An Accident

I feel heavy, weighted. I want something constructive to do, but there are no books to re-read and scour for new vocabulary or create a week's lesson on team work and our school community. 

Tomorrow we pick the books.

I washed my sheets to kill time, to take my mind away from today. 

This morning we sat through CPS training just liked we needed to learn CPR, but I was dreading it. Maybe because I knew I could find the strength within myself if called upon to save a child's life. To not hesitate to accomplish 30 compressions and 2 half breaths if necessary. But here, in the midst of learning to differentiate abuse and neglect I feel lost. Muddled in my own head space, trying to compose myself as I listen carefully to when we should call and how to fill out the forms correctly. 

I focus on number 3: which of the following may be an indicator of sexual abuse. My partner scoffs at c, wearing or sleeping with multiple layers of clothing. I squirm, twisting in my hands sleeves. Sail to the Moon by Radiohead comes to mind, I try to focus on Yorke's voice. 

It doesn't work, I can see all the clothes I used to wear then thinking how my father's Hope College sweater went unnoticed in late July. 

In the car on the way to work, we chastise other teachers for speaking too much during the presentation. I point out how one in particular got up and made a scene that she was crying, probably for attention. I want to admit that I came close to breaking down myself, but I press the small of my back into the worn leather of the front seat and face out into the October rain. The moment is lost.

I want to feel desolate, but even that seems challenging. 

The day is hesitant, our students catch on and take full advantage. On the way back from the bathrooms, my colleague whispers that one of mine has wet his pants.I pull him aside and sit him down in a chair outside the door labelled trash. How do I begin? I close my eyes and see myself, a 5-year-old running. Untouched. Not yet jaded, not yet bound in my father's college sweater. 


I hold up a pinky, training his eyes on where I had cut myself two days before using a dull knife to open a whole wheat bagel. 


An accident. The skin has already started to repair itself. 


Next, I lift my jean leg, showing an indent in soft skin along my shin where I had fallen down the stairs outside my brother's apartment three weeks prior.


An accident. Forgotten and fixed. 


I ask if he understands and he nods, letting me take his sweater and wrap it around his waist so he can join the rest for the read aloud, Finklehopper Frog. He thanks me quietly. 


I sit outside in the chair labelled for trash, taking in three breathes. Once for that 5-year-old self I had worked so hard to forget. Again for the 24-year-old woman fighting the desolation. And lastly for the them, for all of them. 


The sky overhead threatens to spill over, I hear the laughter coming from the black top just beyond my classroom. It is 4:12 pm. An accident, steal healing. Not quite yet ready to be forgotten.