My dad goes in for a memory test. He thinks he didn’t do well. I could hold this test down and punch it until it passed out, gushing blood from its nose, and sorry.
Our identity, mine, my mom’s, my dad’s, rests on being the smart one, the clever one, the one who goes faster, who doesn’t need help. What my dad took from his horrifically abusive childhood was, “I can fix this.” He proceeded to fix many things.
My mom is glue, showing up wherever needed to add connection or heal, and my dad comes with all the carpentry supplies, to assist you in building something new.
As I was leaving work today, a teacher friend mentioned that her mother is donating a Christmas tree, gifts, and Thanksgiving dinner to one of our janitors. This person has two kids, no partner, and will not get food stamps because President Trump doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.
My friend also mentioned to me that one of the students we share recently said, “My mom told my brother and me that she wants to kill herself because of us.”
This student hasn’t done any work for me in a month or two. We’ve been letting the kid simmer. Today the kid asked for a computer. “If you do the beginning of the assignment,” I said. Kid complied.
It’s good.
“I have nightmares all the time,” another kid said, after we watched a CNN segment on lucid dreaming.
“That’s awful,” I said.
“Not really, I’m used to it.”
I work with a lot of kids who have gotten used to some fucked up shit.
I texted my dad about how much I love him, and how much God loves him. These are things I know.
He is the third person related to me who has gotten a dementia diagnosis. He would do anything to succeed on the test. I mean anything. He has an iron will. That’s how he survived.
I have been feeling his feeling of failing the test. I sat on my bed, realized I was opening youtube to escape the feeling, and I shut my eyes and sat with it for a second. The horror of loss, of anything floating down the stream where you will never see it again. The necklace I left in a locker at the Chelsea YMCA on 14th Street. My great-aunt’s costume jewelry ring somewhere at an airport. Miniatures of the big losses that loom. Little practice losses.
I ran out of granola bars today. This isn’t good. We all have three days until payday. The assistants at my school are all so broke it’s crazy. They’re all overdrawn like crazy. They try to figure out how to make it three more days when they don’t have gas money. They can’t afford to fix their cars. They can’t afford to see doctors, or travel anywhere, or feed their kids. They have the sensitive job of caring for some of our more vulnerable citizens, kids who have already been through significant trauma. Our society rewards them by demanding they do more, and paying them less than a living wage.
A teacher friend has given one of them $10 for gas this weekend.
Another teacher friend has given another assistant a bag of groceries.
There are a few places to sit here.
In my love for people who care for others/my love for people who accept help.
In my fury that our assistants are told they should be more involved in the lessons and instruction, and yet they are constantly broke.
In my overwhelming anger at how Trump, and the Republicans supporting him, use the idea of citizens starving to make their point. They use their anger at the success of Obamacare and its subsidies to take health care away from innocent people. No, worse: to make health insurance so expensive people will look at the bill and say, “I just can’t do it.” We can do it.
In my deep sadness about how fragile we all are, how fragile our government is, and how torn apart it is now. So many things it used to do are just gone. Trump’s guy fires one general after another, stripping our military of experienced leadership that won’t answer to him.
In my anxiety about the homes my students go to on Friday. Is there food there? I have the granola bars as emergency food, always. I eat them, and any time a kid or an adult asks, I give them one. No questions asked. It is my Jesus training. If people are hungry, you must feed them. You just must.
I do get annoyed when they want one every day. When they are rude about asking. But it’s required, for me.
I ran out today.
I ordered another box.
A friend tells me she will bring over food to donate when she visits tomorrow.
Perhaps I have kind of come to accept that I will always struggle financially. If at 49 years old my salary is not easy to live on, it’s not going to get much better.
We read “Animal Farm,” and a kid who can barely read aloud again says, “The pigs are acting just like the farmer!”
“Exactly, yes, yes, yes,” I say.
That kid will write down the answers on the board, but honestly I’m not sure how much the kid can read or write on his own.
Yesterday a kid wouldn’t stop tossing his water bottle in the air, and thus had to leave my room. Today I went to get him so we could “process,” that is, restore our relationship. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said.
Kids fucking love to walk.
“Why?” he said.
“Because it’s nice to walk,” I said.
He followed me. “So what went wrong yesterday?”
“You,” he said.
“Hmm,” I said. “What do you think I think went wrong?” (This is a BIST strategy, TM).
“I was tossing something, and you said I was going to throw it at somebody.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t think that. It’s just we have a rule, no throwing no tossing.” (It’s like don’t ask don’t tell but a good idea.)
“Oh.”
“What I meant to say was, if no one is allowed to throw things, no one has to worry that someone will throw something at them.”
We returned to my room. The kid started doing some work. We were listening to “The Great Gatsby” and the kids were placing illustrative images where they belonged. It’s the second time I’ve tried this. I think they like it. I think I like it. Promotes listening, and visualizing, but can keep a kid from getting lost in the weeds, too.
They glue down a picture of a Rolls Royce, a beach, people dancing. Gatsby’s party is getting going.
Trump threw a Gatsby themed party on Halloween. It woulda been better if it were a Marie Antoinette themed party, but he did pretty darn well.
Careless people. People who truly feel nothing for others. People who live only in their own thirsts and disconnect.
My elective class looked at images of masks from around the world, and kids who had been completely checked out piped up with theories about what an ancient Macedonian mask was made out of, or what a squinty-eyed plaster mask was used for. Yes. Yes.
I’m technically not supposed to be teaching this.
Don’t tell anyone. It’s supposed to be a class in expository writing. Expository writing is just More English Class. So I’m teaching creative writing instead.
I have to visit all these places: anger, anxiety, appreciation. These are the places my life goes.
We will all forget, and be forgotten. But decisions being made today, in this dark time, will affect people in the future. In one sense we are all lost, and in another sense we are all forever found.
As George Eliot wrote, “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” I see you, unhistoric acts, and hidden lives.
Going On 