A few thoughts on the last night of a long weekend...

"Am I a bad person?" We seem to be asking ourselves- and each other- this question constantly. I have to admit, this is one of those questions I used to ask myself all the time, and it is among those persistent queries that has yet to be diminished by time. In fact, there now seem to be more people around asking this question on a regular basis than ever before. Are we having trouble finding our moral compass? Is it the age? Maybe, instead, we have particularly high standards for what is right, what we should do, and we feel like bad people when we don't fulfill them? Where is the limit, and what is the source of the confusion? Is this universal across cultures? If we worry so much about being bad people, why not always do what we "should" do. From that angle, it seems like what we "should" do is in constant conflict with what we need to do to preserve important parts of ourselves. Many people use religion as a guide, or tradition- but really it is up to us to decide what is right, which brings up greater questions about the nature of "good". One of my favorite professors in college used to explain to me that it is not selfish to take care of yourself, because if you want to do good in the world, you have to start with yourself, and the rest will fall naturally into place. While it sounds like a selfish outlook, I think that in practice it is valuable advice.

I am so afraid for them. I have no idea what to do. I keep picturing their faces.

It's broken; too much of their light will die where it started. They seem to refuse to cross the line out of this.

Or else I wasn't the one to make it happen.

Like carrying bricks from the bottom of a lake, by hand, one at a time, and then teaching them how to swim.

Sometimes it's hysterically funny- when you don't think too hard, and sometimes it's devastating.

Their faces....

Before Mississippi, I'd never really seen much darkness, and I was afraid of loosing myself in it; maybe I did for a while, while I still believed it worked that way. But now I'm really mostly afraid of going through a life and never doing anything to make it better.

Also, I don't want to teach anywhere else. I don't want to teach other kids. I want to be here for these kids. And yet I'm leaving. They will never understand. (Neither do I.)

Sometimes race, religion, and every other physical factor all seem small, meaningless, compared to the distances we struggle to cross just to find friendship, to find warmth. How could we be so preoccupied with these things when we have to fight so hard just to make a connection? And when we love, when, impossibly, we build a bridge between worlds, and find ourselves fighting for others as though for ourselves, putting them first, we again realize how small these physical factors are.

I love them so much. I hate the weakness in myself that leads to the failures, and the arrogance that leads me to loose patience, to get angry at others for the way things are, as though I could ever really understand how they got this way. I hope that in two years I have given them something worth having.

On the wood floor in Anna's bedroom with my arms and head resting on her low bed, taking up space in her company and listening to her music in the pre-dawn hours while she packed her things- a ruffled shirt, a long string of pearls, a bathroom bag with orange geometric shapes-I felt so much like the kid I was (could it have been?) six, seven, eight years ago, watching my high school best friend get ready: a ruffled shirt, a string of beads, scented oil. Maybe there are some parts of our hearts that maintain their childish honesty and vulnerability. It feels like I have relived this scene a hundred times; I think I have a soft spot for the final hour before departure. I sat on the floor and soaked up the last wisps of her warmth.

So much like Kaitlin used to do, she told me the story of a French novelist and the final great novel, discovered years later by her daughter. I remembered how long it's been since I've really spent much time reading. It reminded me of the parts of myself I've put on hold- as we all do- for teaching. I'm looking forward to their rediscovery. I expect we will each find ourselves, on the other side of this, to be someone new, and always in some way tied to the kids that we (impossibly) cannot bring with us. It really does seem impossible: To leave an entire world behind. To let go. To set down the baby we've been carrying around for two years just as suddenly as we picked it up, and to know, in that part of ourselves that we allow to grieve for this, that it will not be okay. Impossible. That is the part of us that will always be here, furious and sad. Leaving it unappeased feels so much like admission of defeat. I think part of living in the Delta is really understanding, for the first time, that everything will not be okay.

I saw Corderral during tutoring on Wednesday. He was with a few unsmiling tough-guy sorts, who eyed me suspiciously. He was one of my Chemistry II students from last year with a sharp, capable mind and some behavior problems, but opened up to me a bit by the end. (After he had a daughter: "Sometime I be scared of babies, because they cry and you don't what they want.")
When he saw me, he smiled his special ear-to-ear goofy grin and hugged me. His little girl just turned one, and he just got back from Texas where he was "having fun". No college. No ideas.
He said he would work on it. Sometimes I feel like I'm being ignorant or condescending when I insist that they should be in school. I reminded him how smart he is, and felt sheepish. He hugged me goodbye.

And our childish hearts plead.
(I am still that kid.)

Teacher corps is waking up on Friday night the second (and last) weekend of spring break with nightmares about showing up unprepared on Monday, and somehow leaving your Biology II class unattended and coming back to find they've all disappeared. But it is also waking up with nightmares on a living room coach with the voices of friends in the background, and someone tells you to go back to sleep.
It is spending spring break mostly in a panicked daze, making calls about certification and spending hours with four or five kids on the steps of a church with a borrowed easel and not feeling like anything is getting done. But it is also the sweet reprieve of a spring storm, watching from the porch.
And it is also escaping the isolation by spending too much time at other people's house so they feel like you've moved in, but also starting to feel like family, meeting people you admire and wondering about yourself, accepting change, trying everything a thousand different ways, accepting frustration, realizing that this is nothing like you pictured it: It is much, much more.
More than anything, it is the kids, who will keep some of us here, and be the reason for staying, and who some of us will never see again. They will hold the pieces of us that we leave behind.
Everyone's phone number changes, everyone moves, and sometimes it feels like everyone has a baby, like everyone forgets what they used to want. There seems to be no way to keep in touch in the Delta, but also no way to let go.

I think I understand

I ran into Eugene at the gas station. He was wearing a collared shirt, black tie, and sweater vest- "clean", as the kids would say. I soon realized that Rico and DeMarcus were also there, in the backseat of the SUV that Gene climbed into, and decked out in the same attire. (Occasion unknown). Driving was a man in his 40's or 50's with gold teeth, very dark sunglasses (even though they were completely unnecessary), a broad smile and an almost creepy smoothness about him. Very surprised at the particular combination of kids he had with him, I asked if "these guys were all his". He made some sort of comment about how when he started doing it he did it all the way. They seemed so pleased and proud to be seen with him. Rico and DeMarcus, who had waved at me from the back seat, and even Gene, who had caught my attention at first, wore wide goofy grins. I shook their father's hand and we introduced ourselves, and he dropped some sort of flirty comment before they drove off. Thinking about it afterwards, it occurred to me that if their role models- their fathers , are flashy men mostly concerned with appearance and women (unless of course I was completely misjudging), it's no wonder they have little regard for the merits of getting an education. I think I knew before, but you don't really believe it until you meet dad. I think about my own parents, about the values they modeled, and I wonder how my brother and I would have turned out without that.

There were some girls having a snowball fight outside my window. They waved, and I ran outside to join in (playing the role of the crazy grown up who joins snow ball fights without warning or introduction). They laughed and threw snowballs at me and told me that they're sisters .

The weather (and what I'm doing for spring break)

On Sunday, it was 79 degrees Fahrenheit, and we sat on the swing outside to work. (Was that this past Sunday, or the one before?...time is just one more thing that seems to shift and warp beyond control.) On Monday, a tornado touched down (luckily no damage) a few miles south of here, and a couple of miles south of the high school. Today, the Friday of spring break, school was dismissed at 1:30 (which was a welcome end to the utter chaos that the school becomes the day before a break) for snow. Not just any snow, either; thick fluffy flakes that stick to your clothes and pack into marvelous snowballs (I wonder if I could convince some of my kids into a snow-ball fight. Everyone seems pretty shuttered-up inside.) I'm going to be here spring break, but for the first time in 6-8 years, it looks like New York (which is home) in Anguilla, MS.

As my first act of spring break, I paid some bills and picked up a package (thanks, mom) at the post office, came home and opened the blinds to watch the snow build up, and sat down to record it all. I also bit into a chocolate apple with a gummy worm: a surprise gift from one of my students to "tell me I was appreciated"....so sweet.

Spring break I'll be spending here, creating a resume, applying for jobs, grading, planning, working on my portfolio, writing raps to help my kids remember...and of course to get it together for the final push to the state test.

Tutoring starts at 11 am Monday, at Christian Light Church in Anguilla. (The school, of course, will not let us use their building without an administrator.) Let's hope the kids show, as promised- I have already begun to hope.

As my best friend wrote "The weather speaks volumes of what has become of the flame"...

I've been waiting for answers; to feel like I've arrived. I have somehow been waiting for the mist-shrouded solution, for the secret to coalesce, both personally and professionally. I've been looking around for someone in myself that doesn't make any mistakes, and I am forever unsatisfied and short on confidence because I haven't found it. I admire others, and look up to them, but I always feel young and unsure, because I know that I make mistakes.

Lots of times I come home at night, frustrated and isolated and missing important pieces. I try to write but there's always something important I can't say, and it makes harder to just notice the truth that I'm trying to find, to get down on paper and into solid words.

But whenever I see anything clearly, I always see that everything just is. There is writing and there is music (Granian, lately "I still see your face and so I...") ; it's enough. There is struggle and there is summer.

My Dad always used to order the green ice cream whenever my family went out together. It was one of those sweet little traditions that now reminds me what home felt like when I was a kid. Since I didn't know what pistachio was, he always told me it was pickle. He said he knew something had ended when I looked at him and said "Daddy, there's no such thing as pickle ice cream."

Sometimes I look at the kids and find faith in the light behind their smiles, their innocence- despite everything. It is like summer. And then it breaks, again and again. I am disappointed, every single time, when they cheat and lie and laugh or roll their eyes when it upsets me. It makes me feel weak, stupid, soft- which is the worst thing to be in a way, young, incompetent. I feel like a little kid finding out that the world doesn't work the way I thought it did, that there's no such thing as pickle ice cream.

(It's still real to me).

I am still and always looking for strength.

another tornado watch

Does anyone listen when, for once in a thousand tries, you say what you mean? What becomes of the flame, of the tiny bit of light you bear?
(And I've said it all so many times.)
Do we bring it here, hoping to share (and bring out theirs)? Another teacher commented that is us, not them, who have hope (for them).
There is no space to breath between the days, and we search for grace in their faces or maybe in our own hearts.
Ken told me today that he's joined the army (reserves). He is one of those few that helps me believe in them all. It was a little too much like watching him disappear. I think I am finally beginning to understand why people around here pray so much.