Rainbow Morning

I saw this promise in the sky before I rolled away to work this morning:

Red and yellow and pink and green

Purple and orange and blue

I can sing a rainbow,

Sing a rainbow,

Sing a rainbow too.

A Sunday Night, Like Many Sunday Nights to Come

Sitting here, blogging as procrastination. Avoidance. That's nothing new.

I'm trying to hold on to the last shred of this weekend before the new week comes pouring in, drowning me in its tide of sheer existence.

I like teaching, I do. I like the little details of being a teacher. Freshly sharpened pencils, post it notes, seating charts, gesticulating while walking around the room, hoping my word seeds will plant themselves into my students' brains and that little knowledge seedlings will sprout. I like answering questions that show curiosity about the world. I like giving out star stickers for correct answers and participation. (You'd think high school students would utterly shun the very idea of star stickers, but you'd be surprised.)

But the one thing I despise, the one thing that makes me want to curl up into a fetal position in a corner and die is grading papers. And I have a million and one students. Take me now, sweet Jesus. Take me on home. The papers mock me, daring me to make an insignificant dent.

There's a flying saucer of insecurity that constantly hovers over me. I don't have it together. I'm grasping at loose ends and more sprout before I have time to tie them. It's daunting. I'm doomed to slogging through. I'll never be a hot knife through butter.

Sometimes the cool, soothing genie in my brain says just a day at a time. You can only do what you are able to do. It looks nice typed out. It sounds reasonable out loud.

But tomorrow I'll unlock my paper-decorated door (an attempt at morale-boosting festiveness), and step into my chilled room. There will be desks, a podium, a tardy log, a clock. These are concrete things.

There will be a sea of humanity in the hallways which will come flowing into my room. Here we are now, entertain us.

Call: Buenos días, clase.

Response: Buenos días, Señorita Smith.

Invitation

What: Miss Señorita Smith's Detention!

Where: Room 127

When: August 27th from 2:55 p.m. sharp to 3:40 p.m.

**Failure to attend will be an office referral! Gum scrapers provided!**

After

the end of a long week, to sit down to an enormous hunk of chocolate cake accompanied by a tall glass of milk.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Miss Señorita Smith

"Miss Señorita Smith, um, are you black or are you mixed with somethin?"

"Miss Señorita Smith, how long you was in Spain?"

"Miss Señorita Smith, how come they got that upside down question mark thing?"

"Miss Señorita Smith, I don't wanna fail Spanish. I got to graduate."

"Miss Señorita Smith, you liked the kind of food they had over there?"

"Miss Señorita Smith, what kind of music is this? What you said? Flamingo?"

"Miss Señorita Smith, do you listen to this kind of music in your car?"

"Miss Señorita Smith, I don't know what that MEAN."

"Miss Señorita Smith, ooh, I know! I wanna go first!"

"Miss Señorita Smith, is it going to be like this everyday? It be boring."

"Miss Señorita Smith, it be fun in here."

7th period

was a zoo today. This cannot continue.

I'm not the yelling type. I'm just not. Why would I get myself all worked up because of your foolishness? Not this chica.

Were some parents called today? Yezzir. That should nip this puppy in the bud.

Orange Spice Tea

I go through tea phases.

Phase one: Chai tea.

Phase two: Green tea.

Phase three: Lemon ginger tea.

Currently: Orange spice tea.

I hate the fact that my body won't let me sleep in. I'm so programmed to waking up early that even on a lazy Saturday morning I can't get in a few extra winks.

My to-do list. Oh, my to-do list.

This is what I do: Hope for impossibles. Then, if the impossible turns, for lack of a better word, plausible, I acquire a nervous, indecisive aftertaste.

I finally got a new phone. I had had my old phone since 2005. It's not the latest and the datest. I mean, I use my phone for calling and occasionally texting. That's it. I guess it's nice that this one has a camera which I might use and a bunch of other capabilities that I probably won't.

One thing I haven't done yet that I will do today: Use some mango mandarin body scrub.

I wonder: What kinds of other people have Curious George as their computer wallpaper?

Flamenco

A handsome, eyebrow-pierced young Spaniard returns to his job at the cybercafe on a lonely corner in Salamanca.

Every once in a while, his thoughts turn to a quirky American girl with downcast eyes who came into the cybercafe one summer afternoon about two years ago. She sat sullenly, the only one there that day. He had some modern Flamenco on in the background. Suddenly, she inquired about the group playing, and he offered to make her a CD full of the music. Tears welled up in her eyes and she said she wasn't ready to leave Spain. She didn't want to go back to the States. He smiled and shook his head. What a silly little sentimental girl. He gave her candy and told her to keep her head up, that it's better to go through life smiling than crying. He gave her the CD, but not before he wrote "Flamenquito: music from Salamanca for a friend" on it. He then sent her off with his email address, more encouraging words, and oh-so-Spanish besitos on both cheeks.

Little does he know that the music on the CD he burned for her now gets its wear in a high school Spanish classroom thousands of miles away from his lonely corner. Students unaccustomed to such plaintive wailing, staccato raps and claps, and raspy guitar enter a new world for a few moments. Some, ever searching for an excuse, complain that they don't understand the words. "Maybe not," the girl, now a teacher, says, "but you can feel it."

Interview

Interviewer: So, how long has it been since you've been back from France?

Interviewee: Umm . . . let's see . . . it's been a little over a month now.

Interviewer: So, what's it like to be back? Do you miss it? Do you see yourself going back?

Interviewee: It's okay. I mean, I do miss certain things about it, but frankly, I was ready to come back to the States. That's not to say that I wouldn't like to go back to France. I would. It's something I'm considering. I just don't know when or how or under what circumstances. Sometimes I wake up with France on my mind. Often, it will bring me to tears. I think maybe, if I do go back, I should let enough time pass so that I don't feel like I'm slipping back into the grooves of my already lived French experience. When I go back, I want to go back anew.

Interviewer: What do you miss the most?

Interviewee: If I had to choose one thing and one thing only, I would say the Loire River.

Interviewer: You've truly lived a world-traveling life, haven't you? You spent years in Italy as a child, you spent time in Spain and learned Spanish, now you've spent time in France and you've added a second foreign language to your repertoire. What's the next step?

Interviewee: (laughs) I wish I knew. What I know right now is that I need to work. Thankfully, I've gotten a job as a Spanish teacher set to start next week, so I'm focusing on getting prepared for that. So, I guess I can say that for at least a year, the next step has pretty much been settled for me.

Interviewer: What is it that you want to do? If you could choose the perfect situation, what would it be?

Interviewee: (sighs) That's such a broad question. I don't know. I don't really know. I guess I just want to be where God wants me to be. I can't go wrong with that, can I?

This is going to sound kind of mean, but . . .

Okay, I had much loftier things to talk about, deeper things, discoveries, insights and stuff like that. But now I've been reduced to ranting.

I don't think I'm all that. I don't know what I can say to convince anyone reading this that I don't think I'm an untouchable princess or whatever. But I'm just going to be honest and say that sometimes it makes me . . . the only word I can use is 'angry' to describe the feeling that I get when someone that has absolutely no business trying to talk to me tries to talk to me.

I know, like I said, that sounds mean, but I'm serious. You are SO old, overweight, needing a haircut, looking like an extremely unattractive potato face, and you have the audacity to try to mack? Who are you? I don't even know who your nasty old self is. With your yellowing, inwardly turned bottom tooth looking like a fake wooden triangle painted yellow jammed into your mouth.

Just because you and some other lady sat near me at Starbucks and I moved my stuff out of the way doesn't mean you have a conversation opening. And just because you noticed my ringless hand doesn't give you permission to comment on my marital status, and ask if I have any children or a boyfriend when the lady gets up to go to the bathroom. And when I dumbly answer "no" to the last two questions, it doesn't give you license to inform me that you're single too and like younger women and wonder if I'm into older men. How dare you tempt my stomach acid to reflux in my Starbucksian sanctuary? How dare you impudently dare to think you even deserve wisp of a chance? And how dare you force me to revert into my uncomfortable nervous laughtering self, wanting to get leagues away from you, but somehow still trying to be nice?

With your sorry attempts to get faux intellectual with me just because I revealed to the lady that I'd traveled a bit after she asked if I were a college student and I told her I was a teacher and that no, I'm not from Montgomery originally. You Spaghetti-O and fried hot dog eating old man hat wearing over your needing a haircut head.

To talk to from time to time? No, mouth breathing jelly donut lover. Never. I don't think that's a good idea. And I actually said that last part out loud from behind my still trying to be nice nervous smile. Go back to your back room-dwelling, TV-watching life. Go back to lumbering around your flat, worn, all-too-familiar, cornbread crust world.

Let reality forge its way into your brain and focus your energies on finding a woman your own age and shoe size instead of licking your quadragenarian chops in wasting your easily spent energy in pursuit of "younger women." And you can bet your sweet potato face I'm not coming back to that Starbucks as you gullibly believed I would. Good day, sir.

Creative Nonfiction

I've decided that's what I'm going to do. Forsake all to become a creative nonfiction writer. ::insert huge chunk of I'm-just-kidding here:: It dawned on me while perusing my MFA published writer friend's library that that's the kind of writing I can do. My fiction attempts have been met with a teeny bit of success (I won a writing contest sponsored by 90&9 for this story 3 years ago), and I've written a bit of fiction for Word Aflame Press Sunday school literature for teens, but in all honesty, it's not great. My poetry attempts have been . . . dismal. But I think if I were ever going to pursue writing seriously, I would write creative nonfiction. It's a relatively new, open field, and I think I'd like to explore it a bit.

Here's a profound couple of lines from the end of a piece called "Mirrorings" by Lucy Grealy:

"I once thought that truth was eternal, that when you understood something it was with you forever. I know now that this isn't so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things."

Wow. I thought that was pretty profound. It's true. Just because you understand something doesn't mean it's with you. Believing the truth is not a permanent magic moment. It's hard, elusive work.

Another thing I realized this weekend really made me think: The reason we are able to romanticize disaster is because the worst didn't happen. It is such a sobering thought. Not original to me, though I will write it in my journal, and I hope I always remember it.

Friends and Family

So, I got back Tuesday from seeing my caramel, dark chocolate, butterscotch, burnt sienna family. We're such a lovely kaleidoscope of earth tones. Check us out here. My first day in Philly I wolfed down a whole cheesesteak. With extra cheese. Y'all don't know nothin bout that!

Yesterday, I headed to the plains to see some grad school buds. It was such a nice reunion. We even crafted a video destined to go viral:

Now, I'm heading to Birmingham (otherwise known as The Ham) to see my homegirl and her fam.

I have to get all my friend visiting out of the way before the onslaught. Gotta get Rotary PowerPoint lined up, and Monday starts a little "not mandatory, but highly recommended" new teacher orientation. It's creeping up on me and before I know it I'll be thrown back into the tumble dry cycle of roughneck real life.

It's Official

A little while ago, I went downtown and filled out all the paperwork for my newly acquired teaching position. Signed that dotted line, son! Official report to work day is August 4.

What slightly gets on my nerves is some people's reactions when they ask where I'll be working and what age I'll be working with. They wince or chuckle smugly saying, "Good luck with that." Let me passive-aggressively tell you something, since I probably won't say this to yo face. I know the public school system around these parts doesn't have the best reputation. But I DON'T CARE. I knew what I was getting myself into when I applied. I originally got my certification to teach high school . . . that's what most Spanish teachers do. My last elementary/middle school gig was kind of a rarity. Just be glad I have a job. Shoot. I am. And I have a Master's degree now, too? Aw, shucks. Y'all don't know nothin bout this!

Come to think of it, some of the same types of people made annoying comments when they found out I was going to teach at an elite private school. They'd affectedly raise their eyebrows and say, "Ohh, Miss Private School. Too good for us now?" Just go saddown somewhere, please.

Anyway, for the next few days we're taking a little family trip to Philly for a family reunion. Isn't it ridiculous that this will be the first time I've ever been to a family reunion? Ah, well. There's a first time for everything.

I finally finished

that wretched essay, which in retrospect, wasn't really that wretched. I always do that. Procrastinate till kingdom come and then when something finally ruffles up my spirit (click here and scroll down to 3.2.231) to get things done and I do them, I realize it wasn't that bad and should have done it eons ago. I faxed it along with other final report stuff to the Rotary Foundation, and washed my hands saying, "I find no fault in these papers." (Click here for the fun of it.) Now I have to put together a pretty little PowerPoint to share my French experience with my sponsor club.

I also stopped being lazy and standoffish and called people back to chit chat and set up coffee dates.

Before I plunge into reading one of the only Jane Austen novels I haven't read yet, Persuasion (I think the only other one after that is Mansfield Park), I started formulating a little multiple choice lifemap in my head. Here are the ideas that have been juggling around, in no order of importance after my high school Spanish gig is up. Which will be the road less traveled by? (Click here)

a. Go to France and teach English for 7-9 months

b. Teach in the DoDDS system (the schools on American military bases abroad, the kinds of schools I went to back in the day)

c. Join the Foreign Service

d. Go to the Urshan Graduate School of Theology

They're like little crystal balls being juggled around in the back of my mind a la the Goblin King:

Should I do a grand expedition of going for them all and seeing where the chips fall? Or should I just relax and take things one day at a time?

I vote for the latter.

A French Memory

June 21 was a yearly all-night music festival celebrated all over France called Fête de la Musique. There are music performances all day and music played in the streets all night. I was out, laughing at the antics of my friends to the oh-so-European techno music blasting from a cafe near the river. A man walked up to me out of nowhere, startling me. He leaned in and told me in French, "Just to tell you that you are pretty." And before I had time to react, to even say thank you, he walked away. He didn't look back.

Focus, focus.

There are 3 people I need to call back who have tried to get in touch with me since I've been back. Why haven't I opened up my beat up, ghetto phone (yes, I still have the same one) to return their calls?

Why am I being lazy and standoffish and not feeling like dealing with people? No, sir. I don't want to call you back so I can come over and translate during the course of what I'm sure is going to be an awkward, money and/or living arrangements related family matter. Make that 4 people I'm supposed to call back.

I guess part of me doesn't feel like getting together with folks because I don't want to have to pay for doing lunch during a time of current financial strain, and I just end up giving banal answers to "How was France?" anyway. Plus, people I haven't seen in a while inevitably ask me about boys. And since I'd been in France for 6 months, surely there was somebo—No, really? Must we? I'm back, so if I did "meet anyone," he must not've been convincing enough for me to stay.

I'm so mean. And I still need to write this wretched essay. Oh, and I need to get a PowerPoint together to share my French experience with my sponsor club. Focus, focus.

I confess that

I cry easily, and often despairingly. Like the world is broken and irremediable and that I must bear the burden of a generational shift. Like my life is doomed to an unstable series of unfulfilling endeavors and as if every decision I make will be forever etched in stone. I cry because I never want to say goodbye. Because things always come back to "this." Because I was suddenly overcome by a maddening mix of nostalgia and melancholia. Because I wish I had never. Because I wish I had. Because of recurring interconnectedness between beauty and sadness.

I laugh easily, and often boisterously. With my head thrown back, clutching my gut. Doubled over, covering my wide-open mouth, wiping away tears. I laugh because of the simple, amusing things that parade across our lives every single day. I laugh due to old inside jokes remembered like a welcome friend. Because of absurdity that would otherwise be surreal. Because of clever puns, children's speech and conceptions of the world, spot-on impressions, the theatricality of politics, the confusion that results because of cultural and linguistic difference. I laugh when my friends label real life people and situations with literary and cinematic references. I laugh because of my brothers' exaggerated accounts of what happened when we were kids.

I'm naive. I trust easily. I'm taken in by things I consider exotic and different and foreign. I romanticize. Fetishize. I construct impossible ideals only to knowingly watch them fall apart.

I'm a critic, sometimes a cynic. I notice everything out of place. I question relentlessly. I analyze choices to the point of paralysis, oblivion.

I smile a lot and often really hard. Sometimes pictures of myself scare me because of the ability to literally count my teeth because they're that big and defined.

I'm a procrastinator. I let things build up into a time-crunched frenzy, and eventually complete the task in a tiring, unnecessary marathon, propelled by the adrenaline-rush of a looming deadline.

I always take the long way. No matter what it is, it seems like there was always a shorter, more efficient way to do what I just did or to get to where I just arrived.

Things are usually not as complicated as I make them out to be.

After all these years, I still don't know what I'm supposed to be doing.

Return to American Life: Day 11

What am I going to do with me?

Take my pick of lifecream flavors: Double fudge teacher with high school Spanish chunks? Strawberry traveler with a wanderlust ribbon? Rocky road(s)? Birthday cake to 30 and beyond? Truffles, splits, fill-in-the-blank chocolate chip.

There are so many. But I have to savor them one at a time.

I actually had a couple of interviews today. One downtown at the main big dog mcdoggy Board of Education, and one with an individual principal at an individual high school who was "interested." In truth, I applied for an English as a Second Language (ESL) position, but I was told that they were very limited and that they always have a general posting on the website. (Read: there weren't really any ESL positions open, but they like to keep it up on the website because it looks pretty.) What they had available was teaching high school Spanish. Like Mr. Schuster on Glee.

I wanted to try something different with ESL, but I do love Spanish. And the only age that I don't have professional experience with is high school. It'll be another notch on my belt. I will be able to say I've taught at every single level. For real. I taught elementary, middle school, and university, so high school's the missing link. I will be able to say I've been all things to all men.

The principal said he was very impressed with me and said he'd think I'd be a good fit. There are a few administrative wrinkles to iron out before he can formally offer me the job, but he basically let me know he wanted me and I basically let him know I would accept. So, we'll see.

I always have my little plan. My little checklist. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't. But here it is anyway:

My Future Checklist

þTeach high school Spanish for a year

þSave up money

þPay off loans

þGo back to France and teach English

So, I found this little program with the French Embassy for candidates between the ages of 20-30 to teach English in France for either a 7 or 9 month period. I'll still be on the green side of 30, I've always wanted to work abroad, I want to improve my French even more, so why not? The application process starts in October, and if I were selected, I'd find out in April.

I have decided that I just have to go out and do stuff. If it works out, it works out, and if it doesn't, it doesn't. I'm tired of being both paralyzed and driven by fear. I really am. It's an exhausting and ultimately destructive way to live. I can't let that stuff control me any longer. I refuse to.

I could take a painting class. I could take up tae kwon do again. I could take guitar lessons. I could start learning another language. I could plant an herb garden or cultivate a patch of sunflowers. I could move to another city. I could fall in love.

There are so many things I could do.

I felt really American when . . .

I ordered Starbucks through the drive-thru.

I ate Burger King for lunch and had Papa John's pizza for dinner.

I threw away a Sprite can.

My mom and I drove in separate cars to the same place.

I ate a bagel for breakfast.

I listened to NPR.

I didn't have to pay for a plastic bag and the cashier bagged the stuff at Publix.

I took a long, hot shower.

I forgot to turn off a few lights around the house.

I talked on a cell phone with a cell phone plan.

I helped the youth sell fireworks for the 4th of July.

Plunge

So, I've plunged back into my American life.

Saturday night after being picked up from the airport, I was treated to dinner at my Dad's favorite place, Golden Corral. I just hate the way it sounds. The name just gives me an image of a bunch of obese people being squeezed into an enclosed space and gorging themselves at a horse trough. My dad loves buffets. Whether it's a home cooking buffet or a Chinese buffet, my dad is there. I'm not going to front and act like I didn't tear up the fried chicken, though. I had been craving it. My French host mom didn't know nothin bout no fried chicken. Speaking of Madame, I dropped her a little line to let her know I made it back to the States safely. When the taxi came to pick me up that Saturday morning to take me and my 2 tons of luggage to the train station, old girl teared up and got me going, too. Even the taxi driver was touched. As I downed my second huge glass of sweet tea, several things hit me all at once:

1. You would NEVER get a glass that big of anything to drink in France.

2. There are no free refills in France.

3. Sweet tea is a foreign concept in France.

As I heard country music twanging in the background, observed the portly patrons help themselves to thirds, and was addressed as "baby" by the waiter, I felt baptized in the corn syrup sweetness that is the South, and felt as close to home as I probably ever would. On the airplane on the way over the Atlantic, I sat next to a rusty old man and he asked, "Where are you coming from and where are you going?" I told him I had finished a 6-month stay in France and was headed to be with my family in Alabama. "You're from the South?" he asked, astonished. "Well, you sure don't sound like it." I then proceeded to recount an abridged version of the story of my life to account for my lack of a Southern accent.

Anytime I told a French person I was from Alabama, most of them would say Oui, like the song "Sweet Home Alabama"! Yeah, like that. Then they'd proceed to ask if people were racist there. T'yeah. People are racist everywhere. (Even in France!) But I didn't say that.

Sunday was Church McChurchy, and I was asked to give a testimony. "Praise the Lord, Gloria a Dios, and now I can say Gloire au Seigneur!" I gloated.

I headed up to Birmingham to see my bestest friend. We had our Celie/Nettie reunion:

I had my first Stateside Starbucks with her. Awww. It was a tall iced white chocolate mocha with whip. I felt so American ordering it. Even more so at the drive-thru. There aren't drive-thrus in France. The closest I saw was a walk-up outside window at the McDo in town.

So I've had a mother-daughter day of pedicures and brother-sister movie night, but today, today, I was a woman on a mission. Today, stuff was getting done. Today, things were getting checked off of my checklist. Today, I was handlin that bidness and scored a job interview for an ESL teaching position on Tuesday!

I wish I would have spent a lot less time worrying about what to do once I got back. God is like, "I got this." Why is it so hard for me to believe that He really is in control?