School seems to be out for summer, or if it isn't everywhere yet, it will be in the next two weeks or so. And for the first time in my life since I was too little to remember? This means absolutely nothing to me.
This makes me so sad I don't even know how to describe it.
It's not because I need a vacation (although maybe a little I do). It's just because for so long the rhythms of my life have been governed by the seasons of the academic year. There are certain transitions and new beginnings that are promised and delivered when you're a teacher or a student. Not having those, having the year just continue, is really messing with my head.
Counting student teaching and long term subbing, I have been in front of a classroom for 7 years, and I have had a last day of school for every one of them. The class that just graduated from the tiny school I used to teach at was my last class of Sophomores before I moved up here. My last freshmen are now seniors. Soon there will be no one left there who remembers me.
And my first class of freshmen when I was fresh out of college, before I started moving around the country, are college seniors now. I don't even know what to say about that.
Since Baby Girl was 4 months old I have been tutoring two nights a week. I had my last session with my most recent tutoring student on Wednesday. I was almost late because hubby got stuck in traffic on his way home from work. I spent two hours teaching this kid and really, I might as well have been talking to the furniture for all he seemed to get out of it. Then I got home to a screamy baby, a messy house and a frustrated and unhappy husband. So on Thursday morning when the office called to offer me a new tutoring student, I said no, thank you.
It is totally irrational for me to be as sad and angry about this as I am.
I don't want to go back to work. I don't want to leave Baby Girl. Plus, I know how hard it would be. If I could even get a job, it would be at a whole new school with a whole new curriculum. I know I don't have the energy for that.
Sometimes I joke that I wish I could just teach with Baby Girl strapped to my chest (and maybe it would even stop bullying) although I know that even if that was possible, it wouldn't solve everything. I feel like I am disappearing. I feel my old life slipping away, and I don't want to be clinging to it so fiercely, but I am.
And as I was typing this, Baby Girl just crawled into my lap, curled up on my chest and went to sleep. And I want this life, want to stay here in this moment forever too.
It's summer now, time (my body and soul tell me) for the end of something. After 7 years (or 23 years) of crying at graduations, you'd think I would have learned by now how to let go.
You know, sometimes I have the same frustrations. It seems like everyone else can get on with their lives while ours has completely changed. And it does seem unfair. And it hurts.
ReplyDeleteOh, Rach. I so wish we could hang out.
ReplyDeleteIt does hurt. And it's not that I don't like the new life, I just grieve the old one too. It's hard being a mom and a human being, huh?
Can I say that I'm sad that you turned down the new tutoring job? I'm a big believer in that you need to do things for yourself, so you don't lose yourself. I want for you to have a list of ways to describe yourself, you know? You are a mom yes, but also a writer, and I think a teacher is always a teacher, what else? Make a list for yourself to post on your bathroom mirror so you see that you are more than you can see sometimes.
ReplyDelete