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It was 31 years ago this week that I met Himself and with
this otherwise insignificant anniversary, we have been manacled together now for
half of my life. My children are healthy
and employed. I gloat, perhaps kidding
myself, that they have less baggage for which I am to blame than I had with my
own mother. As I find my withering body more
and more resembling that of Adele, I’ve grown more tender and fear that my encroaching
decrepitude will cause my children to grow impatient and short with me and that
based on my treatment of my own mother, I will deserve it. But lately, my guilt has been assuaged a bit
because, and I’m not sure what’s triggered this, some examples of my mother’s
capacity for cruelty, towards me and also others, has seeped into my forefront.
I very much like the assistant principal who supervises me. I am given amazing latitude and compensation to engage in activities to
better my practice of teaching. She asks
me to attend a training meeting on a Friday and it is only because she has been
so great to me that I agree to put on a bra and drive a few blocks to the conveniently
nearby school where it is being held. I
arrive at 1:29 for a 1:30 meeting and find that it is not being held in the
same room as other meetings there have. There
is a sign on the second-floor stairwell indicating that the meeting is upstairs,
and I spend twenty minutes trying to find the stairwell to the non-existent 3rd
floor of the cavernous building. When I
note, upon my tardy arrival, the misleading sign, the facilitator’s response is
that she used to get lost at the school too.
There is another facilitator too. She is facilitating in order to make a video
tape for a graduate program she’s in and doesn’t even work for the department hosting
the session. We have to sign a media release
and it was all I could do to keep myself from red-lining it, as I do to many of
the footage licenses that my clients provide.
She gives us little puzzle pieces to answer questions on. I don't gibe with my partner and miswrites
things that I suggest and writes the wrong way on the pieces so that they
do not fit together when placed on the sharing board.
I’d expect a group of forty or so and plan on sitting in the
back and playing Scrabble on my phone but there are only 7 other teachers. We are shown 2 juvenile videos and then just
a few minutes of the one that’s actually interesting. There are gimmicky discussion prompts and crappy
snacks. I also discover that this is
just the first of a series of monthly Friday meetings that my assistant principal
has suckered me into.
Wilma, my needy morning student who has cancer, is
hospitalized this week. She sends me a picture
of herself hooked up to an IV drip. This
particular photographer has some sort of psychic pathology, so this is
certainly not out of character, but I notice, on social media, that many people
share hospital pictures. I get the
beaming, exhausted new mom with a tiny infant but I fail to understand why
anyone would ever take any other sort of a hospital bed photo.
The morning class is tiny, and mostly young mothers. There is one woman in her eighties with
cataracts and a hearing impairment. The other
students help her through the materials, but it feels a bit like adult
daycare. All of the students are sweet
but as cloistered, stay at home moms, they lack the verve of my lively evening
class.
There are sixty students enrolled in evening ESL. Usually
about 45 attend and teaching the big room energizes me. Most are beginning beginners and we do a lot
of alphabet work and practice reciting our phone numbers and addresses. Every semester a couple of students get on my
radar as folks I can do a bit more for than just teaching beginning English.
Carmen, with intelligent eyes, always sits in the front and
quietly answers just about every question correctly. She is extremely bashful. I pull her aside and commend her smarts. I also ask her to be one of our student
council representatives. She is
mortified but I push it a bit and encourage her to channel her braininess into
some leadership. I tell her to at least
think about it. She is absent the next night
and misses the first meeting. I feel
like an asshole who’s frightened her away.
The following night she shows up and explains that she’d had to work
late and asks me when the next meeting is.
I tell her how grateful I am that she’s not mad at me and send her
around to help students who are struggling.
On the first night of class, Marvin, in his early twenties,
is wearing the same Joy Division t-shirt that Number One Son wore for just
about every day of high school. I ask
him if he likes New Order (not as much as Joy Division) and we talk about the suicide
of Ian Curtis. He likes rock and jazz and I encourage to
listen to some Motown. As his English is
about the best in the class, I ask him to join Carmen as our student council
representative. He is leery but I
promise that in exchange, I’ll give him a band to listen to every night, in
exchange for his service.
I start with my own favorite, The Replacements. He listens to Let it Be, brilliant but early and rougher than their
later albums. “Did you like it?” “It’s punk,” he says sort of dismissively. I jot down a name of a few of their more
produced albums and also, “Shoot Out the Lights” by Richard and Linda Thompson,
which I expect he’ll like, as he’s into guitar and is a big fan of Nico. This does elicit a favorable response. Despite of his lukewarm Replacements
response, on a whim, I recommend another Minneapolis band, jotting down Husker
Du’s Zen Arcade. This band he likes, and
I decide to branch out a little.
I scribble Paul Simon’s Graceland in his notebook. He rolls his eyes and asks, “Simon and Garfunkel?”
“Just listen,” I urge. While Marvin is
one of my best students, it is still a level one class and he struggles to
express his startlingly sophisticated musical insights. “Graceland?” I ask the next night. He grows flustered and finally whips out is phone
and taps something into the translator. “It
exceeded my expectations.” He is very
impressed by the impeccable production and the showcasing of world music.
Before setting up the home office, I have a painstakingly
curated Napster playlist and music plays all through my working day. The combination of working from home and the
2016 election has resulted in an “all -news, all the time” diet. My Napster account is cancelled. But Marvin’s
joy in discovering new sounds has made me think seriously about music for the
first time since the election. I’ve been
listening to CDs in the car and in the classroom while I’m getting ready to
teach. I realize that depriving myself of music because democracy is in
jeopardy really accomplishes nothing.
Dusting off my old CDs raises my spirits. 2020 will bring the fight of our lives and I
will be better fortified by the joy of music than the constantly dispiriting
and disgusting newsfeed.
The benefit of my tiny morning class is that I have the
opportunity for some intensive conversation practice. I wish that my sweet young mothers had
something more interesting to say. About
twenty minutes before the end of the night class I order them to tell me
something before they go home. “Spell
your last name. Remember that “eh” in Spanish
is “ay” in English.”
“Tell me your mother’s name.” I never ask for the father’s name, always
afraid that there’s someone who doesn’t know.
This week, I instruct them to complete the sentence, “I love…”
“I love my family.” “I
love my wife.” A couple “I love Jesuses.” Mr. “I love shoes,” is indeed wearing a snappy
pair of orange and green Nikes. But
there are inordinate number of “I love my Teacher,” followed by hugs and
Teacher getting a bit snarfly.
A couple students hang out after class. Blanca, from Medellin Columbia, is a civil
rights attorney. She met and fell in
love with an American businessman, and here she is. Haroldo, shares my affinity for true
crime. He says it drives his wife insane
and I suggest that the “wife cancelling” headphones that Himself swears by, are
likely available in a “husband cancelling” version. As soon as Blanca utters Medellin, Haroldo
and I simultaneously blurt “Narcos!” “Yeah,”
says Blanca. “Everyone says that. I’ve lived it, so I don’t find it
entertaining.” We apologize for
offending her but do get her to admit that Wagner Moura, who plays Pablo Escobar,
is incredibly sexy.
Himself is valiantly attempting to maintain spirits despite
a heavy course load and a moonlighting gig all the way down in Irvine. Spuds is walks over to Dodger Stadium to
enjoy the end of the season and is doing a lot of serious writing. Number One calls me to report that they’ve foraged
a couple of pounds of chanterelles and ask for some cooking advice. Given that my nation is in peril, this is a good
as it gets. Pretty good and relatively
guilt-free.
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