your closed blinds. And then you can just avoid the part of your day when the bell rings, the kids spill out of your classroom, and a student you know from another class pokes his head in and says, “Um, yeah, you definitely have a penis taped to your window.”

For the love.

So that was my Wednesday afternoon. I didn’t really have time to dwell on it, though, because conferences began immediately after school. I ran around gathering progress reports, a stack of papers to grade, everything else I planned to take home that evening, plus a cup of fresh coffee to sustain me through the next few hours. I burst through the library doors to claim my table.

“How’s it going?” asked a colleague.

“Oh, you know. Had a penis taped to my window this afternoon, but other than that...”

“A drawing, I hope.”

“Yeah. Not a very good one, though.”

These conversations actually happen as part of my day job. Be very jealous.

I’ve spent the last couple of days at school, late into the evening. Parent conferences are exhausting, but I secretly really like them. Those little personal connections matter, even if it’s just a five-minute conversation. I love that they can give me a completely different perspective on a kid I see every day in class -- or, for that matter, the parents of the kids I see every day in class. It’s a time when I really feel like we’re all on the same page. I think that, for the most part, parents see that I care deeply about these kids, and I think it’s good for us teachers to see that parents, even when they’re a little intense, really love them too, and everything they do or say is driven by that fierce love. That love makes us all a little crazy sometimes.

This morning, Matt and I found ourselves on the other side of the table at Suzannah’s conference. She is still so young that all I really care about is that she’s curious, that she loves learning. I care not one bit about her reading level or whatever, because I trust that she’ll get to where she needs to be when she’s ready. For that reason I never check her online progress reports; I talk to her teacher every single day when I pick her up and also trust she’d give me a clue if there were any real issues. I appreciate the things that are challenging for Suzannah; I also think it’s okay if some things are “really easy” (as she says sometimes) because I know she’ll be humbled soon enough. Basically, I try not to worry too much or let my own ego get in the way of her learning. That said, today when her teacher told us how fluent she is in reading and how well she does in math, I couldn’t help but feel a little thrill. I do so love watching her grow. (Suzannah is still quite shy at these conferences; she really doesn’t love to be the center of attention, or at least at the center of conversations about her. So I tried not to embarrass her too much.)

And now the rest of the weekend is ours. Suzannah and I had a lovely mother-daughter day after her conference, mostly because she let me have a little nap before we did anything. (How wonderful it is to have a second-grader who can entertain herself while her tired mama steals a rest on the couch.) I took her to lunch, and then she sat in a salon chair next to me while I had my hair trimmed. We spent a good chunk of the afternoon at the library, where I worked on a poem for a workshop I’m taking and she worked on her reading log for school, and then she read and played a few games on one of the computers while I finished up my assignment and did a little reading of my own. We picked up Isaac a little early today, and back at home I changed into flannel pants and made popcorn for the three of us.

I love it. This life. These ordinary moments. Changing into pajama pants at 4:30 in the afternoon while my son changes into his (too-small, fraying, slightly dirty) Iron Man costume. Snacking on popcorn while I unload the dishwasher. Slicing sunchokes and layering them with purple kale and a bit of red onion in a casserole dish, covering it all with breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese and hoping it makes a decent dinner since I’ve never cooked this before. (It did. Matt and I topped our servings with fried eggs, slightly runny.) This is still my favorite time of year. The leaves are falling faster, now; yesterday morning a sudden storm tore them from the branches in swirls, and sidewalks are buried in damp red and yellow piles. Evening comes early. There is the sense of pulling inward, of hunkering down for the winter. I notice the lights in people’s houses as we drive by, the way they are framed against the dark of these November evenings. I hope our windows look like that from the outside -- warm, cozy, with just enough light to read by once we tuck our children into bed for the night.