What's a vacation?

A break in work for a teacher is like a break between two championship series for a baseball team. You know you should rest, you also know the next battle will be even harder. Except for the teacher there will be no rings and no world-astounding end. The books will close, students will pack up and go home. And then a longer or shorter break, etc. Do business people feel this way? The one friend I used to have in business used to truly enjoy her vacations. She stayed out of contact with her office and she shopped and hopped around the globe. I can't imagine having the concentration to do this. There are so many other things to think about and so many to avoid.

I turned on the radio in time to catch Leonard Lopate interviewing a Yale professor about a book called, It Can Happen Here. Lopate was doing his best to dismiss the possibility that the "it" could be terrorism or violence, but was less able to quash the possibility of total economic disaster, though he did argue the usual "we've been through this before...." It was right for him to play such a strong devil's advocate, both as a good host/journalist and someone who knows that an audience that literate and free at noon is either over-educated and underpaid or unemployed. As someone who now tries VERY HARD not to listen to rumor, not to predict what is going to happen next, but just focus on immediate tasks, I was especially grateful. I called a former colleague who proceded to give me the latest news of what was "on the table" for our upcoming contract. We all see those tables so vividly and we argue for our deaths better than our lives because we accept both that we are powerless and that we were smart enough to have been given more power. So what? I know that "It" of various kinds can happen here and am less dismissive of the possibility of total economic collapse. But, I can't think about that either. It won't profit me. Panicking has caused me enough trouble.

Still, what do I do with this bountiful time? I've bought a test prep book. Bookmarked some textbooks to buy when I have more money. I'm going to surf for some more test prep and lesson plan materials I need and look for reduced-priced middle school readers. That, clean the cat box, eat and maybe look at a movie on Netflix (which I keep largely as it might be useful to my classroom) seems about as much as I can handle. In between, I do bits of massive cleaning around the apartment. What I don't do is talk with anyone. I don't know if this has happened to anyone else, but my friends have all reduced themselves to texting or to the kinds of conversations which don't last beyond a minute. "What else is there to say?" No one is going out much. Even on the rare moments when I think, "I would like to see that," I never pursue the thought. First, I'm broke. Second, everything seems indulgent. Everything. Except what I need right in front of me. There is no reason to get away. It will be there when I get back and there will be less time, less energy and even more fear. More fear. I never knew how much fear I could feel.
When I was a kid, they would show us pictures of the holocaust so we would be aware of how badly Jews had been and could be treated. That fear was nothing like this. This is not to minimize genocide. Thinking about its possibility and looking at miserable sites makes me bilious. Being in a position in which thinking ahead is frightening is living in a conscious slow motion. Stultifying.