The Things I Think But Do Not Say

Dad's doing better. He made it through the 14 hours I was away at Springsteen (see below). He's feeling better today. No vomit. Less torso pain. This is good.

Lisa, Diana and the kids are at the Happiest Place on Earth. So glad I'm not there... I'm more a Six Flags kind of guy.

But as I mentioned in the Springsteen show entry, "Wild Billy's Circus Story"

an interesting observation just before the show... which made me think that the dark opening was PERFECT for me last night

When talking to the Hemet teachers in the pit before the show, we talked about teaching, and the subject came around to my career.

I taught for 10 years (been out of the classroom for ... jeez... 12 years now), teaching high school English and drama from 1986-1996. I was a pretty good teacher, so I've been told. I took a year off to "recharge my batteries" then never went back. Miss the kids something awful (I was able to present a lesson on Shakespeare to Kyle's class last spring, and I loved it)... just don't miss all the administrative stuff. And the administrivia just began to build and build.

I had told my mentor and high school English teacher, Terry Taylor, in the interview at which she hired me at my first teaching gig (she was then Assistant Principal), "when I don't love it anymore, I'll get out... I don't want the kids to see it."

Taylor had battled cancer before my hiring. Then she transfered crosstown to become principal at my alma mater. And I followed her back home. She instituted a great many reforms and innovative programs. She was a visionary. And then she died, and it took the school district all of six months to dismantle every program she instituted.

It took the wind out of my sails. And after a year and a half of misery, I decided I needed to take a year off to get my head straight before going back to my calling.

But it didn't call again.

As I recounted the Reader's Digest version of that last night to the Hemet teachers, Lisa said, "Well, there was probably some grieving going on there, too." I looked at her, and it struck me like a bolt from Zeus. "Yeah," I sighed. "Yeah," she said, "We do know now how you handle that." And I thought but did not say, "Yeah, I don't handle death all that well."

Understatement.

Looking back, maybe the misery I felt during that year after Terry died, maybe leaving the classroom, maybe never returning, was all part of my grieving her death. That lasted YEARS. She was my mentor. She wasn't even my blood.

It made me think of how long this process will be for Ma. And it was with that sense of doom, gloom, fear, loathing, and desperation, that the concert began.

And two and a half hours later, I felt lighter, demons exorcised. For now.

But for how long?

[in that penultimate miserable year, I wrote a long-form piece called Journal of a Short-Timer... kind of a blog before blogs... I may need to post that someday...]