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In my dreams I say…

I swear in my dreams.

Last week, I dreamed I said it in front of my grandmother. I don’t know what was happening, I just know the word flew out of my mouth and she was horrified, stood there looking at me, blinking, probably ready to disown me.

Two nights ago, I dreamed I said it in front of the worst possible audience: my fourth graders. They were all sitting at their desks, their faces bright, a few of them clamoring to see what we’d be learning in Latin. And out it came, “What the…?” and I clapped my hands over my mouth so fast, in real life my cheeks would’ve burned red.

There was no reason for me to make such an exclamation, no prompting from either my grandmother, or the class full of children. My psyche is freaking out.

~     ~     ~

That is a word I consciously choose not to use. I say “consciously” because a little part of me would love to break out with such profanity and look at those around me and laugh. Yes, I swear. And you want to do it, too. 

But I don’t.

Or at least, not that word.

I can’t even imagine what would happen if I did, if I stood in front of all these children who made me Valentines (spelling ‘Magistra’ like ‘Magestra’) and swore like a sailor. I would be fired, probably. No, definitely. And I would live on in their memories as their “Magistra who said…”

~     ~     ~

The name of this new blog is my attempt at the impossible: to admit to myself that I am now an adult. As I wrote about earlier, I may never feel like an adult. But that doesn’t change the fact that 99 children’s parents have entrusted a part of their education to me (albeit a relatively small part). I may not feel like a very grown-up person, but I’m as tall as I’ll ever be.

I wrote an overdue letter to my dear friend in Switzerland the other day. In it, I admitted that I love how much those children look up to me. I love that they can’t wait to see what I’ll say next – that they devour the derivatives of rex like it’s the most amazing thing they’ve ever heard. They race to get the dictionary if they have questions, and they jump to be the first actors when we act out the Latin skits in our textbook. They ask me questions that seem far too deep for third, fourth, or really even fifth or sixth graders, and I know that what comes out of my mouth is important. They believe every word I say.

Maybe that’s why I dream about swearing in front of them. I know that what I say matters so much more in those classrooms than it seems to outside of them. I can still picture the adults I admired and respected as a kid, and it’s frightening to realize that I have become one of those people. It’s frightening to realize that there is so much in the world these kids have yet to discover.

Eventually, they are going to realize that all I say isn’t gold. They’ll see my faults (“You forget everything, Magistra!” they say in chorus as I run back in to grab my water bottle almost daily), and my humanity will be all too obvious.

Someday, they’ll realize it, but it won’t be because I said ______.

285092_2161342945874_1015570950_32489021_7554639_n[Five weeks in Austria after graduation taught me: You will never feel so free again. Enjoy this. So I did. I felt young and I knew when I hit American soil, everything would be different.]

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Knitting Club

A few weeks ago, I was ambushed by a friend at work. She emailed me with a plea to teach something – anything, really – as an after-school activity.

I thought, This could be fun! Maybe a knitting class?

Yes, knitting.

So I signed up to teach a four-week knitting class to five sixth-grade girls.

I think I forgot what it was like to be a sixth-grade girl. 

It became pretty apparent during that first class that these girls had big personalities. One, the ring-leader, is obsessed with “winning,” with being “the best,” and is a self-proclaimed perfectionist. I sat and listened to her talk, and I felt an immediate sense of dislike and understanding. So much of my time was wasted on that same feeling. I wanted to fast-forward to when this little girl would not longer feel like she had to knit perfectly the first time, tell me all the things she was good at, or explain why her grandma had more talent than I did.

Another of the girls is quieter, but just as diligent. She came to class with her wrist in a cast, but she was still determined to learn how to knit. She is by far the least talkative, but her eyes are always lit, always watching, and she’s the one with the quiet witty comments.

One girl is also bent on knitting the perfect scarf. I told them that it would take a long time to get good, that it took me months to make something, and even then there were often spots that weren’t perfect. But this girl asks me every few rows, “Does this look okay?”, and she even emailed me over the weekend for suggestions on what to do if she had too many stitches.

These girls are going to make very detailed leaders someday.

Or, perhaps, type-A moms.

Two of the girls are a little slower at picking it up. They hold their yarn too tightly, straining the fibers until they become untwisted. Their stitches are uneven, they add and subtract stitches at random, until the edges of the scarf are completely misshapen. They look at me with sad eyes, “Miss H, something happened.” (Although sometimes they call me “Magistra” because I’m also their Latin teacher by day.) I tell them to take a deep breath, that it can all be fixed. But they still get upset, still want to be perfect.

I am surprised at how difficult I find this class. They are all good girls. They all want to do well, to please me, to make something beautiful. But it’s hard for me to hear them, constantly trying to tell a better story, to shock the other girls with their own experiences, to show me that they are grown up.

I remember one of my mom’s friends telling me when I was little, “I had to grow up really quickly, Catherine. Don’t rush it. Be a kid as long as you can.”

I look at these girls and I want to say the same thing.

Just enjoy knitting. Enjoy chatting with each other on comfy pillows on the floor. Enjoy the fact that the hardest thing you have to do today is unravel an inch of uneven scarf.

But instead, I just smile and say, “It’s okay, I’ll fix it.”

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[Valentine’s Day]

I danced and spun and twirled

and you watched, laughing. Balanced

a glass of pale pink wine 
in my hand –

not spilling a drop – while I danced

alone in the living room.

 

But I stopped and looked at you,

shocked suddenly. This is it, I said,

we are women. And I couldn’t believe

that I was dancing with wine, still

waiting to grow up.

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Mystery Group

“You’re a teenager.”

The five-year-old girl I babysit says this to me every few days. Now she has a twinkle in her eye because she knows what conversation will ensue:

“No, I’m not. I’m twenty-three. I told you that already!”

And she will respond with:

“Well, where are your kids?”

It seems our culture isn’t the only thing that isn’t quite sure what to do with young single women. I go on to explain that there is a group – between teenagers and moms – and that’s where I am. This mystery group that gets larger and larger and seems to be less and less easily defined. She cocks her little blonde head and smiles at me. She still doesn’t believe.