Elegy for My Childhood

Yeah, I know. I haven't posted in a REALLLLY long time. One of my high school friends teased me on Facebook about how my blog lasted a whole two days. "I've been busy" is an understatement and I definitely have many thoughts I'd like to write about, but that would require thinking that I can't manage to do lately because I'm being pulled in about a thousand directions at my job.

One of my Christmas Break resolutions was to get more organized and to clean out drawers, my closet, etc. (I cleaned the closet. No easy task). In my entertainment center I found a notebook full of papers and random assignments from college. Most of them, especially my English papers, were a blur and I honestly don't remember writing 97% of them because they were usually produced in the early morning of the day that they were due. I did run onto a poem that I obsessed over when I was originally writing it for my Poetry Writing Workshop during Fall semester of 2007 and when I found it and read it in the middle of this night, I got teary-eyed. Here it is:

Elegy for My Childhood

Twenty years ago, I was almost three.

I wore my hair long, just past my tiny shoulder blades.

Usually there was sand in it, and if it was summer,

a green tint resonated.

I rarely moved from the sandbox and I loved to swim.

By all accounts, I had big, blue, curious eyes

And I asked a question with every breath.

I breast fed my dolls.

I spent my days with Grandpa.

I received great pleasure from snapping his suspenders when he least expected it.

I lived on hot dogs and ice cream,

and he'd watch cartoons with me all morning.

I used to lay on my tummy on the blue carpet,

arms outstretched, pretending I was floating in the ocean.

My grandpa would walk around me on the water.

I grew. I went to school but I didn't eat glue.

I was described as "precocious."

I remember the rich crayon smell of my elementary school

and how a new box of colors was all it took to feel complete.

School-age afternoons were spent with my brother, catching grasshoppers

and showing Grandpa what happened when we pulled their legs off.

I adored my mother.

Her mother died when I was 10

And on the day of the funeral, I perched myself

on the back of the 70 year old toilet, my chubby legs dangled down

to the carpet covered seat.

I tried to catch the threads between my toes as

I watched her

wipe the tears from her mascara stained cheeks

with a warm cloth.

Her long, brown hair was held back from her forehead.

That was the day I realized that I had her widow's peak,

and that I would inherit her laugh lines.

Five years ago I was almost eighteen

and I saw these years coming to an end.

My grandpa evolved into just a sweet old man

from the fearless, suspender- clad messiah 

of my childhood.

I noticed my mother's beauty less and disregarded her more.

I preferred not to ask questions, but to answer them

And I had long ago become disgusted with the idea of sand in my hair.

I didn't know it yet, but I was saying goodbye 

to the precocious little girl.

I'll soon be twenty-three.

I pay bills now and

I sit at a desk at least half the day,

most days.

Often my head aches with tension.

I have demands,

a responsibility as a scholar and an employee.

As the days pass, my recollection fades

from the memories of a previous life without adult burden.

Over the summer I lay awake in my bed in my parents' house

and remembered this little one.

I think I had always been waiting for her to come back,

and suddenly I realized that she was gone,

her dolls packed away in the attic.

I elegized and began looking forward to a reincarnation:

a little girl, born from my body,

with the same tiny shoulder blades

and sand in her hair. 

It's all in the attitude

I fall easily to pessimism. I generally expect the worst to happen just so I can be surprised and relieved when it doesn't because I HATE being let down. I can't stand to get excited about something and not have it work out the way I want. I guess that probably makes me a somewhat normal person, but it does send me into an especially severe downward spiral when I expect something is going to happen and it doesn't. #control freak

The one area of my life, however, where I am not a pessimist is with my students. People make jokes to me all the time about me being a teacher that watched too many movies where a person comes in to a school and works a miracle, turning the school around and winning the trust and love of what others think are crappy kids. It's true. "To Sir with Love" and "Dead Poet's Society," mixed with a lot of liberal guilt made me want to teach. I do walk around my classroom assuming that all my kids are going to go to college and lead better lives than their parents are, even though subconsciously I know that a lot of them won't. My conscious naïveté has bought me a lot of respect from them. Until last week.


Last week was horrible. The proverbial stars were not aligned whatsoever. One of my favorite kids got caught drinking in the bathroom and trafficking it to others and is now getting expelled, another's father committed suicide, there were stupid fights and drama going on everywhere. On top of that I was teaching them how to write an argument paper and most of them chose really heavy topics like abortion and gay marriage so that weighed me down (mostly because I had to bite my tongue to the ones that were taking the position opposite mine) and several of them didn't want to write papers because they realized it was something they would have to do on their own and not in a group. The backlash was serious and it was a week-long game of "Whack-a-Mole."


I was wandering around the hall, looking especially dejected, when a co-worker asked me if I was alright. I don't know her well, but I just took the opportunity to unload. I confessed that I felt like a terrible teacher because some of my students weren't understanding their paper and didn't want to write it (what 14 year old does, though?) and that behavior in general sucked. She gave me a long lecture about how all young teachers are idealists and I need to realize that I can't save everyone. Some kids will slip through the cracks and I can't do anything about it. They don't want to work, they will get left behind and that's the way it is. You just have to focus on the ones that will make it. So what did I do? I bought it. It took a lot less mental energy to concede that things were bigger than me. Free at last!


Then I paid for it double the next 2 days. They went from worse than normal to bad. Kids that never misbehaved with me were acting like giant jerks. It felt like no one was working, everyone was commenting on how Fromm is being a real "B" and I found myself saying things that I normally would never say. I became miserable and seriously considered another job. Then I realized something: things were just "uncomfortable" and the discomfort was all related to situations outside my classroom until I decided to adopt the mentality that some of these kids suck and always will and I can't stop it. Then it became unbearable.   

My pessimistic inclinations really screwed me and I felt terrible about it. So what does a good teacher do to win back her kids? Well, she would probably talk ad-nauseum about how she messed up and is human so she makes mistakes and apologize, but I just went and bought a bunch of star crunch and a movie and planned on winning them back through bribery. I thanked them for working so hard all week and explained that I know it's difficult to write an argument paper and made a deal that if they work hard for an hour, I'd hype them up on processed sugary snacks and watch part of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Worked like a charm. We were all back to our old selves and in the middle of practical jokes and class discussions about random topics, nearly all of them met the goal that I had set for the day. Thank God 8th graders are so easily bought. (Herman Cain, I know you're reading this. Don't get any ideas).

I learned a very important lesson about how to not become a burned-out, grumpy old hag before I really do move on to another career. I should say that the teacher with whom I had the discussion that temporarily converted me to what is probably realistic is great at her job but I personally have to pretend that I'm a super-hero to enjoy what I do. I'll keep pretending and hopefully the young minds to which I am entrusted continue to believe it.

Oh, hey.

So here I am with a blog. Having a blog is kind of an egotistical thing. It means that you assume people care what you think about enough to waste a few precious moments of their lives to read your musings.  Those of you who have known me since high school and certainly those of you that knew me in college understand that I do assume that people want to hear what's going through my head and you're probably wondering what took me so long to get one of these going. I have no idea what took me so long. I guess until now Facebook status updates were working just fine. Plus, my friends are pretty good listeners and humor me more than they probably should. I do have to confess, though, that I plan on my opinions making me a lot of money some day so I guess this is practice. Don't worry, I'll be sure to take it down a couple notches from Nancy Grace when my day comes.

There was a specific motivation for starting this blog. Over the last few years I've read blogs by quite a few of my friends and acquaintances and noticed that the blogging theme for women in my age group in this part of the country revolves around their experiences with making their new house a home, or being newly married, or starting to raise children. Love all of you that are sharing photos of your knitting projects and newly painted dining rooms and your frustration over the cost of organic baby food peas, but I'm not there yet. I might not be there for a long time because I'm not particularly interested in that at this point. I want to write about my life as an independent woman now-approaching her late 20's who soaks up a lot of culture and entertainment, loves to wear beautiful outfits, lives to eat and drink all that is delicious and insists on having an impact the state of the world while living in a city that usually makes it difficult to do any of that. You will also hear about my life as a teacher in a school full of kids that have lived interesting but challenging lives. And, if you know me, you know I'll share my thoughts on politics and social issues a lot. (And yes, I do consider fashion to be a social issue). This will be a manifesto of random topics and opinions by yours truly-- some will be deep, others will be shallow and I'll probably make you laugh, you will certainly raise your eyebrow and I might make someone mad. Oh, well. A guy once told me that honesty wasn't attractive in a woman, so obviously he liked to be lied to. If that's what you like, you better check out classy Casey Anthony's blog because I only tell you what I really think, for better or for worse. Enjoy.