postmodernfamilyblog

On Friday, I was struggling. I felt underwater. I felt frazzled. I was faking it till I could make it – like all teachers do sometimes. It’s the hardest tool of the skills set you need for the job.

And on Friday, I felt like I’d compartmentalized myself down to the point of fragmented, ineffectual bits.

And then these three beloved fellows stopped by during my lunch break. And they gave me bear hugs. And they told me about their lives. Their classes. Their girlfriends. Their dorm rooms and apartments. Their families. Their teammates. Their healing injuries.

And along the way, they healed my own injured self. The self that gets lost in the creases and cuts that all the compartmentalizing I do has incurred.

And they didn’t know it, but their smiles and their stories unfolded all the creases, and their huge hugs were a salve to all the cuts.

They helped me remember why I love my job and role as teacher and coach’s wife.

They helped me remember why I pour love and feed hearts (and bodies when I bake up their treats).  All that love is never for naught. 

It comes back to you. Three-fold. (And ten-fold and a hundred-fold and more.) Like when one of the guys who swept in on Friday to brighten my day, also came by for our boys’ basketball game to give THEM an extra lift too…

(I just wish I’d gotten a picture of the other guys on Friday, but these from this past fall will have to do.)

These pictures? These faces? These smiles? Our family is extended and varied and vast. And THIS is what makes teaching and the football life so wonderful.