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Multigenerational Mom Muses on Twin Toddlers & Twenty-Something Daughters

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one teacher’s thoughts and prayers about school safety

I woke up yesterday and prayed for a good day as I got in my van to head to school. At our moment of silence I prayed for us all to have a safe day. I have the same requests every day.
In the end, I guess it was a good day. We were all safe.
Still.
When will we stop getting these calls — real and otherwise — that send schools into lockdown?
I don’t know that my body can take it anymore. My heart either. This might’ve been my fourth or fifth. (We average one a year lately). This was the scariest by far.
At the end of it all, I thought I was fine.
I handled the code red calmly. My kids did too. We sheltered in our two available safe corners in the classroom and prayed and texted our families. As a teacher, the responsibility was intense. To keep them quiet. To keep them safe. To get them all home to their families. All 24. Crammed and vulnerable. The picture above shows the two corners we have to work with and the door right there where the threat could lie…

I terrified my daughters. They were crying on the other end of my texts (one in a Panda Express checkout line and one in a hospital clinic with her fellow attendings) because I was texting them and then I wasn’t. Because the signals jammed. I’m sure there were 1500+ kids and 80+ teachers all reaching out to loved ones because these might be our last words to them. 

But my texts weren’t going. I could see the line at the top of my phone showing them trying to fly off into the Ethernet. I wondered if there were people’s souls out there trying to do the same — students, teachers, admin… Because there were so many sirens. Police cars and ambulances. So many.

Were there students bleeding and worse in the other classrooms?
And teachers too?
I worried about my administrators up front — seemingly the first line of defense.

And then we were good.

Or okay, at least… or at least of sound body. But my mind… It was traumatized. I just didn’t know how badly. Until last night… but still couldn’t crash from my mom and coach’s wife responsibilities.
I had football players to feed and dress rehearsals to drive a son to and home chores to handle.  

But after all was done, I hit a wall. My body gave out and my mind toppled. Rage and frustration and tears and feeling like I was overreacting and then feeling like nobody else was reacting enough.

And I don’t mean law enforcement or administration or my students— they did exactly what was demanded of them. They were amazing. 

No, I mean society. I mean America. We keep seeing the same stories — the horror-filled variations — but nothing changes.
I told you yesterday what one of my students said about not living in a perfect world. But what I didn’t say was that he said, “In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need guns, but we don’t live in a perfect world. We live in America.”

Everything is different here. We have freedoms here. And that’s all well and good. But we also have bad people with guns who threaten innocent children and something’s gotta give. And it doesn’t need to be more student and teachers lives.

There are no easy answers. Everything is so hard.

But if we teachers and students can do hard things like getting up today and going to school after a hard day like yesterday (and like so many far, far harder yesterdays) this country can do hard things too.

Like come up with some solutions to fix this.

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If Reading Dies our Truths will Die Too

People don’t read much anymore. I’ve known it for a long while, but this year, it’s hit me especially hard because even my AP Lit kids don’t want to read. Even them. They brag to me about never having read a book in high school. To me. Their teacher. And they’re proud of it.

And me, I’m sad about it; damn near sick about it.

I’ve tried and tried to reach them, but they only want to socialize and see what’s on TikTok and Snapchat. They can’t have access to their phones, so they’ve decided I can’t have access to their minds. I’ve used a gazillion approaches, so many projects, so many competitions. They refuse to yield. I refuse to give up. But I am growing desperate. I know what’s at stake.

So, for the month of October, I’m trying a unit filled entirely with short stories we’ll read together in class. A captive audience is a more accessible audience. At least, I hope so.

I plan to hook them with dark and twisty tried-and-trues at first: Edgar Alan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Joyce Carol Oates’ “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Alice Walker’s “The Flowers.” Then a couple of newcomers to add insult to injury: Stephen King’s “Strawberry Spring.” Dantiel Moniz’s “Exotics.”

Then, after they’re hooked and horrified, I’ll gut them with Ken Leiu’s “The Paper Menagerie.” (If you haven’t read it yet, read it now. It’s available online. But beware: it’ll leave you sobbing in snot-soaked shirt sleeves.)

Which is my goal: to demonstrate the power of literature so that maybe after I’m through, they’ll get it.

They’ll understand why reading matters. How fiction exists to show us how to live — and how not to live. How fiction shows us our truths — the good, the bad, and the ugly — inside our hearts.

But if reading dies, then good fiction, truth-telling fiction, will cease to exist and we’ll be left with the fictions of Instagram, snapchat and tiktok — the fiction that teaches nothing but falsehoods through filtered, fragments, all the real sliced away from the reels. Illusion masquerading as life.

If reading is lost… we will be lost.

I believe this much to be true.

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what I want for my children

I believe parenting and teaching are the two hardest jobs in the world. And when you happen to do both, the hardness is compounded. Because you want so much for your kids. All of them.

I want to see my physician daughter, who has spent the past 17 of her 35 years learning each cell in the human body and how cancer attacks it, and then learning every conceivable way to excise and eradicate that cancer — I want to see her accepted as the exceptional surgeon she is, accomplished and pedigreed and equal to any male physician she meets in the OR or on the interview trail. I’m ready to see her heal her patients of the most pernicious of cancers while shattering glass ceilings in the most prestigious of institutions. She’s in an uphill battle, but she is a capable and tireless fighter. She’s got this.

And I want to see my second born — my hard-headed, hard-loving daughter with a work ethic and people skills that absolutely can’t be taught — I want her to keep embracing her destiny and side-stepping the naysayers. She has worked her way from sandwich maker to grocery teller to medical receptionist to dental office manager. College is not for everyone and she proves every day that a sharp mind, heaping helping of initiative, and an open heart are the key ingredients for a successful life, not some framed piece of paper from a university. I want her to know how proud of her I am, and I want the world to know how amazing and brilliant she is.

I want my eldest second-grade twin — the one with amber hair and almond eyes who wants to play quarterback, but is built like a D-lineman; who worries about his intelligence because of a score on some blasted gifted criteria test, but reads chapter books and spouts Titanic facts like a documentary — I want him to understand that he is smart and tender and tough and totally and always enough. (Oh, and that defense wins championships.) I want him to know he has a heartbreaking smile, an intuitive kindness, and a sarcastic wit that cannot be bought, but sure can win folks over. And I want him to know there’s nothing he can’t accomplish if he sets his heart and mind to it.

And I want my youngest twin, the one who worries about who he is and what he loves because society is so eager to judge him for it – I want him to know that he is fearfully and wonderfully made according to God’s pattern.  And by golly, the pattern God cut for him is on a bright, bold, beautiful cloth. This kid loves long, curly hair, turquoise sequins, sassy mermaids, and ballet, tap, and jazz. And all those things are not, nor have ever, been wrong. And if anybody says otherwise, then they are the ones who are wrong. He shines in every way possible – mind, body, soul, AND clothing. His future is as bright as the sequins and glitter he embraces. And Satan, if you have anything to say about it by loading the mouths of minions with ridicule– STEP ASIDE. We don’t need you or your lies in our lives.

And I want the 165 students I teach to likewise be loved and appreciated for who they are and the potential they hold. All of them, of course, but especially my marginalized students – the ones who have so few supporters in their corners. And there are so many of them – marginalized students and corners they’re crammed into. So many who are judged and bullied and ostracized and hated even, all because they look different or think differently or sing different tunes than everyone else. To these children I say – you be you. And I will love you and accept you and celebrate you and stand with you and fight for you. You have an advocate in me. Because red, yellow, black, white or rainbow-colored, you are all precious in my sight. And in God’s.

What I ultimately want for all my children is to accept and see, not reject and judge. God has granted all of us gifts and all of us grace — and we need to use and embrace our gifts and model and share His grace. It’s that simple.

And that hard.

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Why Teaching and Being a Coach’s Wife is SO Worth It

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.

This is what makes this tough life we live so very worth living

#FootballIsFamily
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when you’re brittle and trying not to break (the tale of an introvert in mourning)

Something’s gone wrong with me. I’m impatient. Inadequate. Unmoved. 

I roll my eyes at people who deserve my patience. My sympathy. My empathy. Where has my empathy gone? 

It’s like I’ve suddenly been remade of a very fragile substance. Like I’ve been through the fire and have cooled and turned crisp. Like glass, thin and sharp. Like peanut brittle, but without sweetness. Like dried bones.

Who am I anymore?

Is this what mourning is like? Distancing myself from every feeling so I don’t shatter into jagged bits that will cut someone? 

Because I really think I could. Cut someone. If pressed.

I always thought mourning was feeling everything. Feeling it all so hard and so sharp that it stole your breath and left you drowning in a dense sea of emptiness built from never-ending tears. 

But me, I’ve only truly cried once. The night I buried him. Cried in a fetal position in the floor of my closet until I thought I would vomit — not just the contents of my stomach, but my stomach itself. Cried until bile ran through my veins and tear ducts. Until my intestines flipped and twisted into a knot and wrung out the tears, said, ENOUGH, and sent them packing.

After that, I cooled. 

And backed away. Pushed anything and anyone away who tried to make me talk about it, made me try to feel it.

Leave me alone. Let me alone. Let me.

Who the hell are you to ask me how I’m doing, anyway? Who the hell are you? You have no right to this pain. 

I’m not sharing it with you. I’m not even sharing it with me. It is sacred and not to be touched. It is strangled deep inside my sigmoid colon where it needs to stay. Contained.  Lest I shit all over you. 

Lest I cut you with it, too.

Distance. I need distance. I’ve needed it for the last seven months. 

I’ve put everything and everyone beyond arm’s length. So I don’t get touched. Touch. Feel. I can’t handle it. 

But I know I can’t stay like this forever. I need to get back to what I do. Teaching. Writing. Motherhood. Feeling. 

I’ve always been good at these things. At motherhood and writing and teaching. And feeling.

But I’m still so brittle. So frangible. So far away from who I am. 

How do you teach like this? How do you awaken the minds of your charges when you are terrified to reawaken your own?

And how do you write like this? Without digging deep? Without dipping into dark, muddy shit.

And Motherhood. It’s impossible to mother without shit. Without getting cut. Without feeling. 

Impossible.

I’m an imposter right now. This is not who I am. 

But one-half of the people who made me is now gone. And the person I was came unmoored. And sank. And is buried somewhere in my twisted reality. 

And when I start digging for her, I face hard questions. Not the Did you love me? questions. Because I know he did. I truly, deeply know he truly, deeply did. 

But the other hard questions. The shitty ones.

The Were you ever really proud of me? and Did you ever really know me? ones. The Did you ever really even want to know me — like who I was, not who you wanted me to be? questions. 

All the dark complexities of being a daughter in a patriarchal papa’s world kind of questions.

Will I ever be less brittle? Feel less brittle? Feel? 

Will I be able to reignite the flame that got doused, strangled somewhere inside my intestinal fortitude? Get back to the warm-blooded me who is flexible enough to teach my students the way they should be taught? To mother my children the way they should be and deserve to be mothered? To write about the things I want to write about, that I should write about, that deserve to be written about. To search for the answers to the questions I manage to write out, but still can’t write about. Can’t write through.

Is there a way to tap back into the life forces that pull me through this universe when a major life force in my universe has tapped out? 

It’s all so complicated… and so different from what I expected.

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2021’s Promise-Filled Purple Hurricane Class

Last night, the Cartersville High School Class of 2021 graduated. And in true pandemic fashion, the year of never-ending challenges refused to let up.

Storms came. The sky raged and splintered. The clouds shuddered and roared. Sheets of rain raced across the stadium, pummeling the stage where the seniors were at that very moment supposed to be receiving their diplomas.

About forty people (school administrators, teachers, and techies) huddled beneath a tiny tent just right of center stage (to protect the sound equipment inside, not themselves).

The stands were empty, families and friends recently vacated to parked car interiors, teachers hunkered down in the field house. It would prove a stuffy, stormy, two-hour delay.

The seniors, robed and tasseled and anxious to get the show on the road, were huddled inside the school gym, appropriately named The Storm Center.

The graduates knew the rain was coming. School officials knew the rain was coming. They’d all been watching their weather apps the entire week. Watching as the chance of thunderstorms kept climbing, finally topping out at 100% .

But the seniors had taken a vote. They didn’t care if it was midnight, come hell or high water (and oh, how that high water came), graduation would be Friday. Too many had too many plans Saturday: family leaving, family vacations, graduation parties, Life.

And close to midnight, it was — 11:22 PM to be exact — when the caps were finally tossed.

But first, came the ceremony… and 2021 was’t done making mischief just yet.

The families and seniors had just taken their seats when class representative Alli Archer welcomed the crowd. As she commented on her class’s perseverance, the lights in the stadium flickered and failed.

But this was just one more hurdle the seniors sailed past. They cheered their defiance. Friends and family took up their cause and thousands of phones lit up the stands in solidarity.

The effervescent energy of this class is contagious and God took note.

Class secretary Robert Novak concluded his prayer with a hallowed Amen when God restored all the lights. Chill bumps and cheers erupted in the stadium.

2021 would not, could not, win.

Photo Credit: Trevor Shipman

Despite the hardships and hurdles flung their way, this senior class — this beautiful, resilient 2021 class — didn’t just weather the storm, they owned it. And how could they not? They are Cartersville Purple Hurricanes. It’s in their genes.

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Time to Tuck in this School Year and Lay it to Rest

It’s time to put this school year to bed.

We’ve got three more weeks with kids and then one more for post-planning, and I’m ready. This year nearly convinced me I didn’t want to ever teach again. 

It’s just been so hard. To keep going. To make connections. To smile.

Nobody could see them anyway, hidden behind our masks. And for me, Miss Far-from-Dynamic-or-Charismatic-or-Entertaining… smiles are how I form connections with my kids. How I build relationships with them. One reassuring, genuine smile at a time. (But after the loss of two of the most important people in my life, the few smiles I had weren’t always even genuine.)

Some folks have a presence that commands, an energy that radiates off their entire being like they swallowed the sun and breathe its fire through their pores. 

That’s not me. 

I’m quiet and unassuming, and I easily blend into the background. But I am warm and I am safe. I’m steady and exacting. And so is my classroom. And smiles are how I convince students to take risks inside its walls, under my warm, watchful eye… and smile. 

I’m a firm believer in rigor. I challenge. I set a high bar and watch my students struggle to meet it, with smiles of encouragement and with applause and constructive criticism, and the warm assurance that they are in a safe place.

But not this year.

This year, the rigor was softened — the only soft spot in the entire year.

It had to be. This year, the rigor couldn’t come from the classroom because the rigor was coming at them hard from life. For them. And for me. These are some of the toughest tests we’ve ever endured.

So the smiles were lost. From them. From me.

And we all feel lost. We all feel like we lost.

And we did. We have.

We lost loved ones. I lost my dad. I lost my aunt.

We lost our edge and gained a few edges we’re not proud of — edges formed from resentment and anger. And we nearly lost our motivation. (Some of us, sadly, did.) And our lights were nearly snuffed out.

Remember that old Sunday School song about hiding your light under a bushel? Well, with our smiles hidden under a bushel, the Satan in the form of Covid almost stole our light.

Me, I’ve tried faking it till I make it. Since my smiles are invisible, I’ve tried slipping them inside my voice. Packing my vocal chords as tight with tinkling, prismatic light as I possibly can and then practically singing each student’s name as they come down the hall. But the muffler slung ear to ear on my face acts as a soft pedal, tamping down my smile and energy. They meet me with their own, soft, tamped down greetings behind their own, soft, tamped down smiles.

And the connections have been slow. Or not at all. With almost all of them. Except, thankfully, for my study hall kids. My study hall kids make for an ideal case study on the importance and value of smiles.

Those kids, they get to see me smile. And I get to see them smile. And for an hour each day during lunch, they eat in my room, and I eat in my room, and none of us wear masks. It’s a small group of eighteen. And they’re all spaced out – each to their own five foot desk.

So no masks, and lots of smiles. And the relationships I have with them are flourishing.

But with my six other classes? Well.

We are not well and good. We are far from it. And we are all so thankful this year is drawing to a close.

No, this year has not been my best. And it sounds silly to say because I know no teacher thinks this year was their best. Nobody at all thinks this year was their best.

But I guess sometimes saying it helps. Sometimes saying it helps us move on. And I need to move on. I’m ready.

I’m ready to put this school year to bed and wake up and unleash my smile.

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Carpe Diem and the Soggy Bits

I woke up this morning at 4:14. I didn’t want to. I wanted to sleep. I’m beyond exhausted. I feel like the soggy bits at the bottom of a garbage disposal… all churned up and left to be washed away. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. I lay there tossing and turning, trying to quiet my mind. My mushy, damp, mushroom filled mind. 

It wallows in darkness all the time now. After all, this is the year of living with mortality. From the five hundred thousand and counting deaths due to Covid, to the traumatic cardiac event that cost my father his life, to the long-suffering, slow loss of  my aunt, it has been a tough year. 

I was going try to fight through the wakefulness this morning. Try to lie there, mind churning, stirring and slicing my thoughts, leaving me anxious and exasperated. But then I remembered the article I read this week… about how we need quiet time, Me Time. Time with no interruptions, no pressing obligations (well, they’re there… but nothing can really be done about them at 4 AM), and how those simple solitary hours can be some of the most important, and most difficult, to find. Especially for a 54 year- old grieving daughter and niece, who is also the mother of twin soon-to-be-seven year old sons, as well as adult daughters, who still pull at the strings of my heart and the thoughts in my mind, no matter how grown they get. Plus, I’m the wife of a coach getting geared up for spring ball, and the teacher of 160-plus students. In a pandemic year. All of this. In a pandemic year. 

Let me say, this year has shown me why teachers retire after 30 years. I get how if you start your career straight out of college, a dew-skinned, wide-eyed, tenderfoot, that by the time you hit 52, you’re spent. You’ve developed thick skin, side-eyes, and calloused heart. (Let it be known I work hard every single day not to let my heart grow hard. My conscience is a pumice stone, grinding away the calcium deposits and thick skin. But also let it be known that tenderness makes my job way harder. It leaves me wide open to wounds and weeping.) 

But alas for me, I was never a 22 year old teacher. I am a product of a nontraditional trajectory: back to school at 32, graduated at 34, 20 years a teacher, and way beyond spent. Emotionally and mentally. 

And I know it’s not all teaching that’s done it to me — because my nontraditional trajectory didn’t stop at my late-blooming career path. I also decided to have a second set of children, twin boys no less, at 48. Boys who didn’t sleep for sixteen months – which may be partly why (nearly seven years later) I still can’t seem to catch up… and why waking this morning at the ass crack of day’s beginnings was so incredibly insulting.

And I know it’s not all parenting primary-school twin boys that’s exhausted me.  Because the pandemic has saddled me with all sorts of extra weight too… the five-to-ten pounds worth of stress eating because, hell, carpe diem, for tomorrow we may… well, you know. I mean, after all, 500,000 have, plus my father and aunt. And then there’s the return of teenaged acne from the fabric masks I wear faithfully, and the lack of smiles from my students (maybe just because I can’t see them under their own faithfully-worn masks or maybe because they aren’t smiling either). And the continual waves of students leaving for quarantine and returning from quarantine. And my asynchronous classroom adaptations so hopefully they don’t feel as lost and forlorn as I do. But they do…

And I know it’s not all pandemic. Because I’m also executor to my father’s estate. Which means I haven’t had time to truly mourn because I’m dealing with the load and stress and anxiety of dealing with finances and legal matters that are completely alien to my being. It’s like handing a toddler a buzzing chainsaw and telling her to clean out the underbrush. It’s too heavy. There’s way too much room for error. There’ so much I could do wrong. Chop down the ancient oak or the beautiful dogwoods, get tangled up in poison ivy, raze my legs right out from under me.

I need supervision every step of the way. And thank heavens I’ve had it. I have a family of experts in various arenas and they’ve all lent a hand. Me, all I’m good at is the grunt work. The clearing of the debris. I guess that’s why I have the chainsaw, after all. But, have mercy!

So here I am, typing away my innermost thoughts on my computer (at now, 6 AM), the warm glow of a lamp next to me, warm coffee in my favorite mug,and nothing to keep me company but the quiet hum of the boys’ white noise machines and the keyboard recording my inner-most thoughts. 

And not gonna lie, it’s kinda nice. (Not saying nice enough to attempt on a daily basis because, by GOD, I’m running on dregs.) But still, kinda nice. Like the distinct pleasure of low tide. There are tiny, sparkling bits of peace unearthed or deposited there in the newborn damp.

I guess there are gems to be found in the soggy bits once the churning has paused after all. 

So, right now, I’m actively searching for them. I’m using these newborn, wet moments of my day to write my memoir, to chase my future. To birth yet another nontraditional career inside the trajectory of my nontraditional life. 

I’m believing in myself. For at least a hot minute — before the sun comes up and the boys wake up and the day’s demands start rising again… leaving me fighting for life. Not just my life, but all life. My boys’, husbands’, girls’, students’, society’s. 

It makes for an exhausted life. But a worthy one. So carpe diem it is.

2

When Life Gives you the Bird x 3

We found a dead bird under my father’s mattress. It’s the second dead bird since he’s been gone.

The first was the week following his death. It lay in swirls of peach blush and red feathers, sprawled on the outdoor sectional’s cream cushions like a puffy Renaissance nude — an Audubon Society pinup — anticipating a quick nap. Only the nap was prolonged due to a picture window kamikaze mishap.

And then last weekend, the second one. Also red, no blush this time, all sleek and secret under my father’s upstairs master bed mattress. We unearthed it while diving for dumpster deposits in preparation for an estate sale. The mattresses had to go. No one wants to sleep on a dead man’s mattress. Especially a decades-old one. The mattress, that is, but so too, was the man.

And then a third bird — a robin this time — flew headlong into our screened door on Sunday and knocked itself senseless. It hung out for a while on our porch, ruffled and pouring shat like a cement mixer, before finding the wherewithal to fly away.

I’m a big believer in signs. And birds… they’re symbolic. And things in threes — they’re like the Holy Grail of signs and should never be ignored. But what do they mean?

Well, birds are symbolic of souls. Of souls ready to fly. They can be souls bound for glory or souls bound for freedom. Sometimes those things are one and the same. Sometimes they’re not. Here’s hoping they’re not — at least not in terms of that third bird.

Pretty sure the first two are representative of my father’s soul — a soul flown to glory. Especially considering when and where each was found. A bird in a house symbolizes a trapped soul. And when that bird doesn’t make it, it symbolizes death. So, too, does a bird hitting a window.

So here we are… three birds: two dead, one dazed and confused and shitting on my back porch. In a year already swollen and battered by anxiety, I can’t help but worry.

But that third bird… that robin (the species itself a harbinger of spring and new life)… I want to believe that bird symbolizes freedom. Freedom from this pandemic. Freedom from the ungodly stress and hit after hit this year has delivered to me and mine: my kids, husband, extended family, students, school.

This week has been particularly awful. We’ve had upheaval after upheaval. Our boys have croupy colds. My daughter’s boys have croupy colds. My other daughter endured a traumatic patient loss. And then there’s my husband’s and my work week (and it’s only Wednesday).

We have students sitting social distanced in hallways watching class from computer screens, and students sitting quarantined at home watching class from computer screens, and students sitting in class watching class from behind masks. And none are eager to participate. It’s all just too overwhelming.

And then there’s us. The teachers. We have teachers teaching their own students — in a myriad of ways — and teachers teaching other teachers’ students — for a myriad of reasons. We have teachers getting their temperatures taken twice daily because of exposure risk, and teachers taking anti-anxiety meds twice daily because of exposure risk, and teachers getting sick because of exposure risk, and teachers taking early retirement because of exposure risk. It’s all just too overwhelming.

And then there’s my father’s estate. I’m executor. And road blocks and delays are waiting at every turn. None of it’s been easy. Then multiply the “not easy” times a thousand because I am not a financially-inclined, legally-minded sort of individual. Not in the least. So it all keeps me forever off balance. And honest-to-God exhausted.

And any way you look at it, we are all, all of us, taking punches right and left, and the universe just keeps swinging.

It all feels so overwhelming and so honest-to-God impossible.

So here I sit, dazed and confused in a pile of shit not of my making, as the blows rain down upon me, and I pray there is another way. That there are indeed, better days coming.

That robin on my back porch regrouping while the wind whipped around it — I really need it to symbolize me. All of us. My family. My students. My school. My community. My country. All of us struggling under the whiplash of all the screen doors slamming us sideways right now — but still fighting our way toward freedom. Toward rebirth.

Bruised, battered, and split stem to stern, though we may be, I need to know we can rise above the monumental, excremental existence we’ve been living for far too long now and learn to soar. Again.

Amen.

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