Into limbo

Yesterday was our school's yearbook day. It was one of the most stressful days I've been through all year. As yearbook advisor, I had to coordinate the distribution of over a thousand yearbooks (all individually checked for quality) to more than a thousand students in dozens of classes. Each book is labeled with the student's name and placed in a box for his or her class. For weeks we've been typing labels and organizing books. Without going into too many details, yesterday had me seriously thinking I should go blow the stipend I received for being yearbook advisor on something crazy, because I had just earned it. Big time.

Because I've been pushing so hard to get all the final projects graded, the yearbooks out, etc., I have given very little thought to moving out of my room. Finally, yesterday afternoon, after losing my patience, my temper, and my sanity, I staggered back to my room, thinking that I would take the rest of the day to get caught up and to figure out how I was going to do this moving thing. As I opened the door to my classroom I gasped in surprise. There would be no respite, no afternoon of getting caught up, no leisurely moving things out. My back counter was already piled up four feet high with boxes the teacher who will have this classroom next year had moved in while I was dealing with the yearbook.

So here I am today, taking the posters off my walls and reflecting over the past two years at Lehi Jr. Most of these posters I hung less than a week before school started my first year of teaching. In many ways, this classroom feels an awful lot like home. I've spent so many hours sitting at my desk, covering it with papers, uncovering it bit by bit, entering grades, teaching, talking to students. I still remember the blog I wrote about the first time I saw my classroom. I still have the series of pictures I took as I decorated it step-by-step. Now, as I look around, it looks like someone is playing that slideshow backwards.

Disassembling this place feels like going back in time. More than once, after taking down a poster or flag I remembered that the reason I had hung it in that spot was to cover up a hole in or stain on the wall. Now my desk is like an island, still covered in papers, the little flower pot, and with the stapler, tape dispenser, and tissues at the ready. All around it, my classroom is turning into a barren and increasingly unfamiliar space. Who knew that classrooms were such blank spaces? Spaces that could be filled with an incredible amount of personality and life with just a few colored bits of paper and cloth and the collective experience of the hundreds of students who have come through this room in the last few years. And who knew that all of that personality and shared experiences could be simply wiped away like the notes from my students I cleaned off of my white board this morning?

To make matters even more disorienting, I'm moving out without moving on. The classroom I will be in at my new school is going to be remodeled this summer, and no one knows where it will be or when I will have access to it. So I am moving all of this stuff, so useless outside of a classroom, into Allie's and my spare bedroom. Next week I will turn in the seven keys I have to different doors around this school and receive none to replace them. And while my pocket will feel lighter and more carefree without their considerable weight, I think I will also be somewhat homeless until there are at least few to replace them.

Well, I've run out of things to say and time to type. Don't let my current yearbook-hangover fool you, I think this transfer will be just fine. But cleaning out my classroom while the next teacher slowly piles her things in the corner (she's brought in three more cart loads today) makes me feel like my life here is already ended, even though the last day of school isn't until tomorrow. Somewhere yesterday, Miss E., the 8th grade English teacher at Lehi Jr. died, and I'm just her ghost, a faded spectre shuffling about my "unfinished business" while the living busily and cheerfully move into the vacant space my life once occupied.

Confession

I can't help it. I know I should be more patient with him. I know that he doesn't limit his attention span to twelve seconds on purpose. I know he doesn't mean to disrupt class by coming in late, talking, whining, and sighing so loud I can hear it clearly over everything else. I know he doesn't intend to be one of my most annoying and frustrating students. I know that I have to give him extra patience, so I know that I shouldn't take out my frustration at not being able to punish him when he's a pain on him. I know that I should be even more loving and patient and understanding since he just got back to school after being gone for a month because he fell off a cliff and landed on his face over spring break. I know he had extensive reconstructive surgery on his face, and am daily reminded of it by the scars stretching across one side. I know that his nose could quite possibly break if bumped at all. I know he's even more scatterbrained and stressed because he's behind in all his classes from his time in the hospital. I know that for naturally active person with a 12 second attention span, being unable to play basketball and horse around must be an agony of torture, reducing his attention span and usually sparse impulse control even further.

Still, after the tenth time he had blatantly interrupted my class "on accident" in the first fifteen minutes of fourth period, the reason my anger didn't boil over, and the only reason I faced the class with a delighted smile as I turned away, was because I, accidentally, for the briefest of milliseconds, imagined punching him in his fragile, reconstructed nose.

That probably makes me a bad person. But hey, I didn't yell at him like I was about to, right?

Mother's Day Tribute

When I was 18, I got my first official “boyfriend.” I was giddy and happy about it, until I realized that having a boyfriend was usually public knowledge. And while I didn’t mind the people at school or all my friends or, heck, even the teachers knowing, I wasn’t so sure about my parents. As I thought about it, I realized I didn’t even know if I was “allowed” to have a boyfriend in high school. Everyone else’s parents seemed to have clear rules on these types of things, but it had never been an issue for me before, so I had never asked my parents about it. Not to mention, when you’re 18 and beginning your first official relationship since the fifth grade, telling your parents is an agony of awkward. I considered not telling them at all, but they were bound to notice unless I actively hid it from them, and I didn’t want to have to sneak around in my real relationship, especially when there was nothing they could possibly disapprove of in this relationship—except, perhaps, its existence…

I decided to test the waters with Mom. One day, as we were driving back from somewhere, I said with pretend innocence, “Mom, what would you do if I got a boyfriend?” This was supposed to give the information I needed without disclosing any on my part.

I think I can count the number of times I’ve fooled my mother on one hand. This wasn’t one of them. “Why? What boy do you think highly enough of to make your boyfriend?” I was caught red-handed.

Besides reading minds, my mother has several magical abilities, and it would take a book to list them all. For instance, I’m fairly sure that she has visions. I don’t mean the in the Joseph Smith and Nephi kind of way, although I’ve never asked her, but visions nonetheless. Frequently these visions were a source of confusion and extra hard work for me. When she decided to plant bushes and trees all along the edges of our lawn, and sent my sister out to plant and weed and whine about it, I grumbled about “Mom’s projects.” When we tore up the lawn to install a sprinkling system, I thought it’d never recover. When she decided, years later, to plant MORE TREES along the edges of the field, and sent me out to weed and whine again, I grumbled about “Mom’s projects.” When she decided to rip off one side of the house and throw everything into confusion by remodeling, I thought it was fun, but crazy. But, it turns out the Mom has visions. She can see the future. She looked into the future and saw how beautiful our house and lawn could be and then spent years gradually turning vision into reality. She did the same thing with our cabin, and she does the same thing with nearly everything she touches.

Ask her to plan a family reunion, and, before you know it, you are sent off to help take care of bits and pieces you don’t understand until you see the final product. And that’s another thing she taught me, visions require hard work and planning, sometimes years of it. But more important than being aware of the work involved, she has shown me, on countless occasions, not to be afraid of it. So what if it means upsetting the just-fine status quo? So what if that’s a project that will stretch for years? So what if you don’t know the first thing about what you’d like to do when you begin? All of that can be dealt with, and I’ve watched Mom do it countless times to prove it. She taught me to dream big, and to dream creatively, and to not limit my dreams to things that feel safe and easy.

Now, when I want to try new things, things that seem foreign to my experience, or even to the idea of “Eve” that I saw for myself, I don’t spend much time freaking out. Last year, when I was asked to take over the yearbook and make a good looking product from scratch without much training or instruction and a staff of fifteen 14-15 year olds and sell it to a thousand of their peers, I could say “ok.” When I decided I needed a new hobby, I wasn’t afraid to try something completely different. When I was told I would be moving schools and teaching more classes and starting from scratch again, I didn’t waste time grieving and moping. I remembered Mom, and everything she’s taught me about opportunity and work. When you need to create a yearbook, you do it, whatever it takes. When you need to change schools against your will, you make it work and make it work well. Mom has taught me not to be afraid of change, voluntary or un-. Her example gives me courage, hope, and determination.

I think Mom had a vision for the type of home she wanted, one in which anyone would be welcome, and her children would rather bring their friends there than leave. A home full of good places to take naps, curl up with a book, or sit talking with siblings and parents. I know that I am only aware of the tiniest percentage of how much planning, effort, and vision that took to create, but the result is that we all love our home, and we all love being there. When I bring friends home for the first time, they always say something about the atmosphere of our home.

There are so many things I have learned from Mom, so many memories of things she taught me. When I set out to write this, I had a list of five or ten that I had to cover. I’ve made it through two so far. My mom is someone whom I look up to, whom I respect and love and admire more than I know how to express. As I do this “growing-up” thing that I’m doing, I’m beginning to piece together my own vision of the future. It’s a vision of who I want to be, and I know I will spend the rest of my life working it into a reality. That vision looks an awful lot like my mom.