Light...Sort Of

When talking to Jack last week, I compared this last half of the year to the part of a run where I've just turned around, realized I've run way too far given my general fitness level, and have to face the fact that I have to do a return trip that seems far too long. Whether I walk or run, it's still a LONG way. Today, on my way home, it also reminded me of riding on the subway past the place I'm actually trying to go. Watching it go by in the window. Dreading the walk back in the direction I came, even if it's really not that far.

All of this is very melodramatic, something I'm realizing more and more as I actually put these sentiments into words. I guess it's incited by my first law school acceptance letter and a friendly phone call about "my qualifications and future career options" from one of my job applications. It's light at the end of the tunnel, the first hint that, no, I will not be teaching next year. Kind of surreal.

In spite of knowing this, I still have to come in every day and look right at my students who have no idea about it all. A mother of one of my kids from last year stopped by my room and asked if I would be teaching first grade again next year, because if I was, she wanted her youngest daughter in my class. I just nodded. Her son was one of my favorites, the kind of kid who doesn't realize he had arms until I pointed out to him that he does and that he's swinging them around his body in rapid circles. The kind of kid who no matter how many times I'd say "Do not touch the snow!" on the way to the bus lot, even if I glared at him and said his name in that precautionary tone ("Jacob!!!")... he'd still touch the snow. He brought me a napkin and put it on my lunchbox every single day, even the days when he had silent lunch and lost his recess because of his behavior. That's the worst part. Thinking about the people I'm leaving behind, no matter how much I just want to move forward.