Sight to See

"Visual surprise is natural in the Caribbean; it comes with the landscape." --Derek Walcott

Baie Rouge.  So pretty!

It’s a strange thing, not knowing if that person with the brightly colored bikini bottom is a man or a woman.  We sat on the French side of St. Maarten—now Sint Martin—and what Jackie told me earlier was proving true.  There was more topless bathing on this beach.

It seemed that like most things on the island, clothing was highly unregulated.  Even the Dutch beaches we had been to were clothing optional, and some people decided to opt out of it altogether. 

I’ve never had a problem before, distinguishing sexes on the beach—woman two piece coverage, man one long piece.  It seems pretty simple.  But here, you see people with only one piece and you don’t want to stare too long.  Even though it was our last full day when we went to Baie Rouge it still caught me off guard.  And I didn’t want to seem like the uncultured gawking American.  So there were a few moments when the quick glance over saw tiny bottoms and big man boobs, and I thought a man was a woman.

It was unsettling to realize I was wrong.  It was at least as unsettling to realize it was an easy mistake to make.  As Jackie said to me quietly while we were swimming, “Hello sir, I like your bright blue bikini bottoms.”

Before I left for my trip, I was eating lunch with some people I didn’t know very well from work and one woman close to my mom’s age said, “You know they have nude beaches there.”   She let the implication of that hang in the air and then felt the need to awkwardly add, “Do you think you’ll try that?”

“Of course.  I can’t think of a better way to spend time with my parents and my brother than to be topless.” 

Okay, I didn’t say that.  I might’ve except she might not have heard the sarcasm.  Or she might’ve been offended if she did.  But really, who asks someone going on a family vacation about that possibility?  P.S.  This story does not end with me trying it and finding out it’s freeing or liberating.  Of course I didn’t try it.

The first day we went to Maho Beach for dinner, though Andrew and Jackie had only been there for drinks before.  “Topless women get free drinks there.  But I doubt we’ll see any,” one of them had told us on our way over. 

It's okay, that my brother not wearing a top. 

Okay then.  Andrew continued, “It’s never the people you want to see naked who do it.  It’s just old townies that sit there at the bar.”  Jackie agreed.  

Luckily, in both places, there were better things to see than topless women.

In Maho, just outside of the restaurant, was the beach where planes come zooming in just over everyone’s heads to touch down on the short runway. 

The better sight at Baie Rouge was underwater. The rocky cliff at the end of this beach made it perfect for finding brightly colored little fishes as we roamed around with snorkeling goggles.  I both loved, and felt weird about, seeing a school of fish right underneath my floating body where I had been standing a second ago and hadn’t noticed a thing.  Close to the rocks there were neon blue fish and fish with bright yellow stripes.  There were sea urchins and crystal clear water to let you see an entirely different world (insert Ariel singing in the background here).   We convinced my mom to try it and she loved it—it became her favorite part of the trip—other than seeing her kids. 

When we finally got back to where we were staying, I finally saw what I had suspected—snorkeling had left my back to the sun after my sunscreen had washed off.  Part of my back looked red, but since I’d been wearing a racerback tank suit, I had what looked like a skunk stripe of white, unburned skin down the middle of the red. 

If I had been bathing topless, I considered, I wouldn’t look like a skunk, but I would look like a lobster.   That's not better.

Miss (Understood) Fortune

This is how I felt...

"All human life can be found in an airport." --David Walliams

We missed our final connection flight back from St. Maarten despite running through the Charlotte, NC airport and getting to the gate five minutes before the scheduled take off.  That’s right, I am beginning with the end of the trip, go with it. After standing in line for about half an hour we were put on stand-by for the last flight to DC of the night, and with half-hearted hope that we could avoid spending the night in uncomfortable airport seats, we made our way back down to the gate. 

Over the next few hours Dad I and I walked all over the airport for the apparently rare delicacies of chicken fingers and French fries, Mom and I got Pink Berry, and I went to the bathroom every time I was bored.  On my first trip to the bathroom I saw my newest friend, my seatmate on the four hour flight from St. Maarten to Charlotte (more about her another time).  “Meghan! Did you guys miss your flight?”

I nodded sadly, “Missed it by a few minutes.” Checking my watch I saw it was also past the time her plane to Philadelphia should’ve taken off.  “What about you guys?”
“It was delayed,” she replied.  We chatted a few more minutes before I went back to my parents, intensely jealous of her good fortune.

If we had arrived about ten minutes earlier for our flight—if the plane had left a few minutes earlier, if there hadn’t been a dead bird on the runway, if there hadn’t been thunderstorms all up the East Coast, if the Customs Office had let us deplane right away—we would’ve been halfway to DC by that time.  Carolina and her husband knew they would make it home tonight.  We did not, and that just seemed unfair.

I sat back down, my mom was making phone calls to her boss and to substitute dental hygienists, my dad was e-mailing about his friend’s father passing away, and the wind was emptying from my sails.  It wasn’t ruining our vacation, but it was a sucky way for things to end.

I called my roommate who was graciously picking us up from the airport to update her and explained to my parents what I’d found out about our checked luggage when the loud announcement echoed through the airport, “The flight to Philadelphia has been cancelled.  Please see the customer service desk for new flight arrangements.”

The capricious airline gods had shifted their favor just that quickly, and now we were the lucky ones. 

If you’d asked me twenty minutes before, I’d have told you I’d have chosen the delayed flight over the missed one time one.  But it would’ve been the foolish, short-sighted choice.  And whether that reminder comes through a missed connecting flight or another way, today I was desperately in need of it. 

It’s past June 24^th.  And no, I still don’t have a job.  I might seem obsessed at this point, it’s just that paying for food and rent seems sort of important.  But if it were up to me, I know exactly how I’d write the fairy tale ending to my journey of waiting this year.  I wouldn’t even have to think twice.

But it might be that my fairy tale is the short sighted story that is totally unsatisfying and a misfortune in the long run.  I can’t see into the future, so I have to trust the Author of Time who can.  And that’s still hard.

Beyond D10, the plane.  The Promised Land. 

As we sat, waiting for our flight, I chatted with Zach, a fellow Northern Virginia resident who had missed his connection and wanted to get on the last flight out.  We commiserated until he realized I had already gone from the Stand-by Land of Maybe into the Certainty of Seat Assignments.  “Bastards,” he said without malice.  I wasn’t ready to give him my seat, but I didn’t wish a night inside the airport on anyone. 

So I wonder, is my plan, what I think is exactly what I want, would it end up being a False Promise like a delayed to cancelled flight?  Am I willing to sit through this uncertainty of an endless night in the airport if it means I get what is really best?  Have I completely taken this metaphor too far?

Probably. 

So I’ll just say we did eventually get home, and my gem of a roomie picked us up well after midnight.  My parents rolled into their house after 3am.  I’m not sure how Carolina and her husband ever got home.  And not only did Zach get on the flight too, he got a seat in first class.  

On Homes. And Ikea.

"Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?" --Stephanie Perkins

“My parents want to go to Ikea when they come,” I told Megan, a native of the Northern Virginia area.

She looked surprised.  “Why?  Do they want to buy something?”
I shrugged.  “I assume so.”
“Don’t they have Ikeas where they are?” she asked, still confused.

I shook my head, chuckling.  “No.  This is probably the closest one to them.”

Megan stared at me in disbelief.  “You really are a country bumpkin,” she said.

I nodded, because in some ways I am.  Going home means getting caught behind horse and buggies on Sunday mornings and not needing curtains or blinds on the windows because there’s no one to see into the house.  I did grow up on a farm, sort of, and so I don’t know how to milk a cow, but corn is only fresh when we’ve picked it from the field just beyond our backyard. 

And yet somehow DC is home now too.  When my parents ask about going to Ikea, I know what the trip down I-95 South to Woodbridge will mean in terms of traffic and sheer amount of people in a way that I didn’t understand two years ago.  The people who hover within 5 miles of the speed limit on busy highways—which used to be me—now irritate me completely. 

I remember—most of the time—that I need to pull my curtains shut because people can see in and I can navigate my way with the Metro.  But really, this area has become home because people I love are here, and when I miss my first real adult home it’s about 5% for the lack of traffic and free and plentiful parking, and 95% because of the people who were there.

I’m packing for St. Maarten to go for a Caribbean vacation, but also to see my little brother and my almost sister.   It’s a strange way of traveling for me because I haven’t planned anything about what I want to do, where we’ll eat, or how we’ll get around.  I haven’t arranged for anything after my roommate Christiana—bless her—drops us off at O’dark thirty tomorrow morning. 

It’s because it’s home for Andrew and Jackie now.  It’s where they live until August of next year, and even though it’s not home the way that areas of Pennsylvania are for them, it is their current home.  They have a place that Jackie has decorated.  They have a dog.  They have friends and mopeds and local place to get drinks.

I’m excited to see my brother’s new home and also so incredibly proud of and impressed by both of them, and their ability to make a home, with only each other, thousands of miles away.   White sand and blue water, graceful, brightly colored buildings, different types of money and a different way of life are all waiting for us in St. Maarten, but in less than a week, we’ll be back.  For Andrew and Jackie, it will continue to be a way of life.

I’m not sure when my brother grew up.  But I’m pretty sure it happened. 

The ball pit is back there somewhere...

Since I’m not sure how I feel about that, but because I miss him, one last Ikea story.  A memory from my first Ikea trip when I was about kindergarten age.  We always had Ikea catalogues in our house growing up and I loved the pictures of the ball pit.  So when we decided to make the long drive to an Ikea, all I wanted to do was go and play in the ball pit while my parents shopped.  My mom dropped Andrew and I off at the kid center, but before I could dive into the balls, I realized Andrew was crying.  I remember trying to convince him that it would be fine and Mom would be right back, but instead tears ran down his face.  So I went over to the attendant, told her that my brother was crying, and could she get my mom back.  Mom says she wasn’t even up the stairs to meet my dad when she got paged. 

Maybe I should’ve given Andrew more time and actually pulled him into the balls to start playing, and he would’ve been fine. 

Either way, he’s all grown up now. 

No, I Don't Have a Job Yet.

This is all I've got right now.

The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. --Henri Nouwen 

Do you know what you’re doing yet next year? Have you heard about a job? You do have a job lined up don’t you? Has anyone given you the final nod for next year?  You at least have something unofficially, right?

There are lots of ways to ask it.  But only one answer.

No. 

It’s not an easy answer to give.  It’s not an easy thing to have to say over and over again.  It doesn’t matter that I know people are asking because they’re genuinely interested or concerned, or even just because it’s something that—for them-- is safe and easy to bring up. 

It’s really hard for me.

I’ve put in applications, e-mailed principals, had interviews and meetings with department heads and assistant principals.  I’ve gotten really positive feedback and feel generally good about my job possibilities. 

And now, there’s nothing much I can do but wait.  Try to wait patiently.

Waiting patiently is not an easy thing for me to do.  I’m a smart, capable woman, and most times there’s something that I feel like I can be doing to move the situation along, to give myself an edge, to be proactive so I don’t feel like I’m sitting on my hands.  Not right now though.  Right now, I’ve done what I can do and I need to take my hands off of things and just see what happens. 

It’s this waiting, this uncertainty that is much worse than the idea of being unemployed for me.  Which is also why every single person who asks me, who requires me to say that I don’t know yet, frustrates me so much—because it reminds me that there is nothing I can do and no answer I can give.

This struggle to Wait Patiently is, in some ways for me, the whole point.  There are things worth waiting for, and there is value in learning to wait patiently even when it’s easier to start taking steps towards something—anything—that will produce results faster.  I’ve known since about September of 2012 that by September of 2013 almost nothing in my life would look the same—but I wasn’t—and am still not—exactly sure what that new sort of life would look like. 

Wait and see.  Wait and be patient.  Wait because what you’re seeking, what will come is worth waiting for.  

Most days, in my own heart, I’m doing a pretty good job of recognizing that everything is going to be just fine.  And then someone asks me about it and even though they don’t mean it that way, I hear, “Are you kidding me? Why on earth don’t you have a job yet?  No good, Meg.”  There have been times I’ve been tempted to start wearing a sign which reads, “No, I don’t have a job yet.  Yes, I find that stressful,” on the front and “IF I PROMISE I’LL TELL YOU WHEN I GET A JOB, WILL YOU STOP ASKING?” on the back.   Somehow I doubt that’s the right way to get people to stop saying anything. 

The process of waiting is so incredibly difficult, but part of me is glad about that because it means I won’t be quite the same afterwards as I was before.  I might be quicker to trust next time.   I might find patience easier and resting in God’s timing that much more comforting.  He who has begun a good work in me—and I believe this is one of His good works—will carry it on to completion.

I’m never going to be perfectly at waiting patiently—that’s not how this ends—but there’s still a reason—a good one—that I’m learning more about how to do it.

The point of all this is not to say, “Please ask me about my job so I can be refined more intensely.”  (In case you are wondering the earliest I’ll know is June 24.  There’s really not much point in asking before then).  It’s also not to say, “Don’t be surprised if I bite your head off if you ask me about this.”

The point is that this is hard for me.  But it’s worth it.  

Chiseled, or the Meg(h)ans Workout

"If you still look cute at the end of your workout, you haven't gone hard enough."

A week ago Megan and I joined a gym for a month with a Groupon because we wanted to try some fun classes.  Naturally, we decided to ease into the idea with a class that sounded manageable, and so we went to CHISEL. 

After an extremely efficient, unnaturally fit, woman with a George Hamilton tan checked us in, she gave Megan and I detailed instructions about how to get to the group fitness room. 

“Do you know where we’re going?” Megan asked me.

“No, of course not.  I just nodded, but she lost me after turn right.”
“I thought she said turn left.”

“Umm…”

We got to class a little late to find them throwing tennis balls at the mirror in the front of the classroom.  Somehow I was expecting CHISEL to involve lots of weights, probably some grunting and lots of difficult sculpting reps. There were lots of reps, but we didn’t lift weights--we swung yoga mats and then went in a line pretending to be an elephant or a frog.   All while somehow actually feeling muscles working.

Then, our fiftyish, incredibly fit, instructor started giving us options.  Our first option was to leap frog over our partner, our second was to give a piggyback ride.  Somehow Megan convinced me that we wanted to do the piggyback ride, but I was nervous.  Not about carrying her, that was fine; I was scared that instead of hitching a ride, I would crush her.  Never mind that she was a lacrosse goalie for Virginia Tech.   We moved on, and I was just grateful Megan didn’t make us do the fireman’s carry later.

The options didn’t stop though.  By the time we were well into the ab section of the workout I would watch Option A, B, and C in the vain hope that they would get easier. 

They didn’t. 

When I looked at Meg, after seeing Option C be a plank, then a pushup, a quick back roll with knees in the air to another pushup and plank, she captured it perfectly, “Option A.  Always Option A.”

But we made it through and could still walk the next day.  Success.

A few days later we headed to spin class.  Neither of us had ever been to one, but people rave about them.  We entered the small room filled with black lights and tried to look like we knew what we were doing.  Within about a minute the instructor looked at us on the bikes and said, “You’re new, right?”

She adjusted our bikes, explained what numbers she would be calling out, and gave us a few pointers. 

After the hour was up, I was very ready to be done.  My thighs and calves were ready to be done.  But even more, my feet were ready to be done after the pressure of the pedal on my instep (I totally understood those weird clicky shoes!) and most of all, my butt was ready to be done.  I could not sit on the bike seat anymore.  I actually didn’t want to sit on anything because I could still feel exactly where that bike seat had been.  And would every time I sat down for days.

 “How do people do this?” I asked Megan.

“Padded spandex,” she advised.  I could only imagine how heavily padded my spandex would have to be for me to feel comfortable.  Not attractive.

Tonight Megan and I went to Cardio Kickboxing. 

No sitting in this class.  Praise the Lord.

We had our ridiculously fit CHISEL instructor again tonight, and he put us through our paces with jabs, crosses, hooks, and uppercuts. And I was hitting hard—at least the couple of times I clipped myself accidentally seemed to hurt.  We kicked to the side, to the front and jump-kicked.  We ran laps as a break and jumped rope.  And so of course we left dripping sweat.

“I like kickboxing,” I told Megan, “but it always makes me think I could kick just about anyone’s ass.”

“I know!” she replied.

“But only as long as I could do the same move over and over again.”

“Stay still while I finish this combination!  Four more times!”

We haven’t had to kick anyone’s ass since class a few hours ago, but anyone who was willing to let us do the same move for 8, 16, or 24 times in a row would be in a lot of trouble.

Three class down.  Megan has made it our goal to make it to every class in our month membership.  Another couple dozen to go.  

Class of 2013

"Home actually existed. Home wasn't just a dream. Sometimes, that's the best thing of all.” –Mira Grant

On Friday night I drove through traffic and rain to get to Woodstock, Virginia.  It took me almost two hours to get 90 miles into southwestern Virginia. When I got off I-81 and entered the best pizza place in town where Central’s English department was gathered, I realized I had also journeyed back two years in time.  As I squeezed into the booth with some of the best colleagues I could ask for, I was once again the person I had been two years ago—an intelligent expert in something I loved, and I was ready to cheer on some lovely kids who were becoming adults. 

Over dinner, Patrick, my old department head, asked me how my morning had been.  It seemed a different lifetime ago when two seven year olds had curled up into me and slept through a band concert, but it had only been that morning.  After the concert was over, I helped the boys stand up, and gave one my water bottle, and the other my box of tissues.  They had one in each hand, and gave me their other hands, in what was becoming a ritual for me with students in this particular class.

If you had asked me two years ago if I would ever walk second graders back to class holding their hands, I would’ve responded with a resounding no.  But now that was exactly what I had started doing.  Not at all in an inappropriate, creepy way, but in a “this is what these particular students need in this specific time” kind of way.

A few weeks ago my roommate asked me if I was worried about going back to a high school next year, and in most ways, I’m not worried.  Even though I’ve frequently felt kind of stupid over the last few years when I’m trying to help with math or sorting out who gets to jump rope first, balancing that with grad school helps me not feel too stupid to go back to teaching high school.  If I worry at all, it’s about switching back to an age group that doesn’t see hand holding as a necessary part of crossing the street.  

It’s not on my mind all the time, but I wonder. 

I walked into Central’s library where the teachers gather before graduation and felt totally happy to get hugs to old friends and be in this place. I felt slightly awkward as I snuck into the gym and sat uncomfortably in the bleachers during the ceremony until it was over and the teacher recessed out.  I slid down off the stands and followed them, ignoring the male crowd control teachers trying to direct me to follow the general public.  I was going to stand with my old colleagues for my favorite part of graduation—clapping and cheering for the kids as we lined the hallway and they walked back down it.  I’ve given a lot of hugs to kids on that walk of whom I’ve felt incredibly proud, and it was a wonderful moment for me that even though I haven’t seen them in two years, a great many students were surprised and thrilled to see me there. 

When I had the class of 2013 as freshman, one young woman, for no real reason I can identify, decided I was her favorite teacher.  She was terribly sad when I left and has continued to tell me just how much she still valued that ninth grade class.  She hadn’t seen me in the auditorium, and when she saw me in the hallway, she burst into tears.  “I was fine until I saw you,” she said as I hugged her tight and told her how proud I was of her.  “Thank you for coming,” she choked out. 

I hadn’t come only to see her.  But when I thought about not coming, it was her unflinching devotion to me that made me realize I needed to be at Central High School on Friday night. 

Several students expressed so much appreciation for me coming, and I was so proud of them, because I could see they had become enough of an adult to understand that I don’t just apparate onto the grounds.  It’s not as easy to come back as wanting to—it costs me time, energy, money and emotion to see them graduate.  And they were beginning to understand that. 

It also made me remember times when I’d let them go to the bathroom with a friend to reapply their makeup after a painful breakup, or sent them down to the counselor to discuss their fear at being pregnant.  It made me remember offering, however reluctantly, a place to eat lunch and relax, and talk through difficult situations. 

Going to Central is like going home.  That place, the people I met there, the students I taught, the houses I lived in during that time—that was my first real adult home.  Newville is my first, probably deepest, and most lasting home.  But Harrisonburg, and Central High was the first home I chose. 

Going home reminded me who I am.  Who I’ll be no matter if my students are seventeen or seven.  I’ll always extend them the grace they need to make it through the day.  And I’ll give myself enough grace to realize that I’ll be able to make the switch back to high school without too many growing pains.  

Hate is a Four Letter Word

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of my biggest frustrations in an elementary school is the amount of daily tattling. “He’s not allowed to have Pokémon cards out—he should lose thirty seconds of recess for each one!” “She didn’t cut in the order you told us to go to make the square!”  It’s what makes me want to roll my eyes more than anything else.

A few weeks ago down in first grade, one little boy reported to the teacher that a girl had, “said a bad word.” Her classmate reported “hate” as what she had said. My first instinct was to roll my eyes at this and to see it as yet another example of how I need to get out of the elementary school and back into a high school where no one tells on a person for saying the word “hate.” 

With the exception of my mother, I don’t actually know any adults who view hate as a “bad word” the same way that other kinds of profanity are bad.  (On a side note, there was an instance where, in my twenties, I was scolded by my mother for saying I hated Billy Packer.  To be truthful, I don’t actually hate him, but it is hard to feel any kind of affection for a man who seems to get a great deal of enjoyment out of pointing out faults in the Heels.)  But the more I thought about the idea of hate as a bad word, the more I got behind the idea. 

Contrary to what is likely a popular belief among my students, I don’t actually like playing the language police.  Honestly, if high school students could understand that profane words can be powerful when used sparingly and in appropriate circumstances, I wouldn’t object to them using them in school.  It’s just that it’s not really up to me, and I haven’t met many sixteen year olds who fit that description.  Really, when people use a word like retard to describe someone, I find that far more offensive than someone using a word like shit to describe a terrible day.   Words are incredibly powerful,  and I’m not certain that we realize that seemingly common, everyday words—words like hate—have a great ability to harm others and ourselves.  

At what age does hate stop being a bad word? When do we allow students to hate things—and each other—with impunity?  Is it just that we have bigger problems and bigger fish to fry when they get older that we think it doesn’t really matter?  Is there any truth to the idea that I’ve been turning over in my mind that if we let kids say they hate that they will in turn be able to hate?  Or is all of this really more worthy of my original eye roll feeling than anything else?