calm before.

i'm listening to the dulcet tones of "the simpsons".  

my kids, like all good american children, are enjoying "the simpsons" marathon on fx, and although we are about to park our butts in the large lot that is known as "the school year", we decided to give them one more night of all-out delight.  truly, their choice of show could be worse.  if nothing else, lisa simpson is one of my heroes.

anyway, tomorrow i begin as a 5th/6th grade teacher.  the room is ready, sort of.  i gave the wrong number address to the shipping company who is sending us new futon couches for the cozy/meeting area (giving them the number to the preschool where i taught over ten years ago) so it's been a crazy journey trying to locate said pieces of furniture.  they were supposed to show up today, but i stayed until 5:30, to no avail.

i've given over to the idea that the room is not perfect, nor would it be even if the goddamned couches had shown up today.  still, it's sorta a bummer, considering it was because of my own brain not quite working the way it should.

i've given over to the idea that my hair is not the way i'd like it to look, but since i cannot make it grow overnight, i am resigned to a quasi-louise brooks kind of thing.  whatever.  it's just hair.

i've also given over to the fact that i am wading into unknown territory tomorrow.  i've come to grips with the reality of me never having taught 5th and 6th grade before, of me moving from Kindergarten to pre-adolescents.  watch me do it.  just watch me.  i don't know what it will look like yet, but i know it's going to happen no matter how much i twist myself up about it.

it's strange to think about the amount of anxiety circling around houses tonight, on the eve of a new school year.  i know my children will have trouble falling asleep.  they've already told me so.  and last night i tried to drift off but kept having visions of things i had forgotten to do, so i'd grab my phone and type a note and try to get back to some deep breathing and nice beachy visualizations.  it worked, sort of.  

i saw some of my new students today, as they came in to say hello, and i saw myself in their faces--saw our mutual nervousness and anticipation and hope, hope, hopefulness for a good year.  for love and acceptance and feeling smart and full of prowess and power and creativity.  hope hope hope.

tomorrow morning, i'll wake up early and try on a dress and cross my fingers that it fits well enough and decide which pair of converse to throw on with it.  i'll make my lunch and pack my bag and jump in my car and wind my way over to the correct address of 14702 sylvan street.  i will parallel park somewhere with extreme talent.  and then i'll walk in through the gate, my heavy bag on my shoulder, my sneakers giving me buoyancy and emotional support, and grab my key and open the classroom door.  

and i'll walk in.  and just like that, my new school year will have begun.  with or without couches; with or without overwhelming feelings of confidence--i'll just be in it, doing it, living it, with twenty-one other humans who feel pretty much the same way i do.

just like that, we begin.

trapped.

so much sadness over robin williams.  over those who choose suicide, and those they leave behind.

that's all i'll say about it.  many more have said things that are better.  more eloquent.

today i woke up early for the second day in a row.  i tried to grab hold of the dream that i was having to lull me back to sleep, but that never works for me.

i got up and put on my gear and headed over to lake balboa park, which is a big expanse of land near my house.  i figured i'd walk/run the perimeter, which is about five miles.  i was not feeling overly energetic, but what the hell.  what else was i going to do at 6:25 in the morning?

the sky was actually beautiful.  there were clouds to greet me, and the sun was just poking through.  it felt good to move.  i listened to "this american life" and laughed out loud a few times, and said good morning to my fellow early-risers.

i was behind a woman walking a gorgeous pit bull--the ones they call "blue"--and i lost myself in the daydream of stopping and saying hello to the doggy.  she started walking inwards towards the golf course which is in the middle of the park.  i followed her, figuring that she knew a path across that i didn't--up for an adventure--not in a big rush to get home.

she walked about fifty feet and then stopped, checked her phone and then turned around.  at this point i had walked past her but she wasn't in the mood for a stopgreet, so i kept going.  i didn't want her to think i was following her, which i was, but i didn't want to creep her out or anything.

so i kept going.  

i walked around the driveway, past some buildings with trucks and golf carts, out the other side, and suddenly i was on the golf course.  in the middle of the golf course.  i looked around for a way out--a path through--but there wasn't anything, so i headed for the other side of the course where there was a fence, and hopefully a way out.

i walked for a few minutes, my headphones on, when i heard someone screaming at me, "MISS!  MISS!"  i turned around and saw a man in a golf cart following me.  at this point i knew i was in trouble, but being me, i was also defiant.  fucking golf course.  fucking waste of good land.  stupid fucking manicured lawns and men playing a dumbass game.

these are the thoughts that went through my head.

he pulled up close to me and said, with a furrowed brow, "Miss, you cannot be here.  This is the golf course.  You cannot be here."

"I know.  I got trapped."

"What is that?"

"Trapped.  Stuck.  I'm looking for a way out."

"You have to go back--there is no way out."

at this point I knew that there was no way i was going to hop on his little cart and have him escort me off the premises.  i asked him in an incredulous tone if there was a little gap in the fence way over yonder--there had to be--but he told me no.  i then told him that i was going to simply jump the fence, as if 40-something women at 7 am jump fences regularly at his golf course.

"That would be bad.  You could get bad hurt--or fall.  Bad."

i told the fine gentleman that i would be fine, and then i took off running over the greens.

"MISS!  MISS!"

i ignored him, and kept running, turning my head now and then to keep an eye on the golfers.  what must they think of me, i wondered.  who cares, i thought.

i ran sort of haphazdly, trying to gauge ahead where the fence looked the strongest.  the course was bordered by a simple chain link fence, except most of it was pretty flimsy.  i needed something with a bar on the top, something that looked familiar to me, something i could scale just like i did when i was a kid.

i finally found my spot, dodging the large lawn mower in the process, and grabbed onto the fence.  it was about 10 feet high. oh shit.  the last time i climbed a chain link fence i was at least fifty pounds lighter and twenty years younger.  i began to panic, but i couldn't handle the thought that the groundskeeper was watching me, waiting for me to escape or fail or both.

i tried to stick my feet through the holes in the fence, but my toes don't fit perfectly into them the way they used to.  still, i managed to hoist myself up, shaking like hell, my hands hurting immediately.  i got to the top and swung my leg over, said "yup, yup, yup" to myself, got my other leg over and let go.  i fell to the ground on two feet and immediately started walking again, as if to show the cars and people passing by that my manuever was in my plan all along.  

my hands burned all the way back to my car.

as i drove home after finally finishing the five miles, i kept thinking of my groundskeeper friend, and how he was going to be sitting around his dinner table tonight, telling the story of the white woman who walked across the golf course and then jumped over the fence.  i hope his family laughed with him, hoped he told the story with glee and embellishment, making me even more combative than i was in real life, maybe--or telling them that as i jumped down from the fence my shirt got caught and ripped.

i hope they all laughed really, really hard.

i would.

those good old days.

my high school is being razed, replaced by a gorgeous building that will house generations of kids from franklin.

this is what my high school looks like now.  piles of old chairs, rotting wood, bits and pieces of nothingness--piled up to be carted away to the dump.  that building above was the gymnasium--known to us as the field house--and there was a giant panther painted on one of the walls.

it was there that i ran laps during PE and practiced tennis by hitting the balls against the wall and watched basketball games with boys i wished were my boyfriends.  

it had the smell of unproven sex, sweat and desperation.  it smelled as if john hughes had commissioned a fragrance called "high school".  it was glorious.

now it's gone.

i'm not really all that nostalgic about the building itself, but it does feel a bit strange to see it destroyed. when i pulled up to look at it, there were three guys in the parking lot, looking at it as well.  were we all there for the same reason--to pay our last respects?  did they have feelings of sadness or longing?  did they have the same impulse that i did--to jump the locked fence and make off with something tangible to remember it by?

i would've loved to pick through that pile.  that kind of stuff is my jam, anyway, but can you just imagine finding a chair and bringing it home?

if only home wasn't Los Angeles.

i'm thinking about all of those boys and girls that i was in school with--now men and women with prostate exams and mammograms and hair loss and trick knees and all the trappings of adulthood: mortgages, divorces, aging parents, children.

children who will be going to the new high school, never to know the sweet and sourness of that old building.

we've all changed so much, and yet we haven't.  our bodies have--my hands are proof enough, what with their age spots and veins and crinkled-up skin.  but still, these hands love to put my hair behind my ears, just like i did when i was 16.  my legs might have had trouble climbing up the fence--it sure as hell wouldn't have been graceful--and they have more cellulite and spider veins than i care to mention (but i just mentioned)--but they are as long and formidable as when i was a teenage dream.  and my head--the brain that resides in it--oh man, let me just say that i am so glad that my head has grown up.

'cause that girl back there, she didn't know what to do with that brain of hers.  now it seems to fit me  so well.  

except when it doesn't.  well, work in progress and all that.

it's sort of sad to see it gone.  those old hallways.  those front steps where i fell down in front of melanie when she told me about that kiss.  damn, that was fun.

time marching on, just like me in the franklin high school band back in the day.

sigh.

tuesday night.

had to watch my kid being tortured today.

her big toenail got smashed a couple of weeks ago, and it finally reached the stage where we needed some intervention.  after letting her scream and cry about the injustice of it all for a while, i took her to my mom's doctor and paid $220 to have a nurse practitioner take some toe pliers and try to nudge it off her toe.

this procedure lasted five minutes, and the girl held onto me and moaned and clutched at my hands in pain, and i just sat there and watched as the nurse determined it couldn't come all the way off, so she had to cut as much of it as she could.  

it was pretty gnarly.

still, i was so proud of my kid.  not because she didn't cry, but because she gave over to what had to be done, and took it with grace.  she gave over to five minutes of constant pain.  no one had to hold her down or bribe her.  she did it her nine-year old self.

okay, maybe i offered her a trip to target afterwards.  there was a bit of bribery.  i admit it.

still, i'm proud of her.

i'm down to my lowest dose of my meds in a while, and getting the "brain zaps" that so many people wrote about on the web. it happens all of a sudden; there's an electricity that goes down my right arm and then a jolt that hits me and makes me dizzy on my left side.  very disconcerting.  drives me a bit bonkers, but i know it'll be gone in a few days, once i adjust to the new dose.  it's strange, knowing that i'm putting my brain through this, but i remain my own science experiment.

i sent postcards to my old class and my new class today.  i'm ready to get ready for school.

this morning my parents started sniping at each other at breakfast, and i had to leave the table.  i realized that i wanted to write IMMEDIATELY; the impulse was so strong it almost bowled me over, but writing has become difficult lately.  mostly because i don't know how honest i should be.  even just writing about my parents arguing makes me feel a bit odd; i don't care about pouring stuff from my own damn self out here, but when it gets into family dynamics i edit the hell out of things.  

i don't like to do that.  i wish i could just say what i could say without judgment.

my father is currently laughing out loud by himself to "young frankenstein" (the gene hackman scene) while my mom is hanging with the kids in the pool, wearing her "bad" bathing suit. she saves it just for the family.

trust me, no one should see it.  

i drove around my town today, doing errands.  went to the post office and sent three boxes of books, including one full of magazines from my great-grandmother.  i think i'll save talking about those for another post.  went to the supermarket, saw my parent's neighbor, amazed by all of the Red Sox goods on display.  saw people glance at my tattoos and make judgeyjudgments and well, okay, sorry, whatever.  drove fast in my mom's kia, knowing somehow the car was happy to feel the acceleration, just like me.

i'm working my way towards friday, when we fly back to Los Angeles.  i cannot wait to love my dogs hard, to see my friends, my people, to feel the crappiness of my very own mattress instead of trying to figure out how to sleep comfortably on those set out for me here.  i look forward to having my clothing in drawers, to be able to find things i am looking for, to curl up on my own couch watching television that i have chosen to watch.  

such simple pleasures.

still, i know there is the inevitable letdown i will feel once i have left this land behind me for another summer.  i know there will be melancholy and missing and i will be okay with this.  

i just heard--from the room where my dad is watching the movie--"hello, handsome!--- this is a good boy... YOU ARE A GOD!"  

as alex says, no one yells better than gene wilder.

i'm proud to be part of a family that frequently quotes mel brooks' movies.  it's part of my heritage as a middle-class white girl, and i'm okay with that.

i'm okay with all of this.  i have to be.  i am.

triste.

sometimes it comes in low-tide waves, just barely making my ankles wet.

other times it hits me in my gut and my breath escapes in a gasp, no way to control it.

when i see the devastating drought in my home city, the land parched and raw

or glimpse another photo of a dead child in the Middle East

or see the clouds forming their nighttime dance

or hear the sound of my daughter's faraway voice

when i read the poem that talks of walls in the heart

or see the faces of these people i love when they speak of their work,

or sway to the song that makes me swoon

or hug the friend goodbye, our hearts knocking against the other's.

it is palpable, this sadness and melancholy. it is next to me now, sure as my glasses' case and lip balm and book to read. it is in this room with me, despite the single bed and chest of drawers. it is mine, all mine, all me, and tonight i can do nothing but snuggle down with it tight and pray for the rain to accompany our dreams.