It's Friday night, and I am sick. The first cold of the school year. Last year I was more resilient. But it caught everyone in the first month...kids and teachers alike. I have just finished watching two chick flicks, and I have traded in teacher clothes for pajama pants and a giant sweater. And laying on the couch for the rest of the night.
This is not my dream of an evening, but it is a relief. After a few days of cold meds and an attempt at a perfectly timed sleep schedule so I could do my job this week, there is no pressure. No consideration of last minute sub plans at 5 am...Should I write them? Should I just go there and do all of these things myself and try not to breathe on anyone? Where did I really get this cold anyway? Was it when I was grading the mound of papers on my desk? Did someone sneeze on their homework and then transfer it to me?
These are passing thoughts, but not very comfortable ones.
I know it's no specific person's fault. People get sick. 'It's been going around.' Most of the colleagues I see in the day at school have been looking a little peaked lately too. Drinking tea. Smiling wanly. Trying to avoid talking for 6 hours a day. Or more appropriately, just GONE to recuperate. Written out, it all sounds a little pathetic. You'd think this group of people in the world called teachers have a streak of martyrdom in them based on the paragraph I just wrote. And while that may be true to some degree, I still argue it's in total avoidance of writing sub plans.
If you write sub plans well, they take hours of diligent typing. And if you don't, someone else's day has a weird off kilter rhythm that they have to hide in order to make do. I've been the sub. I know when someone wrote good plans and when they sucked. And I will always do my part if someone is taking over for me.
I just watched a movie that makes me feel quiet and sad and kind of wistful, which is a word I always tend to use, but always mean. Sometimes I think too much about the world, and then I become wistful. And this movie was abstract enough to pull me in and forget everything but the t.v., the couch I am laying on, and the pajamas I am wearing. It was about waiting and fathers and sons who do the same thing in life, and there was good music in it that matched the fall outside weather.
Someone I know from a long time ago once told me that he thinks of 97.1 as music you listen to the in fall. Country in the summer, Cities 97 in the fall, and so on. I like Cities 97 all year round, and this is that kind of music.
I talked to a woman I know this week who subs at school. And this week she told my class about WWII. I learned that she was in utero when her mother was a warden in London during the Blitz. And I sat there at my desk, and thought, 'Good grief. Her mother was standing on top of buildings looking for German planes, and she was there too.' The kids felt impressed by this as well, but their response was to ask her how old she was. She told them WWII. 'WWI was a little before her.' And I laughed, but no one else did.
It was then that I solidly, in my own life, believed that British people really are fascinating to Americans. A lot of my friends have shared ideas like that, and I have always scoffed. I got into Downton Abbey and liked it but was still astounded by their rigidity. But I sat at my desk and felt it. They cast this lovely little spell over us with their casual remembrances of very difficult things, and their pluck and the way they say things like, 'Jolly good'. At least this woman does. In the last few years, I have read enough about WWII alone to feel fairly astonished by the British more often than not.
This woman, who happened to spend time in my class with me....she was also the one who sidled up to me after my trip to Connecticut in March and, when asking me what I thought about the sea, ended our conversation with, 'Makes you homesick, doesn't it?'
How did she know?
And how can you be homesick for something you never saw before? I think this is what reminds me, and points me always, to the work of God.
In the end, it's this. I'm sick and tired but still happy about life underneath it. My body is not cooperating with my mind. But I have some hope. I remember, even worn out with Kleenex, what it's like to get healthy again. And that you really do want to take on the world in this fresh new way when you finally get there.
I am hoping this happens by Monday! (Or before.)
No comments:
Post a Comment