Cool things.

It seems I’m not a very faithful blogger, posting only when the mood strikes me, but I have reason to post so infrequently. Not because I’m down in the dumps—-really, I’m not. I’m on a great upward swing in my teaching career and am carving out a path for myself in which I feel confident and calm. This past week I’ve been wrapped up in creating a film of my class and just this morning we had our Premiere.

This first half of the year, we’ve been studying ancient India and in the last three or so weeks, we’ve been working on The Ramayana, the story about Rama and Sita and their great love, separation, and reunion. It’s a bit like the story of me and Dennis when I was in Brazil, minus the ten-headed demon, a talking monkey, and all the other stuff. So the kids had to memorize a bunch of lines, we filmed them, and then Dennis gave up his entire Sunday to edit it all together so I could preview it at school on Monday to make sure it worked. It did, of course, and this morning at 8:35, I walked into a room full of parents who were eagerly awaiting the screening. My kids were jittering with nervous energy, excited (or not) to see themselves on the screen, and when it was all said and done, I think both the kids and the parents were happy. BIG exhale.

Now it’s onto China and sadly, I know nothing about it. So this vacation, I will be studying up on the basics—something like a thousand or so years of history—so that I can share it with my students when we come back from break. I’m sure, because it always happens this way, I’ll freak out after the first week because I’ll realize just how little I know and how much effort it will take to teach the kids, but, like I’ll good teachers, I’ll do my best and hope they pick up at least a little of what I lay down.

It’s hard to believe this is the last week of school before winter holidays. The week before the end of school in Brazil I think things felt a little more calm—kids started trickling out of school to go on extended vacations with their families (even though the break was already a month long) and we wrapped up major projects and whatnot. I feel as though this week has come upon us too suddenly, as if I will be cut off mid-sentence and made to wait two weeks before being able to finish.

An interesting thing happened on the train today, something that brought me back to Brazil in a very funny way. At Grand Central, I boarded the 7 train to take me back home. I sat down across from the German equivalent of Brad Pitt, Russell Crowe, Chris Elliot, and a very pretty Ralph Fiennes (not that Ralph Fiennes isn’t pretty, but this guy on the train was too pretty, almost impossibly pretty. Not hot, mind you, but disturbingly pretty.) They blabbed back and forth in German the whole time and I sat staring at them, mostly to figure out which actors they most closely resembled so I could write about them later on the blog. It occurred to me after a while that I was staring at them. I guess that means I’m not aware when I’m staring, but that’s beside the point. It struck me that I was staring at them because their language caught my attention. That I noticed them based on their German made me then drift off into the Land of Celebrity Look-Alikes, and then it occurred to me that I had been in the exact same situation on trains in Brazil, but on the other side.

This is not to say that people stared at me in Brazil because they were trying to figure out which celebrity I look like. That’s actually impossible because I don’t look like anyone. But on the train in Sao Paulo, trying to get from Estacao Tiete out to Avenida Paulista (where the closest Starbucks was, of course) I can’t tell you how many people stared at our group of English speakers. I used to get a kick out of how my language called attention to people on SP trains, and how I felt so different and obvious. Like I was in a fishbowl of sorts. I never really considered what it was the people were thinking while staring, only that they were staring. I used to feel insulted almost, and I remember calling Brazil a staring culture. I remember feeling eyes rest on me because I thought I was different and that didn’t sit easy with me.

But tonight, when I caught myself staring, I smiled. I smiled because I finally knew about the staring. I wasn’t staring because I thought these four guys were different. Their language had triggered for me other thoughts and I stared while lost in those other thoughts. Nevermind the fact that two of them had severe underbites and that the other two were wearing the exact same army green jacket. I found myself on the other side of the coin tonight. How interesting it is that language is the thing that got me there.

Renewed.

Well, sorry for the long pause there. I’ve been out and about, upstate, downtown, and all over the place. This past weekend, I went to Bard College, where I and another colleague took part in a writing workshop. It was a small gathering of people, just 12 other teachers and professionals from around the country (indeed as far away as California!) and we spent our time writing and thinking about writing.

I am somewhat of a Professional Development nerd, in that I’ll take whatever comes my way with nowhere near your average teacher groan. Sometimes I’ll fake an eye roll here or there, but for the most part, I look forward to stepping outside of my classroom world and learning something new. This weekend, since it was about writing, I was pretty much in paradise, and not just because of the workshop. I got to stay in a hotel.

There’s something magical about staying in a hotel, in the same way that stopping at a McDonald’s is magical when I’m on the 6-hour drive from NYC to Vermont. It’s a departure from routine and a welcome one. This is not to say that my life in Queens is anywhere near a routine, nor is it needing a break from routine. But I do love to get away and then come back home again, which is something I don’t think I’ve quite gotten over since returning from Brazil. There’s something special about coming home, especially when I get to come home to my best friend and my best cat.

Dennis is nearing the end of his production and these days we rarely see each other. We have such opposite schedules—even on the weekends!—that it’s almost a surprise when we find each other sitting at the table together having a meal, or (this week) even being awake at the same time. He won’t be home until almost midnight tonight, and that’s a full two hours after I’ll have gone to bed. In the morning, there’s no need for him to wake up until after I leave the house at 6:30…and so, there you have it. Like ships passing in the night.

Remember that recent post about how I thought I was changing, standing up for myself, and whatnot? Well, it’s coming even more into fruition. Lately I’ve had a very hard time at work finding my place, my voice, where I fit into the grand scheme of things, in amongst the tradition of this private school. Today I took the first big step and announced at the faculty meeting that I was looking for other teachers who might be willing to open their doors to other teachers, purely voluntarily, purely out of a desire to share teaching. Not in any kind of critical way but instead with the intent to help create an environment that makes teaching at the heart of what we do. I know this is a school, and I know that teaching is (or should be) at the heart of what we do. But these days, I’m just not feeling it. I don’t feel like a teacher and any heart that’s there is beating slowly and faintly. A sleeping heart, if you will.

And so I said, “screw it.” This isn’t just going to change overnight and certainly not without my calling attention to what I need, so, in the spirit of change, in the spirit of standing up for myself, I said I was trying to find teachers who might be open to sharing. I got two responses. But then again, we’d just spent an hour in a faculty meeting in which we learned, via PowerPoint, about e-mail: what it is, how to use it, the challenges of it, and what to avoid. I am not joking and I’ve never wanted to be joking as badly as I do right now. And you ask why I might be feeling confused about the value of teaching in the school. It makes me feel sad to be in a place where passion for teaching, real love and interest IN it, seems hidden. Where we can shout: “We love the kids!” instead of “We love what we do! Come look at what we’re doing and join us!” Shouldn’t we be saying both? I’d be crazy not to say the first thing about this school, but I’m really feeling the absence of the second one. So? Rather than sit and bitch? Do something, right? Right. We’ll see where it takes us.

Shuddering.

The rate at which I am going grey astonishes me.

Thanks Given.

And so we find ourselves in December. Thanksgiving has come and gone, the winter holidays are just ahead. We are sandwiched right in the middle and it is hard to believe the year will turn into another so soon. I can’t say I’m not thankful for that as there’s a lot about this year I’d like to put behind me.

I spent a good while in Anthropologie today, wandering the aisles and taking down any number of outfits I thought would look good on my little lumpy body, but, lo and behold, come Dressing Room Time, I stood there like I knew I would, hair tousled, skin dry, bags beneath my eyes sinking lower, and not a thing managed to make all those imperfections look any bit better. There’s nothing good about going shopping for clothes at 6pm on a Monday. Especially after a Thanksgiving vacation. I should have just come home, warmed up a piece of pizza, and gotten into my pajamas. Defeated, I threw myself into the subway and slunk home, where now I sit at the dining room table with a warmed up piece of pizza. And I’m too lazy to get in my pajamas. 

A word about Thanksgiving. It had been almost six years, we figured, since I’d joined my family for this meal, and nothing beat the feeling of walking into a warm Albany house and seeing all those familiar faces, wrapping up in warm embraces, introducing Dennis to that half of my heart. There was a new baby, who I held, who cried only when I held him. I didn’t mind at all because I knew he was crying because he was hungry and not because he took offense to me; therefore, I didn’t take offense to him, and rather than passing him off to his parents, opted to hold him a little longer and rock him while standing up, trying to find a way to soothe his little infant worries. It was nice.

We feasted on home cooked everything, welcomed pies and stuffings and mash into our bellies, declared ourselves full. And it was at that point my happiness turned a little sideways. It is a tradition in our family to go round the table and say what we’re thankful for and as the time drew nearer in the evening to do so, I became nervous, afraid of saying what I really felt: I wasn’t thankful for very much. It was a rough year. One I don’t want to remember save for just a few bright moments. Having made a stalwart resolution not to cry, having thrown on a brave face and blurred my focus a bit, I said the year had been a hard one, that I was thankful for coming home, for having Dennis as my best friend, for seeing all those faces again. And that was true, those words I said. But words don’t cover an abyss and I left myself suspended from those gossamers for the rest of the evening, slipping farther away from the rest of the people there, and held on as best I could through the morning. As Dennis and I drove away in the morning back to the City, I felt myself relax and exhale.

A few hours later, we were with his family, huddled around a little table with a spread to challenge the one from the night before, albeit with a Russian twist. There, I ate as if I hadn’t had food in weeks, laughed loud like I know I can, and fell back into my skin. I looked around the table, shared warm true smiles with the few people there. Felt nourished, not neglectful. There, I didn’t need to feel the history or the expectation to repeat history. I was thankful for this family, the one that’s not even mine. It was almost, almost like it used to be when nothing was wrong. There was dancing and laughter and singing and I was finally thankful for real, the kind of thankful I wish I could have been the night before with the family that is mine. 

And that there is the truth. I know no other way of saying it.