This afternoon I posted on instagram a photo of a poster I made.
I taped this poster to the window of my classroom, that way when teachers walk down the hallway, they might read my viewpoint. This is my protest to the way some of the kids in our class were treated today. It was field day today. I have hated field day since losing every event as a child and never getting a blue ribbon or a red ribbon while watching others skip with joy while their ribbons blew in the wind. My class’s field day experience was segregated. Our popsicles were melted. And when we retreated to the playground, we were met with exclusion. At one point a teacher was holding one of my students under the armpits attempting to drag him away from her class who was sitting eating their melted popsicles.
Now we are all humans. Correct? But sometime sin schools something happens and people who went into teaching to work with children find themselves forgetting we are all human. At a playground in the community, if a child with a disability, who is usually in a wheel chair but has made progress walking, stumbles over to your picnic table and reaches for a popsicle- What would you do? Yell stop it and trying to physically remove the child? Or make space on the picnic bench and say Hi and offer the child a melted popsicle?
Somehow leaving work late to make this poster and hang it in the hallway made me feel better on a long hot Friday field day. A tad rebellious and thought like a true protester.
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Tonight I was trying to go to bed and scrolling on my phone. Reading doomsday news about a fight at my daughter’s high school that involved a gun. A child, a student, shot the gun at another child in the parking lot of Mim’s school. Everyone is alive. A heroic resource officer was brave and inspiring. I knew she had been on lock down but I have become numb to the lock downs. Numb to the terror. I posted this on Facebook in a school parent group.
In between these two posts, Mim and I went to our town square and watched a band called the Quaranteens. The group is five kids from Mim’s high school. We sat on the turf- front and center of the turquoise gazebo. As soon as the lead singer began, Mim asked me to dance. I said yes. We danced for the rest of the concert. Full out danced. She shook out her long tangled curls. We jumped and bopped and sang into our imaginary microphones. No one else at the square was dancing. I was shocked that Mim danced. This was unheard of. She has never gotten up and danced and kept dancing and clapping and giving thumbs up after each song or guitar solo. It felt so good. After one song, She put her arms around me and melted into me with a relaxed body. No pulsing anxiety. No startle. Just a genuine moment of shared affection. Yes, I was aware of the fact that no one else was dancing. But lucky for me I embrace the sentiments of our dear Bonnie Raitt. “Love has no PRIDE.” I would rather enjoy this moment with my very incredible girl and risk looking like a fool as parts of me jiggle under my dress. It was worth the risk. It was worth the shared twirls. It was dreamy.
We ate Thai food. We thought we were at an outdoor table for sushi but the Thai server thought we were at a table for Thai and we played along. Going with the flow when expecting sushi is hard. Mim swallowed that disappointment like a champ.
Ready for our bedtime routine, we got home to have the realization that this very morning Mim had a panic attack before school. I leave for work before Mim leaves for school. Her big brother George is home with her until she gets on the school bus. She had called me screaming crying about pouring out her coffee and not being able to go to school without coffee. She hung up on me when I suggested coming home and I could rive her to school. She doesn’t handle change in routine well sometimes. She loves her bus routine. My offer to “help” was not helpful at all to Mim. I call what Mim had a panic attack because it is brought on by extreme anxiety and she goes into fight or flight. In between spilling her coffee and getting on the bus she fought two of our bedrooms. She fought a mattress, a glass picture frame, a vintage wire shelf bought on Etsy from Italy, 5 loads of clean clothes, two dirty clothes hampers, a container of sunflower seeds, and some plastic mementos. George watch vigilantly offering help but he knew this scenario well and waited for the fight to pass and the calm to grow.
At 9:30pm, I vacuumed our bed of glass shards and sunflower seeds. I changed our sheets. I vacuumed again. I fluffed our pillows. She drank sleepy time tea. We watched two episodes of Royal Pains, Season 6. and went to bed.
But now here I am.
Momoirist 