Author: roselevine40

Sometimes, I feel exactly like I did when I worked at Old Navy in 1999. I vacuumed the fitting rooms on Saturdays and scrubbed the toilets on Sundays. I hung fleece vests on plastic hangers, only to find the merchandise thrown on the floor hours later. I greeted each customer with all the feigned joy I could muster for $5.25 an hour. Now, I’m a teacher working in a pandemic. I’m constantly cleaning up messes, and my efforts often feel futile.

With upcoming AP testing, I offered 16 hours of additional prep outside of class time in the evenings and on weekends. Attendance and participation resulted in extra credit. At my review sessions, I had on average 7 out of 70 students attend. Today, multiple students asked me what they could do for extra credit to improve their grades. Time travel? 

In the past year, I have been amazed at what our profession has been able to do. We embraced Flip-grid where reflective videos became the new exit slip. We utilized Nearpod, or, as I like to call it, fancy PowerPoint. We said phrases we never dreamed of saying in the classroom, like “Put it in the chat!” or “You’re on mute!” We created a thousand breakout sessions in hopes of still maintaining the heart of our pedagogy: collaborative learning. We stared into the vortex of black screens hoping just one kind soul would turn on their cameras and make eye contact with us. Teachers have done it all and have done it well. Instead of being thanked, we are asked to modify and adapt over and over and over again.

Just last week, a new policy was implemented where students could revisit any work from any class from any point in the school year. How is this fair to the teachers who thoroughly taught units, graded assessments, and transferred those specific skills to future units? How is it fair to ask those teachers to make time to reevaluate a student’s work? How is it fair to all the students who did master that particular skill months ago?  

But, I know what you are thinking. What about the struggling virtual learner? The one with spotty internet provided by the school system? The one who has to work full time and attend school? And, I agree. Those students deserve every opportunity to succeed. This year, I had a student working at the movie theater while she was in class. If I called on her, she would quickly unmute, just enough time for me to hear the popping of popcorn in the near background.

However, these policies are abused by the privileged who are grubbing for grades. My work email floods with requests to exempt assignments because of mental health issues. We teachers are in tune with these struggles, and schools have risen to the occasion, implementing social and emotional health lessons and ensuring that counselors and social workers are as accessible as possible to help kids work through these difficult moments. And, we teachers have these same struggles, fighting depression, anxiety, and worse due to the loss of loved ones and the loss of normalcy.

My biggest concern is that the teacher’s expertise is no longer valued. That we are supposed to lower our expectations and reward kids for a modicum of effort. I felt this in Before Times, pre-pandemic where the teacher is at the beck and call of the parent and community. But, virtual schooling has only exacerbated a system where we devalue teachers. 

Then, I feel guilty for even harboring these thoughts because I am employed and healthy and vaccinated. 

What I had hoped was that public education would make its own Flipgrid video, reflecting on how we can do better for teachers and students. When teachers have spent the past 14 months reinventing their profession, it seems only fair that we ask the system to do the same.

When I listen to The Shins, 
I time travel to our coveted space - afternoons
of invented villages residing 
outside windows.
But, I left you 
sailing South
all the while cursing
my departure, the roughness 
of the sea.
The lantern only so 
bright, and you knew 
I had to 
row alone.

When I listen to the music of your island,
I remember the roar of the restaurant - the night
of confessions no longer residing 
inside
your head or home.
You gripped my right knee
with panic and possession
wishing it was maybe 
my heart.
Fingerprints lingering for hours.
You fed me
Sangria until 
my head swayed to the rhythms of your Cuban hips.
You begged me
to stay, knowing this 
would be your first indiscretion.
Dressed in your t-shirt and shorts
in a bed miles from your shore.
Even then, I knew you
would leave her.

But, I accompanied you 
as you left port
held your hands
and helped you steer. 
I fact checked your poetry
(no - your grandfather never slept with a prostitute)
and edited your fiction.
You completed the divorcee checklist:
moved out, lost weight, started running,
remarried - quickly.
Eager to patch the hole of that sunken wreck.
Desperate to feel less alone.

But I
was just that 
girl sailor
offering you a safe harbor
on a sandbar,
knowing in a breath
we would both be gone.

I climbed in – the tub already a quarter filled – and slid underneath the water, hoping to cease my shivering. I gripped a plastic red cup, a portable mug of sorts for soup. Tonight, though, the cup only housed dirty bath water, carried from the bottom of the tub to the top of my knees. My legs, always so long, jutted north like an iceberg. I mindlessly scooped and poured, scooped and poured as my body adjusted to its new temperature.

At age eleven, I still took baths. And, even though eleven sounds incredibly young, you think you are three-fourths grown by the time you enter sixth grade. Lockers, school dances. When my friend Darlene came over before one of these dances, she requested to use the shower. But, then she asked a very adult question: should she tuck the shower curtain in the tub? I tried to play it cool. “NoOH.” Once Darlene turned on the faucet, I bolted downstairs – “Mom, do we tuck shower curtains into the bathtub? And, if so, why?” Luckily, Darlene, more mature than me, knew how to handle the curtain.

I know exactly why I was hesitant to switch from baths to showers. For all of my eleven years, I had been mistaken as older. That’s what happens when you are a 5’0” at age ten and then 5’4” by age eleven. Even when mom and I watch home videos together, we cackle at the way I carried myself – a sage. The bath felt like something from childhood in which I could cling. Just me and my young muscles (so many Charlie horses) soaking quietly in the tub, letting my mind breathe, scooping water onto my legs, watching droplets cascade down their personal water slide.

However, baths are also spaces of vulnerability. When I was eight, I had a friend named Lauren Miller – just for a year. She moved in and out of town rather quickly. I considered her to be rich because she had a jacuzzi tub in her bathroom. Her mom encouraged us to try out the tub, let the jets relax our small muscles. I really didn’t want to go in without a bathing suit, but Lauren, the youngest of three sisters, felt totally comfortable in the nude…or so I thought. My baby vagina had already started sprouting hairs, so the entire jacuzzi experience resulted in me fielding questions about puberty, only known to me from a library book I had read with my mom.

Ultimately, though, the bathtub is a place of nightly rituals. When I was smaller than eleven and eight – and still needed assistance and an audience – I’d tilt my head back as mom massaged Johnson & Johnson’s baby shampoo into my scalp. If I scrunch my face and close my eyes, I can still smell it – grapefruit and jasmine and violets and chemicals. Mom would encourage me to keep my eyes tightly shut as she poured warm water from the faucet onto my head with that mustard yellow measuring cup stolen from the kitchen, never to be used for cakes and pies but, instead, soaps and suds. I’d eagerly stare at my fingertips as they transformed into raisins. And, when the water got so unbearably cold, mom would kneel on the tiles with arms outstretched, one side of the towel in each hand. She’d wrap me in tight, helping me transition from sea to land. 

Tonight, I soaked in the tub. To feel nostalgic. To feel young. To feel vulnerable. To feel loved. To remember.

Tonight is the most magical of the whole year. Not New Year’s. Not Christmas. But the autumn evening when we change the clocks. Yes, it’s annoying to hold down the buttons on the stove, and we never quite remember how to reset the clock in our cars. And, tomorrow, my mom will call to tell me what time it is and what time it really is!

But, I promise you that this night is special – the chance to relive an hour between 1 and 2 A.M. – existing in this liminal space with no external markers. It feels as though anything is possible. And, as the saying goes, I tend to fall back into memory, memory drenched in sweetness.

I remember this night, many moons ago, when I ran around D.C. with a boy. With my hand in his, he led me to Old Ebbitt’s back bar – our favorite – where we drank Old Bay Bloody Mary’s. He encouraged me to shake my hesitation about oysters – to tilt my head back and taste the ocean. That particular night, we befriended a Brazilian couple celebrating their engagement. Elated in love, the two betrothed bought us two strangers a bottle of champagne. Afterwards, we emptied the bar and dizzily walked along the empty streets, sightseeing our city in this magical hour when nothing and everything coexist.

The magic of tonight is its fleetingness. I desperately want to hold onto the crunch of the leaves, even the crisp wind that would feel harsh if not for the warmth of the sun. We hold our breath, not wanting to pivot closer to winter and darkness and unease.

Tonight reminds me of one of my favorite songs – “Moon River.” The lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with fall or daylight savings. But Johnny Mercer did write about his hometown, and the song aches with nostalgia. When I return to my childhood home, I sit down at the Kawai piano, now 33 years old, and pick through my grandfather’s sheet music, searching for “Moon River.” I translate his annotations – marked with different chord progressions from his various gigs. His handwriting, a portal to his life decades ago. As my own fingers clumsily splay across the keys, I wish so much to hear Poppy’s music instead.

Tonight, in this lost hour, I want to give you permission to lose yourself. To recall those moments when you felt free, reckless. To remember when you felt nostalgic, sad. To feel it all. For the magic resides in memory and in champagne and in songs that have nothing to do with autumn.

I always felt guilty telling Stacy Rebel no. She would walk from her neighborhood to mine – maybe a total of ten minutes – and ring the doorbell. She wanted to play. Crippled with fear, I hid behind my mom’s legs as she fibbed for me: “Sarah isn’t feeling well…we have to run to the store…she already has plans.” It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have a play date. Instead, at six years old, thoughts raced through my mind. What would we do? What if she tired of me? What if I did something to anger her?

That same year, as I started first grade, I had a painful awareness of time. As soon as we were dismissed for lunch, I had a nagging feeling: shouldn’t I be going home? Kindergarten was only half day. Why did every other grade have to be double? So, I hysterically cried and did so for ten days straight until Mrs. P, Mrs. Faber’s aide, yelled at me to Knock It Off! I never cried again. I didn’t like to be in trouble.

These are my first memories of my anxiety. But, in the ’80’s, we didn’t openly talk about mental health, nor would a family admit that a six year old was suffering. I can just imagine my Polish grandfather hearing about my illness: “What the hell does a six year old have to be anxious about? She doesn’t have to pay the bills!”

Anxiety pairs well with depression, and, while I don’t remember much, I do remember wanting to kill myself at age ten. I knew my dad had rifles for hunting, but they were locked away and hidden. One afternoon, I sobbed in the kitchen and told my mom I wanted to shoot myself. I had not seen any television shows or movies glamorizing suicide. How did I even know it was possible to take one’s life? I had this sadness deep inside me and felt her sit at the bottom of my soul. In fact, she still resides there.

Not until I turned 26 was I ready to face these issues. After my grandmother’s death and the demise of a toxic romantic relationship, I put myself in therapy and started Lexapro. I wasn’t cured, but I was helped. I still have bad bouts of depression. The pandemic doesn’t help. Neither does a ludicrous oligarch as president (off topic but true, nonetheless)

The longer I teach, though, the more I see my own students struggle with mental illness. I used to think that the increase in 504’s resulted from the normalization of mental healthcare. We talk about it. We see it in the media. We have more remedies to help. But, I don’t think that’s the case. When I reflect on all my students have to cope with in 2020, of course they are struggling. Right now, their lives are book-ended by tragedy: 9/11 and the pandemic. In between sits expedited climate change, senseless murders of the black community by the justice system, separation and detainment of immigrant families. You know that this is only a small part of the list. Part of the problem is that our kids are constantly informed. When I was six years old, my parents could shield me from Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings by turning off the television. But, now, my students have all the information in the palms of their hands. I’m not arguing against the smart phone. I’m simply observing that this is a difficult time to be alive – a difficult time to understand yourself and the world you live in when there is so much sadness and destruction.

The only thing I can do is be there. I listen when my students are having a shitty day. I offer advice. I make myself accessible. I think more times than not we all need someone to tell us that it’s going to be okay.

I still resemble that six year old who used to hide behind her mom’s legs. I often back out of plans with friends. This comes across as me being flaky or unreliable. It’s not. Sometimes, I just can’t leave the house, and that’s okay. Some days, I feel uncontrollably sad, and that’s okay. For me, though, I keep going because I know one of my students will need me next week, and that’s okay too.