It’s over.
The busses pulled away, a flutter of hands waving through the windows, eyes peeking over the edges. Teachers wooting. A collective cheer, then a collective sigh, then everyone back in the building to clean up, box, stack, and sweep away the remnants of the year.
I thought there would be an instant feeling of relief. An instant moment of reflection and gratitude for lessons learned and optimism for the year to come. No longer a first year teacher.
But all I felt was the tension I held in my chest. The feeling that I needed to hold myself together. It was because of that- because I felt the tears and because I wasn’t ready for them, because I didn’t have the words yet- I stayed outside.
I joined a co-teacher and friend who sat at a picnic table under the trees. She had words to give to her tears. Co-workers she loved and respected were leaving. Change is always scary and hard. And this group of kids- she’d taught them in 7th grade through a computer screen and in 8th grade behind masks – these kids left a mark on her. She’d been in their homes and they’d been in hers. They knew each other’s dogs, the colors of their walls, their annoying siblings and crying cousins in the background.
We were all wrecked in our own ways when we came to school in September- teachers and students. All tender and translucent skin. Familiar now with uncertainty. Uncertain about the safety of the ground underneath our feet. For my co-teacher, it was that I think. These kids so entwined with this trauma. These kids she might not see again.
For me it was that- in part anyway. Their being my first students as a teacher. The familiarity I had with their habits and ticks. That I knew what angle to take when making a request. But it wasn’t just that.
I don’t know that I even have the words to express this thing I’m carrying now.
Maybe I need an analogy.
Our last unit in English 8 was mythology. We introduced it to students by telling them that they’d been on a hero’s journey themselves. Leaving home to return to school during a pandemic. The trials of endless testing, middle school shenanigans and fights – the chaos that sort of undergirds middle school. Having to learn how to use their voices again now that there was no chat. Having to show their faces again now that there was no camera to turn off. They were shaped by the year, we told them, changed.
And probably, so was I. Though I don’t have any sense of triumph. Nike, the winged goddess of victory, has not given me a palm branch or a wreath. I feel like Sisyphus. Every day since August pushing that boulder up the mountain. The boulder, of course, was the first year of teaching, the graduate classes, the family, the friends, the pets, the house, all the life I lived every day from 5:15 to 10:15.
And as I heaved it up the hill, I dragged a dead horse roped to my ankle. The horse was my self doubt, expectation- all the thinking I did about all the doing. The constant anxiety that I was letting people down. My children, husband, siblings, parents, co-teachers, friends, and neighbors. The constant realization that I was not operating at full capacity. that I was constantly dropping things. That I wasn’t taking care of everyone the way I once had. The constant worry that I was forgetting something- an assignment, a meeting, an appointment, a duty. The fear that I was doing all of it wrong. That I was failing every day. That my students weren’t learning. That my children at home were floundering with their own worries. That the house was falling a part. That my sisters felt overlooked. My friends felt unloved. That I wasn’t enough.
Every day I tried to push the boulder up. Every day, my legs inched that horse up another inch.
And I have tried to hold all of it to myself. Because it was my burden to bear. Because everyone I know is struggling. Because this was all part of the expectation.
So I shelved it all in a closet. Just to survive the year. Even today, I’m not sure I’m ready to open the closet. But its contents keeps spilling out anyway.
As my co-teacher was speaking fondly of her students all I could hear were the parting words of the boys in third period. Two out of three showed up on the last day. Upon arriving in the room, they told me they hated me. That I sucked. That I was a bad teacher and should retire.
Before the bell rang, I told them I knew it had ben a challenging year and that I knew I hadn’t been the perfect teacher, but that I enjoyed teaching them. And that they taught me a lot and also made me laugh. I wished them the best in high school.
I meant every word.
“We don’t like you and we come back to visit, we’re not going to visit you,” they said.
The bell rang and they left. And that was that.
The beauty of working at a school is there are no long goodbyes. The bell always signals when it’s time to move on.
This week in English we read a short story called “Eleven” by Sandra Cisneros, about growing older. How even as we grow older, we’re still a compilation of all the ages we’ve ever been. How you might be 11, but some days you might need to cry and sit on your mother’s lap and that’s you being 3. And sometimes you wish you were a much older person so you could say the exact right thing at the exact right moment.
The boys made me feel as if I were 12 or 13 again. As if I were getting kicked out of the lunch table in 7th grade. As if my best friend didn’t want to invite me to her birthday party because I wasn’t cool enough. My 40-year-old self knows that their words to me were, at least in part, just a manifestation of their disability. That, mostly, they had nothing to do with me at all, but rather their inability to cope with trauma they hadn’t fully processed. My 40-year-old self reminds me that I did the best I could with my limited experience and the challenges of pandemic schooling. My 40-year-old self tells me I don’t need validation from middle schoolers. “It’s not you, it’s not you,” she soothes.
But I’m not just my 40-year-old self. So even as other students thank me and offer hugs and high fives. Even as a few tell me I was one of their favorite teachers, I still hear these boys telling me I’d failed. I’m 13 and I just want to hide in my bedroom and cry into my pillow and wonder what it is about me that is so awful.
I’m sure my 80-year-old self will one day smile knowingly to my 40-year-old self and my 13-year-old self and point out that it’s all just part of the narrative. The story doesn’t end with me being marooned in the middle school cafeteria or me being a horrible teacher or me sitting there at that picnic table under a tree trying to hold back tears. These are just chapters.
I had thought on the last day that I would have a sense of relief. That I would be able to celebrate. That all the tension I’d been holding would just evaporate. That I could go back to being loose and silly and fun.
But I’m not ready. I watched as Lily and Jovie raced around the pool parking lot dousing their friends and other parents with water during the annual last-day-of-school neighborhood water fight. But I didn’t enter the melee. I couldn’t let go. And then later on when we joined some friends for an outdoor concert, I didn’t feel like I could dance or sing along. I just felt awkward and stiff. Like I was still all tangled up in rope.
At the water fight I caught eyes with a neighbor who is moving across country in a couple days. I know she’s devastated about leaving. I know in that moment we were both on our own islands just trying to hold ourselves together. That we had to be careful about what we said or how much we said so as to keep the dam from breaking. Because there wasn’t time for it. So while I wanted to give her a hug and tell here what a wonderful neighbor and human she was, I told her I wasn’t in a place to deal with goodbyes and I figured she wasn’t either and that I thought it best we just ignore our feelings for a little while longer.
But also, we both know there are times when words can’t replace the mutual knowing. Even know as the words spill out of the pen, I know they are just the outlines of our experience. Just the lines. The rest can’t be said. Only felt. Only known by walking through it.
I don’t think I ever pushed that boulder over the mountain. But the year is over. And I don’t need to try anymore.
Today I can sit at the bottom and lean on the bolder. Unknot the rope around my ankles. Give the horse back to the earth.
Just sit and listen to the birds and the rain and the sound of my own breath. And be grateful for the rest.