Author: mmtbagladyintraining

When I graduated from college, I had three jobs. On the weekends I was learning to tattoo at a shop on East Colfax in Denver. During the week, I was working nights at a yuppie-slumming biker bar in North Denver and working days at a day care center. I remember wearing jeans and t-shirts to the day care center and playing with five year olds all day and then changing into slinky tank tops and putting on eyeliner at stoplights to get ready to deliver long necks during happy hour. I ate nasty goldfish crackers and the fruit from the drink garnish bins. I’d go to my mostly empty apartment and take a notebook out onto my deck and write about the crazy, funny things I was thinking, then sleep for about four or five hours and get up and do it all again.

My parents came up to see me during that crazy time and brought me a computer. That was back before EVERYONE had a computer. Mom said it was for my great American novel. Dad said it was for law school. Just for the record, I never wanted to go to law school. That was their way of saying, “Why are you working in a bar and babysitting with a degree from CU?” They didn’t know about the tattooing. I bring this up to illustrate that NOT knowing what I wanted to do in my career has been a life long problem. Everyone but me always had ideas about what I SHOULD be doing and I was always afraid to do what I WANTED to do.

But I have to say I was pretty happy during those months. I still remember the kids at the day care center and I wonder how they grew up and what kind of lives they have now. Working with them didn’t have any pressure…no high stakes testing or watching bar graphs in harsh shades of red to show how they are failing as students and how the adults are failing in their teaching. I remember doing fun things like tye-dying and running with them in sprinklers at the park, and watching Beauty and the Beast on a rainy afternoon. The bar was equally satisfying. I had plenty of adult conversation and laughter and good music. I met two women that became life-long friends and I started learning about the loneliness that brings people to an addiction, giving me a sense of compassion for those down on their luck. But there was always the sense that I wasn’t living up to my potential. I wasn’t doing ENOUGH.

I have been thinking about the ENOUGH thing. How was that born? And how do I transcend it? It’s been a life long theme. It’s one of the reasons I left teaching art. I felt like I should be doing MORE. I was wrong about that. My work in the art room was more powerful than I ever knew.

When I was thirty, interviewing for a job meant a new outfit, answering questions with conviction and confidence. I really believed all the shit that poured out of my mouth. Now at fifty-four, interviewing for a job is both tiresome and terrifying. I will still dress up, but I am not wasting my money on new clothes. I have lost confidence about what I say because I have seen too many broken children to believe in ideals anymore. The right answers feel like lies.

I found out this week that I might be teaching kindergarten next year. My first thought when I heard that was-do you know me at all? I told my son and he said, “Well, you did teach Darian and me to read and do math before we got to school. And you like reading stories and love the alphabet. If you suck at it, you’re only ruining fourteen or fifteen kids for life.” Thank you, Shayne.

My dreams this week have been about living in houses without walls, and my dad hammering up framework, and sitting up against tour buses with Stevie Nicks. I don’t know what ANY of that means. I do that ENOUGH is more about how I feel inside than about my job. I do know that this road of a life in education has reached some sort of crossroad. I am not sure if it’s the getting off point, or a better path ahead. I do know whatever comes next NEEDS stories, art, music, love, and laughter. And it is time to do what I want. I just wish I knew what that was.

In the meantime, it’s the weekend. I am going to get out my bike and see where THAT road takes me. The answers are there somewhere.

March 24 would have been my mother’s 91st birthday. It was the first time in all the years of my life that I didn’t acknowledge her birthday aloud. Even after her death, I have wished her happy birthday on social media. I think she might be hurt, because she has been showing up in my dreams, making pancakes and giving me unsolicited advice. Except the truth is if she were around I’d be sitting at her kitchen counter hoping she would help me choose a direction.

I went back to the skin doctor. I have a new lesion on the top of my wrist. It started as a teeny, tiny blemish, but grew to over a centimeter in a few weeks. The doctor said, “It’s probably squamous; I will have to biopsy it.” I figured. I was smart enough to look away this time as he numbed me up, shaved off the lesion, then cauterized the cut to stop the bleeding. Now my wrist just looks like it has been burned with a big cigar. It looks better than it did.

My mom had skin cancer. I don’t remember what kind, but it was a rare form of head and neck cancer. But hers presented atypically. She had a tumor removed from her calf that was almost as deep as her shin bone. Then she had a sizable tumor on her neck and a series of growths on her scalp. A piece of her scalp was actually removed and she had to use a solution that burned her. After that, she almost always wore her little pink “Life is Good” ballcap.

One time I went over to the house and she was sitting in the bathroom on the floor with a wash cloth on her head, crying. She tried to cut off the new growths herself with scissors. I remember being alarmed, wondering if she had finally entered the land of crazy. But I get it now. Basically that IS what the doctor does, only with skill, surgical tools, and drugs at hand. I hate doctors even more than my mom did, so I totally give her grace for that day in the bathroom.

I have to wait for the biopsy results to see what the next steps hold. I asked the doctor if these lesions were going to keep popping up like popcorn. He said potentially. So I said, “It won’t kill me, just take pieces of me, painfully, like teaching.” He laughed. Everybody always thinks I am joking.

This week back after spring break was kind of hell. I was trying to make a last push toward teaching my students how to divide before state testing, and they were passing low key hate notes to each other. I guess I should take this as a sign that they know something about writing. I went to watch them play basketball and got hugged by the team. I love them, even if I feel like I am in trapped in a cage with them. I guess figuring out what comes next is another thing I am waiting for.

In the meantime, Happy Birthday to my mother and good vibes for all the people touched by cancer in whatever form.

I was just drifting off when the pilot announced that the Northern lights were out there. He said the best way to see it was through the camera on our cell phones. I was over a wing and had a red light flashing and a propeller moving, but I still managed to get a shot. I decided it was Alaska telling me, “Until Next Time, Chica.”

Shayne was waiting for me with a clean house and scratch lottery tickets on the table. Charlie came running, even though he waited an entire minute to purr when I picked him up. Lucy forgot who I was and hid under furniture, and then something clicked and she will not leave my side. That’s fine, because I am so tired that I feel like I could adopt a cat lifestyle and sleep for a year.

Now that I am home and on the downside of Spring Break, I am choosing not to panic. I spent a lot of time in Alaska at the tide pools peering around the rocks, looking for treasure. Maybe that’s an analogy to live by–wonder is in the dark places, if you look for it and accept it.

I have a lot to unpack from this trip. Literally and metaphorically. My trip might have come to end, but I feel like it is just the beginning of living my best life.

Every morning since I got to Alaska, I get up and check the view. Depending on the light, the cloud cover, and snow, it is different every time. It was gray this morning because I am out and about earlier. It’s my last day in Alaska.

I couldn’t sleep last night. And when I did, I had dreams about being back in my classroom. It was chaos; no one was listening to me and kids were being mean to each other and throwing things, and I was trying to be patient, but firm. Administration was watching me and writing notes down on a clipboard and a social worker was trying to talk to me and kids were crying and other kids were fighting, and I just wanted everyone to leave for five minutes, so I could breathe. Then I woke up and thought about the dream. Then I tried to not think about the dream. Then I reached for my phone and started looking for jobs. Then I tried to go back to sleep. Then I just got up and showered and got up to look at the ocean.

The snow surprised me. I mean I wasn’t surprised that it was snowing; it has more or less been snowing since I got here. But most of the snow has been a fine, glistening sparkly sprinkle, interspersed with fat fluffy snow globe moments. This is the first time that I can see how all those flakes ARE new and piling up and it makes me think of how I want Christmas morning to look. I immediately wondered about my flight. Will it be able to take off? Do I even care?

Yesterday I spent the day exploring art galleries. There are quite a few photographers and painters. Some of the pottery was really unique with glazes I have not seen before. I did talk to another artist and showed him photos of my glass weaves. He asked me if I was a hobbyist or more of a professional. I told him, I probably leaned more to a hobbyist. And we talked about that. I looked at the fused glass and realized that I could make everything in the gallery, but the subjects were new and really stretched my thinking about things to make with glass. It got me thinking about making art for a living. I just don’t know about that. I think I get more joy from making things and giving them away. I don’t mind getting paid for a mural job or a piece of artwork, but money will probably never be the point. But that doesn’t mean, I wouldn’t like to paint murals, or backgrounds for theaters, or make illustrations for a graphic novel. I am just not sure art is my next career path.

As I have been writing this, the light has come up. The ocean is still there. My plane will probably leave, but I am going to enjoy one more day in Alaska. I am going to check out the beach at low, low tide and thrill at the surprises waiting. I do want to go home and enjoy my mountain view from the porch and pet my cat. I just hope that the quiet, calm of this wild Alaska will return with me and help guide my heart to finding peace.

Because I am very busy listening to what the universe is telling me, I have decided that an earthquake first thing in the morning on my second day in Alaska, was a wake up call. The Earth was saying, “Rise and shine, girl, and be prepared for wonder.”

Probably everyone who comes to Alaska hopes to see wild animals. I am missing bears and puffins, but my friend assured me that I’d probably see seals, sea otters, moose, and plenty of bald eagles. She didn’t tell me how close I’d be –like reach and touch if I wanted to close. I still can’t believe yesterday was real and not some dream about being an Alaskan animal whisperer.

Ocean boats fascinate me. I love walking among them and reading their names, and trying to figure out what the boat does. A lot of boats on the Spit are fishing boats. A fisherman named Dave gave me a herring to lure in a seal. The seal took the bait , but surfaced further away. But I wasn’t disappointed because there was a mama sea otter fussing over a baby perched on her tummy. I have only seen sea otters in zoos. The ones I have seen entertain the crowds as they speed around their enclosures. Now I wonder if that frantic, circular swimming is a form of pacing . The sea otters I saw today were calm and slow, just floating around, checking out the slips for fish scraps and friendly fisherman handouts.

We went to a different beach at sunset. It was low tide and the clouds were lifting and I could see into the endless ocean, the Cook inlet and the Kachemak Bay, but I was focused on the tide pools under my feet. I have seen starfish before. The dried up carcasses at tourist shops. From a sea cliff in Washington, I looked down on colorful starfish beached during low tide, but I have never peered into a tide pool before and been able to capture a photo from my phone. I just read a story with my students about tide pools. My students were totally disinterested, but I wished that they could have seen the starfish and all the other little tiny creatures waiting for the ocean to return.

The bald eagle was sitting on the rock when we came to the beach. I thought it would fly off as we approached, but it didn’t seem bothered by us. Two other women approached it and took selfies and photographed the hell out of it. And then traded places with us. I was cautious because the talons were very real. I was so close that I could see the dark wet particles of sad clinging to the yellow gold claws. I was standing right next to a bald eagle. Uncaged. Untethered. Wild. Free. Massive. Magical. I photographed her (?) at every angle in the changing light.

I will never forget standing next to the eagle. I was walking back to the car in the fading light thinking about how completely lucky and humbled to be able to experience that kind of magic and I joked that if I saw a moose on the way home, nothing could be more perfect. And then this happened.

Not sure what perfection is ahead for today, but I am ready.

I was eight years old the first time I went to the beach. It was in Mexico. Since then I have been to beaches in Hawaii, California, Florida, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, Washington, New York, and now Alaska.

I guess most people don’t frequent the beach on snowy, windy days. I wonder why, because the colors are fantastic with sea foam and clouds and giant flakes falling from the sky. I was on the very tip on the Alaskan Spit yesterday. On the map, it is the thinnest of lines into the bay.. There is coal on the beach from coal beds that lie in the ocean. Pieces wash up on shore. I picked up a chunk of it, drenched from the sea. It’s hard to believe that something that cold could ever burn so hot.

The most interesting thing I saw was a graveyard for ships. All sorts of old boats, broken, sea-battered, and marooned in a ragged line. It was just a drive-by, but my imagination exploded. I want to go back and walk in the shadows of these ships and take photos and weave stories and paint pictures.

I am staying with a friend and her family. They made me welcome signs and have done everything to make me feel at home. It is so nice to be in a place of so much love. It makes me think of my own family in ways and reflect back to the days of quick pasta meals and board games on our little kitchen table. I guess I never believed how fast those years could go.

I was thinking about how you never get time back, when my brother called. I haven’t talked to him much since my sister-in-law died. He forgot that I was going to Alaska. He got out his atlas while we were on the phone and said, ” Oh, here you are. I see you!” It made me laugh and feel optimistic that he is able to make jokes. I promised him that I would come over and clean up his answering machine for him when I got back.

While I was writing my blog this morning, there was a loud sound like falling bricks and moving furniture and the bed shook for a second and then it paused and then again for a few more seconds. Then I heard the kids say, “Earthquake.” So I just lived through my first earthquake.

I guess maybe it was more of a tremor? I don’t know about much about the technical differences. I just know that those tectonic plates are shifting around and sometimes it reminds people that there are forces all around us doing their thing. And if you really think about it, every moment is kind of a gift.

On this trip, I am making an effort to breathe and look and listen. I have known for a while that I have been ignoring what I need and what I want. Coming here was a step in listening to my heart. I just hope I am brave enough to keep trusting in the messages that are coming my way.

When I first got into teaching, I considered going to Alaska. I talked to a recruiter, looked at finances, read books, talked to people who had lived in Alaska. In the end, decided to not move with a toddler to an isolated place without any friends or family. And over the years I have realized that I am more of a city girl than a rustic girl, but the dream of going to Alaska has never faded.

So my first ever adult spring break destination trip, Homer Alaska. The mountains and ice and water and snow are just like the pictures. I could not get over the way the water and ice make amazing swirly patterns. It reminded me of dropping a bit of blue into a gallon of primer and dipping in a stir stick and watching the magic unfold. And then I saw the road, like a black ribbon cutting into all the shades of white and blue in the world. I wondered what it would be like to drive for hundreds of miles surrounded by all that white and blue.

If I had to go home right now, I would say Alaska is breathtaking, but fortunately it is just the beginning of my stay. Cannot wait to see all the majesty ahead.

I am writing this blog post from a hotel room in San Francisco. It’s raining like hell and I am thinking about all the times I have been in this city before. I remember the first time; I was thirteen. I’d come on a family vacation to visit my Aunt Martha in El Cerrito. She took us to Chinatown and Pier 39 and Muir Wood. My cousin, Patricia drove my brother and I all over in her little Mustang with 80’s rock jamming. We went to the mall to see E.T. IN THE THEATER. It was one of the best vacations of my life.

This time I am here on this trip for professional reasons. San Francisco was just to be an airport hop, but delay after delay has me in the city overnight. I am exhausted, but I have been awake doing A WEEK IN REVIEW in my head.

I told my class on Monday that I was coming to California. At first they were outraged. “No. You can’t go. Who is our sub? When will you be back? Are you coming back? Are you ditching us for DisneyLand? It’s dangerous in California…what if you get shot?” I assured them I would be back and that I didn’t plan on getting shot. Later, during math, one of the boys came up to me and said, “I got you, Miss. I will make sure these homies stay tight. Promise you’re coming back?”

This boy. I can’t say his name, but he is kind of remarkable. He is the kind of student teachers want to strangle. He does very little in the way of academics and falls asleep. He doesn’t have any boundaries and will ask me things like, “Have you ever been in jail?.” He isn’t always nice to other kids, but expects everyone to share with him and treat him like a king. He is disrespectful to adults and if they call him on it, he hates them for life. I watch him run the room. I am not going to lie, sometimes he reminds me of every prison movie I have ever seen. The guy in the yard everyone watches with a mingle of fear, respect, maybe jealousy.

Under all his bravado, this kid has had serious trauma. He watched his own mother catch fire when he was six years old. He threw a bowl of dog water on her to put the fire out. He saw his little sister get run over. He has seen people stabbed and shot. He has dealt with more trauma and death in eleven years than some people see in a lifetime. His academic skills aren’t great, but he is first one to notice if someone in the room is crying. He will stand up for the underdog in a fight. And he will try to make things right if someone goes against his “code.” For example, this week in school he didn’t like how I was being treated by a couple of students, so he made them write me letters of apology. He checked the letters over and sent them back for rewrites. Part of me was amused, and also a little touched that I have entered his circle of protection. I am a little worried about how much power this boy wields, but I do know, no matter what, this kid is a survivor.

Anyway, when I left, all the kids said goodbye and wished me a safe trip and told me not to get killed. I assured them that I would be fine, but travel can be triggering for me. I think it is hold over from losing my parents in an accident. I was worried about Charlie this time. Like would he notice if something happened to me? Who would take care of him? Would he think I abandoned him? Maybe it’s easier to project those feelings on a cat than the people in my life that I love.

It is tempting to blow off why I came here and enjoy what this amazing city has to offer. There used to be a restaurant in Chinatown that you could enter from the alley and be given fresh, hot fortune cookies. My students would love that! But today I am heading up North. The Cascades. The Redwoods. Hoping the weather doesn’t delay my travel anymore. Doing my best to put down my worries and see what the day holds for me.

I never know if 3 am is late at night or early in the morning. I just got done reading about Cardi B on Wikipedia. I didn’t realize she was so established. In my defense, I don’t listen to a lot of rap, but my students are obsessed and one of the reasons I cannot sleep, is because I am trying to reach them.

I only have fifteen students, but only seven students who consistently are on task. Overall, skills are far below grade level and there is a lot of behavior. A lot of trauma. In my experience of trauma, my instinct is to smooth things over, not rock the boat, work on fixing everything and everybody. But my students are the trauma survivors who fight. They are edgy and alert and hit first and ask questions later. I walk around the room trying to get them to read about Rosa Parks, or the phases of the moon. They ask me what kind of Takis I like best and what I grub on when I get my food stamps. I tell them that I don’t need food stamps and I can tell that some of them are confused by that statement.

One of the things my class does is argue over which one of them is my favorite student. I always tell them I don’t have a favorite, that I like them all. And that’s the truth. Sort of. There are some girls who never give me a bit of trouble and I love that they do everything I ask and get started on their work and are so nice and freaking quiet. I have a boy who is so bright and asks questions and is always thinking. I have another boy who is like a giant St. Bernard puppy, big and happy and always into everything, but so cheerful and positive. Then I have another boy who might be destined for a life of crime, He is street-smart and tough and thinks he runs the room. He makes my life hell sometimes, but he gets people and reads emotions and is a survivor and I freaking love him, no matter how much sleep I have lost over him.

This week one of my students asked me if her clothes matched. She told me that she thought she was ugly and she hated her body. This kid is adorable and I told her that I thought she was beautiful. She shrugged and said, “If you say so, Miss.” She gave me a quick hug at the end of the day and said, “Thanks for being my school mom.” And it almost made me cry, because I know how much this kid works at everything. And I hate that she is another girl in the world with a poor self-image. And then I lost sleep overthinking about her. Because really she is sorta my favorite.

Even though I have been teaching a long time, I have never had my own classroom before. I have always taught in situations that brought kids in and out of my room all day. Over time and through art and writing and listening to their conversations, I’d get to know them. Along the way, I have had students who have carved their way into my heart and I will run into them or get an email or a friend request on social media, and it is awesome to see how they have grown up. This year being a classroom teacher has brought more challenges than I can possibly name, but I have really learned why teachers say, “my kids.”

Every day, I wake up and say, “Give me the strength to get through today. ” And I look for jobs to take me back to art. I crave creativity. My soul NEEDS it. I spend a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to just write for a living. My computer. My cats. The radio in the background.

March is the time of year when the end of the school is near. The promise of summer is so close, and the thought of fall so far away. I don’t really know what took me to this rough bunch of kids on the East side. And I don’t know what comes next. But I do know that I have learned and stretched myself in ways that I never knew possible. No matter what comes next, these kids will be forever etched into my heart.