safety first
Old couch, new feelings.
Old Ikea comforter cover, same as Erica’s, miraculously,
still on an old duvet that is folded in half
and runs the length of the couch seat.
Oscillating fan.
Overwhelm.
When you are at a loss, anything novel and not terrible is a gift.
I bought myself a crystal for a special treat, no regrets.
A almandine garnet for soothing frayed nerves.
What are nerves?
I think I’ve got some.
Listening and learning and hearing.
My daughter’s last-year-teacher is talking about planning to live apart from her two young daughters while she goes back to work
listening to her, I cry.
These teachers who I trust, have been whispering to one another in secret, planning with one another in zoom meetings
to sort out how to keep on teaching
without dying.
It’s not fair.
I’m not here to argue.
Or say anything other than
it’s not up to them to perform emergency surgery, but
it is up to them to know what feels right
or wrong
in the old creaky buildings they work inside
and the old creaky structures they work inside.
When a teacher says, in our community conversation, that (according to the department)
if a kid can’t keep their mask on, they will be sent home,
we know what will happen. We know who will be sent home,
because the powers and structures have spent the summer
and forever, really
pushing a plan that doesn’t take in account
the old creaky buildings they work inside,
the windows that require a long pole with a hook
to open (things you learn as a teaching artist).
If you’re lucky, the tops of the enormous windows
come down and the blazing heat from the radiator
is sucked out of the room and it is January, but it feels
like August inside that classroom, the careless heat pumping away,
still a good place to put your socks if you get caught in the rain
at 8am on Nostrand Avenue.
There is no soap in the soap dispensers in the girls’ bathroom.
There is a citywide hiring freeze on custodial engineers currently working ten hour shifts.
The teachers have no class lists, haven’t been in their rooms yet, hold in their hands a smiling bouquet of I don’t knows they trot out for us parents as we quickly realize — slow on the uptake — that we are all being gaslit.
And so, I start to listen harder, from a different place, thinking
how can I support what already is in place, and
is there someone already doing this? and
are there toes to be stepped on? and/or
it doesn’t matter, let’s get to the work
of understanding that slow and steady
is the only way to go, and now
that the band-aid has been pulled off
the wool pulled from our eyes
the veil pulled back, we understand
that we can’t go back to when
if a kid can’t ________________, they will be sent home,
That time is gone and we know there is no real time,
this is the forward facing future and while we’re here,
deep in the crevasse, let’s all hold onto something solid,
get a good grip, and wait out the storm
until we can repair
all that’s broken here.
the faucets
the windows
the last toilet on the left
the lock on the door to the science room (when we all used to get science class)
the a/c unit, kaput since circa 2013
the room dividers making one cafeteria into four classrooms
the piles of furniture, busted
the basement full of brand-new computers, undistributed
the old chalkboards that no one needs a tutorial to use
the missing hand soap
Pay up. It’s time.
