Would It Be Better If...

It's the end of another year and I find myself as reflective as ever, hours spiraling away like cottony dandelion heads blown by breezes far too warm for any self-respecting December afternoon in Kansas.

Nothing and I mean nothing feels real today.

I could chronicle in grisly and gothic detail the year that ends tonight, I could recount months spent coming to terms with myself as a divorced woman, as a woman who experienced a transformative return to faith, a woman who loved a man so desperately she nearly lost her mind when he disappeared, a woman who had to hunt through the dark, cold and alone and terrified, to find the only light she could ever actually be guided by lived and lives inside her own heart.  I could tell all those stories, but none of them alone says what I need to say today.

I keep wondering, would it be better if I'd made this choice instead of that one, if I'd said no instead of yes, if I'd spoken instead of stayed silent, sung instead of whispered...in the end, though, a year is a drop in the path of a human life, not even enough of a rock to impede your path unless you let it.  I am choosing, today, to walk past this last year, to give it back to the earth, to say no thank you and to happily, and hopefully, accept the next stretch of time as one that will be better.  I deserve it.  You deserve it.  We deserve it.

1957, Milo Greene

Light

First day of holiday break.  Shopping/errands, laundry, "Crimes & Misdemeanors" on HBO, Charlie Rose w/Angelina Jolie, some new Caramel Chai tea, gave the dog a bath, now watching "You've Got Mail."

I love this movie for so many reasons.

1. It's New York, and though I don't think I could ever live in that city, it is incredible and I have been itching, itching, itching to revisit it for a very long time.  I especially want to go here: The Strand

2.  It's about bookstores, and people who love books, and smart people who love to talk about books.

3.  It's about falling in love with someone whose heart and mind speak to you on a level you didn't know existed.

4.  But most of all, it's about hope.  That everything will get better, that life can be beautifully rich and lovely and full of warm sweet tenderness and I love this movie because I want all of that.  All all all of that.

So, happy holidays, all.  Here's to light in 2012.

Dark

I can't tell yet if the malaise I've been feeling lately is tied to the holiday season and it's lack of snow/good cheer/general kindness, or the strained relationships with some of the people I love most, or if I'm just in a particularly undefinable but completely unsettled mood, but--whatever the root cause--I find myself stunned to tears by the smallest gestures of kindness lately.  I think I'm hungry for something more beautiful and less complicated than my own life.

I cry at commercials, at bad television shows, inspirational videos, my dog playing with me, so effortlessly happy in her running around that I want to choke on my own inability to be--simply--joyful.  Where did that go?  Honestly.  I have no idea.  I used to count myself a pretty joyful person, optimistic, hopeful, ready to believe that all would be well with little to no encouragement because beauty and possibility trumped darkness and fatality at every turn.  But, now...

Not so much.

The person I want to be--strong, intelligent, kind, thoughtful, loving, loved, inquisitive, trusting--is in here somewhere, I know.  I've met her and she's pretty outstanding.  It's just that lately she is buried under this scared little girl who wants guarantees that everything will work out okay.  And because those guarantees don't exist, much as she loves the sun, she'd rather sit in the dark and wait it out, knowing in her heart that all the magic she imagines may be nothing more than illusion, and that these dark hours are all she can count on.

All I want is a little joy.  A little safety.  A little assurance that everything is going to be okay.  I know I can't have it without trusting myself, trusting God, trusting the people I love.  I know that.  It's just easier said than done.

An Open Letter to Jay-Z

Dear Mr. Carter,

I want to first thank you for the amazing contributions you have made over the past five years towards the lessons I teach in my high school classroom. I've used "99 Problems" to discuss the need we all have to name our issues. When my students were learning about allusions, we spent a day studying "Empire State of Mind."  And, just this semester, I've been teaching the concept that words matter, that they have value, so when my Midwestern male high school students use the word SWAG over and over again in an effort to establish they have swagger, I remind them that you are the poster boy for swagger in part because you never need to say you have confidence or infuence. You have it, so people know you have it and, conversely, people know you have it because you do.

I read today that you recently told reporters you would be happy to pay higher taxes if the cause were a just one: education, children in poverty, etc. I impressed with your specificity here, making our poorest children and the intellectual concerns of our American children such an important piece of you life.

As a high school teacher (with a masters degree in my content area--English), I make less than $50k a year and am crippled by student loan debt. This letter, Mr. Carter is my way of asking your charity to start smaller.  No need to rush to the IRS to amend a return, there is a faster way to begin contributing to education.

I'm asking you to choose ten teachers from around the country who owe over $100k in student loans, and then you pay off their debt.  It would cost over a million dollars, but you would be guaranteeing decades of lower stress for people doing one of the country's most exhausting and thankless jobs.

I recognize that you are busy with your own child on the way, you are on the throne so many of us are watching, and I am certain you have many projects to address at this time. I only ask that, now, at the holidays, you consider giving a gift very few people are capable of giving. Give ten teachers their lives back, keep us from scrambling paycheck to paycheck, let us love what we do without that love crippling us financially.

Finally, you could have read anything else in the world today, but you read this from me, and I appreciate that.

---Ms. D