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.

Tommy Guerrero - Yerba Buena Bump

6:53 PM

It begins as a tickle brushing past on the coat tail of an October wind. A thought that hasn't come to you since July, and that has suddenly reappeared clearly as though it never left. Rising from the asphalt just beyond your classroom door. It's slow rhythm an old grandfather clock, collecting in the crook beneath the stairs leading to your apartment as your make your way in.


Rain. The rain has come, and just in time. I'd nearly forgotten how sweet her voice was. And with it the desire to curl into myself, dig deep those images that have suddenly stirred from their long sleep and capture them all in some glass mason jar so I can bathe in their light. There are new CDs to be made, new journal entries to be written, new quiet moments to be shared in the quickly fading light before us. 


The sage is saturated in the hills, its smell coming in through bedroom windows, lingering on pillow cases. Tonight I've chosen to write. Tonight, the rain has come and just in time. 

Perth

You can feel it, this electricity that pulsates when this many people come together over something they all love equally.


It's a Thursday night. 8:30 pm. They open with Perth when I'm in line, cursing myself for dishing out 8 bucks for a lousy beer. The weight of the day heavy on me, unwilling to dissipate as quickly as I'd wished.


Why didn't I bring a flask? Whatever.


The lights dim and I get antsy, this is it. An uneven guitar line enters, familiar and bittersweet. A death precession in the making. The weight lifts, I have my beer, I'm off to tuck myself in with what feels like 50,000 of us drifting in and out of one another.

It's so beautiful, I feel disconnected from myself momentarily. I'm slightly buzzed, it's been hours since I ate. I closed my eyes and inhale deeply, letting every sound, every ounce of reverb, break me evenly. 






I press myself into the green sweater of the guy standing in front of me. Even through the weed and smell of nearby settling compost, his soap or laundry detergent or whatever it is hits me.


Chamomile, maybe.


I feel content. At home. At peace with everything.


I finish my beer and take the stairs to the second level as they begin Towers, pausing to stare out across an uneven mountain side of faces. All faced forward, edges bleeding into the cascading lights pouring from the stage. My heart is full.

 I've almost forgotten what this is like. This cohesiveness. I'm grateful, I feel cleansed.

Vermont

I wished this could be the year I finally saw the leaves turn in Vermont. Not that I've seen them before, but that I've more or less dreamed of it. Walking along some gravel trail alone, hands in pockets, face turned downward into a scarf as I paced carefully over each red-yellow-brown leaf already felled. Deceased. Hearing that gratifying crunch as heel met earth. 


It's good to be here in this moment. But there are no seasons here. Our perception of time is marked in fog as it curls itself over mountains, swallowing whole cities in its decent to the Pacific. Autumn has begun, and with it the relentless rain waits somewhere beyond where the eye can see. The skies themselves have turned sour, a perpetual grey. And within myself I feel a warmth growing, a comfort in knowing that Oakland will revert to this half-hum that I love best. The tourists will all have gone away and all that's left will be us, those peoples disassociated with grandeur images of the bay area. Separate entities that run the course of its veins, bringing life to our hearts, coming and going these months as each morning


the fog rolls in. The fog burns off. And the rain engulfs us in its relentlessness. 


This was the year I wished I could finally see the leaves turn in Vermont. Where behind my eyes some old, out of key piano played a familiar tune I couldn't quite place as I walked, coming and going in my own right. I needed something older, something beyond my control, something celebrated. I wanted to taste fresh maple syrup in an unfamiliar place, cast a shadow by some new fire. 


But instead I sit, writing, barefoot and looking toward 9 am when the day begins. 

Ask not what your country can do for you...

Yesterday morning as I was getting ready for work, bent over the sink with hands cupped together below the running faucet to rinse my mouth, I stopped suddenly intrigued by the millions of creases across both palms that seem to feel deeper. More pronounced. 

This isn't to say I feel old. Rather that opposite, that I am still a baby in the grand scheme of things. But these lines tell of something much harder, more calloused, walled off with brick and mortar. 

These few weeks have been incredible and incredibly exhausting. The long hours, the having to succumb to buying a vehicle (not that I'm complaining, I've forgotten how nice it is to just get up and go for a drive if you desire that), the small interfering questions of "will I be good at this?" that seem to strike at the most inopportune times, the veteran teachers who aren't willing to cooperate, the parents who clearly have no right to be....

And then there's the children. 

I've worked with children from all over the bay. Kids who grew up with a silver spoon in their mouth, running into the arms of a French au pair after a difficult day rather than their own mother. And the kids who watch stoic-like as their mother is taken away for domestic violence, counting down the days until she'll be home again. The ones who never dream of getting out because if East Oakland is good enough for their parents, its good enough for them too. 

I knew going into this that it wouldn't be easy: they never once tried to avoid that during our training and orientation. We were told that we'd have bad days, terrible days, days were we felt utterly defeated and inconsequential. And so I started to build up my walls, preparing for the very worst. For the gang bangers and crack dealers, for the bastards of prostitutes and cast-away illegals. We worked together, picking out the books we'd use for story time, cutting and pasting and decorating the board that would hold our classroom rules and agreements, all the while suspecting what if this didn't work. But before we could doubt ourselves reasonably  the first day was upon us and it was time to be teachers.  

My name is Miss Mariel I announced carefully eyeing each child squirming on the area rug in front of the white board after a failed attempt at control. Was it too relaxed to use my first name? Would be they be able to pronounce my last name? Too late, I had to be confident. Alpha. 

"Hi, Miss Mariel." They echoed after repeated prods from a colleague. The first blow was over with, the norming process could begin. Slowly but surely we'd be alright, we'd make it. I felt a heavy sigh escape me as I stepped off to the side, the weight of not knowing slowly starting to slip away. 

We walked them to the only bathrooms we were allowed to use across the school campus, lining them up and marching them quietly up ramps and through the library. Half way to the door, I felt a tug at the back of my shirt, turning to a frail Mexican girl who always looked worried. It only took a moment before the tears started to pour over onto the apples of her cheeks. I panicked momentarily, not knowing what had caused her pain, looking from student to student as they passed trying to reach some conclusions, but none would meet my gaze. 

"Ms. Mariel." She managed, pushing herself into me as the tears came faster now. What was I to do? Who was I to this child? Suddenly weeks of building my walls up were demolished in a moment. I bent down and brought her to me, letting her cry until the sobs subsided. 

I had forgotten that as adults we teach ourselves to be cold and live alone if no one will have us. I had forgotten that the kids of the gang bangers and crack dealers, the bastards and cast-aways were still kids. And that as their teacher, it was my job to fill in so much more than the educational gaps their school had forced upon them. Hand in hand, we walked to the bathroom. 

The first blow was over with, the norming process could begin. We'd be alright, we'd make it. 

I can't promise these kids a better life, one filled with college and a two-car garage house in the hills, or a six figure pay check. But what I can do for them is teach them to be compassionate with one another, to sound out the words that a really hard, to get them excited about story time, to follow along with all the camp songs I still love to sing when no one is around. And to be the very best individual they are capable of being and becoming. 

I'm exhausted. I'm sure I will feel defeated, but I am only a child in the grand scheme of things. And with these two hands, I can answer what it is I will do for my children, for Oakland, for education. For my country. For myself.

This is it.

I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I'm overwhelmed. I don't even know where to begin explaining this process because I myself are clueless to 90% of the details. 


But this is it. The beginning of what could possibly be that experience, the 12 months that will ultimately determine the woman I will become. 


The last two days of orientation have been a whirlwind. Meeting this huge, beautiful, eclectic amoeba that is the bay area Americorps - the people I will come to depend on, and the people who will look to me for support along the way. The people I've been looking for. The people I've dreamed of walking with.   


We've talked politics, kids, recited our favorite camp songs, discussed in great detail how amazing avocado with lemon juice and salt is after a long day of gardening, held hands and given epic high-fives, been a bit guarded and a bit vulnerable, and laughed and cheered until we were horse as the rock-paper-scissors tournament of the century rounded down to it's last two competitors. 


I can't tell you where I'll be working or who my team will be. I don't know if I'll be teaching Kindergarteners or 2nd graders. I don't know if I'll be in Oakland or Hayward. 


I don't have a car. And I'm still sleeping on my brother's incredibly uncomfortable couch. 


But this is it. Here marks the beginning of the journey of where I started toward to the woman I've always envisioned myself to be.