Summer Days

"They just wheeled her back.  They said it would be two and a half or three hours."
I thought of my sister, alone among doctors, being wheeled into surgery.  I knew she was terrified.  I stood in my trailer and gripped my face really hard.  I thought if I could somehow smash it it would compress everything, everything inside me.   

We were staying in a house on the Long Island Sound for a few days this summer.  I liked the cottage a lot, and the atmosphere there.  It was very beautiful.  But, the reason for our visit was difficult and Alec was away for days at a time.  On the day Biden left the race I sat watching the Tour de France on the screened in front porch.  It was overcast and atmospheric.   Temple and I went inside because I wanted a little air conditioning.  I heard a clunk in the formal-sh living room and darted out there.  Temple was galloping toward me, but lifting her front paw, limping.  I sat down and hugged her.  Hard. I looked at her paw.  She licked my neck and pushed in.  I was glad that she let me hug her.  I saw an ottoman by the windows skewed to the side.  It had fur on it. We sat like that for a long time. 

I have a lot to say, but have been feeling uncomfortable about putting my life online.  I guess after all of these years it's dawning on me that an online diary is overexposure for me.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  

The Day the Music Died

The little boy was screaming his brother's name, tears gushing down his face.  Words in Swahili were coming out, too.  I had my arms around his waist, holding him back from running into various classrooms, searching for his brother.  He howled and howled as we wrestled in the middle of the hallway.  Teachers with concerned looks on their faces poked their heads out and quickly closed their doors.  I looked at his distraught, swollen face.  I rested my forehead on the top of his head while continuing to hold him back and began crying too.   

My summer ended with an extension of my family blow out.  It makes me very sad.  I returned to work.  Our school is an open construction zone.  All of my things are boxed up in my trailer.  Unfortunately, someone added boxes and boxes of some sort of storage to the trailer, blocking me from getting to the majority of my things.  There is even a piano in there.  I dug out a few necessary items and put them in a milk crate that I took from the cafeteria.  I have a student desk in the corner of the C-50 room.  I put my milk crate next to it and placed my coffee cup on an overturned chair.  C-50 is all the broken furniture and dirty rugs and basically every other gross thing that teachers want to get rid of until the county brings a truck and hauls everything away.  

We have new administrators, too.  My go to person, the one that everything I do goes through was promoted to another school.  Now, I have someone new.  The school is really in chaos.  I am in chaos.  All of my beginning of the year paperwork and testing is backing up, piling up, while I wait for my new go to to acclimate.  My schedule is a mess and I'm getting new students, daily.  Our tree was cut down last week.  I have a developer that wants to buy the lot next to my house harassing me to the point that I peek out of the blinds before going on the front porch.  Temple has developed a cough since we drove back from Connecticut.  I made a vet appointment and realized I've got major anxiety about going to the vet.  I relive them telling me that Lola was going to die. I've tried to keep my head up, keep it together but by the time Friday arrived I had huge circles under my eyes, broken out skin and a container filled with only lettuce that I brought for lunch.  

My baby died a year ago today.  It has been on my mind, building, making me cry.  Scream cry.  A year ago this minute she was still alive.  A year ago today I woke up with her for the last time.  It is just never going to be okay.  It never will.