back at the start

Twelve hours from clean slate, from resolution, from here we go again. I'm feeling optimistically curious-- curiously optimstic? perhaps-- for what comes next: eager, rather than hopeful. Because if my 2009 demonstrated anything, it was the power of just doing. A year ago, I had no idea, no intention. But at some point I realized never had doesn't mean can't, so I did and now I do. I don't measure my achievement in miles, and I don't really think of it in past tense. I love this photo, and not just for the memories of that morning it inspires. I look at it and think, "I made that happen!" And now, whatever it is, I'll do it again.

too bad I don't write fiction

There is a story there, at the checkout in Walgreens, one that could go either way. As we both make our way to the no-waiting register, he hesitates and loiters, giving up his claim to be first. He could be half my age, but it doesn't seem he's being polite. Before I drop my armful of half-off impulses on the counter, I turn back to offer either, "Go ahead," or "Are you sure?" but his expression silences my gesture. I complete my purchase and walk out, leaving him alone to buy a pregnancy test and a Hallmark card.

Muppets!

imaginary nuts

"Is this officially an in-joke now?"

She is 12 and a half, a newish arrival to the world to having a verbal password into a group.

"It is!" I confirm, as we giggle through the aisles in search of imaginary nuts. (You had to be there.) She is, I must admit, too often too wary when I speak in exclamations. That she can't always tell when my rants are serious is not a credit to me, her mother. The stories she will tell won't be flattering.

But this one,this is a keeper, an grocery list mishap turned in to "that one time when." It is, we agree, each for her own reasons, the best trip to the grocery store ever. She couldn't explain, wouldn't guess, exactly what it meant to me, but I think the eavesdropping grandma smiling down into her cart in the baking aisle could.

closure

Hand on the doorknob, eyes down the hall: "Thanks for everything, Ms. P."

I nod, and we exchange see-ya-laters; this isn't goodbye but it is, so far, his second attempt to walk out that door. He had feared I'd try to celebrate him, so I didn't. He feared I'd try to give him something-- it's become a tradition-- so I refrained, calling him back only to hand him my card. His departure then, just like his graduation, an all-paperwork transaction with no pomp or circumstance or party. Maybe in May, maybe if he keeps his promise to me to walk through the ceremony.

I've told him (without basis) that his parents will appreciate it, that he'll someday be glad to have done it (perhaps), that two hours out of his life is not too much to give those of us who want the payoff and the photo memento (in other words, me). It's silly, I suppose. It's not like one cap-and-gown afternoon will trump nearly seven years (he was a sixth grader), but after all the laughs and the drama, the near-misses, close calls, and successes, the questions, the answers, the education in all senses, I'll take whatever closure I can get.

For now that boils down to a not-quite-casual doorway exchange and the choked-up feeling I got when he left.

Amen

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taking a break

This clip is not timely, and the song choice has nothing to do with anything I might want to say tonight. But I'm up to my ears in finals week prep, and thus especially prone to distraction. Flipping post-football channels-- which actually is unlike me-- I ran across the rerun of this. I didn't expect to like it--nobody else should sing that song-- but I enjoyed it, so here it is. Take the Japanese titles as an ESL touch (or evidence of who gets better bootlegs).

Joke of the Day, Except It's Not A Joke Edition

So the teacher e-mails the guidance counselor to confirm the origin of the new new kid.

"You said he's from Colombia. Is that right?"

"No, Hades," she types out just like that. H-a-d-e-s.

I pick up the phone.

"Hades?"

"Yeah, Hades."

(Insert pause full of furious brainstorming.)

"HAITI?!?"

She agrees that the kid is from Haiti. I, ladies and gentlemen, am the one in Hell.

and now, for my next act

To anyone and everyone who has ever said, "I don't know how you do it," when referring to my job, allow me just this once to eschew my traditional shrug of dismissal and instead offer an amen. Because me too neither, brother.

It's not that there's anything different about right now compared to always. It's not as if each individual day or hour or moment is really that hard. I throw it together and do what I can and get by, more or less or mostly. And every day something goes right, or somebody learns something, or at least I have a laugh.

But now and then I have a little out-of-body experience as I cope with some normal-for-me that becomes a periodic last straw. I hear myself, on the phone in my typical role-reversal with Guidance at the end of just another nobody-ever-told-me-the-US-constitution-graduation-requirement-was-now-my-responsibility-or-if-they-did-I-was-out-in-the-hall-with-pregnant-girl-number-four-(FOUR!)-day explaining that yes, we will take the heretofore unschooled fifteen year-old Haitian orphan just now transplanted into Missouri, and that yes, he'll be mine, and yes, we'll teach him English, and yes, I'll help you enroll him, and yes, we'll figure it out. It will be fine, I say and mean it in a code that also translates, "I'll take him off your hands."

I will, and I'm glad to, and it is, after all, my job, my ever-expanding-now-what-how-will-I-one-way-or-the-other position. It will happen, this much I can tell you. How? Well. I'll get back to you on that.

trouble

She leans forward across the desk that's shoved up next to mine, something on the tip of her tongue. She takes a breath then hesitates.

"I don't feel comfortable saying this," she says, whatever this may be. I have asked her no questions, personal or otherwise, invited no discussion. I'm just sitting at my desk finishing my lunch.

"Then you shouldn't say it," I emphasize, both sincere and relieved. "But," I add lightheartedly, "if there's something you need to ask someone, I have heard it all."

Two days later I hear it again, a different story from a different girl, unless her friend was running reconnaissance. I realize as we're talking, again out in the hall, that I had told a truth to which I've been a little oblivious: I have gotten pretty good at this. I am not indifferent to the dramas and the crises, but I am mostly unphased, at least on the surface at the moment, at least in my expression and tone.

When told about a pregnancy, a deadbeat dad, a lost job, a sudden move, a sheriff's knock upon the door, whatever else can knock a kid off-kilter in one five-day span, I can listen and I can calm. I can tell the truth as I see it and somehow reassure. Once upon a time these conversations filled me with above-my-pay-grade jitters; now I'd feel highly qualified to talk folks back in off the ledge. I don't know if word has gotten around or if they've just no where else to turn; I suspect both might be true. Regardless, I don't seek these troubles out. I just look up, and they're there.

in the hall

Once again, we're out in the hall, that public space always more private than a crowded room with three closed doors.

The convoluted details are nearly irrelevant, just one more example of life on the undocumented edge, one more object lesson on the fragility of a life not sheltered by paperwork. Many of us are one false move away from one kind of doom or another; the trip wires are just that much harder to see out in the shadows. Danger lurks everywhere. Story told and retold, he sadly spells out a conclusion that might satisfy the smug: his family figures they might as well return to South America, that for six years of hard work they have nothing to show but a family divided and a younger boy who speaks no Spanish. It's not the whole story, but for now it's the focus. I nod and consider.

Today he looks like an overgrown boy, every bit of teenager bottled up like the gel he has left on the shelf instead of sculpted into his hair. His voice is soft and stripped bare, no pretense, no bravado: "I just wanted someone to tell me it's going to be okay."

So I do.

As best I can, as honestly I can, I tell him what seems to me will happen, which worries of his are legitimate, and which are just catastrophizing. I tell him what I know and what I can guess; I tell him I understand. I hear reassurance in my voice even as I explain that I'm not sure. I feel the trust he has in me, and I try to live up to it.

For a few minutes, we talk, straightforward and seriously, until there's no more to say.

"You know where to find me," I say, and he thanks me, again. In separate directions, we each walk away.