Airing the Dirty Laundry

Yesterday the school where I teach had a Victory Day to celebrate the homecoming of the Allied Forces during World War II. Okay. That's when you know you are working in a) NYC and b) an international school. The promoters begged us to take our classes and I said, "sure" since I'm already gone, but it being a gorgeous spring day, a third of my class showed up and I sent them on their way and decided to wait in the empty classroom to see if any of the latecomers might show up.

I wanted to be still and it was glorious.

I sat in the classroom and stared out at Downtown Brooklyn, really the backside of a huge Burger King and another building where a lawyer for Jacobi and Meyer sat in his chair, the sun pouring gold through the blinds as he talked on the phone the entire hour I sat there.

I realized while there that I have returned and circled back to the soulful days of being a student at UT El Paso. I felt the stirrings, the reason I was at peace, happy, hopeful, earnest in who and what I was.

I have returned.

Came home to an email from my brother, Steve. He said he had gotten a horoscope but it sounded more like for me...stating I was feeling like giving up, like maybe it wasn't all really going to happen. But to hold on, keep going. I smiled and knew it was right. I was feeling shaky, because while in the classroom and feeling the tremendous swelling inside my heart, I also felt the frettings of the mind pestering me with "what if you fail? what if you can't make money off your writing? what if you have to scramble back into the workforce," what if, what if, what if, arggghhhhh!

So Steve's email was a welcome relief and made me smile and resolve to go on, to stay in the moment, to relish in my renewed skin. No more freaking out, listening in, second guessing.

A student last night during a free writing spell wrote about her father, how she thought he was so thoughtless and lazy. I was walking to the laundromat this morning and two guys walked between me, the older one saying to the younger, "Life is too fucking short!" and I had to laugh. Hearing messages all over. I hear and accept. No laziness nor forgetting the shortness of life. As my towels dried, I resolved to pull out my notebook and journal this experience, to keep track of this momentous movement to the center of where I began.