Here I sit....

So, the memoirs of a high school English teacher (is that "what" I am these days?)....oh, where to begin. I could easily start by mentioning that I have 143 core papers to read and grade or I could tell you about some of my students who think I will harbor them in my classroom while they sluff their religious class, or I could begin a soliloquy of the mass amounts of professional development I need to read, evaluate, and practice......

Or, I could just wrap my fingers around the keys of my keyboard and ignore this all.

I love teaching. I love the kids. I really do like to read their core papers. However, as per my usual way I have "bitten off more than I can chew" (is "bitten" really a word, you say?). I am not only the mother of two young boys, but the mother of two cats, the wife of an over-stretched, under funded creative man, a soul-sister, a purveyor of books of all colors, a teacher to 143 students, a graduate student (this despite the fact I already have my graduate degree), an addict to several vises (none of them illegal but all expensive) and a sister/daughter/auntie, a roll of which I appear to participate in less and less of these days.

And, last, but not least, I am a soul on a journey.

I've tried to think of a time when I haven't been on a journey and I do believe I've come to the conclusion that there has NEVER been a time when I have not been searching. My earliest memory of myself is from when I was 18 months old and I had pneumonia. My parents and my aunt and uncle took me to the hospital for admittance. I remember sitting in the back seat of our yellow car with my auntie Bonnie (flashbulb memory). Then I remember the nurse pushing against me, trying to get me "into" the oxygen tent while I pushed back (Second flashbulb memory). My red shoes were in that tent, I don't know if that was to help me "want" to go in, but it didn't help.

Apparently there my journey consisted of trying to get back to the yellow car. I didn't complete that journey for 3 days.

Then there was my journey to find Elizabeth, my Siamese cat. She had been gone for several days and since her disappearance occurred shortly after our move to our new house, I believed my mom when she said Elizabeth probably ran away. The journey to find her didn't end until I was 20 and the news was finally given to me that she had been chopped up in Jim's (our next door neighbor) truck engine. Dad had to finish her off with a shovel to the head.

Another sort of journey lasted for the next 13 years. It was the journey to figure out how to live in a neighborhood of girls, 12 of which were the same age. The life of a young girl amongst young girls is not EVER easy. Add to it that there were 12 of us....ALL the same age, and always in constant competition to be friends with the Top Girls.....Toni, Tracy, sometimes Jennifer B., always Susan, but never Jillene. The competition was fierce. The battles regular. And always knowing that I would never be a Top Girl. I had too many "important" things against me. I definitely wasn't the cutest, I didn't have dance lessons, I "qualified" for reduced lunch, I certainly didn't get new clothes on a regular basis and when I did, they were the clothes from the clearance rack (no, I didn't have self-esteem issues). We were a young family that struggled financially, which, in itself wasn't nearly as bad as others, but not surprisingly did create my own mores about young families.

So, that journey went on for a long time and really, I think, helped shape my insecurities about myself.