Cupcake Cones and Appreciating Entropy

Cups with varying levels of water litter the sink, dirty clothes spill out of the hamper, and shoes rarely make their way to the rack under our bed.  While I value cleanliness and order, fatigue and an impetuous desire for time with my husband overwhelm the clamor of the clutter, especially during the week.

However, when guests are expected, somehow clean cups teleport into the cabinets, shoes scramble beneath the bed, and Tide-scented shirts populate the formerly empty hangers in our closets.

Our guests receive the Facebook version of our lives- polished, Tide-scented, serene, and fictitious.

Two years ago, after an emotionally poignant argument with Glenn, I arrived unannounced at one of my closest friend's apartments.  I have a key, so I entered unannounced.  Clothes were scattered across the living room, dishes littered the table, and the bed covers were tousled and thrown around the bedroom.

She was incredibly embarrassed, while I found her mess strangely consoling.

While social media is a wonderful tool for maintaining contact with distant friends and family, it is also cruel in its distortion of reality.  Life is not polished, Tide-scented, and serene.  Many times, real life is more like a failed Pinterest project.

Last year, an amazing teacher spoke at our county's commencement ceremony.  He inspired all of us with his tireless energy and vignettes from his experience in the classroom.  His dynamic passion still inspires me each day as I prepare to go to work.

As he closed his monologue, he offered a final analogy characterizing teachers as travelers on a tire-less bus.  The best educators are the 'runners,' driving the bus forward.  The walkers are permissible due to their potential to become runners and thus contribute... and then there are the riders, the laggards who missed their stop last year.

The analogy stuck with me.  It motivated me, but it also fed my comparative transgression.  I wanted to be a runner, and every day I endeavored to sprint ahead with creative planning and picture-perfect presentations.  I was compelled by a desire to attain the runner status and a longing to be Pinterest-perfect.

Each week, I left school exhausted.  By the end of the first quarter, I felt dissatisfied, discontent, and discouraged.  Occasionally, I received praise for my originality and drive, but the accolades were unmerited because my motives were entirely selfish and, as such, the hunger for recognition became insatiable.

The Pinterest-perfect photos and plans were displayed on my blog, but many days my classroom more closely resembled the cupcake cones pictured above.

In my endeavor to attain status, I only saw the road ahead instead of my fellow travelers.  Sometimes, my students needed the proverbial bus to pause.  After a student's death, everyone on the bus needed to slow down, and some days I needed to be the laggard and depend on my school community to keep me moving.

My beliefs as an educator were undermined by my sinfully competitive and selfish nature.

Four years ago, when I decided to pursue my teaching license, I reflected a lot on my own academic experience.  As a student, I most admired the teachers who were sincere in their care for me and interest in my personal success.  I do not clearly remember any of their creative projects or lesson plans, I only remember the way that I felt in their classrooms.  There were moments last year, when I entirely lost sight of my original motive for teaching.

This year, I have already experienced a few 'Pinterest fails.'  Technology does not always cooperate, and my plans are not always executed as seamlessly as anticipated.  Yet, I am hoping to leave my door open and refrain from exclusively posting pictures that distort the reality.  Being a runner every day is unrealistic and untenable.

While I aspire to incorporate original and engaging ideas, more than anything, I want my students to see the classroom as a safe and responsive place where they are valued, even on their laggard days.

Bidding Farewell

I've reflected before on how a space can become a time capsule- guarding and subduing a memory's strength until its reunion with the memory keeper.  Sitting in my empty classroom, the memories are released one by one.  I can sense the silhouettes of my students rummaging through the blinds and books searching for scavenger hunt clues. They open and shut the cabinets, peer beneath the desks and tables, and shuffle through papers.

I hear her sheepishly confess of her first "real crush."  I can see his face tear-stained as he composed an eloquent personal narrative about the loss of his beloved dog.  I feel the impetus to jump up and down upon receiving notice that she passed her math test.  I am sitting in the chair where he thanked me for becoming his "middle school mom."  I smile as he asks in broken English if he can "take a shower for his hands."

So many sweet memories.  So many emotions contained within a trapezoid classroom with stained roof tiles.  Tears were shed here, laughter spilled recklessly, a thousand hugs and handshakes exchanged, two million gallons of "Fantastic Spray" were emptied, and numerous 'hard conversations' permanently claim this space.

This room became the home for my family.   The nostalgia forms a thick fog of emotion, and I am held here.  This classroom now possesses such an important season of my life.  It holds me like a secret that no one else can fully comprehend.  While I must bid this sacred space farewell, it will always hold a piece of me that I cannot reclaim.

Above all I am grateful for this place.  This season may be trapped within these walls, but the lessons I have learned will stay with me eternally.  I pray the same holds true for my students and for every colleague that blessed me by visiting this seasonal sanctuary.

Farewell, P168.  Thank you for revealing so many attributes that I did not realize I possessed- the good and the bad.  Thank you for remaining in my absence and awaiting our next reunion.  Thank you for teaching me how to be a teacher, a wife, a mother, and a friend.  Thank you for infinitely protecting this precious season.

So long, GMS.  Thank you for an amazing year.

My Tadpole Hand-Fishin' Friend

Standing barefooted with grass trimmings like ankle jewelry- the moment seemed infinite.  We would take turns balancing on the slippery stones that created the border between lawn and lake.  There was an art to it- the bending down, cupping of hands, the stillness and waiting.  Finally, an unassuming tadpole would swim into our crude trap.  Swiftly hands ascended and dropped our new pet into a beach bucket.  Each tadpole was rewarded a name and toted around for a while.  Eventually, once we tired of the enterprise, we would return the tadpoles to their original home.

We probably traumatized hundreds of baby frogs in our innocent fun.

When I met you, you were two, and I was almost six.  I ate orange slices on the patio by the pool in your backyard.  You were in some sort of floating swimsuit, and I remember feeling jealous and confused by the accolades lavished upon you for bobbing up and down in the water. At that moment, I did not know that you would redefine my life, but when we moved into adjacent houses on Baneberry Lake 12 months later, I realized I could not get rid of you...

Over twenty years have transpired, and I still miss the 7AM Saturday wake-up calls, "Can Austen come play?"  I miss the phone messages waiting for me when I returned home from school... the little ball of tangled blond hair sitting on my front porch.  I miss tumbling down the hill in your front yard.  I miss playing dress-up with your Gammy's old evening gowns, baking chocolate chip cookie cake with my mom, creating obstacle courses in the unfinished basement.

As your wedding approaches, I ache to return to barefeet, beach buckets, and the oppressive heat of Alabama summers.  We were infinite in those simple moments... I think when my family moved away, time accelerated somehow.  I cried every night for months.  Seeing you during the holidays was not enough.  And now, here we are- in awkwardly taller bodies, married, beginning careers, and paying bills.  I would trade my entire salary for one more tadpole day with you.

A million superficial things have changed, but I still have not gotten rid of you, and I don't ever intend to.  I am pretty sure grass stains left permanent tattoos upon my heart, and so did you.  As your wedding day approaches, and another season of change commences, know that I am not budging.  I will be by your side as you commit yourself to your husband-to-be, and I will be there for all of the strange and scary discoveries that marriage provokes.

We serve a loving God... I have questioned his motives and goodness many times, but when I look at you, my tadpole hand-fishin' friend, I have no doubt that somehow in this pain-filled world, He is still present.  Your husband-to-be will become many things to you, but the role of tadpole hand-fishin' friend is proudly taken.

The Imperfect Marriage

Me during my first year of marriage = A match in an oil spill.

I pity my dear husband.  The slightest friction would ignite and engulf everything in flames.

Our first year of marriage was more like escaping Pompeii than a trip to Disney World.  No fairy tales were actualized.  At the slightest provocation, flames incinerated any proverbial glass slippers and singing tea pots.

I am not easy to love. I learned very quickly that sunshine does not exude from my presence, and kind words do not flow like rivers from my mouth, especially when I'm mad, sad, disappointed, or anything other than perfectly content.

Let me preface this a bit...

I started coloring within the lines when I was three years old.  Since then, perfection was more than a goal, it was the expectation.  I took my father's nightly bedtime prescription to heart- "just do your best."  The wisdom of the adage infected my blood stream like a virus attacks a cell.  Such an innocent and well-intended precept became the incantation of my heart.  "Do your best. Do Your Best. Do. Your. Best."  The words motivated and inspired me, until my best had to be "the best."  The words still enslave me frequently.

Throughout my career as a student, my grades never fell below the honor roll. I took AP and dual enrollment classes at a prestigious high school in Richmond.  I graduated in three years with a full ride to college.  I spent time working for a nonprofit abroad. When I returned home, I started and completed graduate school in 16 months while working full-time... and oh by the way, I got married somewhere in there.  I was ticking off the boxes of "Supposed To Do's."  I loved Glenn, and I mistakenly assumed that marriage would be another way for me to demonstrate mastery.

I was wrong.

When done well, marriage brings out the best in people via eliciting their worst.  

The pathogen of perfection manifested some pretty unattractive symptoms in our first year.  I am pretty sure oozing boils would have been more attractive than the words that spilled from my lips.  I resented Glenn for seeing my imperfections, but what's worse, he could see my nasty reaction to failure.  The jealous and petty thoughts that I used to keep hidden were suddenly visible and vile.

The problem with perfection is that it is incredibly lonely. Faults do not exist if they are invisible to others. Friends are kept at an arm's length in an act of self-preservation.  God is kept at arm's length.  When pursuing perfection, God's grace is finite, and He is often at fault for failures that are too difficult for us to own ourselves.

In a conversation with one my newly engaged friends, I was telling her how being married is kind of like trying to color within the lines while blindfolded.   The thing is there aren't actually any lines, and perfection does not exist between two imperfect people, but we make the lines for ourselves.

Somehow marriage liberates us from the lines we once established for ourselves.  It is terrifying and glorious.  Glenn has extended unconditional grace to me over and over and over and over again.  At first, I resented him even more for his grace because I did not have grace for myself.  I would beg him to leave me, to let me go.  I would hyperbolize his mistakes and my own as an excuse to retreat to the solitude of perceived perfection. It was easier to be alone than to accept God's grace and thereby concede my failures.

Generally, when symptoms start to manifest, the pain is at its apex, but the worst of the virus has transpired.

In the thick of my anxiety attacks, blow-ups, anger, and bitterness, something inside me broke apart. The virus released, and the blind fold became a creative outlet, rather than an instrument of cruelty.  

God used Glenn and continues to use him as an invitation to something better than perfection... forgiveness.

I am walking it out every day, and some days it is easier to surrender to grace than others, but every day I am grateful for the man who does not expect glass slippers and singing tea pots.  I am far from perfection, but he loves me anyway.