Long Day

It's been a long day, without you my friend....
And I'll tell you all about it when I see you again...

I listened to the kids sing the same song in various award ceremonies, over and over.  Every time I heard the first lines, my eyes would well up.  I stared at the ground, trying to focus on the worst singers of the group.  The horrible high pitched, yet flat tones.  I'd look at kids I don't like.  Anything not to cry.  During one of the ceremonies I received a text from Lola's old vet, reminding me that she was due for her annual check up.  Oh Lola....it has been a long day without you.  

The ceremonies are always a little emotional, especially the fifth grade ones.  Pablo finished elementary.  I've had him since he was in kindergarten; I taught his older brother and sister too.  Other kids in his grade level would come and go, but not Pablo.  We were together during virtual learning and when he was the only ESOL kid in his grade level that came back to the school in person when we reopened.  He loved Lola and would always make me call her with him on her Pet Chatz before I took him back to his classroom.  His mom came to me before his ceremony and thanked me repeatedly.  She cried.  I thanked her too for letting me work with her family.  One of my new fifth graders finished too.  She was a difficult kid with a penchant for fighting.  

"Do you remember that day, that day when we first met and I took that test in your trailer?  she asked.

"Yes, yes I remember."

"I had that big bow that my mom put in my hair.  I asked you to fix it for me and you did."  she continued.

I laughed a little.

"Yes, I remember that.  Carlota, I know you kind of have an angel and a devil on your shoulders.  Please take care of yourself and try, well, try to listen to the angel....."

"Yeah....I'll try."  she answered, smiling.  

I lost my newcomer, Kati, too.  That was hard.  We've spent close to three hours a day together, due to her Intensive English status.  I'll miss her.  

We have a beautiful, one hundred plus year old White Oak in our backyard.  After a lot of Oaks fell in the park during one of the recent thunderstorms, our new neighbors have taken to texting me about the tree.  We have it serviced annually.  They prune any dead limbs and assess the health of the tree.  My new neighbors want to pay for someone to look at it.  I find it intrusive and let them know (nicely) that we already have an appointment set up for that.  I thought to myself about their towering chimney that leaned precariously for nearly a year, looking as though any minute it might crash down.  Did I text?  No.  I figured they'd handle it and if they didn't, homeowner's insurance would.  I've noticed mixed reactions to our tree over the last twelve years.  Some neighbors love it.  Other neighbors, generally those that moved in from condo or suburban communities seem to fear it, preferring a gas station landscaping-look for one of the leafier neighborhoods in Atlanta.  Yesterday, I was planting some stuff near the fence line in our backyard.  An older woman started talking through the fence, letting me know that she lived in the condos nearby and was watering the yard for our new neighbor.  

"I heard from her that the tree might need to come down!"  she announced merrily.

You are looking a little long in the tooth yourself you old hag, I thought, before letting her know it was being assessed and that we really hoped not.  Something about the thought of that tree having to come down fills me with sadness.  It's as though everything around me is changing and dying. 

It's been a hard year and I have been more than ready to finish it.  Our school was supposed to undergo some sort of major renovation that could last a year and a half.  Instead of waiting until school was out, the renovation began a few weeks ago.  The back area where my trailer is was transformed to an open construction site.  Some how the electricity to my intercom got cut and I stopped receiving announcements at all.  By the last days of school, the construction workers started coming inside the school.  During dismissal on the last day they were up on ladders ripping down ceiling tiles as kids tore through the halls to the waiting buses. As the teachers tried to finish our end of year duties, they began covering the hallways in plastic and plywood as they full-on ripped out the ceiling tiles.  When we came in the next morning for our mandatory post-planning day, the transformation was shocking.  Workers were all over, like bees on a hive.  All the ceiling tiles were gone and long wires hung everywhere.  A teacher slipped on the plastic trying to get in her room.  Others couldn't get in at all because of the stuff on the floors.  Workers stormed around in hard hats and n95s while we wore no protective gear.  A thick white dust hung in the air in the cafeteria.  I walked through it to get to my trailer thinking, Hilary, you are getting cancer right now.  It got so bad in there the workers put huge fans in, blowing the offending dust throughout the whole building.  Asthmatics started pulling out rescue inhalers.  The wifi went out.  The workers started taping shut people's classrooms and said they were cutting the electricity soon.  Some alarm beeped endlessly in the front office which was also covered in boxes.  Only one administrator was there and she was trying to do everything.  I ran out to my trailer, which I had to leave unlocked because they had taken our keys and key cards away the previous day.  A coworker had piled stacks of personal shit under my desk and inside the cabinets of my carefully packed trailer.  About two and a half hours into the debacle the admin texted me and said she was checking people out, approximately five hours early.  

"I know you can't get the intercom messages so I said to myself, girl you better text her."  she told me.  

I handed in my checklist and half-ran to the car, my classroom globe in hand.  I pulled away and up the hill without even looking in the rearview mirror.  

*Lyrics  - See You Again, Whiz Khalifa

See You Again

I heard a loud scream and looked down the hallway at my school.  A woman was walking a very large grey dog, on a leash.  She had a Lifeline shirt on.  Multiple people ran at her and hustled her to the gym.  It was Career Day at my school.   I walked quickly down a back hallway, trying to get another look at that dog.  That big grey dog.  

The kids in the library started singing for our guests, the people that were there to talk about their jobs. 

 
"I'll tell you all about it when I see you again...." they sang, howling at the end of the song.

I wish I could see Lola again.  I wish I could tell her all about everything that has happened.  I don't believe in god, or afterlife, or rainbow bridge.  But, I would love to see her again and tell her about everything.  But I won't and it makes me cry like crazy.  

Alec has been out of town, because his mom has been sick. Temple and I picked him up last night from the airport and it felt really good.  

I went to the gym with one of my classes, even though I wasn't supposed to.  I petted the giant dog without even asking, which is crazy.  I felt its teeth on my hand at one point, and just pulled it away.  I still have welts.

"What kind of dog is this?"  I asked.
"A Curso,"  she answered.
"Is this your personal dog?"  I asked, looking at her animal control badge.
"Yes.  We got called because they were breeding her to death.  And I said, I'll take her."

The dog pushed against my leg and left spit all over my skirt.  But I didn't care.  I didn't care at all. 

*wiz khalifa, see you again 

April Showers

"Why did you do that?"  I saw The Flave scream at Elayna.  He was holding his swollen, red cheek.  

I haven't really told you about them.  My new kids.  The newcomers.  Maybe I did, maybe I didn't.  I'm not sure.  We were in a minute of complete joy, a pep rally at school to get the kids amped up for state testing.  Yes, testing sucks, but I like it when my school has special events.  I watched the kids scream and dance with glee.  Like many times when I am surrounded with absolute happiness, I felt like I was going to cry.  I thought of Lola.  I felt like I might need to leave the room.  Then, Flave's teacher ran up and said that Elayna had smacked Flave across the face, hard.

"Wait, why?  Was she pissed off?"  I asked.
"No, that's how they play.  But he's crying, I told him to go to the bathroom."
I watched Flave sit back own and question her, his eyes puffy with tears, cheeks swollen.  Flave and I have had issues, more with his parents, but I was heartbroken.  I can't see them hurt.  I just can't.  
"You hit me!!"  I saw him howl, hand to his face.  

I walked up the hill at the end of the school day.  Eduardo's sister picked a flower and turned to blow it at me.  The fuzzy little white things went right up my nose.  

El Camino a Santiago

"Turn right on five de mayo."  Google Maps voice instructed.  Five de mayo.  She tried her hand at "caballo" too, saying the double L like an L instead of a Y.  I kept praying a street name with Jesús would come up, but no luck.  
"Take a left after the O-X-X-O."  The Oxxo?  Just say Oxxo!  Google Maps lady was doing a number on the Spanish.  

"Level 3 has arrived in 25."  the disembodied voice announced while we followed my mom through the cavernous hallways of Grady's emergency area.  My mom was Level 3, arriving in 25.  I remember being nervous that they were taking so much care.  Nurses and doctors started asking a lot of questions.  My sister and I helped answer them and then, while we stood next to our mom's gurney, a stern looking nurse came over and said that though they had asked both of us to come to the back with my mom, only one of us could remain back there with her.  I went up front.  Horrible things were happening there but I just sat in a fog, staring forward.  Patients that required police intervention, street people in horrible states, I can keep going but I don't want to.  As much as I appreciated their care with my mom, Grady looked like what I imagine a field hospital in Iraq must have been like.  I found myself thinking over and over, people should not die in a place like this.  

We left for Mexico Saturday morning, my first day of Spring Break.  We made it all the way to Victoria, Texas and set out for the border on Easter Sunday.  We crossed over in McAllen/Reynosa instead of the Laredo crossing that we were more familiar with.  Though Reynosa isn't the safest city, all of the Texas crossings have issues and the McAllen/Reynosa crossing shaved off a little bit of driving time.  As we got closer, we started seeing Border Patrol trucks and got in the line for the bridge to Reynosa.  As we got closer to the painted line on the bridge delineating the end of the United States and the beginning of Mexico, the concertina wire gave away and then, we were there.  Temple bobbed around in the backseat, looking out the window.  

My mom did not have a stroke.  They weren't really sure what happened, but all of the really horrible stuff was ruled out.  My sister started going over to my mom's house daily, often bringing food.  I went by after work and on the first weekend after the incident.  We cleaned the majority of her house.  We were trying to make her environment healthier, hoping it would help her be healthier.  

We got immigration stuff taken care of and our temporary vehicle importation permit.  We drove through Reynosa and shortly after, started seeing all kinds of law enforcement - the Mexican military, the National Guard, various police types riding standing up in the back of pickup trucks with big guns and ski masks covering their faces.  A little later, we saw a large convoy of Pemex trucks, guarded front and back by the National Guard.  And then, we drove on to Santiago, a small town near Monterrey.  We found the neighborhood where our rented house was and were relieved when we realized that we initially pulled up to the wrong address, a house overflowing with junk.  A little down the street, a big nice wall surrounded the actual house we rented and the entire family who owned it sat on the front porch, keys in hand.  We are kind of used to just getting a code to get in the door when we rent a house and never meeting the people that actually own it, but this was different.  

The house has a big yard surrounding it, all encased in a sturdy wall.  Temple runs laps around the whole thing.  There is a large nice pool and a mountain view.  I am trying to coax Temple into the pool, but she's not feeling it yet.  The first day here was almost one hundred degrees.  

Yesterday, I saw a dog poking his face through a gap in the wall-gate.  He had love in his eyes.  He and Temple touched noses, then he ran away.  Minutes later, I saw him back again, nose poking through the gate.  And away he went again.  Minutes later, he came back with a second dog.  

Temple poked her face through the gap and the second dog licked her nose and ran away. 

The Birth of the Best

La vaca Lola, la vaca Lola
Tiene cabeza, tiene cola
La vaca Lola, la vaca Lola
Hace moo!

I can never tell what year it is.  Recently, our school put on a 50 years of hip-hop presentation for Black History month.  I thought about my decades.  I was born in Michigan in the early seventies.  Moved to Georgia by the early eighties.  Atlanta Child Murders.  By the early nineties, I was at Georgia State and working in restaurants.  There was a lot of great music in Atlanta at that time.  It seemed normal, but I didn't realize it wasn't until it was gone.  By the 2000s, those were travel years.  By the 2010s, antidepressants and massive weight gain.  The 2020s, I don't know.  I just don't know.  

My mom texted me last Wednesday.  Early in the morning, which isn't unusual.  She said that she woke up on the floor of her bathroom and didn't know how she got there.  Her arm was injured and her glasses were broken.  She said she had been there for hours, trying to get up, and that her face wasn't working right.  She feared that she had had a stroke.  

I stared at the message.   It had come through about twenty minutes earlier, while I was doing morning phonics.  
"Call your doctor."  I texted back.
And then, I called her.  

"Mom, what the fuck?"

"I'll call them as soon as they open."  she responded.

"They open at eight."

"Okay," I said.

"I have to got to my first class." 

I don't know why I said that.  

I called my sister.

"You have to go to mom's house, now.  She thinks she had a stroke."  

And then, I started walking to my class.  I slowed down as soon as I made it to the cafeteria.  I went by the principal's office, but it was dark in there.  I stood in the lobby and texted the principal and vice principal and said that I needed to leave.  I saw the vice principal in a side classroom and waited in line to talk to her.  When the person before me finished, I said that I needed to go because my mom thought she had had a stroke.  

"Go now."  she responded.

"Do I sign out, what do I do?"  I asked.

"GO NOW." she repeated.

"Okay, I have to Uber, our car is in the shop, I got dropped off today."  I responded, shell shocked.  Papi and I were getting the car ready for Mexico.

"Let's go, I'll take you."  my arch nemesis responded.  

"I have to get my stuff."  I replied, and ran to the trailer to get my bag and purse.  And my lunch.  

When I came back, the safety patrol that my arch nemesis coordinates was standing at the doors, opening them for me, directing me out front to the bus lane where her car waited.  

She took me to my mom's house.  I had to use Google to get there, because I don't go over there much.  

"So Wagner, where are you from?"  she asked.

"Michigan.  But I've been here since I was ten."

"Okay, Detroit. "  she responded.

I'm not from Detroit.  

"So, we're driving toward Bouldercrest, the Flat Shoals exit."  I continued.

Yes.  My mom lives on the Crest.  And apparently, I'm from Detroit.  

She pulled into the driveway.  I tried to just jump out, but then she asked if the car in the driveway was my sister's, and I said no.

"It's my mom's.  I can drive it."

"I'm coming in."  she responded.

And came up, onto my mom's porch, that was covered in wine boxes and dog pee.  

"Do you have a key?"  she asked.

"Yes, but I don't know the alarm thing."  I responded, trying to stall for time.  I knew my mom was not on the floor at this point and I could not have her going into my mom's house.  It's a difunctional mess, to say the least.  I knocked on the door.

"Get back!"  I called to her.

"Her dog's mean!"

My mom poked her head out.  

She left.  And I went inside.  

"They said go to the emergency room."  my mom said.

My sister was there within minutes and we took my mom to Grady. Barricades blocked most of the emergency entrances.  My sister dropped us off after we finally found the entrance.  She went and parked the car.  I took my mom in, through the metal detectors and police wands and went to the desk.  They were very nice.  My mom answered all of their questions and showed her all of her insurance cards and when they asked for emergency contact information, I had to speak.  I told them my name, spelled it, and when I started saying my phone number, I started to cry.

"It's okay, it is okay."  they told me.

"We have her.  We will get her all fixed up."

Lola would have been twelve today.  She should have been twelve today.  But me, us, all of us, we are trying very hard.  

I am, I Cried

It's funny.   I never really know what I'm doing.  I am always flying by the seat of my pants.  Like, my whole life.  When we got Temple, I sort of assumed she would be like Lola, because I have never owned another dog except Lola.  And, I didn't really think.  I just needed to get her out of the shelter.  Temple doesn't cuddle like Lola.  She has separation anxiety;  I can walk out of the room for a couple of minutes and she will jump up and hug me, frantic, acting like I've been gone for ten years.  But at night, she curls up on the end of bed.   Tight, like a ball.  Lola used to push me out of the bed, pressing up to me so hard that I broke my arm once, I fell out in the night.  But Temple has extremes, heart pounding fear when we leave the room, and then independence when she knows that we are here.  

"Lista, mamá." Joya announced, slapping her hand on the table.  I burst out laughing, as she did.  I thought she was being sassy, but it turned out, she was calling me mom, by accident.

I am struggling a bit.  I want to be at my best with my students, myself and my dog and and my partner. My schedule at work is wearing me out, even though I am completely on board with teaching kids that are new to the U.S.  They are actually the ones I wanted, all along.  Maybe it's the short days.  Maybe it's gross winter.  I don't know.  Maybe I just suck ass.  I want to be the best I can be.  Maybe I am being the best I can be.  But, it's not good enough.  

I watched Jon Stewart talk about the passing of his dog.  It was so well articulated that it brought me to tears.  I watched when his dog ran in the snow, with Jon Stewart saying "Get your ball,"  over and over again, while the dog ran and played in the snow.  Alec told me that one of his best memories was one time, when he and Lola were walking together, in the snow, it was all silent and they just walked together.  And it was beautiful.  

The Flave ran up the stairs to the gym, and turned.

I was standing down below, making sure he and the Joya made it where they needed to go.  
"Ciao papa!"  he yelled.  

Groundhog's Day

My birthday was at the beginning of February.  Papí went all out and got us this pretty, historic hotel on one of the squares in Savannah for the weekend.  And, it actually allowed dogs.   Aside from rental houses, the only places we were ever able to bring Lola was La Quintas and Motel 6.  I genuinely thought these people might be crazy to let any size dog into their place with all this antique furniture, but jumped at the idea.  They even invited her to their afternoon wine receptions.  I bought her a cute robe so that she would look like a fancy lady in her fancy hotel.    

I walked through the house, doing one last check before we took off.  The car was packed and Temple and Alec were outside, waiting.  I looked at the box of Lola's ashes.  I thought of how she pushed her chin so hard on my hand while she died in the same room I was standing in.  I touched the box and realized that this time, Lola wasn't going with us.  We were leaving her behind.  

Being back at work after our weekend was a rude awakening.  I've been testing non-stop.  Testing can be boring, but this test is the one that's used to basically evaluate me and it's difficult to administer.  I feel tired.  I finished most of it, just in time for a teacher work day, followed by a three-day weekend. 

Yesterday morning, I sat with the rest of the "specials" teachers, as instructed, while the grade level teachers began a training about teaching math.  None of us sat down with the other groups during the training, because none of us teach math.  I was surprised when one of my bosses walked by and stated:  "You need to get with a grade".  Her tone was one you might use with a child that was deliberately out of his assigned seat.  I was being chastised.  She then dismissed the rest of the "specials" teachers to do whatever they needed to do.  I was embarrassed and honestly, angry.  I don't like being talked to that way.  How the fuck was I supposed to know that they wanted me in that training?  It was as though I was knowingly avoiding doing something I was supposed to do.  Which is the opposite of what I do at work.  I do a million things that are not part of my job.  I interpret whole meetings, translate documents, teach phonics and reading before school actually starts...I hate it when teachers talk like this, but I do it because I care.  I do it when I notice that their grade level, content-area teachers are going to let them slip through the cracks.  There is a short window where children can gain reading proficiency.  If they don't do it by a certain age, there can be lifelong repercussions.  I've worked with a lot of people that don't give a shit, so I have gone way outside of my teaching lane because again, I care.  I was angry at the implication that I was avoiding my job.  

Yeah, I'm triggered.  I quit my last school because I had a boss that treated me like shit.  Constantly rude to me, berating me, even though I was doing a lot of the heavy lifting for my department.  Yesterday's comment put me in a tailspin.  I was also mad that I had to sit through a training about how to teach small group math, when I had a million other things to do.  Some of the other teachers kind of laughed and asked me why I was in the training.  
"Don't you teach ELA?"  one asked.
"I don't teach content.  I teach the language that allows English learners to understand the content."  I answered, pissed off that I am still explaining my whole job to whole teachers, and bosses.  I am so tired of this willful ignorance of what ESOL is.  I don't teach multiplication.  I teach kids what the word multiplication is so that the content-area teachers can teach them HOW to multiply.  But here I was, sitting in a training about how to teach small group math.  I am not even in the classroom when math is taught.  

I know I need to blow it off, not worry, but I am super tired of being various people's bitch.