It amazes me how infrequently I follow through with things I say I'll do. I have written countless "manifestos" stating that I, Kate Hooks, will stop drinking, eating whole pints of ice cream, being late, swearing, gossiping etc. Inevitably, though, one or all of my proclamations ends up broken within a week, my manifesto ends up in the trash, and a new, modified version is written to enable the cycle to repeat itself.
Before I left for Vegas, I vowed I would give my gambling money - if I made a profit - to a good cause. Specifically, I decided I would donate half to the genocide intervention fund, and half to Ronic at the grocery store. Secretly I didn't want to give any surplus cash away; I wanted to buy a new pair of jeans to better compliment my recently burgeoning butt (thus the ice cream manifesto). On my way through the grocery line, though, I found myself telling Ronic that I was going to Vegas for a few days, and that if I won any money, I'd give her half. I sort of winced as the words came out of my mouth, because, like I said, I wanted a new pair of jeans.
In Vegas I met Brett and his friend, Keith, and spent the weekend learning why the City's nickname is "Sin City." We all met to watch a bunch of concerts, but managed to spend a sufficient amount of time at the blackjack tables as well. At least Brett and I did (we both have addictive personalities). So 48 hours after landing in Vegas, I managed to leave $280+ richer, with (what I imagined to be) a permanent headache, a perpetual ringing in my ears from the music, and a grand total of 20 minutes of sleep. When I entered my classroom on Tuesday morning, I noted how difficult it would be to keep what happens in Vegas in Vegas, when I looked like I'd been hit by a truck. Fortunately I must look like I've been hit by a truck on a semi-regular basis, because no one seemed to notice.
That Tuesday afternoon, after school, two things happened:
I bought $225 worth of "Save Darfur" bracelets for my students to sell at the school store.
I gave Ronic $100 at Giant.
So secretly, I managed to lose money. And I realize that the Bible emphasizes that you should give just to give, without sharing every "selfless" thing you do with the world. And of course I agree, but I need to emphasize a revelation - giving does amazing things to one's insides. It's like all the self-doubt and disappointment and guilt that riddles a person's inner-most thoughts is immediately superceded by pure hope and love and softness. My headache, gambling guilt, and beer gut-induced self-deprecation became insignificant when Ronic called my house to tell me she loves me. When I gave her the money on Tuesday afternoon, I was shaking, and she started to cry, held up the money and told everyone to "look at what her customer gave her." (Which was rather embarassing, actually). I cried though, too. Especially when she told me that she'd hit that part in her life where she thought she couldn't go on, and that God had sent her an angel from heaven in the form of, well, me. The customers behind me didn't seem impatient or angry that I'd caused a scene, and had forced the already backed-up line to extend a little further down the cereal aisle. The woman behind me asked where the money had come from, and I told her it came, ironically, from "Sin City." She laughed and assured me that "Jesus knows my heart," and doesn't mind if I gamble every once in a while.
My students think I'm crazy for spending $225 on rubber bracelets to fund the African Union, but I think it's good for them to see follow-through from me for a change (especially since I never return their papers on time).
So what is the point of writing this? It's honestly not to prove how virtuous I am or to suggest that I'm an "angel sent from heaven." I'm neither. I'm a mess, and the only reason I didn't leave Vegas with even more money, is because Brett and I were both physically incapable of leaving the blackjack tables while we were up more than $1800 - neither of us has much self-restraint. It is, however, to say that Brett is probably right: Mother Theresa might have been completely selfish in her selflessness. Because hearing Ronic tell me she loves me, and seeing my students wear their green Darfur bracelets religiously, feels much more gratifying than buying a pair of jeans.
Besides, now I have incentive to stick to my "no more consuming entire pints of ice cream in one sitting" manifesto. I need to fit into my current pairs of jeans.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Words
There are some things that people say that I never forget. Sometimes the words are formative, and sometimes they're destructive. Either way, people's indiscernible fragilities make me cognizant of how frequently I speak, and of how infrequently I think before doing so. Right now I teach 180 high school students - I think about the words that come out of my mouth sometimes when I'm frustrated, and when no one will sit down or agree with my contention that it really is possible for a 10th grader in Baltimore city to stop genocide in Sudan. I told Cortez that I wanted to run him over with my car - what if he becomes an ax murderer as a result of my irresponsible use of hyperbole? What if Cortez, or any of my other students, are like me: ostentatious and ridiculously self-assured yet secretly vulnerable and sensitive to the potentially destructive words of others? I should have studied bugs or worked in a lab training rats.
When I was 16, April, a friend on the track team, told me my stomach was too fat for such a skinny girl. I was 5'10" and weighed 135 pounds, but all of a sudden I was self-conscious about something other than the ferocious zit on my chin. I started doing sit-ups. 11 years later, I gave up because the washboard abs never materialized. I still don't like my stomach, though.
I also remember my high school friend, Selina asking me how I could be so stupid. We were at a friend's house doing math homework my senior year. Some type of trigonometry, I think. I was in 12th grade. I haven't taken a math class or balanced my checkbook since.
In ninth grade I remember Neil telling me I was pretty. He was a curly-haired senior on the cross country team, and I was a gawky long-legged freshman, covered with mud and sweat, topped off by frizzy post-running hair. Still wearing our respective ITHACA cross country mesh tank tops, we were crammed on a yellow school bus on our way from a mid-week meet. I don't remember Neil's last name, nor how I did in the race that day, but I do remember thinking it was some sort of miracle that someone found me pretty. Especially after a cross-country race. People must not have called me "pretty" very often.
Rather than list the innumerable things that I've selectively ingrained into my bizarre memory, I write this to encourage you, when you're breaking up with someone, to choose your words more carefully than one usually does. Sometimes things stick and, like your favorite jeans that you wash with a piece of gum in the pocket, there is no amount of peanut butter or patience that will ever return things to normal. Jeans, post-gum, are always a little bit jacked-up.
When Jim and I broke up, he left quickly. He had to. He was upset, I was upset, and I knew that if he stuck around for more than 8.5 seconds I'd start frothing at the mouth, beating him with my frying pan, or cleaning the toilet with his head. So he packed fast. I was still wearing my pajamas, sitting on the floor, clutching my knees to my chest. Everything around me started to look blurry and the back of the couch was scraping into my backbone and the carpet itched and I couldn't figure out what to do. So, while he packed, I did nothing. I couldn't even think or pray or remember that I was stressed-out about the school year that started in two days. I might have started rocking back and forth a little; that's what crazy people do, I think. I felt like I was going crazy.
A few days later I realized how much stuff he'd left at my apartment. In addition to the mess of what used to be me, he'd forgotten a lot of his crap. CDs. Pictures. Books. A few t-shirts that I'd worn to bed earlier in the summer. Looking for an excuse to call him and hear, "April fools, Kate! I'm coming home, I love you, I never cheated on you etc. etc.", I decided to call him. Since it was August, there was no "April fools!" rather a terse, emotionless conversation which went something like this:
Me: Hey, how are you.
Him: Not great, how are you?
Me: I'm sitting under my desk.
Him: Why?
Me: I just am. Listen, you left a lot of crap here. Do you want me to mail it somewhere, or do you want to come by and pick it up sometime I'm not here?
Him: Neither, don't worry about it.
Me: I'm not going to throw out all of your pictures and books and stuff. Where do you want me to mail it? You left an entire CD of vacation pics here...
Him: Listen Kate, if I left it there, I obviously didn't care that much about it anyway. If it's still in the apartment, sell it on eBay or throw it out - I don't want it back.
Rationally, I knew he was talking about his stuff. Rationally, I knew he probably wanted his books and CDs and pictures back, but felt guilty having me mail them all to his "new" mailing address. Still, the only thing that came out of my mouth was the word, "Clearly." I sucked in a breath of air that tasted like dirt, and the conversation ended shortly thereafter.
I since resolved to throw out most of his stuff. I finished the book that I'd borrowed from him, and gave it to a friend, turned a few of his T-shirts into gym t-shirts and tucked the shoes he'd bought me for my birthday, and the Ray Lewis jersey I'd bought him for his, to the back of my closet, and threw the rest down the garbage chute.
My advice, though, is this: if, while in the process of shredding someone's heart with a rake, you need to move out, please choose your words more wisely if you leave things behind. It's inevitable that you'll forget a few things; material things you can qualify much easier than the mess of a person you leave behind. Speaking from personal experience, though, it's hard enough to think you're dumb at math, or to spend a decade sucking in a non-flat stomach, but it's even harder to be relegated to the status of an over-listened-to CD or a paint-stained t-shirt. Personal resilience only goes so far.
When I was 16, April, a friend on the track team, told me my stomach was too fat for such a skinny girl. I was 5'10" and weighed 135 pounds, but all of a sudden I was self-conscious about something other than the ferocious zit on my chin. I started doing sit-ups. 11 years later, I gave up because the washboard abs never materialized. I still don't like my stomach, though.
I also remember my high school friend, Selina asking me how I could be so stupid. We were at a friend's house doing math homework my senior year. Some type of trigonometry, I think. I was in 12th grade. I haven't taken a math class or balanced my checkbook since.
In ninth grade I remember Neil telling me I was pretty. He was a curly-haired senior on the cross country team, and I was a gawky long-legged freshman, covered with mud and sweat, topped off by frizzy post-running hair. Still wearing our respective ITHACA cross country mesh tank tops, we were crammed on a yellow school bus on our way from a mid-week meet. I don't remember Neil's last name, nor how I did in the race that day, but I do remember thinking it was some sort of miracle that someone found me pretty. Especially after a cross-country race. People must not have called me "pretty" very often.
Rather than list the innumerable things that I've selectively ingrained into my bizarre memory, I write this to encourage you, when you're breaking up with someone, to choose your words more carefully than one usually does. Sometimes things stick and, like your favorite jeans that you wash with a piece of gum in the pocket, there is no amount of peanut butter or patience that will ever return things to normal. Jeans, post-gum, are always a little bit jacked-up.
When Jim and I broke up, he left quickly. He had to. He was upset, I was upset, and I knew that if he stuck around for more than 8.5 seconds I'd start frothing at the mouth, beating him with my frying pan, or cleaning the toilet with his head. So he packed fast. I was still wearing my pajamas, sitting on the floor, clutching my knees to my chest. Everything around me started to look blurry and the back of the couch was scraping into my backbone and the carpet itched and I couldn't figure out what to do. So, while he packed, I did nothing. I couldn't even think or pray or remember that I was stressed-out about the school year that started in two days. I might have started rocking back and forth a little; that's what crazy people do, I think. I felt like I was going crazy.
A few days later I realized how much stuff he'd left at my apartment. In addition to the mess of what used to be me, he'd forgotten a lot of his crap. CDs. Pictures. Books. A few t-shirts that I'd worn to bed earlier in the summer. Looking for an excuse to call him and hear, "April fools, Kate! I'm coming home, I love you, I never cheated on you etc. etc.", I decided to call him. Since it was August, there was no "April fools!" rather a terse, emotionless conversation which went something like this:
Me: Hey, how are you.
Him: Not great, how are you?
Me: I'm sitting under my desk.
Him: Why?
Me: I just am. Listen, you left a lot of crap here. Do you want me to mail it somewhere, or do you want to come by and pick it up sometime I'm not here?
Him: Neither, don't worry about it.
Me: I'm not going to throw out all of your pictures and books and stuff. Where do you want me to mail it? You left an entire CD of vacation pics here...
Him: Listen Kate, if I left it there, I obviously didn't care that much about it anyway. If it's still in the apartment, sell it on eBay or throw it out - I don't want it back.
Rationally, I knew he was talking about his stuff. Rationally, I knew he probably wanted his books and CDs and pictures back, but felt guilty having me mail them all to his "new" mailing address. Still, the only thing that came out of my mouth was the word, "Clearly." I sucked in a breath of air that tasted like dirt, and the conversation ended shortly thereafter.
I since resolved to throw out most of his stuff. I finished the book that I'd borrowed from him, and gave it to a friend, turned a few of his T-shirts into gym t-shirts and tucked the shoes he'd bought me for my birthday, and the Ray Lewis jersey I'd bought him for his, to the back of my closet, and threw the rest down the garbage chute.
My advice, though, is this: if, while in the process of shredding someone's heart with a rake, you need to move out, please choose your words more wisely if you leave things behind. It's inevitable that you'll forget a few things; material things you can qualify much easier than the mess of a person you leave behind. Speaking from personal experience, though, it's hard enough to think you're dumb at math, or to spend a decade sucking in a non-flat stomach, but it's even harder to be relegated to the status of an over-listened-to CD or a paint-stained t-shirt. Personal resilience only goes so far.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Funk
To be honest I've been in a funk lately. I guess I don't really know what that means, but if funk is gunky stuff that ruins something that is otherwise good, then that's where I've been. On Thursday I woke up at 5:45, and for the 14th straight day, the sun wasn't out - nor did it show any signs of emerging. The weather outside was wet and gray, my classroom was so cold that my students took the PSATs wearing gloves, and my somewhat frizzy hair was slowly starting to resemble Don King's. I was in a bad mood. I tried listening to festive music, but happy noises irritated me, I tried to pray and my prayers usually came out as lists of requests for myself and others. Meanwhile I was teaching my students about the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, and while the topic should have sparked at least a moderate amount of appreciation regarding my own life, it just depressed me. I decided the world was disgusting, and maybe the best case scenario was contracting the Avian Bird Flu. Our country is entrenched in moral depravity, we're fighting a war that we shouldn't be fighting, people all over are starving to death, the Janjaweed militia is roaming around on camels with M-16 assault rifles killing civilians at a rate of 500 people per day in Darfur, and the "love of my life" cheated on me. Rationally I knew that my own life was fine, but all I wanted to do was eat pint after pint of ice cream and then complain about getting fat. Yes. I was even starting to drive myself nuts.
On Thursday night, after decimating a pint and a half of ice cream and reading about Darfur, I felt heavier. Heavier even than 6 servings of ice cream should make me feel. I sat on the couch to watch TV, but I hate TV. I listened to music, but I'm sick of all my music. I wanted to talk to someone, but I didn't know what to say, and MS stuff is bugging both of my hands, so I didn't even want to write.
I scanned my email inbox and called Jenny - one of my runner friends from Colgate. She's ridiculous and stubborn and filled with magnetism and radiance. She cracks me up. So I called her. I told her I was in a funk and it was absurd and inexplicable and there was nothing wrong, but I needed someone to talk to. She talked. She suggested about 89 things that I know I need to do, but am too lazy to do. I must be insanely annoying to talk to sometimes. The conversation went something like this:
Me: I'm lonely. I live in this stupid apartment nowhere near my friends and it reminds me of my ex.
Jenny: Why don't you move?
Me: I like my couch. But there's still this cheeseburger stain and it reminds me of my ex too.
Jenny: You could sell the couch...
Me: It's really comfortable.
Jenny: Could you talk to someone, you know, just to get some of this out?
Me: I don't have time. My insurance won't pay for it. It won't help - I already know what's bugging me.
(At this point I could almost hear the wrinkles on Jenny's forehead start to form.)
It went on like this until I started hypothesizing that I could die in a car accident and no one would ever find out. Then Jenny, who presumably wanted to flush the phone down the toilet, insisted on coming to Baltimore for the weekend instead. We got off the phone and she said she'd meet me at the train station on Friday night. Begrudgingly I agreed. There is honestly no point in arguing with Jenny once she makes her mind up about something, and even though I'd have to vacuum, I think I needed something to take my mind off of, well, me.
In the meantime, I went to bed, woke up six hours later to another cloud-ridden day, spend my "moment of silence" in homeroom internally calling on God for help, and went about my job of educating the youth of America (I like to sound as important as possible).
Anyway, it was a normal day at City High School. Normal except my 9th and 10th graders passionately assured me that we have a chance to be on Oprah if we continue our endeavors to collectively heighten awareness about Darfur. It was normal until Octavia stayed after school to watch a multimedia presentation about Darfur by the NYT on my archaic laptop, and until perpetually pissy Patricia sent me a rough draft of an email she wrote to the local news station about the genocide in Darfur.
I left school on Friday feeling a little less funky.
Then I went to Giant, the grocery store down the street from my school. I bought an avocado and chips for the weekend, and placed the basket carefully on my lap while I waited in the interminably long line. While not moving, I asked the woman behind me if she knew of any nearby liquor stores where I could actually park and get in with a wheelchair. She didn't, but I could tell she gave my predicament serious thought (more thought than a six-pack of Corona deserves). Then Veronica, the best grocery checker in the Continental United States, poked her head out of a previously-closed line, and saw me. She pointed at me and said, "Hey! I knew I was here for a reason, get over here." I felt bad - I realized I visit the grocery store entirely too often, and I didn't want to cut the line. Before I could protest, though, the woman behind me pushed me, my wheelchair and my avocados forward.
Veronica rang me up. I told her how glad I was to see her, that I'd been in a ferocious mood, and that I loved how she arranged my groceries. Veronica is seriously the most thoughtful checker-outer one can conceive of. She hangs the grocery bags perfectly on the back of my wheelchair, so they never fall off or scrape on the wheels - this is a highly under-appreciated skill.
While she arranged my avocados and chips, she told me that I'd made her think. She told me that bagging groceries really wasn't her calling and she needed to teach or become a nurse. I told her I would find some information for her and that she'd make a fabulous teacher (which she really would). Then the lady behind me told Veronica that she worked at the hospital, and that she too could offer Veronica some career-type help. Veronica looked like she was about to pee her pants. Then, as if this Giant trip wasn't good enough, the nice lady behind me asked Veronica about a nearby wheelchair accessible liquor store. Veronica couldn't think of one either, so I said thanks, acknowledged that this was sign number 895,622 that people with MS shouldn't drink and rolled towards the exit.
Lovely lady behind me stopped me. She said, "I have nothing to do right now, why don't I follow you to the nearest store and I'll go in for you."
"Seriously - this isn't that big of a deal. Don't worry about it."
Suddenly, though, I had a fan base and they were all rallying for me to get beer. Veronica told me to take help when people offered, and that this wasn't a coincidence, and the nice lady behind me continued to insist, and even the older man who looked like he was stoned started waving his fist in the air yelling, "Yes, yes!" And honestly I felt like I was in a movie.
Minutes later, the woman I'd met in Giant followed me to a nearby liquor store where I realized I had no cash. Again, I told her to forget about it. Again, she insisted. So in the middle of a gloomy Friday afternoon, I was suddenly about to accept charity beer from a complete stranger. The woman, whose name was Barb, went into the store and came out with Corona (the perfect compliment to guacamole), and I found my checkbook in my backpack to write her a check. She argued with me about the check, but I gave it to her regardless, and the two of us started talking. I talked to her about my students, and our project on Darfur, and my friend Jenny who was coming in from NYC to rescue me from my self-acclaimed funk. She told me I reminded her of her daughter who'd just died of Cancer two weeks ago. I got out of my car and hugged her and she started to cry.
I still can't think of a solution to genocide or world starvation or the 30,000 people who died in the earthquake last week. I'm still hurt by my ex, I'm still sick of MS and I'm still a little bit lonely. Sometimes I think God is wearing earplugs, and I don't have the patience to wait for a mountain-top experience or a new boyfriend or a cure for my neurological disease, or peace in Africa, but this is what I know:
Veronica shouldn't be working at Giant, but I'm selfishly glad she is.
Barb probably shouldn't have bought me Corona because my liver isn't doing so well, but I really needed her hug and I think she needed mine too.
I had an entirely unfunky, relaxing and cathartic weekend with Jenny and she left in time for me to go to church today.
It's sunny out.
My students want to be on Oprah to save Darfur.
We do what we can with what we have, and sometimes what we have doesn't seem like quite enough. On Friday, though, it did.
On Thursday night, after decimating a pint and a half of ice cream and reading about Darfur, I felt heavier. Heavier even than 6 servings of ice cream should make me feel. I sat on the couch to watch TV, but I hate TV. I listened to music, but I'm sick of all my music. I wanted to talk to someone, but I didn't know what to say, and MS stuff is bugging both of my hands, so I didn't even want to write.
I scanned my email inbox and called Jenny - one of my runner friends from Colgate. She's ridiculous and stubborn and filled with magnetism and radiance. She cracks me up. So I called her. I told her I was in a funk and it was absurd and inexplicable and there was nothing wrong, but I needed someone to talk to. She talked. She suggested about 89 things that I know I need to do, but am too lazy to do. I must be insanely annoying to talk to sometimes. The conversation went something like this:
Me: I'm lonely. I live in this stupid apartment nowhere near my friends and it reminds me of my ex.
Jenny: Why don't you move?
Me: I like my couch. But there's still this cheeseburger stain and it reminds me of my ex too.
Jenny: You could sell the couch...
Me: It's really comfortable.
Jenny: Could you talk to someone, you know, just to get some of this out?
Me: I don't have time. My insurance won't pay for it. It won't help - I already know what's bugging me.
(At this point I could almost hear the wrinkles on Jenny's forehead start to form.)
It went on like this until I started hypothesizing that I could die in a car accident and no one would ever find out. Then Jenny, who presumably wanted to flush the phone down the toilet, insisted on coming to Baltimore for the weekend instead. We got off the phone and she said she'd meet me at the train station on Friday night. Begrudgingly I agreed. There is honestly no point in arguing with Jenny once she makes her mind up about something, and even though I'd have to vacuum, I think I needed something to take my mind off of, well, me.
In the meantime, I went to bed, woke up six hours later to another cloud-ridden day, spend my "moment of silence" in homeroom internally calling on God for help, and went about my job of educating the youth of America (I like to sound as important as possible).
Anyway, it was a normal day at City High School. Normal except my 9th and 10th graders passionately assured me that we have a chance to be on Oprah if we continue our endeavors to collectively heighten awareness about Darfur. It was normal until Octavia stayed after school to watch a multimedia presentation about Darfur by the NYT on my archaic laptop, and until perpetually pissy Patricia sent me a rough draft of an email she wrote to the local news station about the genocide in Darfur.
I left school on Friday feeling a little less funky.
Then I went to Giant, the grocery store down the street from my school. I bought an avocado and chips for the weekend, and placed the basket carefully on my lap while I waited in the interminably long line. While not moving, I asked the woman behind me if she knew of any nearby liquor stores where I could actually park and get in with a wheelchair. She didn't, but I could tell she gave my predicament serious thought (more thought than a six-pack of Corona deserves). Then Veronica, the best grocery checker in the Continental United States, poked her head out of a previously-closed line, and saw me. She pointed at me and said, "Hey! I knew I was here for a reason, get over here." I felt bad - I realized I visit the grocery store entirely too often, and I didn't want to cut the line. Before I could protest, though, the woman behind me pushed me, my wheelchair and my avocados forward.
Veronica rang me up. I told her how glad I was to see her, that I'd been in a ferocious mood, and that I loved how she arranged my groceries. Veronica is seriously the most thoughtful checker-outer one can conceive of. She hangs the grocery bags perfectly on the back of my wheelchair, so they never fall off or scrape on the wheels - this is a highly under-appreciated skill.
While she arranged my avocados and chips, she told me that I'd made her think. She told me that bagging groceries really wasn't her calling and she needed to teach or become a nurse. I told her I would find some information for her and that she'd make a fabulous teacher (which she really would). Then the lady behind me told Veronica that she worked at the hospital, and that she too could offer Veronica some career-type help. Veronica looked like she was about to pee her pants. Then, as if this Giant trip wasn't good enough, the nice lady behind me asked Veronica about a nearby wheelchair accessible liquor store. Veronica couldn't think of one either, so I said thanks, acknowledged that this was sign number 895,622 that people with MS shouldn't drink and rolled towards the exit.
Lovely lady behind me stopped me. She said, "I have nothing to do right now, why don't I follow you to the nearest store and I'll go in for you."
"Seriously - this isn't that big of a deal. Don't worry about it."
Suddenly, though, I had a fan base and they were all rallying for me to get beer. Veronica told me to take help when people offered, and that this wasn't a coincidence, and the nice lady behind me continued to insist, and even the older man who looked like he was stoned started waving his fist in the air yelling, "Yes, yes!" And honestly I felt like I was in a movie.
Minutes later, the woman I'd met in Giant followed me to a nearby liquor store where I realized I had no cash. Again, I told her to forget about it. Again, she insisted. So in the middle of a gloomy Friday afternoon, I was suddenly about to accept charity beer from a complete stranger. The woman, whose name was Barb, went into the store and came out with Corona (the perfect compliment to guacamole), and I found my checkbook in my backpack to write her a check. She argued with me about the check, but I gave it to her regardless, and the two of us started talking. I talked to her about my students, and our project on Darfur, and my friend Jenny who was coming in from NYC to rescue me from my self-acclaimed funk. She told me I reminded her of her daughter who'd just died of Cancer two weeks ago. I got out of my car and hugged her and she started to cry.
I still can't think of a solution to genocide or world starvation or the 30,000 people who died in the earthquake last week. I'm still hurt by my ex, I'm still sick of MS and I'm still a little bit lonely. Sometimes I think God is wearing earplugs, and I don't have the patience to wait for a mountain-top experience or a new boyfriend or a cure for my neurological disease, or peace in Africa, but this is what I know:
Veronica shouldn't be working at Giant, but I'm selfishly glad she is.
Barb probably shouldn't have bought me Corona because my liver isn't doing so well, but I really needed her hug and I think she needed mine too.
I had an entirely unfunky, relaxing and cathartic weekend with Jenny and she left in time for me to go to church today.
It's sunny out.
My students want to be on Oprah to save Darfur.
We do what we can with what we have, and sometimes what we have doesn't seem like quite enough. On Friday, though, it did.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Recovery
I like very much to make sense out of things. Particularly things that are messy. Ideally, I like to find a reasonable explanation for things before I go to bed. Which, I guess, is why I'm a habitual insomniac; some things never make sense.
For almost three months (which, in the grand scheme of things I realize is a short amount of time), I felt my "Jesusy" relationship with Jim fall apart. I felt this as definitively as whether or not I wear socks when my feet are cold in the winter, but I was too lazy to get up and find a pair. Especially since it was summer. I hated the feeling. Jim was, I thought, the one. He was it. So this whole need-for-socks feeling was very bad. Like I was sleeping next to an imposter, except I couldn't really sleep because my feet were cold and nothing made sense.
I can see now, why people stay in abusive relationships, and why drug addicts remain drug addicts until they overdose. At some point in life, we all make a decision that yields some type of euphoric sensation. For drug addicts, I suppose, it's the first high. For others it's the inexplicable intoxication of falling in love. I remember when it first happened with Jim. It was when I told him that I was broken and a complete mess, and he didn't run away with his hands over his head screaming. Brokenness can really only be attended to once it's acknowledged, and even then, it's really just shared and never quite fixed. Still, though, it felt nice to finally breathe properly; to share my insecurities and vulnerabilities - my internal mess - with someone else.
All at once (too quickly really), my inside broken bits were tenderly acknowledged and held and loved exactly as they were, and not how I wanted them to be. I felt like I was free-falling from 18,000 feet above ground, and Jim dropped out of nowhere, handed me a parachute and said, "Hey, this could be fun, can I come along?" To this day, I don't think there's anything as exhilirating or frightening as letting someone really know who you are - especially the messy parts. And this is why I forced myself to "work things out" when imposter-Jim started hanging around more often. I was completely incapable of reconciling the Jim that knew and loved me, with the Jim who moved in with me. I prayed, I wrote, I swam and I cornerned him into biweekly "are we okay"-type conversations. As his answer was an ostensible "yes", I started to think I was going nuts. At the very least I was delusional, and the whole thing scared me even more than my initial descent of 18,000 feet, because suddenly there was no one there with a parachute.
Imposter-Jim was much less sensitive than his long-distance counterpart who I'd started my relationship with; we'd visited monthly and talk on the phone for hours at a time. Once he moved here, though, he watched a lot of television, drank a lot of beer and wanted to go camping all the time. I stopped feeling delusional and reexamined my previously-acknowledged broken-bits. I decided to gather them up and build a wall between me and the Imposter. He didn't seem to notice, he was too busy reading espn.com. I thought maybe he was turning into a goat - something completely lacking in human characteristics, that likes to consume garbage and is incapable of conversation. He started to talk on the phone outside of the apartment, camp more often, and drink even more beer. He stopped making eye contact. Everything seemed forced, and when I'd mention this I was chronically assured that everything was fine. I decided to turn my wall into a fortress with the new broken pieces I accumulated, and started to assemble a few weapons of mass destruction (just in case). The thing is, even with my fortress and weapons, I was still convinced that diplomacy would work and the Imposter/goat would leave, and my fortress would be peacefully disassembled.
It was right around then that I got nuked.
Even before I found out he was cheating on me, my fortress, weapons and all, were systematically annihilated. Imposter-Jim imitated the way I walk.
It was just the two of us in the apartment. We didn't have a couch or anything, so he had the entire living room for his performance; I, his sole audience, was awestruck. It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. It was like watching a Discovery Channel special on liposuction when I can't find the remote in time to change the channel. Even then, I usually turn away - not merely because the sight of someone else's fat in a tube grosses me out, but because my own judgment of someone else's vulnerability makes me feel like a nauseous version of Beezlebub. The bile in the back of my throat was more a function of my own judgment than someone else's disgusting fat in a tube, and this meant I was not a good person. At the very least I had a lot of work to do.
When I watched Jim walk across the room like me, there was no remote to change him with. Besides, he was imitating me, and no battery operated anything was en route to curing a neurological disease. So I watched, as the person I loved leaned too far forward, lifted his right leg too high, and grabbed onto my shaky Ikea desk for balance. It was so accurate and so disgusting. My boyfriend was much worse than a goat. I refused to show him how hurt I was. I refused to suggest that my own horrific judgment of liposuction patients was analogous to the fourteen steps he made across our apartment, but I was aghast. Aghast that he saw me like that. Aghast that my inside broken-bits were no longer tenderly held and loved, but regarded as ugly Discovery Channel-type entertainment. Aghast that he didn't realize any of this or feel a semblance of guilt.
I don't remember what I said to him afterwards. I doubt it matters anyway. I just remember the familiar taste of bile that rose to the back of my throat, and the definitive realization that this would take much more than a self-initiated talk to recover from. My vocal chords were too tangled to speak anyway.
Jim and I were not, and never will be "okay." That's a fact I've started to digest by now, but still doesn't make any sense. The bigger question is, will I?
For almost three months (which, in the grand scheme of things I realize is a short amount of time), I felt my "Jesusy" relationship with Jim fall apart. I felt this as definitively as whether or not I wear socks when my feet are cold in the winter, but I was too lazy to get up and find a pair. Especially since it was summer. I hated the feeling. Jim was, I thought, the one. He was it. So this whole need-for-socks feeling was very bad. Like I was sleeping next to an imposter, except I couldn't really sleep because my feet were cold and nothing made sense.
I can see now, why people stay in abusive relationships, and why drug addicts remain drug addicts until they overdose. At some point in life, we all make a decision that yields some type of euphoric sensation. For drug addicts, I suppose, it's the first high. For others it's the inexplicable intoxication of falling in love. I remember when it first happened with Jim. It was when I told him that I was broken and a complete mess, and he didn't run away with his hands over his head screaming. Brokenness can really only be attended to once it's acknowledged, and even then, it's really just shared and never quite fixed. Still, though, it felt nice to finally breathe properly; to share my insecurities and vulnerabilities - my internal mess - with someone else.
All at once (too quickly really), my inside broken bits were tenderly acknowledged and held and loved exactly as they were, and not how I wanted them to be. I felt like I was free-falling from 18,000 feet above ground, and Jim dropped out of nowhere, handed me a parachute and said, "Hey, this could be fun, can I come along?" To this day, I don't think there's anything as exhilirating or frightening as letting someone really know who you are - especially the messy parts. And this is why I forced myself to "work things out" when imposter-Jim started hanging around more often. I was completely incapable of reconciling the Jim that knew and loved me, with the Jim who moved in with me. I prayed, I wrote, I swam and I cornerned him into biweekly "are we okay"-type conversations. As his answer was an ostensible "yes", I started to think I was going nuts. At the very least I was delusional, and the whole thing scared me even more than my initial descent of 18,000 feet, because suddenly there was no one there with a parachute.
Imposter-Jim was much less sensitive than his long-distance counterpart who I'd started my relationship with; we'd visited monthly and talk on the phone for hours at a time. Once he moved here, though, he watched a lot of television, drank a lot of beer and wanted to go camping all the time. I stopped feeling delusional and reexamined my previously-acknowledged broken-bits. I decided to gather them up and build a wall between me and the Imposter. He didn't seem to notice, he was too busy reading espn.com. I thought maybe he was turning into a goat - something completely lacking in human characteristics, that likes to consume garbage and is incapable of conversation. He started to talk on the phone outside of the apartment, camp more often, and drink even more beer. He stopped making eye contact. Everything seemed forced, and when I'd mention this I was chronically assured that everything was fine. I decided to turn my wall into a fortress with the new broken pieces I accumulated, and started to assemble a few weapons of mass destruction (just in case). The thing is, even with my fortress and weapons, I was still convinced that diplomacy would work and the Imposter/goat would leave, and my fortress would be peacefully disassembled.
It was right around then that I got nuked.
Even before I found out he was cheating on me, my fortress, weapons and all, were systematically annihilated. Imposter-Jim imitated the way I walk.
It was just the two of us in the apartment. We didn't have a couch or anything, so he had the entire living room for his performance; I, his sole audience, was awestruck. It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. It was like watching a Discovery Channel special on liposuction when I can't find the remote in time to change the channel. Even then, I usually turn away - not merely because the sight of someone else's fat in a tube grosses me out, but because my own judgment of someone else's vulnerability makes me feel like a nauseous version of Beezlebub. The bile in the back of my throat was more a function of my own judgment than someone else's disgusting fat in a tube, and this meant I was not a good person. At the very least I had a lot of work to do.
When I watched Jim walk across the room like me, there was no remote to change him with. Besides, he was imitating me, and no battery operated anything was en route to curing a neurological disease. So I watched, as the person I loved leaned too far forward, lifted his right leg too high, and grabbed onto my shaky Ikea desk for balance. It was so accurate and so disgusting. My boyfriend was much worse than a goat. I refused to show him how hurt I was. I refused to suggest that my own horrific judgment of liposuction patients was analogous to the fourteen steps he made across our apartment, but I was aghast. Aghast that he saw me like that. Aghast that my inside broken-bits were no longer tenderly held and loved, but regarded as ugly Discovery Channel-type entertainment. Aghast that he didn't realize any of this or feel a semblance of guilt.
I don't remember what I said to him afterwards. I doubt it matters anyway. I just remember the familiar taste of bile that rose to the back of my throat, and the definitive realization that this would take much more than a self-initiated talk to recover from. My vocal chords were too tangled to speak anyway.
Jim and I were not, and never will be "okay." That's a fact I've started to digest by now, but still doesn't make any sense. The bigger question is, will I?
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Monday, August 08, 2005
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Why I'm (sort of) Starting to Like Baseball
One week remained in my first year of teaching at Baltimore City College High School. Unlike my gullible 6th graders at Morrell Park, my sophomores knew that my gradebook was closed, so planning a structured and scintillating lesson on the United States Government was about as lucrative as the crunches I once thought would give me washboard abs. Instead of agonizing over lesson ideas, or grading work that I had no intention of recording, I threw a few student-written current event summaries into the recycling bin and drove to Frederick, MD with Jim for the weekend. We originally planned to camp, but opted for the Travel Lodge instead, and substituted a Friday night canoe trip for a minor league baseball game. If my memory serves correctly, the Frederick Keys (Baltimore's minor league team) were playing the Nationals. By the fifth inning, the score was still 0 to 0 and my attention started to wane. That's the problem with baseball: there are too many innings and not enough action. I like hockey or lacrosse games and (even though I'm biased) a good fast-moving track meet. Baseball is only one small step above picking the lint out of my dryer vent, so I don't buy season tickets.
On this particular evening, though, I went to a game. I also, for whatever reason, went with a moderate level of enthusiasm (which had something to do with Jim). I drank an overpriced beer and watched the people around me. I tried to concentrate on the first few innings of the game and learned that the letters KKK stand for more than a white supremacist organization founded in 1865, they also represent strike-outs (I was relieved to learn this, but still confused about the absence of African Americans in Frederick, Maryland). Then I lost my focus again and had to pee.
Jim was engrossed in the game and I had my wheelchair, so I wheeled away without discussion. I got about three feet from the bathroom when I passed a girl and her mother. As the girl was approximately six years-old (and thus at eye level), I smiled - I like to convince small children that people in wheelchairs are normal and nice. In this particular instance, it must have worked; rather than gape or walk by me (her mother was literally dragging her back to their seats), she stopped, pulled her mother to a halt, and looked me straight in the eye.
"Hi." I addressed her as non-threateningly as possible so as to avoid having my wheelchair tires slashed by her mother. The girl had thick glasses and stringy blonde hair all attached to a beautiful rosy-cheeked face.
She was literally pulling against her mother at this point, but I could tell she wanted to talk.
"Umm, why do you use that, that wheelchair?" She sort of pointed at my chair and then put the majority of her left hand into her mouth.
Like I said, she was six, right - she obviously had no concept of nerves or myelin or autoimmune diseases that compromise a person's functionality, so I rejected even a cursory explanation of multiple sclerosis, and summed it up like this:
"Do you ever get colds?" (She nodded) "Well when I was 19 years old, I got a cold in my legs. Only my cold won't go away. And just like your nose doesn't work really well when you have a cold, my legs haven't really worked well since. So my wheelchair helps me get places..."
Her mom stopped pulling her and let her listen, and right as I finished my blatantly inaccurate explanation of my neurological disease, the little girl put her hand on my shoulder:
"That happened to you?" (Now I nodded while her eyes got very serious.) "Well I'm really sorry to hear about that."
Then she walked away. I went to the bathroom and started crying. This little girl still makes me cry, in fact, and I don't even know her name. For whatever reason, when she spoke I felt every disdainful look I've ever received in grocery stores/parking lots/malls/restaurants/churches/pretty much everywhere I've ever tried to go, all come back at once. I remembered bouncers turning me away from bars because they assumed I was drunk, the note I found on the floor of my classroom that referred to me as a "crippled bitch", and Darryl, a kid on the track team that I'd coached, who'd imitated my walk. All at once, I felt the memories of eight years worth of shame and preemptive explanations or apologies on behalf of a disease I never asked for, all land straight on my sternum in the form of 18 cinderblocks. So I couldn't breathe evenly for a few minutes (cinderblocks are heavy) and I started to question why it is that small children are so real and honest and pure, while adults are awkward and scared and meek. I started imagining the past eight years of my life if people just asked me what was wrong, said it sucked and moved on, instead of whispering things and treating me like a three-armed circus freak that earns averted looks, blatant stares or pity. I decided the 18 cinderblocks would have felt far less heavy.
So I cried.
Jim thought I'd injured myself in the bathroom (which is, sadly, highly possible). But I don't cry when I'm hurt, or even when I'm sad. I cry when someone acknowledges that concrete blocks are heavy, and that MS (or a "cold" in my legs) does suck. I cried then because a six-year-old, with genuine concern, and innocent inquiry, validated two things: what I felt on behalf of a debilitating disease, and what I want from the people around me. Neither of which I know how to get, and both of which I think I need.
The Keys won that night, but I don't remember the score. I do know, though, that if baseball were more interesting than dryer lint, I never would have gone to the bathroom in the middle of an(other non-scoring) inning. I would have spent one more day with the cinderblocks that I try to forget about, instead of remembering, and receiving, what I need.
On this particular evening, though, I went to a game. I also, for whatever reason, went with a moderate level of enthusiasm (which had something to do with Jim). I drank an overpriced beer and watched the people around me. I tried to concentrate on the first few innings of the game and learned that the letters KKK stand for more than a white supremacist organization founded in 1865, they also represent strike-outs (I was relieved to learn this, but still confused about the absence of African Americans in Frederick, Maryland). Then I lost my focus again and had to pee.
Jim was engrossed in the game and I had my wheelchair, so I wheeled away without discussion. I got about three feet from the bathroom when I passed a girl and her mother. As the girl was approximately six years-old (and thus at eye level), I smiled - I like to convince small children that people in wheelchairs are normal and nice. In this particular instance, it must have worked; rather than gape or walk by me (her mother was literally dragging her back to their seats), she stopped, pulled her mother to a halt, and looked me straight in the eye.
"Hi." I addressed her as non-threateningly as possible so as to avoid having my wheelchair tires slashed by her mother. The girl had thick glasses and stringy blonde hair all attached to a beautiful rosy-cheeked face.
She was literally pulling against her mother at this point, but I could tell she wanted to talk.
"Umm, why do you use that, that wheelchair?" She sort of pointed at my chair and then put the majority of her left hand into her mouth.
Like I said, she was six, right - she obviously had no concept of nerves or myelin or autoimmune diseases that compromise a person's functionality, so I rejected even a cursory explanation of multiple sclerosis, and summed it up like this:
"Do you ever get colds?" (She nodded) "Well when I was 19 years old, I got a cold in my legs. Only my cold won't go away. And just like your nose doesn't work really well when you have a cold, my legs haven't really worked well since. So my wheelchair helps me get places..."
Her mom stopped pulling her and let her listen, and right as I finished my blatantly inaccurate explanation of my neurological disease, the little girl put her hand on my shoulder:
"That happened to you?" (Now I nodded while her eyes got very serious.) "Well I'm really sorry to hear about that."
Then she walked away. I went to the bathroom and started crying. This little girl still makes me cry, in fact, and I don't even know her name. For whatever reason, when she spoke I felt every disdainful look I've ever received in grocery stores/parking lots/malls/restaurants/churches/pretty much everywhere I've ever tried to go, all come back at once. I remembered bouncers turning me away from bars because they assumed I was drunk, the note I found on the floor of my classroom that referred to me as a "crippled bitch", and Darryl, a kid on the track team that I'd coached, who'd imitated my walk. All at once, I felt the memories of eight years worth of shame and preemptive explanations or apologies on behalf of a disease I never asked for, all land straight on my sternum in the form of 18 cinderblocks. So I couldn't breathe evenly for a few minutes (cinderblocks are heavy) and I started to question why it is that small children are so real and honest and pure, while adults are awkward and scared and meek. I started imagining the past eight years of my life if people just asked me what was wrong, said it sucked and moved on, instead of whispering things and treating me like a three-armed circus freak that earns averted looks, blatant stares or pity. I decided the 18 cinderblocks would have felt far less heavy.
So I cried.
Jim thought I'd injured myself in the bathroom (which is, sadly, highly possible). But I don't cry when I'm hurt, or even when I'm sad. I cry when someone acknowledges that concrete blocks are heavy, and that MS (or a "cold" in my legs) does suck. I cried then because a six-year-old, with genuine concern, and innocent inquiry, validated two things: what I felt on behalf of a debilitating disease, and what I want from the people around me. Neither of which I know how to get, and both of which I think I need.
The Keys won that night, but I don't remember the score. I do know, though, that if baseball were more interesting than dryer lint, I never would have gone to the bathroom in the middle of an(other non-scoring) inning. I would have spent one more day with the cinderblocks that I try to forget about, instead of remembering, and receiving, what I need.
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Jesusy?
Last summer I planned to go to Scotland. Sarah, my roommate from my Junior year abroad was working in Edinburgh, and compared to the 27 hour flight from Baltimore to Australia, I could travel to Britain in a mere 9. Without much thought, I booked a ticket on Orbitz, and briefly rejoiced in my impulsive, carefree attitude. I was empowered. I was an independent teacher who'd saved her money wisely, and planned to spend it in style. I would travel intercontinentally alone, with a neurological disease, and it was going to be fabulous.
But that's not exactly how things worked out. First I discovered that Sarah was still, after several months in Edinburgh, living in an un-MS-friendly hostel (she'd assured me she'd be living in a proper "flat" by the summer). Then I had a relapse. To complicate things further, somewhere in between, I'd convinced my co-teacher/favorite friend in Baltimore to travel with me. To clarify: I purchased plane tickets in March, convinced Amy to purchase plane tickets shortly thereafter, found out that the aforementioned "flat" was nonexistent in April, and had a relapse in May.
Relapses vary when it comes to MS, and certain people bounce back without sustaining permanent-types of disability. I, however, didn't. I got a sunburn that turned my skin tone from relatively normal to that of a fetal pig in formaldehyde, presumably melted some precious nerve myelin in the heat, and was suddenly rendered just a little more disabled than I was before. My symptoms were bad enough that I started using my wheelchair in the grocery store, at the gym, when I went to get my hair cut, on trips out to dinner, etc. My legs and coordination deteriorated to the point that I managed to slip in a handicapped bathroom while I was at a hotel for my brother's college graduation, and was forced to use a walker for the majority of May. The relapse was serious enough that the trip to Edinburgh no longer seemed practical. I started to envision my wheelchair wheels stuck between historic British cobblestones, and my friend Amy hauling my wheelchair up stairs while I climbed, a la Spiderwoman, to wherever our destination might be. I saw myself in bars with cute Scottish men and my walker, and concluded, thus, that I needed to cancel the trip I'd already planned. I needed to leave Amy alone with intercontinental travel plans to see my best friend, and spend the summer home, with my family, in Ithaca.
I didn't deal very well with any of these conclusions. Especially when Orbitz refused to refund my tickets, and the various hostels I'd booked throughout Scotland were ostensibly impossible to reach. $2000 poorer, and one geriatric walker later, the school year ended, Amy left for Scotland without me, and I went home to my parents'.
I planned to write a lot, but the keyboard was stiff, and my fingers were MSey and uncooperative. Instead I worked really hard on two things: not taking my anger out on God, and swimming. I begrudgingly had hand controls installed in my car (wince!), and bought "life-changing" jeans for far too much money (no, there is no correlate). Then, though, just as I reached the pinnacle of my pity party, I met Jim.
Jim had been roommates with my closest friend from high school, Meli. The two of them had lived in Seattle for three years, initially building houses for Habitat for Humanity, then living together while Meli continued with carpentry and Jim worked with incarcerated youth. At the end of their three years together, they drove from Seattle to Ithaca; Meli prepared for law school the upcoming fall at Cornell, and Jim prepared to move back to South Florida, where his family lived. When the two of them arrived in Ithaca, I was supposed to be in Scotland. Jim, according to my unwarranted expectations, was supposed to be annoying.
He wasn't.
We spent four days together, Meli, Jim and I, and when he left I felt a little different about things. I didn't think about MS as much. I signed up to swim across the lake. I started writing more. I remembered how to laugh. I thought at first it was the jeans, but after some not-so-challenging introspection, I realized it might have something to do with Jim.
After a decidedly ineloquent email where I attempted to express these sentiments to Jim, we slowly started talking. Then I visited him in Florida where he sat with me on the ground after I'd tripped, and asked me what it felt like to walk. A question that no one had ever asked me before...
A year later I'm still not in Edinburgh. Amy had fun without me and Sarah moved back to Australia. I still use a wheelchair to grocery shop, and I've gotten much, much better at balancing the bags on my lap (a skill I'd never hoped to acquire). I swam across the lake and wrote a book. I found a job teaching that I actually enjoy, and, more importantly I fell in love.
Jim lives in Baltimore now. He drives me absolutely crazy and just dropped a hamburger on my new couch. His feet smell and he's the most self-righteously stubborn person I've ever met. He's passive aggressive and independent, yet undoubtedly the most unconditionally loving and perceptive person I've ever met. No one has ever had this much capacity to break my heart, and the whole thing makes me want to bury myself in a bag of mulch - I'm vulnerable and scared and can so clearly remember the days when just my disease and myself governed my mood... But Jim, and the circumstances that brought him into my life, are what I would characterize as Jesusy.
So far.
So I guess I'm glad, in retrospect, that in spite of a new walker and a $2000 loss, I didn't take my anger out on God. I'll take a grease-stained couch over a summer in Edinburgh any day.
But that's not exactly how things worked out. First I discovered that Sarah was still, after several months in Edinburgh, living in an un-MS-friendly hostel (she'd assured me she'd be living in a proper "flat" by the summer). Then I had a relapse. To complicate things further, somewhere in between, I'd convinced my co-teacher/favorite friend in Baltimore to travel with me. To clarify: I purchased plane tickets in March, convinced Amy to purchase plane tickets shortly thereafter, found out that the aforementioned "flat" was nonexistent in April, and had a relapse in May.
Relapses vary when it comes to MS, and certain people bounce back without sustaining permanent-types of disability. I, however, didn't. I got a sunburn that turned my skin tone from relatively normal to that of a fetal pig in formaldehyde, presumably melted some precious nerve myelin in the heat, and was suddenly rendered just a little more disabled than I was before. My symptoms were bad enough that I started using my wheelchair in the grocery store, at the gym, when I went to get my hair cut, on trips out to dinner, etc. My legs and coordination deteriorated to the point that I managed to slip in a handicapped bathroom while I was at a hotel for my brother's college graduation, and was forced to use a walker for the majority of May. The relapse was serious enough that the trip to Edinburgh no longer seemed practical. I started to envision my wheelchair wheels stuck between historic British cobblestones, and my friend Amy hauling my wheelchair up stairs while I climbed, a la Spiderwoman, to wherever our destination might be. I saw myself in bars with cute Scottish men and my walker, and concluded, thus, that I needed to cancel the trip I'd already planned. I needed to leave Amy alone with intercontinental travel plans to see my best friend, and spend the summer home, with my family, in Ithaca.
I didn't deal very well with any of these conclusions. Especially when Orbitz refused to refund my tickets, and the various hostels I'd booked throughout Scotland were ostensibly impossible to reach. $2000 poorer, and one geriatric walker later, the school year ended, Amy left for Scotland without me, and I went home to my parents'.
I planned to write a lot, but the keyboard was stiff, and my fingers were MSey and uncooperative. Instead I worked really hard on two things: not taking my anger out on God, and swimming. I begrudgingly had hand controls installed in my car (wince!), and bought "life-changing" jeans for far too much money (no, there is no correlate). Then, though, just as I reached the pinnacle of my pity party, I met Jim.
Jim had been roommates with my closest friend from high school, Meli. The two of them had lived in Seattle for three years, initially building houses for Habitat for Humanity, then living together while Meli continued with carpentry and Jim worked with incarcerated youth. At the end of their three years together, they drove from Seattle to Ithaca; Meli prepared for law school the upcoming fall at Cornell, and Jim prepared to move back to South Florida, where his family lived. When the two of them arrived in Ithaca, I was supposed to be in Scotland. Jim, according to my unwarranted expectations, was supposed to be annoying.
He wasn't.
We spent four days together, Meli, Jim and I, and when he left I felt a little different about things. I didn't think about MS as much. I signed up to swim across the lake. I started writing more. I remembered how to laugh. I thought at first it was the jeans, but after some not-so-challenging introspection, I realized it might have something to do with Jim.
After a decidedly ineloquent email where I attempted to express these sentiments to Jim, we slowly started talking. Then I visited him in Florida where he sat with me on the ground after I'd tripped, and asked me what it felt like to walk. A question that no one had ever asked me before...
A year later I'm still not in Edinburgh. Amy had fun without me and Sarah moved back to Australia. I still use a wheelchair to grocery shop, and I've gotten much, much better at balancing the bags on my lap (a skill I'd never hoped to acquire). I swam across the lake and wrote a book. I found a job teaching that I actually enjoy, and, more importantly I fell in love.
Jim lives in Baltimore now. He drives me absolutely crazy and just dropped a hamburger on my new couch. His feet smell and he's the most self-righteously stubborn person I've ever met. He's passive aggressive and independent, yet undoubtedly the most unconditionally loving and perceptive person I've ever met. No one has ever had this much capacity to break my heart, and the whole thing makes me want to bury myself in a bag of mulch - I'm vulnerable and scared and can so clearly remember the days when just my disease and myself governed my mood... But Jim, and the circumstances that brought him into my life, are what I would characterize as Jesusy.
So far.
So I guess I'm glad, in retrospect, that in spite of a new walker and a $2000 loss, I didn't take my anger out on God. I'll take a grease-stained couch over a summer in Edinburgh any day.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Scars
How scary is it to love someone? To reach the realization that another person has the unique ability to make you feel as close to nirvana as is humanly possible, yet simultaneously can scramble up your insides as effectively as your roommate shakes the boggle letters around the game's plastic case.
In loving someone, and allowing myself the potential to be hurt, I am positive that God or the universe is trying to teach me something. It is in this certainty, that I find myself fighting between the things I know and the things I want to believe. I know I am more scared of any type of emotional pain that has the potential to take place than I am of getting my blood drawn at the hospital. I think I'm more scared, in fact, of an unguarded heart than I am of my neurological disease. I know that I have a combative amount of self-respect, and it isn't conducive to the word "surrender". I know that I am threatened and challenged and much, much weaker than I'm supposed to be, and that I should probably run (or wheel) in a foreign direction as quickly as possible with armor and weapons, and, if necessary, enter a convent on the way.
This is where it gets tricky, though, because the things I know and the things I believe weigh equally on my faith-filled heart, and this is what I believe: that God won't let my inside bits get too scrambled without His assistance; that love is just a tiny bit esoteric and doesn't always yield self-respect, and this loss, sometimes is okay (because we're not supposed to have that much pride anyway). I believe that scars accumulate sometimes, and that while they're always painful at inception, they don't always compromise the beauty of a person, a heart, or even a relationship. I believe that wheeling or running away is just a little counter-productive, and maybe just a little weaker than even I purport to be.
I believe I am stuck.
In loving someone, and allowing myself the potential to be hurt, I am positive that God or the universe is trying to teach me something. It is in this certainty, that I find myself fighting between the things I know and the things I want to believe. I know I am more scared of any type of emotional pain that has the potential to take place than I am of getting my blood drawn at the hospital. I think I'm more scared, in fact, of an unguarded heart than I am of my neurological disease. I know that I have a combative amount of self-respect, and it isn't conducive to the word "surrender". I know that I am threatened and challenged and much, much weaker than I'm supposed to be, and that I should probably run (or wheel) in a foreign direction as quickly as possible with armor and weapons, and, if necessary, enter a convent on the way.
This is where it gets tricky, though, because the things I know and the things I believe weigh equally on my faith-filled heart, and this is what I believe: that God won't let my inside bits get too scrambled without His assistance; that love is just a tiny bit esoteric and doesn't always yield self-respect, and this loss, sometimes is okay (because we're not supposed to have that much pride anyway). I believe that scars accumulate sometimes, and that while they're always painful at inception, they don't always compromise the beauty of a person, a heart, or even a relationship. I believe that wheeling or running away is just a little counter-productive, and maybe just a little weaker than even I purport to be.
I believe I am stuck.
Monday, December 27, 2004
Power Struggles
I took two sick days within one week. One had nothing to do with illness, the other one did. Regardless of the reason, I spent more time without 11-13 year-olds within a work week than I’d become sadly accustomed to. Sometimes all you need is a little space from a situation to recognize its beauty – distance makes the heart grow fonder? College cafeterias make your mom’s meatloaf taste exceptional. Regardless, I was hopeful that a day in bed with a fever would catalyze some sort of epiphany concerning my job: specifically that I’d return to work refreshed, rejuvenated and ready to teach.
The next morning I slept through my alarm. Skip breakfast? Forgo making lunch? Let my chlorine damaged hair dry on its own? Nah – I resolved to drive fast. But then the ditto machine didn’t work (teachers were not allowed to use a modern-day copy machine), the sub hadn’t erased the boards and the kids were early. I convinced myself, with a marginal amount of strain, though, to stay calm, I was an invincible, super-human teacher for America. I would recover from my morning’s frustrations, and reach all of my students in an effort to maintain the program’s creed: “One day all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” But then, in between second and third period, while there was momentary silence, I briefly reflected on the searing absence of any fever-induced career-related epiphany, and tugged at the end of my dried-out hair – yes, I was awake. This wasn’t a nightmare.
The eighth grade class entered my room resembling a herd of undomesticated, temperamental beasts. Kenny, bigger than his peers, wearing baggy jeans and untied boots, came in last and destroyed the small amount of hope I’d had in his absence. Within the first ten minutes of class, rather than give my students the “excellent education” I was there to provide; rather than observe my twenty-seven eighth graders diligently working on the “drill”, I listened to Kenny offend approximately 90% of the glass. He told Lauren to eat another donut, threw Argent’s hat across the room, made fun of Amanda’s thong, and told me – the teacher – that my head resembled a mop. I contemplated, for a moment, which battle to pick, and opted for the least offensive:
“Kenny, do your drill. Take your hat off – school policy.”
Kenny responded immediately, “Don’t tell me what to do, woman. You look like a pilgrim with those shoes on.”
This, naturally, made me think about my shoes. What type of shoes did pilgrims wear, anyway? One of the 896 reasons why I shouldn’t teach – aside from being apparently paranoid about my shoes - was my inability to avoid power struggles with adolescents. I needed to take solace in the victory of the grade book – Kenny would, inevitably, fail my class and should – based on his academic prowess, fail the entire eighth grade. Even this, however, didn’t appease my need for decisive victory,
“I will tell you what to do, Kenny, because six months into the school year you still can’t figure it out on your own. And next time I want your opinion on my outfit I’ll give it to you.” My eyes bore into Kenny’s and I tried to sound very mean and very threatening. Really, though, the retort sucked; I merely ensured that this issue (starting with my pilgrim shoes and my mop-like hair) would not be dropped. Twenty-seven anxious pairs of eyes turned to Kenny, anxious to see where the confrontation would lead. I attempted to ignore him, to go over the drill, and to redirect everyone’s attention to the board and my sure-to-be scintillating lesson.
Kenny, surprisingly, wouldn’t let it go. I decided to send him to the office. I calmly asked him to pack up his things (I failed to notice that he was still wearing his backpack), and scoured the area for referrals (I was out of them). I found an index card, wrote a hasty note to the disciplinarian documenting Kenny’s lack of respect, and enjoyed a few seconds of silence while the other students watched me furiously write. Just as I finished my scathing index card, I looked up. Kenny was looking at me with a cold, calculating stare. He cleared his throat to ensure that everyone’s attention was directed to him and said:
“Are you done with that yet? Why don’t you walk it over here?”
I rolled my stinging eyes nonchalantly and said, “Because, Kenny, I don’t want to waste my energy on you.”
I knew though – just as the rest of the class did and just as Kenny did – that he had won.
The next morning I slept through my alarm. Skip breakfast? Forgo making lunch? Let my chlorine damaged hair dry on its own? Nah – I resolved to drive fast. But then the ditto machine didn’t work (teachers were not allowed to use a modern-day copy machine), the sub hadn’t erased the boards and the kids were early. I convinced myself, with a marginal amount of strain, though, to stay calm, I was an invincible, super-human teacher for America. I would recover from my morning’s frustrations, and reach all of my students in an effort to maintain the program’s creed: “One day all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” But then, in between second and third period, while there was momentary silence, I briefly reflected on the searing absence of any fever-induced career-related epiphany, and tugged at the end of my dried-out hair – yes, I was awake. This wasn’t a nightmare.
The eighth grade class entered my room resembling a herd of undomesticated, temperamental beasts. Kenny, bigger than his peers, wearing baggy jeans and untied boots, came in last and destroyed the small amount of hope I’d had in his absence. Within the first ten minutes of class, rather than give my students the “excellent education” I was there to provide; rather than observe my twenty-seven eighth graders diligently working on the “drill”, I listened to Kenny offend approximately 90% of the glass. He told Lauren to eat another donut, threw Argent’s hat across the room, made fun of Amanda’s thong, and told me – the teacher – that my head resembled a mop. I contemplated, for a moment, which battle to pick, and opted for the least offensive:
“Kenny, do your drill. Take your hat off – school policy.”
Kenny responded immediately, “Don’t tell me what to do, woman. You look like a pilgrim with those shoes on.”
This, naturally, made me think about my shoes. What type of shoes did pilgrims wear, anyway? One of the 896 reasons why I shouldn’t teach – aside from being apparently paranoid about my shoes - was my inability to avoid power struggles with adolescents. I needed to take solace in the victory of the grade book – Kenny would, inevitably, fail my class and should – based on his academic prowess, fail the entire eighth grade. Even this, however, didn’t appease my need for decisive victory,
“I will tell you what to do, Kenny, because six months into the school year you still can’t figure it out on your own. And next time I want your opinion on my outfit I’ll give it to you.” My eyes bore into Kenny’s and I tried to sound very mean and very threatening. Really, though, the retort sucked; I merely ensured that this issue (starting with my pilgrim shoes and my mop-like hair) would not be dropped. Twenty-seven anxious pairs of eyes turned to Kenny, anxious to see where the confrontation would lead. I attempted to ignore him, to go over the drill, and to redirect everyone’s attention to the board and my sure-to-be scintillating lesson.
Kenny, surprisingly, wouldn’t let it go. I decided to send him to the office. I calmly asked him to pack up his things (I failed to notice that he was still wearing his backpack), and scoured the area for referrals (I was out of them). I found an index card, wrote a hasty note to the disciplinarian documenting Kenny’s lack of respect, and enjoyed a few seconds of silence while the other students watched me furiously write. Just as I finished my scathing index card, I looked up. Kenny was looking at me with a cold, calculating stare. He cleared his throat to ensure that everyone’s attention was directed to him and said:
“Are you done with that yet? Why don’t you walk it over here?”
I rolled my stinging eyes nonchalantly and said, “Because, Kenny, I don’t want to waste my energy on you.”
I knew though – just as the rest of the class did and just as Kenny did – that he had won.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Peggy
My mom told me once that when I deny people the opportunity to help me, I deny them the chance to be a blessing. I found her words absurd – absurd and inconceivable. I relied on people far too often. I ask my roommates to clean the floors and carry my laundry from the drier to my room, I solicit strangers outside of shoe stores to walk me to my car or women in parking lots to cover me with umbrellas while I assemble my wheelchair in the rain. I’ve always imagined that if I find myself annoying, others would feel the same way.
It was late spring of my third year at Morrell Park Elementary/Middle School, and my students were convinced it was already summer. There were four days of school remaining (not that I was counting), and rather than spend the last hour of the school day listening to my own voice while thirty sixth graders attempted to secretly pass notes and play cards under their desks, I made an impromptu decision to save my own sanity: I took my kids outside.
For the last hour of the school day, I sat on the playground in a chair that one of my students had stolen from the second grade classroom and watched a few of my boys violently hurl a four square ball back and forth. My girls were clustered around my feet talking while other students ran mindlessly in circles. I participated in conversation with the girls while silently praying that none of my kids would climb the chain link fence, inflict pain upon themselves or others, or disturb the high stakes learning that was surely taking place within the nearby portable classrooms. Meanwhile, I got hot.
Since I was sitting, my body temperature didn’t matter much. I didn’t plan on going anywhere until 2:30. That left me 45 minutes to either spontaneously cool down or come up with an ingenious way to get myself from the playground, up the stairs and back to my classroom in time for dismissal. I pushed these thoughts to the back of my head and listened to Peggy and Kari discuss their summer plans. I watched Andrew bounce the four square ball directly into Michael’s face, and I glanced in the general direction of Jessica as she paced back and forth along the edge of the blacktop engrossed in conversation with what appeared to be a twig. All the while, my nerves were getting hotter and hotter and I felt my face flush from the heat. At one point I actually felt my entire nervous system come to a halt on account of the heat. By the time 2:30 rolled around I couldn’t get out of the chair. I felt like three mysterious hippos had descended upon my shoulders.
I didn’t have a whistle to use to get my classes’ attention (and, even if I had, they likely would have ignored it), so I yelled. Approximately 27 of my thirty students eventually gathered around me, and I told them my legs weren’t working on account of heat-induced MS issues and that they’d have to dismiss themselves (this was a risky request).
“Okay guys, you are going to get to the classroom much faster than I am. You need to get your stuff, put up your chairs, straighten the desks and proceed slowly and carefully to the busses. If I find my room in disarray, or hear about you knocking any small children over en route to your busses, we will never, ever go outside again.”
With that they happily scampered up the stairs, to my classroom and, eventually, home. Since I didn’t find anyone subsequently flattened in the hallway, and my room was relatively organized when I finally arrived, I was impressed. For once my homeroom listened to my directions.
Peggy, though, didn’t scramble up the stairs. She and Kari waited for me.
“What are you gonna do, Miss Hooks?” Peggy asked the obvious question just as I was strategizing how to properly crawl up the stairs without ripping my stockings.
I tried to pretend I was someone else – someone without pride issues; someone who had no problem physically relying on twelve-year olds. “Do you two feel like helping me?”
The girls nodded in unison and Peggy answered quickly, “Yeah, what do you want us to do?”
Collectively we decided that Kari would return the chair to the second grade classroom, and that Peggy would help me get up the stairs. She offered me her shoulder while I grasped the chain link fence that led to the building and the two of us began a long trek up the stairs. I mumbled a few words about MS and the heat, and distinctly remember communicating how sorry I was that she needed to worry about how her teacher would get back into the building.
I put more of my weight on Peggy’s left shoulder than any child should have to support, and she literally dragged me – step by school lunch infested step – up the stairs and towards my surprisingly organized and empty classroom. I probably apologized on each step because that’s what I do. There are moments when my guilt is as oppressive as the hippos that had perched on my shoulders that afternoon.
“I’m so sorry about this, kiddo. I guess we can’t go outside when it’s this hot. You shouldn’t have to worry about me…”
Peggy stopped hauling me up the stairs and looked at me very sternly. She was suddenly as serious as I try to look when I’m threatening someone with detention and she with equal gravity,
“I feel good when I can help you, Miss Hooks. I want to help you. I think we all do.”
I didn’t say anything. I just kept holding onto her, and moving my feet, slowly, up the stairs. Safely back in my classroom, Peggy went home and I sat at my desk until I had the energy to erase and wash my boards. All the while, Peggy’s words repeated themselves in my head: I want to help. I feel good when I can help you. I want to help...
So I suppose, when it comes to sixth graders, my mom was right.
It was late spring of my third year at Morrell Park Elementary/Middle School, and my students were convinced it was already summer. There were four days of school remaining (not that I was counting), and rather than spend the last hour of the school day listening to my own voice while thirty sixth graders attempted to secretly pass notes and play cards under their desks, I made an impromptu decision to save my own sanity: I took my kids outside.
For the last hour of the school day, I sat on the playground in a chair that one of my students had stolen from the second grade classroom and watched a few of my boys violently hurl a four square ball back and forth. My girls were clustered around my feet talking while other students ran mindlessly in circles. I participated in conversation with the girls while silently praying that none of my kids would climb the chain link fence, inflict pain upon themselves or others, or disturb the high stakes learning that was surely taking place within the nearby portable classrooms. Meanwhile, I got hot.
Since I was sitting, my body temperature didn’t matter much. I didn’t plan on going anywhere until 2:30. That left me 45 minutes to either spontaneously cool down or come up with an ingenious way to get myself from the playground, up the stairs and back to my classroom in time for dismissal. I pushed these thoughts to the back of my head and listened to Peggy and Kari discuss their summer plans. I watched Andrew bounce the four square ball directly into Michael’s face, and I glanced in the general direction of Jessica as she paced back and forth along the edge of the blacktop engrossed in conversation with what appeared to be a twig. All the while, my nerves were getting hotter and hotter and I felt my face flush from the heat. At one point I actually felt my entire nervous system come to a halt on account of the heat. By the time 2:30 rolled around I couldn’t get out of the chair. I felt like three mysterious hippos had descended upon my shoulders.
I didn’t have a whistle to use to get my classes’ attention (and, even if I had, they likely would have ignored it), so I yelled. Approximately 27 of my thirty students eventually gathered around me, and I told them my legs weren’t working on account of heat-induced MS issues and that they’d have to dismiss themselves (this was a risky request).
“Okay guys, you are going to get to the classroom much faster than I am. You need to get your stuff, put up your chairs, straighten the desks and proceed slowly and carefully to the busses. If I find my room in disarray, or hear about you knocking any small children over en route to your busses, we will never, ever go outside again.”
With that they happily scampered up the stairs, to my classroom and, eventually, home. Since I didn’t find anyone subsequently flattened in the hallway, and my room was relatively organized when I finally arrived, I was impressed. For once my homeroom listened to my directions.
Peggy, though, didn’t scramble up the stairs. She and Kari waited for me.
“What are you gonna do, Miss Hooks?” Peggy asked the obvious question just as I was strategizing how to properly crawl up the stairs without ripping my stockings.
I tried to pretend I was someone else – someone without pride issues; someone who had no problem physically relying on twelve-year olds. “Do you two feel like helping me?”
The girls nodded in unison and Peggy answered quickly, “Yeah, what do you want us to do?”
Collectively we decided that Kari would return the chair to the second grade classroom, and that Peggy would help me get up the stairs. She offered me her shoulder while I grasped the chain link fence that led to the building and the two of us began a long trek up the stairs. I mumbled a few words about MS and the heat, and distinctly remember communicating how sorry I was that she needed to worry about how her teacher would get back into the building.
I put more of my weight on Peggy’s left shoulder than any child should have to support, and she literally dragged me – step by school lunch infested step – up the stairs and towards my surprisingly organized and empty classroom. I probably apologized on each step because that’s what I do. There are moments when my guilt is as oppressive as the hippos that had perched on my shoulders that afternoon.
“I’m so sorry about this, kiddo. I guess we can’t go outside when it’s this hot. You shouldn’t have to worry about me…”
Peggy stopped hauling me up the stairs and looked at me very sternly. She was suddenly as serious as I try to look when I’m threatening someone with detention and she with equal gravity,
“I feel good when I can help you, Miss Hooks. I want to help you. I think we all do.”
I didn’t say anything. I just kept holding onto her, and moving my feet, slowly, up the stairs. Safely back in my classroom, Peggy went home and I sat at my desk until I had the energy to erase and wash my boards. All the while, Peggy’s words repeated themselves in my head: I want to help. I feel good when I can help you. I want to help...
So I suppose, when it comes to sixth graders, my mom was right.
Friday, November 19, 2004
Learning to Teach
In Houston, Texas, the summer after I graduated from Colgate, I learned how to “teach.” I endured five-weeks of Teach for America boot camp and, for the lack of sleep, dining hall food, foot-long roaches, puke yellow-colored, urine smelling Moody Towers dorm carpet, 98% humidity, housing dramas, pedagogical guidebook sessions and Attucks summer school-related chaos, it was an enriching experience. Somehow I left Houston, Texas, with my nerves still moderately functional and the realization that my body works when other people need it to. It held up that summer. My autoimmune disease put up with stress, repeated nights of far too little sleep, and stifling heat and led me to the conclusion that Teaching for America was the right decision. (Even though I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.)
After a week’s insufficient preparation, three other idealistic college graduates and I were turned loose in a classroom of Houston Public School middle schoolers. I taught eighth grade social studies with another prospective teacher for America named John, and two other aspiring teachers taught Language Arts. Our students had failed their eighth grade year, and their promotion to high school was contingent upon passing summer school, and the TAAS. (Texas’ standardized test that gauged whether or not these students were ready for the next grade.)
From 12:00 to 1:00 the four of us taught small group literacy enrichment blocks. This was my favorite part of the day – I didn’t have to worry about engaging a classroom of 20 students with varying needs and interests, I just focused on reading and writing skills with a small group of four students. Two of the students in my group were the biggest trouble-makers in the class – Roderick and Carl the III. Carl, shorter, and rounder than Roderick, enjoyed completely socially unacceptable behaviors – he called people “gay” and shoved desks at girls. He gave my collaborative group a reason to drink profusely every Friday night. Behavior set aside, though, his warm, brown eyes matched his skin, flashed about inattentively, and yearned – silently - for a good night’s sleep. The white part of his eyes wasn’t completely white rather glossy and speckled with broken blood vessels; his pupils were never still. Carl III was prone to fits of rage at inane catalysts, was fourteen years old and stuck in Attucks Middle School, and knew, on a very personal level, of sadness. Roderick was different. He was wiry and tall, with equally soft eyes. He constantly reminded me that physical presence doesn’t constitute attendance. He knew the intricacies of the classroom ceiling better than the alphabet. Occasionally he started dancing in his seat, leave class on his own volition or stare for minutes on end at objects that didn’t move. In my opinion, Roderick and Carl III were the most endearing students in the class.
During our first literacy session, I gave the two of them a newspaper and let them choose an article to read. Carl refused on account of his “sore eyes.” Roderick just couldn’t read. He stumbled over words like “angry”, and couldn’t make sense of a whole sentence after he finally decoded the words. He never gave up, though. The size of our group mitigated his shame; he persisted and read on and never fully understood the content of the paragraphs he struggled through. I still have no idea how Roderick made it to the eighth grade, but I could tell that he genuinely wanted to learn. Over the next four weeks, Roderick’s literacy became my mission, and Carl III became my friend.
I gave up with the newspaper, bought The House on Mango Street, and worked on basic literacy strategies – strategies that I either invented on my own or learned about in afternoon classes. I worked to ingrain two things into Roderick’s amazingly receptive brain – 1. Slow down and re-read anything you don’t remember, and 2. Believe in yourself – these were the only two things I knew at that point. Two weeks later, after ten hours of reading and re-reading, and writing and re-writing, Roderick chose a story out of our book to read out loud. He asked me what I thought it was about, and I told him, briefly, my thoughts. With dead honesty, he looked at me and said,
“No, Miss Hooks, you didn’t get it.”
Roderick decided, for my sake, to re-read the story, and to stop along the way to point out my misinterpretation. He was entirely right – I had missed the point, solely because I was so distracted by his reading ability to actually listen. Roderick didn’t stumble over one syllable. When I commented on his sudden emergence into literary prowess, even Carl III agreed:
“When’d you learn to read, man?”
Roderick just shrugged, mentioned that he wanted to become a famous author, and – two weeks later – passed the standardized test (and my social studies class) for the first time in his middle school career.
Carl the III was different. Carl III, and his identical twin, Carl IV, were the only two students I organized a parent-principal conference with. My three co-“teachers” and I crowded into the summer school director’s cramped office, determined to communicate the severity of Carl III’s impulsive anger, and Carl IV’s tendency to swear at girls, to their tired mother. I knew though – that while I reluctantly concurred with each testament to their inappropriate behaviors – I wanted the identical twins around. Maybe I was intrigued by the fact that they were both on a first name basis with the Attuck’s school police officer, maybe I liked them because they were two hardened 14 year olds with piercingly soft, brown eyes. The boys were simultaneously too resilient to turn their anger inward, and too young to channel it constructively into something else. Regardless, as I listened to my collaborative members lament their occasionally atrocious behaviors, I felt the space around my heart tighten.
Carl III was not kicked out of summer school. He also – despite the fact that he read a lot more fluently than Roderick – did not pass the standardized test at the end of the summer. In his failure, though, he proved that a multiple-choice test does not accurately gauge someone’s brilliance. Carl III described diamonds as “reflecting sunshine like a new car’s bumper” and my own eyes as “deeper than the ocean.” We were reading one afternoon, and he asked me if there was a cure for multiple sclerosis. I told him there wasn’t. He glared at me, simultaneously angry and confused:
“You mean the doctors don’t know how to fix it?”
I was amused at his irritation and responded, “Nope. Not yet.” I smiled convincingly, as if to say, it’s fine, Carl, I don’t mind grabbing onto desks to preclude myself from falling over.
Carl was quiet for a second. Roderick’s eyes just darted back and forth between the two of us. Suddenly, Carl smacked the desk resoundingly. His voice elevated to a level that caused other literacy groups to stop their readings and stare:
“Don’t say that Miss Hooks. Don’t say there’s no cure…”
Still moderately entertained, I put my right hand on top of his chubby fingers, “Carl, there isn’t a cure, though. MS is just something I’ll deal with for a while – just like you’re dealing with summer school and people you don’t like that you’re stuck in class with.”
Carl jerked his hand out from beneath mine. His voice got even louder: “There IS a cure for MS, Miss Hooks! There IS! It’s the Lord Jesus, Miss Hooks. The Lord Jesus will cure you, but you gotta believe. You’ve really gotta believe. I know it!”
My first inclination was to laugh. I looked at his face, focused on the slight tremble in his voice, and suddenly took him very seriously:
“Carl, I pray you’re right. I really do.”
Carl III, whom my co-“teachers” dubbed an “angry little asshole”, was one of the brightest, most faith-filled, and most compassionate people I’d ever met. When he was upset in the lunchroom a few days later, I sat down with him and listened while he spun soggy spaghetti noodles around his spork.
“No one relates to me, Miss Hooks.”
Was I surprised that a 14 year-old eighth grader who passionately asserted that his teacher could be cured by Jesus didn’t have close friends at his lunch table? Not really. Did his insatiable loneliness make it harder for me to breathe? Absolutely.
I swallowed another breath of thin, school lunch-scented air, “It’s tough to find, Carl. It’s really tough to find someone to relate to. It’s especially hard when you’re young.”
He pushed his plastic tray across the table and left his spork intertwined with another pile of tasteless noodles.
“I relate to you, though.”
And that mattered more than anything I’d heard in a long, long time.
After a week’s insufficient preparation, three other idealistic college graduates and I were turned loose in a classroom of Houston Public School middle schoolers. I taught eighth grade social studies with another prospective teacher for America named John, and two other aspiring teachers taught Language Arts. Our students had failed their eighth grade year, and their promotion to high school was contingent upon passing summer school, and the TAAS. (Texas’ standardized test that gauged whether or not these students were ready for the next grade.)
From 12:00 to 1:00 the four of us taught small group literacy enrichment blocks. This was my favorite part of the day – I didn’t have to worry about engaging a classroom of 20 students with varying needs and interests, I just focused on reading and writing skills with a small group of four students. Two of the students in my group were the biggest trouble-makers in the class – Roderick and Carl the III. Carl, shorter, and rounder than Roderick, enjoyed completely socially unacceptable behaviors – he called people “gay” and shoved desks at girls. He gave my collaborative group a reason to drink profusely every Friday night. Behavior set aside, though, his warm, brown eyes matched his skin, flashed about inattentively, and yearned – silently - for a good night’s sleep. The white part of his eyes wasn’t completely white rather glossy and speckled with broken blood vessels; his pupils were never still. Carl III was prone to fits of rage at inane catalysts, was fourteen years old and stuck in Attucks Middle School, and knew, on a very personal level, of sadness. Roderick was different. He was wiry and tall, with equally soft eyes. He constantly reminded me that physical presence doesn’t constitute attendance. He knew the intricacies of the classroom ceiling better than the alphabet. Occasionally he started dancing in his seat, leave class on his own volition or stare for minutes on end at objects that didn’t move. In my opinion, Roderick and Carl III were the most endearing students in the class.
During our first literacy session, I gave the two of them a newspaper and let them choose an article to read. Carl refused on account of his “sore eyes.” Roderick just couldn’t read. He stumbled over words like “angry”, and couldn’t make sense of a whole sentence after he finally decoded the words. He never gave up, though. The size of our group mitigated his shame; he persisted and read on and never fully understood the content of the paragraphs he struggled through. I still have no idea how Roderick made it to the eighth grade, but I could tell that he genuinely wanted to learn. Over the next four weeks, Roderick’s literacy became my mission, and Carl III became my friend.
I gave up with the newspaper, bought The House on Mango Street, and worked on basic literacy strategies – strategies that I either invented on my own or learned about in afternoon classes. I worked to ingrain two things into Roderick’s amazingly receptive brain – 1. Slow down and re-read anything you don’t remember, and 2. Believe in yourself – these were the only two things I knew at that point. Two weeks later, after ten hours of reading and re-reading, and writing and re-writing, Roderick chose a story out of our book to read out loud. He asked me what I thought it was about, and I told him, briefly, my thoughts. With dead honesty, he looked at me and said,
“No, Miss Hooks, you didn’t get it.”
Roderick decided, for my sake, to re-read the story, and to stop along the way to point out my misinterpretation. He was entirely right – I had missed the point, solely because I was so distracted by his reading ability to actually listen. Roderick didn’t stumble over one syllable. When I commented on his sudden emergence into literary prowess, even Carl III agreed:
“When’d you learn to read, man?”
Roderick just shrugged, mentioned that he wanted to become a famous author, and – two weeks later – passed the standardized test (and my social studies class) for the first time in his middle school career.
Carl the III was different. Carl III, and his identical twin, Carl IV, were the only two students I organized a parent-principal conference with. My three co-“teachers” and I crowded into the summer school director’s cramped office, determined to communicate the severity of Carl III’s impulsive anger, and Carl IV’s tendency to swear at girls, to their tired mother. I knew though – that while I reluctantly concurred with each testament to their inappropriate behaviors – I wanted the identical twins around. Maybe I was intrigued by the fact that they were both on a first name basis with the Attuck’s school police officer, maybe I liked them because they were two hardened 14 year olds with piercingly soft, brown eyes. The boys were simultaneously too resilient to turn their anger inward, and too young to channel it constructively into something else. Regardless, as I listened to my collaborative members lament their occasionally atrocious behaviors, I felt the space around my heart tighten.
Carl III was not kicked out of summer school. He also – despite the fact that he read a lot more fluently than Roderick – did not pass the standardized test at the end of the summer. In his failure, though, he proved that a multiple-choice test does not accurately gauge someone’s brilliance. Carl III described diamonds as “reflecting sunshine like a new car’s bumper” and my own eyes as “deeper than the ocean.” We were reading one afternoon, and he asked me if there was a cure for multiple sclerosis. I told him there wasn’t. He glared at me, simultaneously angry and confused:
“You mean the doctors don’t know how to fix it?”
I was amused at his irritation and responded, “Nope. Not yet.” I smiled convincingly, as if to say, it’s fine, Carl, I don’t mind grabbing onto desks to preclude myself from falling over.
Carl was quiet for a second. Roderick’s eyes just darted back and forth between the two of us. Suddenly, Carl smacked the desk resoundingly. His voice elevated to a level that caused other literacy groups to stop their readings and stare:
“Don’t say that Miss Hooks. Don’t say there’s no cure…”
Still moderately entertained, I put my right hand on top of his chubby fingers, “Carl, there isn’t a cure, though. MS is just something I’ll deal with for a while – just like you’re dealing with summer school and people you don’t like that you’re stuck in class with.”
Carl jerked his hand out from beneath mine. His voice got even louder: “There IS a cure for MS, Miss Hooks! There IS! It’s the Lord Jesus, Miss Hooks. The Lord Jesus will cure you, but you gotta believe. You’ve really gotta believe. I know it!”
My first inclination was to laugh. I looked at his face, focused on the slight tremble in his voice, and suddenly took him very seriously:
“Carl, I pray you’re right. I really do.”
Carl III, whom my co-“teachers” dubbed an “angry little asshole”, was one of the brightest, most faith-filled, and most compassionate people I’d ever met. When he was upset in the lunchroom a few days later, I sat down with him and listened while he spun soggy spaghetti noodles around his spork.
“No one relates to me, Miss Hooks.”
Was I surprised that a 14 year-old eighth grader who passionately asserted that his teacher could be cured by Jesus didn’t have close friends at his lunch table? Not really. Did his insatiable loneliness make it harder for me to breathe? Absolutely.
I swallowed another breath of thin, school lunch-scented air, “It’s tough to find, Carl. It’s really tough to find someone to relate to. It’s especially hard when you’re young.”
He pushed his plastic tray across the table and left his spork intertwined with another pile of tasteless noodles.
“I relate to you, though.”
And that mattered more than anything I’d heard in a long, long time.
Thursday, November 11, 2004
The Art Museum
Make your problems the smallest part of who you are.
- Jack Gantos
- Jack Gantos
My second year teaching I decided that the only thing potentially scarier than a day in the confines of the school building with my students was a day outside of my classroom. Despite the fact that my second year was, in retrospect, my best, I continued to avoid field trips as strategically as the earthworms I'd carefully step around in the rain. I masked worm-related paranoia beneath worm-related concern, just as I avoided potentially harrowing field trips with the selfless phrase, “No, I insist, you chaperone, the trip sounds like so much fun!” Secretly though, I knew that if my classroom management was tenuous within the confines of my classroom, it would be disasterous if my thirty sixth graders were suddenly (shudder) free. I avoided the Science Center excursion with ease – there were extra chaperones and my principal needed a warm body in a second grade classroom. The trip to Towson University was under control without me, and in all other situations I feigned valiance and offered to teach the extra sixth graders (or in some cases, even the class of second graders). I preferred a classroom filled with nose picking, illiterate seven year-olds to a day on a yellow school bus with the potential for sixth grade chaos.
When I least expected it though, it happened. The art teacher organized a trip to the Walters Art Gallery, and Brenda Payne, my sixth grade team teacher, was sick. The art teacher, who used approximately no foresight in planning the excursion, accosted me while I was diligently making my morning copies and singing Jack Johnson just loudly enough to irritate my principal.
She appeared next to me right before I hit the refrain: “Miss Hooks, I need another chaperone for our trip today. Mrs. Payne isn’t feeling well, and we need at least three adults.”
My response: “Hmm… who’s the third adult?”
“I don’t know. Sonny said his mom might come.”
Thought – isn’t this something that one should know before the day of the trip? I tried not to wince, her breath was rancid.
“If you need me, I’ll come, but I’ll need a wheelchair at the museum and someone to watch the extra sixth graders.”
She mumbled something about calling the art museum regarding the wheelchair, and told me that the bus would arrive by 10:00. Silently I thought, “You’re welcome” and I finished my copies.
The morning passed quickly and shortly before 10:00 I sauntered over to the art room. There, the field trip organizer was eating something garlic-ridden and organizing cans of paint. She didn’t look up.
I cleared my throat loudly. I didn’t want to startle her lest she drop the paint, “Are we going? Did you get confirmation from Sonny’s mother?”
She looked at her watch, stuffed more food into her mouth, and muttered something about the bus. I nodded and then opted for plan B: find my students and ask them what was going on. I left the art room and crossed the hall to Brenda Payne’s room. There, without adult supervision, thirty students were running in circles intermittently smacking each other and standing on Brenda’s no longer organized plastic, orange-colored chairs. Brenda was nowhere to be found, and I was dubious that I’d find a clear answer in her room:
I made my most threatening teacher-look and yelled, “Small children! You are acting in manner of wild beasts. You have three seconds to act civilized, or the trip is cancelled!” (They didn’t know that the bus was already waiting in the parking lot.)
Moderate silence ensued; enough silence to allow me to locate Sophie amidst the pandemonium. Sophie was my curly haired, rational, brilliant and mature favorite. I quietly asked her when we were leaving and why twenty-nine of her peers were currently unsupervised (while the art teacher organized her glazes alphabetically). Sophie, as usual, knew all the answers. Mrs. Payne was looking for me, Sonny’s mom was outside with the bus, and the art teacher had already reserved me a wheelchair. Mrs. Payne – though sick – had agreed to watch the remaining sixth graders for the rest of the day.
Grateful for Sophie, I militantly herded the small children from Mrs. Payne’s increasingly disorganized room, and lined them up in the hallway. I was very proud of Chad – he only leapt through the air to hit the emergency exit sign once en route to the bus. Their excitement level was even higher than usual. John made fun of someone’s butt, Chad (after landing firmly on his feet post-leap) hit, poked and otherwise irritated his obvious crush, and Nikki and Tiffany formed a staunch art teacher opposition. (Never mind the fact that as we approached the bus the poor woman was directly behind us.) There, outside of the school, standing in Baltimore’s 85 degree heat and smothering humidity, the art teacher finally attempted to organize the trip.
“Okay, we’re going to see some Asian art at the Walters Art Gallery today. I need three groups of ten students with each adult: one group with Miss Hooks, one group with Sonny’s mom and one group with me.” Before she even finished her statement, ten boys ran towards Sonny’s mom, and the remaining twenty girls formed a suffocating circle around me. As the art teacher patiently attempted to ameliorate the obvious discrepancy between my group of twenty and her own group of zero, Tiffany called her a witch. Tiffany’s peers apparently agreed. The art teacher, in vintage art teacher form, exuded no discernable emotion, rather instructed the "ungrateful" girls to return to the classroom. I stepped in between the scowling sixth graders and the art teacher, glared at Tiffany and followers, and slowly mouthed the word, “Apologize.” Then, after my wordless pleading and a series of muffled apologies from the eventually regrouped girls, thirty-three of us piled into the bus. We were a mere forty-five minutes late.
A brief bus ride later, I had sufficiently impressed my students by knowing all of the lyrics to rap songs on the radio, and I started to wonder why we were about to see Asian art anyway. Sarah, another freckle-faced favorite, asked me a question:
“Miss Hooks, can I push you in the wheelchair today?”
And before I could respond, a fight ensued:
“No, I’m pushing her! I’ve never pushed a wheelchair before and she already said I could!” (I had?)
Then Tiffany chimed in, “But I helped her get to her car the other day when her legs weren’t working!”
And so on.
The fight ended when I promised they could all push me, but they’d have to take turns. Two hours later, the trip culminated with minor horror on behalf of their respective pushing skills (Nikki smashed my leg into the door of the elevator and Tiffany almost knocked over a statue of Buddha). More importantly, though, there were a few revelations:
1. My students correctly answered the museum guide’s questions about Buddhism – they actually retained things I taught them.
2. My students eventually mastered the turning radius of a wheelchair, figured out how to back me safely into the elevator, and realized that, much to their collective dismay, the plush carpeted museum rooms weren't wheelchair friendly. They were equally appalled by the “pull-only” doors.
3. And I realized that field trips, even with garlic-ridden “witch-like” chaperones, poor organization and rented wheelchairs, were nothing to avoid.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
The Wheelie
My third year as a sixth grade teacher was my last. The decision wasn’t a defeat to multiple sclerosis necessarily; it was a defeat to sixth graders and to an incompetent administration. I made my decision in October and enjoyed another eight months of school-related chaos and student-inspired disease revelations. My third year was my first year using my wheelchair semi-regularly. I set up my classroom accordingly, and used the chair mainly to get from my classroom to the distant bathroom, or to pick up my students from their resource classes. Occasionally I used it to monitor student progress during cooperative learning activities, but with coats and backpacks and notebooks and handouts strewn about, negotiating the chair through the close-quartered classroom was difficult. My students loved my wheelchair. Usually, in fact, if I didn’t guard it closely, one of my kids would steal it from behind my desk and wheel around my room at mach six before I could reach the chalk and scribble threateningly on the detention board.
One winter afternoon, I wheeled to the cafeteria to retrieve my second group of sixth graders from lunch. I had used my thirty-minute lunch break not to eat, rather to push myself to and from the main office making copies. I kicked myself through the door to the lunchroom right as 6-02 was lining up along the wall next to my classroom. I was practically sweating from my effort to cram 78 things into a half-an-hour, and my kids were waiting for me impatiently. A few of them were playfully fighting each other, and others appeared to have angry ants in their pants. They were moving around so much I was convinced that some type of stimulant had mysteriously slipped into the school lunch. I gave my thirty sixth graders the sternest face I could muster, and demanded that they stop writhing around and prepare for an afternoon of serious learning.
They listened to my request. Mostly. Except for Stevie. Stevie stood at the line’s center with his best friend, Brandon. Stevie loved my wheelchair. Actually, he was the one who initially removed it, piece by piece, from the trunk of my blue Nissan and constructed it in my classroom. He had studied the chair for a few minutes, furrowed his twelve-year-old brow, and then pulled the cord in the back. The seat bent upwards and Stevie slid the wheels on effortlessly, all the while he explained exactly what he was doing with more patience and clarity than I ever used while describing the five-step writing process. Stevie was difficult to teach because he had the uncanny ability to see the other, less popular, sixth graders surreptitiously picking their noses. Then he’d quietly point at the nose-picker, and learning would cease until his twenty-nine peers would stop giggling and gaping. Stevie also back flipped off of a table in my classroom before dismissal one afternoon. He landed the flip like a gymnast, but I was appalled with myself – that a third year teacher failed to notice a small child climb a table was another testament to my year end’s requisite career move.
In the cafeteria, Stevie innocently asked if I knew how to “pop a wheelie” with my wheelchair. I told him I didn’t, repeated how important it was that learning commence, and continued towards my room. Stevie didn’t move though, and neither did his classmates. Stevie’s question quickly commanded the attention of the rest of the class. Brandon spoke next,
“Try one, Miss Hooks – they’re fun.”
This comment was followed by numerous words of encouragement from the rest of the class, and culminated with my authoritative answer:
“We have important things to do, and I don’t know how to do one anyway.”
In retrospect, my response was completely ineffectual at redirecting the attention of my students away from the wheelchair and towards the all-important lesson on Ancient Egypt.
Stevie left the line and grabbed the back of my chair. “You just push yourself forward and then pull back hard, like this.”
(He did it, I tried neither to laugh nor shriek.)
I was secretly amused at their interest in this, and, rather than prioritize Egypt, I agreed – per Stevie and Brandon’s request – to attempt my first wheelie. The class (minus Stevie) was in a neat line, and by this point they’d stopped fidgeting, writhing and fighting with each other; they were focused entirely on me. Using Stevie’s words of encouragement and direction, I pushed myself forward and then pulled back quickly. Then, rather than lifting the front wheels gracefully off the ground while appearing cool and lithe in my green wheelchair, I flipped over backwards and landed directly on my head.
Luckily I wasn’t wearing a skirt.
Not so luckily, the next group of children had already entered the lunch room (at exactly the same time I landed strategically on my head). My students were motionless and silent. They were convinced I was dead. Before I could prove them otherwise, I heard Brandon whisper:
“Stevie, we killed Miss Hooks.”
Then, still upside down, I erupted into laughter and managed to yell (while laughing), “I TOLD YOU I COULDN’T DO A WHEELIE! GET ME UP!”
Steven and Brandon offered me their hands, and the line changed from a relatively straight and orderly formation into a circle of gaping and appalled (although certainly amused) sixth graders. Even Roxanne, the secretary in charge of lunch duty that day, noticed me on the floor. She grabbed the microphone from the stage (the lunch room doubled as an auditorium) and drew every child’s attention to the mess that was myself on the cafeteria floor:
“Hooks, what on earth are you doing on the floor?”
I have no idea what I taught that day. I’m sure my students don’t know either. I do, however, remember the girls in my class that gathered around my head to ask if I was okay, and the firm grasp of Brandon and Stevie's hands that pulled me off the ground.
My pride was slightly damaged – for obvious reasons. But teaching in a wheelchair wasn’t necessarily all bad. I knew I loved my students. Had I not ended up on the floor of the cafeteria with thirty concerned kids trying to get me up, I might not have learned that they loved me back.
One winter afternoon, I wheeled to the cafeteria to retrieve my second group of sixth graders from lunch. I had used my thirty-minute lunch break not to eat, rather to push myself to and from the main office making copies. I kicked myself through the door to the lunchroom right as 6-02 was lining up along the wall next to my classroom. I was practically sweating from my effort to cram 78 things into a half-an-hour, and my kids were waiting for me impatiently. A few of them were playfully fighting each other, and others appeared to have angry ants in their pants. They were moving around so much I was convinced that some type of stimulant had mysteriously slipped into the school lunch. I gave my thirty sixth graders the sternest face I could muster, and demanded that they stop writhing around and prepare for an afternoon of serious learning.
They listened to my request. Mostly. Except for Stevie. Stevie stood at the line’s center with his best friend, Brandon. Stevie loved my wheelchair. Actually, he was the one who initially removed it, piece by piece, from the trunk of my blue Nissan and constructed it in my classroom. He had studied the chair for a few minutes, furrowed his twelve-year-old brow, and then pulled the cord in the back. The seat bent upwards and Stevie slid the wheels on effortlessly, all the while he explained exactly what he was doing with more patience and clarity than I ever used while describing the five-step writing process. Stevie was difficult to teach because he had the uncanny ability to see the other, less popular, sixth graders surreptitiously picking their noses. Then he’d quietly point at the nose-picker, and learning would cease until his twenty-nine peers would stop giggling and gaping. Stevie also back flipped off of a table in my classroom before dismissal one afternoon. He landed the flip like a gymnast, but I was appalled with myself – that a third year teacher failed to notice a small child climb a table was another testament to my year end’s requisite career move.
In the cafeteria, Stevie innocently asked if I knew how to “pop a wheelie” with my wheelchair. I told him I didn’t, repeated how important it was that learning commence, and continued towards my room. Stevie didn’t move though, and neither did his classmates. Stevie’s question quickly commanded the attention of the rest of the class. Brandon spoke next,
“Try one, Miss Hooks – they’re fun.”
This comment was followed by numerous words of encouragement from the rest of the class, and culminated with my authoritative answer:
“We have important things to do, and I don’t know how to do one anyway.”
In retrospect, my response was completely ineffectual at redirecting the attention of my students away from the wheelchair and towards the all-important lesson on Ancient Egypt.
Stevie left the line and grabbed the back of my chair. “You just push yourself forward and then pull back hard, like this.”
(He did it, I tried neither to laugh nor shriek.)
I was secretly amused at their interest in this, and, rather than prioritize Egypt, I agreed – per Stevie and Brandon’s request – to attempt my first wheelie. The class (minus Stevie) was in a neat line, and by this point they’d stopped fidgeting, writhing and fighting with each other; they were focused entirely on me. Using Stevie’s words of encouragement and direction, I pushed myself forward and then pulled back quickly. Then, rather than lifting the front wheels gracefully off the ground while appearing cool and lithe in my green wheelchair, I flipped over backwards and landed directly on my head.
Luckily I wasn’t wearing a skirt.
Not so luckily, the next group of children had already entered the lunch room (at exactly the same time I landed strategically on my head). My students were motionless and silent. They were convinced I was dead. Before I could prove them otherwise, I heard Brandon whisper:
“Stevie, we killed Miss Hooks.”
Then, still upside down, I erupted into laughter and managed to yell (while laughing), “I TOLD YOU I COULDN’T DO A WHEELIE! GET ME UP!”
Steven and Brandon offered me their hands, and the line changed from a relatively straight and orderly formation into a circle of gaping and appalled (although certainly amused) sixth graders. Even Roxanne, the secretary in charge of lunch duty that day, noticed me on the floor. She grabbed the microphone from the stage (the lunch room doubled as an auditorium) and drew every child’s attention to the mess that was myself on the cafeteria floor:
“Hooks, what on earth are you doing on the floor?”
I have no idea what I taught that day. I’m sure my students don’t know either. I do, however, remember the girls in my class that gathered around my head to ask if I was okay, and the firm grasp of Brandon and Stevie's hands that pulled me off the ground.
My pride was slightly damaged – for obvious reasons. But teaching in a wheelchair wasn’t necessarily all bad. I knew I loved my students. Had I not ended up on the floor of the cafeteria with thirty concerned kids trying to get me up, I might not have learned that they loved me back.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)