twelve hundred words

Assignment: Twelve hundred words. I have 1,200 words. I spilled just over 9,000 of them into my portfolio. I probably have a few left. 

What I can’t seem to find is exactly the right 1,200 words. How can something so small sum up something so huge? It’s just a tad more than a word-and-a-half for each day of these two years. There were days, surely, that deserved more. And there were days for which there are simply no words available. 

I thought about harvesting my 18 months of twitter feeds.

Here are some words: 

desire restless anticipation trepidation fear good-bye mountains valleys highway truck wondering welcome hello ice-breaker dormitory roommate swelter rookie dawn preposition cheese-toast tickets chocolate-milk strong companion baloney vis-a-vis home lost interview jesus horror solar-plexus creek cotton dread classroom gin cardiologist crawfish referral theft duty framework cremation wait alone inhale exhale femoral neck rain morphine resignation abandon reunion plucky permanence shelter adrift anger flood roster prayer betrayal love stop doing evil redundant nutella blood history chicken-spaghetti obamaobamaobamaobama gimme gimme hopeless exhale inhale vascular event snow-peas mentor commitment vodka moths coloring squirrels reflection inadequate peace

Sometimes words become arranged in such a way that they begin to tell a story. 

I can tell you why I came here. I had spent almost 20 years surrounded by, and arranging, words about education. I had raised a daughter and seen what happens when a child’s mind is engaged and nurtured. I wanted to find the peace that comes with balance, and my life was heavily weighted to the side of fortune and prosperity. 

Fifty stalks, one put aside, divided between my left and right hands again and again gave me these words:

There has been sacrifice. And I fill these small bowls every day. Some are broken. 

I can tell you what I thought I knew.

I’m still haunted by leaving my first school. As I said at the time, the reasons I left are the reasons I needed to stay. I count it as a failure. The school where I teach now is still critical needs. The administration is still woefully disorganized. Decisions are made without regard to their outcome. Money is wasted. All of the things that go into the making of a failing school district are here. 

My central quandary remains: What level of sacrifice is made, and whose sacrifice is it? Was SDHS so hopeless that I can ultimately help more children by teaching in a district where more children will take advantage of my teaching, and benefit from what I do? Or is it more noble to find the one among those who are most deeply lost?

The highest notes are hard to hear.

I come back again and again to the popular ethical dilemma of the children on the train tracks. You know the one: There are several children playing on a train track, and you see an oncoming train. You can throw a switch and divert the train, saving the group of children, but the diverted train will kill a single child playing on the branched track. Do many children die because you do nothing, or do you actively cause the death of a single child in order to save many? 

And I never know the answer. But some nights I wake in a sweat as the train itself is bearing down on me. 

My wealth of virtue seems inadequate.

And then there are the words about my life.

In the past two years I've spent more time in hospitals -- in emergency rooms, cardiac ICU, neurology ICU, and orthopedic recovery -- than I've spent with my principal. For that matter, I've spent more time under general anesthesia than I have with my principal. 

My mother's heart surgery during my first month of teaching; my own accident that took me out of school at the end of March last year; and my mother's recent stroke last month have all taken a toll on my energy and stamina. It’s taken a year to be myself again and recover both from the initial shock of teaching in a critical-needs school, and from the physical trauma of my accident.

There’s almost no way in which MTC has not impacted my life. Not being in my 20s with the safety net of “going home” beneath me, my commitment to this change was a serious one. I have nowhere to land if I fall. There’s almost no aspect of my former life that I recognize, apart from the furniture in my house — and the moths have made major headway on my Turkish wool rugs.  For the first year I lived, breathed, ate, and slept teaching and planning. I’d like to say I am more optimistic about the future now, but I’m not. I’m more resigned, though, to the concept of slow change. I’m beginning to understand the intricate complexity of the dance of race, poverty, privilege, and history. I’m beginning to get the barest glimpse of just how much I still don’t know. I do know that I no longer believe that our present system of social services helps lift generations out of poverty.

We have code words, too. Like poverty.

I’ve had conversations with several of my fellow MTC’ers in which we lamented that we are now racist in situations where we wouldn’t have been before. I’ve felt the very strong effects of reverse discrimination. At one time or another I’ve heard at least three of my colleagues say that they didn’t come here to hate, but feel hate every day.

We come here with love in our hearts.

I met a man who worked for 40 years without ever taking a day off except holidays. He usually had his allotted 30-minute lunch at Tony’s Grocery, a little market lunch counter in Mayersville, a town of about 700 people on the levee in Issaquena County. He’s worked and paid his taxes. But every day at lunch he’s ridiculed for paying those taxes by men young and old who spend their days sitting on buckets or going fishing. This is the legacy of poverty. This is why there is still hate.

Here are some words: 

crazy check earned income credit obamaobamaobama now we’ll have freedom

I came here with love in my heart. It’s still there. 

I’m staying on, at least for a third year, and probably beyond. I live in Mississippi now. So this doesn’t feel quite like an ending. My relationship has been less with MTC than with Mississippi. I know we’re gathering for what is probably the last time tomorrow. 

But I will continue to gather Mississippi. 

Twelve hundred words. Let me show you them.