I have to break up with her. We’ve only been seeing each other for seven months. It felt so permanent and now here we are, I’m having to dump her. It’s not that I don’t love her, I do, she’s everything I ever wanted. But it’s time to move on, we’ve actually outgrown our use for each other and it’s killing me. The switching, I don’t want a new face, I want the old face. What’s wrong with a one-room schoolhouse, where nothing every changes? Here it is almost June and I know I’m not the only one she’s been seeing, but I thought we had something really special, I mean I thought I meant something to her I saw her every day, I helped her out of some jams, I went to her church for God’s sake. I’m just not handling it well. At night I go to bed thinking about next year, and checking out the prospects – one very perky blonde and one rather quiet dullard and I’m thinking THIS? To replace YOU?
These May break ups and the summer of the Great Switch are killing me – is this the right one? Will going with the quiet one rob my son of a powerful leader in his life? Will going with the quiet one give him serenity but not enough of a challenge? Is this a pivotal year, and will my one weak decision here affect him forever? Who could know these things? The shake of the dice, the blow for good luck, the roll – so far, so perfect and here’s another one. I gotta take into consideration his personality, her personality and will they let me - could I come play?
Maybe I don’t know enough yet. Impossible to pre-know somebody in order to make an intelligent decision. You have to trust your guts and my guts are always busy taking other calls. Asking other guts what they think.
Honestly, I’d rather keep him home and build a university in my living room rather than go through this every May and subsequent summer-before-newness of worry.
I get too attached, throw down the formalities and give myself, raw, to these people. I let them have their way with me and trust them with my children. I take home their homework, their art projects, their cutting and pasting and filing. I do everything to worship the relationship because I forget, I fall into the year and I forget each step takes us closer to the end, that there are ends, that we are in fact building toward the end. And I’m bitter. You can’t just dump me like that. I don’t like any ending where there’s an ending involved. How is it that my heart is broken yet again? Why am I surprised? How can I be shopping for a new one with two feet still firmly happily planted in this fresh, current classroom? This current thing is all we have. This is love, right here, the familiar. I know where the desks are. I know the faces. This is sick, a throwback to my past where I’d fill the new shoes before the old shoes were empty, that gave me security, of never having an empty moment or alone time. Now I just feel ill.
I guess I am the steady. I carry over from year to year. I can find security in the dating of myself. I can bring home my own projects, and bring myself flowers and follow my baby into the next year knowing that I am his ultimate leader. Both quiet and blonde. Both strict and enthusiastic. It’s a joke to think that I have an inside track on what’s best for Nathan for 3rd Grade. What’s the perfect year, how can I pick the RIGHT WAY/Person for him.
I shake, I blow the dice, I let go and I rejoice. I steep him in love, and walk him there everyday.
Third grade isn’t his wife. Or a particularly bad business deal. Or buying property on swamp land, or having a roommate drug addict. It’s third grade. He’s still mine. He’s still seven. He’s a beauty, he’s a fireball, he’s trouble, he’s a gift.
It’s worth it to love the teachers. Just maybe protect my heart a little more. Think of it as a nine month affair instead of moving in and picking out closets. Some years the affair seems impossible to end. But then next year is even better.
I think it’s seeing Nathan grow impossibly bigger, his shoes get bigger, he gets more complex, louder, more individual, strong – it’s unstoppable and wild. This awkward growing of a real boy and not knowing at all what I’m doing or if I’m doing it right. I mean, he came out of air. Barry and I dreamed him up, and now he does stuff, out in the world, as a real person, with a name. I have to settle within myself what Barry always says and I always mouth but haven’t quite embraced – that your heart is all you’ve got. Watch it all with your heart. It’s already excruciating. Plug your heart in and what if I disintegrate from the wallop of light and power. The truth is there’s an immensity to the human soul that baffles me. Turning to face all that purity and welcome it in – that floors me.
Seeing my babies grow from that perspective - it’s awe. There is no footing. It’s all air, and something thicker – True core. This is what connects me to them, past all the threats and school and laundry and dreams – it’s spirit, the core of spirit that ties us, love. Invisible, invincible.
This unshakeable drive is what fuels me to, yes, pick the best third grade teacher. Yell at him in the car. Do his laundry. Worship him. Bask in them, all three.
A juicy life, ripe and baffling.
Happy Mother’s Day.
p.s. Lilly’s getting a new tooth.
p.p.s. If you’re going into second grade, to make it easy for you, definitely pick Mrs. Porcelli. If you notice little stains on the floor of the classroom, just step carefully around them. They are the shards of my heart.
These May break ups and the summer of the Great Switch are killing me – is this the right one? Will going with the quiet one rob my son of a powerful leader in his life? Will going with the quiet one give him serenity but not enough of a challenge? Is this a pivotal year, and will my one weak decision here affect him forever? Who could know these things? The shake of the dice, the blow for good luck, the roll – so far, so perfect and here’s another one. I gotta take into consideration his personality, her personality and will they let me - could I come play?
Maybe I don’t know enough yet. Impossible to pre-know somebody in order to make an intelligent decision. You have to trust your guts and my guts are always busy taking other calls. Asking other guts what they think.
Honestly, I’d rather keep him home and build a university in my living room rather than go through this every May and subsequent summer-before-newness of worry.
I get too attached, throw down the formalities and give myself, raw, to these people. I let them have their way with me and trust them with my children. I take home their homework, their art projects, their cutting and pasting and filing. I do everything to worship the relationship because I forget, I fall into the year and I forget each step takes us closer to the end, that there are ends, that we are in fact building toward the end. And I’m bitter. You can’t just dump me like that. I don’t like any ending where there’s an ending involved. How is it that my heart is broken yet again? Why am I surprised? How can I be shopping for a new one with two feet still firmly happily planted in this fresh, current classroom? This current thing is all we have. This is love, right here, the familiar. I know where the desks are. I know the faces. This is sick, a throwback to my past where I’d fill the new shoes before the old shoes were empty, that gave me security, of never having an empty moment or alone time. Now I just feel ill.
I guess I am the steady. I carry over from year to year. I can find security in the dating of myself. I can bring home my own projects, and bring myself flowers and follow my baby into the next year knowing that I am his ultimate leader. Both quiet and blonde. Both strict and enthusiastic. It’s a joke to think that I have an inside track on what’s best for Nathan for 3rd Grade. What’s the perfect year, how can I pick the RIGHT WAY/Person for him.
I shake, I blow the dice, I let go and I rejoice. I steep him in love, and walk him there everyday.
Third grade isn’t his wife. Or a particularly bad business deal. Or buying property on swamp land, or having a roommate drug addict. It’s third grade. He’s still mine. He’s still seven. He’s a beauty, he’s a fireball, he’s trouble, he’s a gift.
It’s worth it to love the teachers. Just maybe protect my heart a little more. Think of it as a nine month affair instead of moving in and picking out closets. Some years the affair seems impossible to end. But then next year is even better.
I think it’s seeing Nathan grow impossibly bigger, his shoes get bigger, he gets more complex, louder, more individual, strong – it’s unstoppable and wild. This awkward growing of a real boy and not knowing at all what I’m doing or if I’m doing it right. I mean, he came out of air. Barry and I dreamed him up, and now he does stuff, out in the world, as a real person, with a name. I have to settle within myself what Barry always says and I always mouth but haven’t quite embraced – that your heart is all you’ve got. Watch it all with your heart. It’s already excruciating. Plug your heart in and what if I disintegrate from the wallop of light and power. The truth is there’s an immensity to the human soul that baffles me. Turning to face all that purity and welcome it in – that floors me.
Seeing my babies grow from that perspective - it’s awe. There is no footing. It’s all air, and something thicker – True core. This is what connects me to them, past all the threats and school and laundry and dreams – it’s spirit, the core of spirit that ties us, love. Invisible, invincible.
This unshakeable drive is what fuels me to, yes, pick the best third grade teacher. Yell at him in the car. Do his laundry. Worship him. Bask in them, all three.
A juicy life, ripe and baffling.
Happy Mother’s Day.
p.s. Lilly’s getting a new tooth.
p.p.s. If you’re going into second grade, to make it easy for you, definitely pick Mrs. Porcelli. If you notice little stains on the floor of the classroom, just step carefully around them. They are the shards of my heart.
