you are the butterfly, and my eyes are needles...

this is beyond "down the rabbit hole" and way past "through the looking glass". though it will make sense only to my geek friends, i'll put it this way-i have stepped into the TARDIS and spun crazily, crashing through every fixed point in the space-time continuum, only to stumblesteptumble and plant my metaphorical bottom right into the ground. i am reminded of the modest mouse lyric, "i am the same as i was when i was six years old, but, oh my god, i feel so damn old..." i am visiting my mother in the state...in the town...in the HOUSE in which i grew up. i have these moments when i wake up here, and before i have a chance to figure out where i am, i FEEL like i'm still a kid. of course, the delicious confusion gets quickly supplanted by the million, little ants of "i have 200 papers to grade-what am i going to fix for dinner-HOW will i find time to go for a run-dear lord is that a LUMP?" tromptromptromping through my brain. you know how terrifying things also seem exciting to kids? yeah, as you get older, the giddiness one gets from being terrified drops away from that feeling faster than dried macaroni popping off the paper plate in a kindergarten art project...leaving only the terror part, which, like the metaphorically naked paper plate, is wholly unsatisfying. but just for that MOMENT before i can even rub my eyes, i find it actually conceivable that i'll need to get out of bed, pack my strawberry shortcake backpack with my barbie trapper keeper and smurfs lunchbox, and lace up my keds before 3rd grade. my analogies are getting all muddled here. dang.

the point is, regardless of how old i get, i will always love the disequilibrium i feel when i wake up in my old bed and feel confused, not by WHERE i am, but WHEN i am. this, of course, is not to say that i don't want to be this age or in this life, but i do enjoy the transmutability of time that occurs every time i come home. case in point: i spent a most delicious afternoon catching up with a former teacher and current friend. we talked about books and politics and his kids and my mother and teaching practices/politics (in case you didn't know, i am a pedagogical velociraptor), all of it tinged with the time-machine feeling afforded by seeing the face across the table from me. somehow he has not aged at all, and i reveled in a sort of tingle-footed anxiety because while i preened with the false confidence of imagining myself a CONTEMPORARY of this guy, i simultaneously twisted with a kind of intimidating urge to speak to him like a student. that kind of push-pull feeling set me gloriously off-balance.

i've had plenty of other chances to have my brain and heart taffy-pulled into the past and then slingshot-flung back into the current.

for example:
...sitting out by the family pool (no, there is NO way to make that sound any less pretentious or snooty) listening to my mother tell stories about us, our friends, and and our relatives. she remembers every name, every peccadillo, and every charm of summers past. she has a mind that takes in every detail at the time and then gives it back later so clearly that i often forgot that i was visiting. i half-expected one of my brothers to come hummin' down the deck and hurl himself into the blue with a shrill CA-A-A-A-A-A-ANNONBA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-ALLLLLLLLLL!!! i repeatedly ducked my head under the water and viciously hoped so as i wiped chlorine sting from my eyes. no such luck.

for example:
...taking the dog for a walk after everyone has gone to bed. it feels so grown up to be "minding the house while the family sleeps", especially as i check each door to ensure that it's locked. because cicadas are cicadas no matter the year, closing my eyes makes it easy to think "school will be starting soon, so i'd better enjoy nights like this". i get jostled by snuffly-dog sounds, and am startled to look down at bailey (mom's pug) instead of ollie (dad's old bulldog). i have/get to sit on the front step because my knees have been stolen.

for example:
...mom and i SCOURED an old video (VHS!!!!) of my senior prom (dear, sweet jesus...so!! much!! taffeta!!) because i was terrified that i couldn't remember my father's voice. i strained there on the couch, hoping maybe there might be some footage of dad. the murmur of cheesy 90's tunes, as if there were any other kind unfurrowed by forehead and eased my grimace until we were laughing with the memories of aquanet and poorly fitting high heels and pink lights gleaming off of a rapidly-melting ice sculpture of our school mascot. it looked as though the warrior developed a nasty eating disorder. i waited and longed and ached and searched and peered...

...there he was.
and then, in ways that can never duplicated by still photos, an image made shaky by the combination of human hands a VHS video cam, he is suddenly alive. a split second (the video was about the kids, not the parents), he looks solid. he moves his hands. his eyebrows furrow and unfurrow. the fact that he doesn't acknowledge the camera makes him real. for that moment it is 1991 and i am seventeen and the cancer isn't there and he is alive...and again, my vision becomes obscured.

tomorrow i am heading back to california to resume the present as an adult, and to let the little anxiety ants march their way through my brain every morning. the "time machine" is going to be a plane, probably cramped, and my seat on it will probably be between an armrest poacher and a screaming baby. right now i am going to take the dog out and check all the doors and sit on the front step. then, i am going to shower and get into my childhood bed that is covered with bedsheets so old they are almost transparent. when i say goodbye to my mother, the hurt will be incandescent. but tomorrow i will wake up and enjoy one more morning of disequilibrium.

and if you don't give a damn, you're welcome to keep it...

i surrender. that's it. i give in to gravity, inertia, forgetfulness, misplaced (and misspent) vanity, and exhaustion. to these gods and demi gods i offer sacrifices in the form of aching, insomnia, laziness, squinting, and the awful noises that come out of my mouth whenever i have to get out of or into a low chair quickly...and they really are the stuff of legends. oh, i also offer up the multitudes of "excuse me?" that i use CONSTANTLY because i can HEAR the words that are said, but can't quite understand them.

as i type these words (of course, squinting at the screen AND the keys), i am rolling my foot back and forth on a bottle of frozen water. see, i have developed plantar fasciitis (it is TOO a word!), and this is a way of stretching the tendon while cutting down on the swelling and pain. All my life i have had MASSIVE calf muscles...disproportionately so...i'm talking incredible-hulk-sticking-out-of-those-torn-purple-pants-calves. trust me, i'm not happy about it. as i've gotten older, the muscles have gotten less and less flexible, hence, the inflammation of the tendon connecting calf to heel to toes.

so...

i am now relegated to being one of those goblins at the gym who trudges past the happy runners on the treadmill (gazing wistfully at them as i pass), past the iron-abbed vixens on the stair-masters, and even past the herculean works of art on the ellipticals and descends into the murky depths of...THE BICYCLES!!! (dun-dun-DUN!!!)

add to that the fact that on my FIRST NIGHT HOME, i went for an evening run that i have done literally hundreds of times before, and about half a mile in, i tripped. I TRIPPED OVER A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK. no, seriously, i did. because it was dark-ish, i didn't see one stone plate was higher and snagged the toe of my running shoe. i landed on one knee, one elbow, and my face, and...well, you've SEEN the pictures. clutching what i was certain was a broken elbow (it wasn't), i shuffled and tried to catch my breath, making these "unnnnnhhh-unnnnnnnhhhhh" sort of groaning sounds. for all intents and purposes, i was making the exact noises of my worst, apocalyptic-zombie infested nightmares. not pretty. (in fairness to me, i forced myself to run two more miles before dragging my sorry a** home.)

i had my 38th birthday recently (oddly enough, my mother only had her 40th. figure THAT one out), and have found lots of things changing. i can't go past a mirror without doing a wrinkle-and-freckle check. when i wake up in the morning, i have to wiggle my feet and toes so that my ankles don't pop when i get out of bed. i can't drink anything after 11 p.m., lest i have to get up in the middle of the night to pee (of course, with the foot and toe-wiggling beforehand). i have traded red bulls for herbal tea, bubble gum and candy for glucosamine and chondroitin, and having fun looking for funky nail polish colors for getting frustrated looking for the most effective "eye lifting" serum (SIDENOTE: a pox on you, lancome and julia-fricken' roberts for LYING and perpetuating the myth of unattainable youth and beauty with your photoshopping shenanigans!)

i have trouble believing that just four years ago, i was running 8-10 miles a day (A DAY!!!) without pain of any kind. i guess i should take comfort in the fact that, in a few years, i'll probably have trouble REMEMBERING that i used to do that. bleah. but just when i think i'm going to give up, just when i think finished and prepare myself for (as warren zevon puts it ) "a quiet normal life" of cardigan sweaters, checking sodium levels on food packages, 50 cats, and no television, just when i'm ready to purchase a rocking chair, i look over at my mom, who is ABLE to work that treadmill...tiny valkyrie of gym and home...with a sheen of sweat and a determined grimace on her brow and think...

...just maybe.

it's that little souvenir of a terrible year that makes me smile inside. so i cynically say, "the world is that way. surprise, surprise, surprise"

turn the key. ignore the belch of smoke produced as the engine turns over. if there is smoke, if there is movement, if there is sound, there is hope. this engine, long buried under piles of sentence diagramming, paragraph transitions, m.l.a. formatting rules, classroom management, pay cuts, and one HUGE disappointment, will be useful once more. all i need are a few more documentaries about the history of britain, several glasses of REAL lemonade (not the synthetic-ACME ooze-yellow sugar-fueled nuclear waste produced by minute maid), a day when it is not apocalyptically hot, and several hours of sleep uninterrupted by the obnoxiously loud and tourette's-like f-bombs shouted between my downstairs neighbor and her spawn. the cleavers, they ain't.

summer vacation and all that it entails are here at last. for the first time since i started teaching, it actually felt like a VACATION--like i was DONE, like i NEEDED a break from...

in previous years, the act of standing in front of 320 eyes (since all 160 students are fortunate enough to have both of them) was exhausting and terrifying EVERY day, but also bore with it the reward of catching the one student who gets it smiling to himself or herself while the others nod their heads with false understanding ("but the emperor is NAKED!!")

in previous years, the conspiratorial nods between those students and me provided the inertia that propelled me to the front of the room despite the obstacles of anxiety, ennuit, and exhaustion.

in previous years, the love and respect i had FOR and FROM my students often presented itself as mother-bear protective rage when someone was foolish enough to go after one of my babies (sidenote: at what point does using that term go from "quirky" and "whimsical" to "seeing john stossel at the table with the dreaded pitcher of iced tea? regardless, while they are in my pedgagogical care, they are my babies). it sometimes presented itself as mother-bird nutrition, either literally, when i "was too full" and shared my lunch with a kid too embarrassed to admit that his mother had spent their food budget on vodka. it sometimes presented itself as days spending three hours (!!!!) after school as a kid read a story to me out loud, word by painful word so that we could break it into paragraphs, break it into sentences, break it into single words so his brain could digest them. he told me after that it was the first story of any kind he had read all the way through (if you're wondering, it was "the most dangerous game" by richard connell. standard ninth grade fare, but a fricken' waterloo for a kid whose first language is not english.)

this year was different. i don't know if it's because last year's students were anomalistic in their love of KNOWLEDGE. learning for the sake of learning...no, learning for the sake of having information in their weapons caches made them voracious readers, sophisticated thinkers, articulate orators and writers, and a grateful and responsive audience...a dream come true for a teacher. i had not one, but two classes of these wonders. this year's students would certainly have some big academic shoes to fill, if they even chose to do so.

...they didn't.

well, that isn't totally fair. MOST of them didn't. i did have a few who made me shake my head in wonder at their brilliance, shake my shoulders in laughter at their clever but sick senses of humor, close my eyes in amazement at their eloquence and powerful writing abilities, and bow my head in gratitude at their unfathomable kindness. those few shared "the smile" with me on many occasions. as it sit here typing, trying desperately to keep the sweat from dripping onto my too-expensive-to-replace-with-my-crappy-and-getting-CRAPPIER-next-year-salary computer (gilroy + june= apocalypse, remember?), some of my students (sorry, former students. summer vacation, after all) are having that silly argument about trees falling and unexperienced sound if there is no audience...you know, arguments about reality, existence, and perception. their arguments are well-thought out and mature, and i am singularly impressed. that, alone, would be enough to soothe my restlessness and waltz me off to bed; however, during the argument, one of the "smilers" took his understanding of logical fallacies (to which i introduced him at the beginning of the school year) and wielded it like a scimitar, slicing effortlessly through his opponent's argument, causing both flimsy, rendered halves to flutter into a useless heap at his digital feet. huzzah! he very suavely replied, "logic just stuck to me."

james bond, eat your heart out. the best part? this kid is transferring to the same school to which I was transferred for next year. things are looking up...

today's word of the day (finally!) is pullulate, in honor of the new ant hills forming on the sidewalk in front of my apartment.