I'm not sure of the season or the year because I've mostly blocked out everything that happened before graduate school. Out of an obsession with the movie, Summer of '42 which I still probably don't completely understand, but which haunts me, I'll choose it's eponymous season. The block in my memory is an almost conscious division of "Before my mother" and "After my mother." No, she didn't die, but the person who came back from graduate school wasn't as easily influenced by her. The person who came home from graduate school was remarkably self-confident and shrewd and took a friend's mention of a theater company that she had put in the back of her mind and worked it into a really interesting theatrical piece.
Summer of 1991 was before graduate school. Like I feel this morning, I traveled continually with an ashy, clammy fullness in my stomach. Worse than fear, it's a kind of death of spirit. I'd been addicted to a lot of bad habits and drawn a lot of people into them with me. The way some kids grew up playing "Cops and Robbers" I grew up playing "It's you and me against the world," with my mother and when she wasn't there, friends filled her place. It was a bad game, and some of my friends hated it so much they turned it simply into them vs. me -- which is also what my mother disintegrated to. When you can't pull off miracles, the singular army against the fates begins to curse its one footsoldier and soothsayer. There is no hope, not even pyrrhic victories in this kind of war. It's just about despair that luck continues to elude you and, again, as the messenger/diviner, I usually got a physical or emotional beating in the process. In other words: I desperately needed to get away. And I did.
Later on some of the people whom I got away from also got away. And that was good.
But, we're none of us are any different when we combine even now. And I am, at this period of my life, less confident than ever. It's silly, really. There's the shock of loss and being alone and not having a secure position for the first time since I was 22. And then there's the inability to wrap my mind around any of what happened on Sept 2, 2005. When all the facts have been re-assessed, it still makes no sense. It made no sense at that moment in Karen's or my life. And for once, I felt like not only she didn't, but I didn't deserve it. I finally had been and was doing what I was supposed to do. Always. And I got screwed anyway. (I know, me and a million other people, but like all of them, I say to my mirror, "I was supposed to be different. I was THE RESPONSIBLE one.") It would be hard for people who knew me back in 1991 to know just how RESPONSIBLE I had become. I was for a long, long time, not late, not without my research, not without the protoccols, not without the concerns, the questions, the answers and even the manners and I was able to leap small puddles with single bounds. I was no hero, but I had applied to the "Mensch" club and was awaiting membership. I had all the sponsors. Then a plane crashed with Karen B. Hunter in it and I kind of lost track of time. When I ran out of tasks -- closing up the office, etc., is when it got worse and when I really started to spin. There was something about having things to do for Karen that kept me okay. I still have photographs to print. I'm afraid to let that go.
In the three years which have past, I've lost all the drive that made me a "Mensch" and I never got my membership, as a result.
Back in 1991, there were no drugs involved and no alcohol and there aren't any now. Just that dangerous human frailty called judgement. Shortly after she died, someone once told me I was the perfect friend for Karen because I didn't judge her. I didn't like to judge people then and I still don't. It's not heroism and it's not cowardice. It's an awareness that everything that people do IS the best that they could do in those moments, and if you want to help them, the best thing to do is help them change the moments or how they see them. The only things I can't abide are acts of malice. But those are few and far between.
I used to be one of those young teachers -- back in the Summer of 1991, certainly, who thought that some people cared, some didn't, some people tried and some didn't. I've since learned that everybody cares and everybody tries. I've seen teachers beg kids to stay with them an extra minute to get it right -- teachers who kids say all sorts of mean-spirited things about. The truth is we are all so angry with each other because we all care very much. Colleagues who might retire in ten days are absolutely livid. I've been taught more about concern and diligence from people who are fiercely tough than those who seem more amiable.
The scary thing about being an ATR is you are rootless and you feel just like you did -- or I did-- when you started teaching. There's no sense of where you will go, although you've spent the better part of a lifetime working with at-risk youth, etc. It's like, for a moment, my past was washed away, and with it, the part of me that knows how to be cautious -- the part of me that left that summer never to call some people again, and to be hours away from others. The part of me that was quite sure of who I was and wanted to be. It wasn't to have an acronym that, on funny moments, reminds me of the Russian Tea Room (RTR). That was never a great restaurant, by the way. All atmosphere and some great waiters. Nick, you out there? My mother was the blonde with the attitude who was either too stingy or too generous. If that doesn't jar your memory, this will: she sent back drinks. Who does that? I am so sorry.
Nick I hope is somewhere in Florida. But, I'm in limbo. Karen is dead. And, no, I'm STILL not taking it well.
To find my boundaries again, is the goal of summer 2009.
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