Re-invention

Practically every night, before I finally make the climb up to my cave in Bensonhurst (in Brooklyn, caves have staircases), I stop at the local supermarket to pick up groceries. Once upon a time, I was organized and bought a month's worth of groceries on a Sunday and had everything delivered. Now, I plan my meals in a pay-as-you-go fashion.

My supermarket is staffed by a steady crew of male and female teenagers and middle-aged women, all of whom are thoughtful and smarter than their jobs. I wish I were better at easy conversation and that my life weren't constantly paper-clipped with explanations. It's too difficult to keep explaining, so I don't anymore. We still say, "Hello," but there's not much eye contact.

Tonight, I took a deep breath and mentioned I was tired. The very polite young woman who is one of the few left who still tries to tease a smile from my jowls, answered, rather darkly, "at least you're working."

This is technically my 18th year of teaching. And I'm very tired. I'm in a situation to which I am totally unaccustomed and which keeps adding new variables. Yesterday, during a faculty meeting, we watched the short video, "Shift Happens," which makes projections about computers who will be able to outsmart all humans by 2049 and my students needing to work 14 different jobs in their lifetimes. It also talks about the need for students to problem solve. Of late, I've found students unwilling to take on that challenge. Whereas they once seemed interested in being involved in their community, they've grown apathetic. Some of that has to do with being 10-12 and not really knowing how to begin. They still ask how they should begin their essays, sometimes.

When I was their age, I already took ownership of my writing and you COULDN'T tell me how to begin an essay. Yet, I can be as dumbfounded as they are when it comes to problem solving in my own life. At 42, our economy, American greed and Puritanism be damned, is asking me to re-think how to think about myself. I'm not the kind of person to respond well to books about the subject and I intuitively loathe the genre of self-help. I've always found it amusing that Tony Roberts discovered his calling as a guru in that field after failing in others. What I'd rather do is imagine bringing a case to the Supreme Court proving that we are denying our children equal protection of the law by not equalizing the funding of education throughout the country. Do I go to law school? My track record for winning battles is very poor. I can create the argument, but I can't speak it. More often than not, I can't speak, these days.

My own trepidation and my exhaustion necessitates a process of re-invention that is careful and which can be done with some solitude. Of course, my biggest enemy is time.