Why I am a Teacher

Ugh. Yuck. Crust. I’m not eating it. I took tiny bites from the inside of my sandwich, careful to eat every bit of white bread, peanut butter, and cold grape jelly.  The jelly had crystalized on most of the bread, giving the sandwich the most delicious crunch as the sugar first burst on my tongue and then melted away; the purple flavor lingering. Next, yogurt, lemon flavored, my favorite, but there was no spoon packed for me.  I decided to drink it like a milkshake.

“MACKISSOCK! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? DON’T YOU KNOW HOW TO EAT LIKE A LADY? DISGUSTING!”

“but, i don’t have a spo..”

“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT LITTLE PIGGY!”

The tears had already started to congeal behind my eyelids.  The red hot embarrassment began at the top of my head and worked its way down my face and into the pit of my stomach.  Why does she always have to be so mean? The tears streamed down my face making my lemon yogurt salty.  I swallowed the last bit and cleaned up my mess. The cellophane from my sandwich crinkled loudly as I got up to throw everything away.  I hated how easily she could make me cry.  The fact that I could not control the tears was more heartbreaking to me than anything she ever said.

Walking back to my seat, struggling to get control of myself I hear...

“MACKISSOCK, GET OVER HERE!!”

I turned to face my tormentor - her face was pink with rage.

“WHAT IS THIS?” She had my crust from my sandwich in her hand and she was shaking it at me - the crumbs flying around the room.

“its my crust,” I squeaked.

“WE DO NOT WASTE FOOD IN THIS CLASS! YOU WILL EAT IT, EVERY LAST BITE OF THIS SANDWICH WILL BE GONE.”

I stood in front of all my classmates, and I looked into their eyes, through my tears.  Some had looks of pity, others were smirking, others still were clearly glad her rage was not directed at them for once.

I stuffed the whole thing in my mouth, choking a bit, crying still.  I wiped my mouth and snot with the back of my hand.

I looked at her and she barked that I could sit down. 

“Please take out your readers and turn to page 54,

Not me, not me, not me, not me...

MACKISSOCK, why don’t you read aloud for us starting at the top of the page...”

“Once upon a time...”

Optimism and the Red Sox

The three of us lie on the floor in front of the television. Jaimie, Max and I hip to hip underneath the blanket.  The date was October 25, 1986. I was 9 years old.  This was the day that I learned about disappointment.

What can one say about the love a child has for their baseball team? It is undying and unwavering and you never believe that you can be let down by 9 men in jersey pants. Baseball was a way of life in my family. It still is actually - it is the way my father and I begin and end all of our communications with each other. “Did you catch that walk-off from Big Papi last night?”  “Oh yeah, it was a beut!” “Don’t forget to root for our boys this weekend.” “Will do, Dad. Love you.” When I was born, my father had Sox tickets.  This team is such an ingrained part of my family, that when he asked my mother to “Please hurry up, I do not want to miss the game,” she did not get mad at him. Seriously.

I don’t think I really loved baseball until about half way through the season of 1986.  That was when things really started to pick up. I had, of course, worn all sorts of Red Sox clothing since I was a baby and had posters of the players up all over the room I shared with my little brother, Max.  After the all star break, I started to watch the games with Max and my Dad and my Mom. Before, I would be in the room while the games were on, but I would be reading or drawing or playing with my Barbie dolls.  I don’t even remember why I started actually watching the games.  Maybe, at nine, I could finally understand the slow sweet game. The boys of summer felt like my boys all of a sudden and I followed their every move. The choice of team was non-negotiable - I liked the Red Sox because that is what you did in my family, but I didn’t know I loved them until they broke my heart.

Lying on the floor, under that blanket, with my brother and my friend I felt longing and hope for the first time.  It was an ache in my belly, so deep that it felt fathomless. The moment when our poor old Billy Buckner let that ground ball flutter between his legs, was the moment when disappointment came alive.  I was no longer insulated from the devastation of wanting desperately and not getting.

You’d think I would be done with baseball forever.

But you would be wrong.  Because it was at this moment that I also learned about hope.  As my father comforted the tears of my brother and I, he gathered us in his arms and said “The Sox will break your heart. Every year they lose and I say to myself “I’m DONE.” But then the next season starts and they look so good and I get wrapped up in it all over again.  The thing about baseball kids, is well, there’s always next year.”

  At the end of every season, no matter the outcome, the Sox dust themselves off, maybe make a few trades or hire a new manager, and they always come back to the field ready for whatever comes over that plate. Loving the Red Sox is bitter-sweet.  But its worth every win and every loss because, no matter what “There’s always next year.”

Scene

Disclaimer: This is an amalgam of several students and conversations - not a true account of any one experience.

“I don’t need to do anything.  My dad will take care of me for the rest of my life. He’s super rich.” Lies. We know his dad isn’t around. Hasn’t been for years. He glanced quickly at us, across the table, from underneath his eyelashes. His feigned confidence a thin barrier; his iciness just barely concealing his fear. He wants to believe that this is true so badly, you can tell from the hope in his eyes. It’s purely on the surface though, every thing else about him screams “It’s NOT true, It’s NOT true, he’s left me all alone to figure out this world by myself.” We deflate his confidence with the prick of our words.

“Can I ask you a question, pal? and I am not trying to be a punk, I really wan’t to know. What do you want to do with your life? What is your purpose?”

“I wanna do stuff with computers, you know, fix em and stuff.” A moment of excitement, a glimpse of passion.

“And you don’t think you need to go to school for that?”

“nup - my brother will tell me how to do it” (no he won’t - he doesn’t care either.) The brief moment of passion - gone away again.

It was at this point that he leaned even farther into his chair, the eye contact he had been trying to avoid now gone completely.  We talked about the instability of the job market and how many people were currently unemployed. We talked about how people need to be more and more educated and hard-working and efficient to even be considered for a job. 

“I don’t care.” The tremor in his voice, his slumped posture, his shifty eyes all told a different  story. Oh, boy, did he care.  I realized at that moment that this discussion was destroying the only power he felt he had.  I wasn’t going to change his mind using this tactic. He was the most stubborn kid I had ever met.

“Can I go back to gym now? Is the lecture over?” 

“Yes, but just so you know, we have to write a referral. The Dean will be calling home this weekend.”

“Don’t care, got 50 last year and I’m still here.  Peace out.”

He got up and left the room, his apathy hung silently in the air. My teammate and I just looked at each other across the table.

“Don’t you wish you were a time traveler? Then we could go and see what happens, so we know what to do next.”

“Well, I’m going to go write the referral,” she said.

“It won’t do anything.”

“I know, but I have to do something.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Character Sketch

Disclaimer: This is not entirely true - just a bit based on Memere - not actually a real sketch of her.

Her smell was cinnamon and cigarettes. Even though she had quit smoking years before, it seemed her house and clothes had been saturated with the spicy scent of tobacco, and pies. When she saw you, Mémère would hug you fast, and hard, her corpulent arms trapping you. You felt safe in those arms, adored. It’s been 20 years and I can still smell her smell and feel her warmth enveloping me.  Her love is indelibly stamped in my heart.

The brown and white kitchen, remodeled in the 1970’s, served as the backdrop for my own real-life cooking show.  In her last days, she still baked like a fiend, dragging the oxygen tank and her wasted body around the kitchen. She would lean on the counter to rest, her forearms holding her up, the raspy, periodic sucking noise of the hose that never left her face interrupting her stories every thirty seconds or so. From the avocado-tinted stove she would produce the most delicious dishes; they could have been pulled right from the glossy prints of the Betty Crocker cook book (even though she never used one of those things, damn it.)

Like the blue smoke from her cigarettes, her laughter would fill the room. When I saw her for the last time, it was not in her coffin, but as an apparition in the gilt mirror of her living room. The weight of her long illness was gone, she was young again and her beautiful brown hair was pinned, curls framing her face. The navy polka dot dress that she had loved as a young woman flounced around her as she danced to an invisible symphony. Her head tossed back, she was laughing with her whole self. I could hear it. Filling the room, and my heart.

Graduate School and Writing

I have just started Graduate School.  Again.  I am very excited and happy about this - this will be really good for my soul.  I am hoping to get an MFA in creative writing in about 2.5 years, depending on how often I can take classes.  This blog is for me to post some of my writing and share it with whoever wants to read it.  I would LOVE comments and questions about my writing...really I just want to get better.  Someday, I hope to support myself with my writing and teach graduate level classes at a local college.  I love teaching, but I love writing, too.

Please feel free to post your own writing in the comments section of any piece. Please be constructive in your criticism - I will delete mean or poorly worded comments.

Thanks for reading!

Julie