Sappy. Sentimental. Surreal.

My last graded assignment for grad class.

The rose my professor gave me on the podium in the Lally Forum at the College of Saint Rose.

Well, after a long journey, my grad classes finally came to a close this evening. I don't know if it's even really sunk in yet. I am almost officially a certified Literacy Specialist for grades 5-12, and I almost officially have a 4.0 in my program. My professor is amazing, and she was sensitive to the anti-climatic nature of us finishing off the course with presentations and just going on our way until the graduation ceremony in May--so she bought us all roses. A classy and fitting token to acknowledge our completion of a program at the College of Saint Rose.

It's bittersweet of course, because I'd like to celebrate my degree by putting it to good use in a classroom full of students ready to absorb my newly gained knowledge, my passion, enthusiasm, and creativity--but teaching jobs where I live in upstate NY are far and few between. To be honest, I've spent most of the last year questioning whether or not I need to choose a different career (although, if not a teacher, I have no clue what else I'd be). I'm worried that if I can even manage to bite and claw my way into a school somehow that I will be chewed up and spit back out trying to manage a sea of politics and negativity with little support or resources. I'm worried about what education has become, and that I'm not prepared for what I will need to become in order to survive it.

And yet, after over a year of feeling this way, I volunteered in a friend's 5th grade class today to help with a holiday project and I felt a renewed sense of purpose. I worked with some of her students last year as a TA, but stepping into a classroom for the first time this school year, and on the very same day I completed my grad program, I felt alive again. I felt like that was where I was supposed to be. I felt like those students looked to me for a hug, to answer a question, to give them a moment of positive attention--and in those moments, I felt I mattered--like I could make them smile or laugh, make them feel good about themselves, and make their day--and of course by doing so, they make mine!

With my rose-colored glasses on, that's what I feel teaching should be about: helping the students become better, more well-rounded people so that they can not just function in society, but contribute to it--helping them to develop a passion for learning and a zeal for knowledge and exploration--and helping them to develop compassion, creativity, and a positive sense of self.

My heart aches as I write this, because I have worked so long and so hard (and spent so much money) on my own education, so that I can have this opportunity to work with students, and it feels like my day will never come. So while it may seem that I should be celebrating my accomplishments--they may not have sunk in because the real celebration can happen only when my career begins with a teaching job and a classroom of my own.

I usually utilize this blog as a place to showcase my creative endeavors, but tonight it needed to be a journal. I needed to tell the world that passionate and qualified teachers are being forced to sit on the sidelines because of cuts to education. I'm wasting my degree by working in retail, and those students are in class sizes of 27--and worst of all, I feel powerless to do anything about it. I could vent about bureaucracy, and I could certainly continue to feel bitter, cynical, jaded, and defeated...but tonight driving home from my final grad class and thinking back on today in that classroom--I have a spark of hope left in me after all. Maybe it was rose, but I'm betting it was the hugs.

Creative Non-Fiction Piece Chapter 3

Raggedy Ann

She was raggedy by the time my mother handed her down to me. Her mustard dress, which could easily have been made from remnants of my southern granny’s curtains, was peppered with little black daisy flowers. Her loops of red yarn hair were littered with pearls of fuzz, and the white muslin her face had been embroidered onto had become a dingy gray. I wish I could hold her now and gingerly run my fingers over the rickrack on her dress.

She didn’t have muffled cries reverberate from within a plastic frame when I squeezed her hand, and she didn’t wet herself. She didn’t sprout hair from holes in her head as I moved her arm up and down like a ratchet from my dad’s tool chest. She couldn’t play in the bathtub with me, while my sisters and I used Avon roll-on soap to draw red and blue smiley faces on our bellies. Her large stitched round eyes stayed open in permanent surprise; they didn’t open and close when I tipped her back and forth on the swing set. I couldn’t even change her shoes; they were permanently sewn to her feet over her red and white striped stockings.

There wasn’t a string you could pull out from her back to make her talk or a place to insert batteries so that she could walk, but she was portable and soft. She came from a time where make-believe and magic wasn’t bought, it was made.

I would include her in ring-around-the-Rosie, my hand holding one of her little padded hands, and my sister holding the other, and when we all fell down, we would exhale with a giggle and look up at the sky and squint against the sun and smile.

Creative Non-Fiction Piece Chapter 2

No, I cannot wiggle my nose.

Her shiny dark hair was plaited neatly into dozens of tiny braids sticking out from under her red and yellow visor. She absentmindedly asked me for my order while refilling condiment containers.

My gaze traveled back down from the lighted menu overhead as I opened my mouth to ask for a cheeseburger Happy Meal with root beer and no onion, but I caught sight of “Tabitha” on her name badge and I stopped mid-sentence.

Hey, I have the same name as you! I blurted this out, bubbling with the naïve excitement of a seven-year-old.

She looked at me for the first time. Really? I’ve only met a few other people with my name, that’s cool. Do people always ask you if you can wiggle your nose?

Yea and they ask me if I can play the piano like the little girl from Bewitched, but I can’t do that either. My mom laughed from behind me at the sheer disappointment in my voice.

Oh. I was named after a girl in a soap opera. What was it called? Oh yea, Passions. Anyway, what would you like to order?

Creative Non-Fiction Piece Chapter 1

Guy Charlton

She told me to put my middle name and street name together and it would be my stripper name. Guy Charlton didn’t sound that sexy or exotic to me, but that’s the kind of thing we’d giggle over, along with articles in Cosmopolitan magazine, during sleepovers.

I didn’t really like living on Charlton Road at first. There was no one to play with except my little sisters. The houses were so far apart that the only time we went to the neighbors was for trick-or-treating. Our house was closer to the road than the others around us, and we couldn’t pay landscapers to mow the acre or two of uneven lawn.

I didn’t have to share my bedroom though, and I even got the biggest one, over my sisters’ protests, because I’m the oldest. None of us had to share rooms here, which is lucky because we almost killed each other over who go to use the computer after school. We were fortunate to at least finally have one; I thought I had complained enough about having to go to my friends’ houses to type up reports, but really my parents had gone without in order to be able to afford it.

I could appreciate home more when I had to make one of my own with my boyfriend and our two kittens. It didn’t really feel strange until my first Christmas that didn’t involve opening stockings with my sisters at 6 am, and breakfast of Belgian waffles while watching the TBS marathon of “A Christmas Story.”

The bush isn’t hiding the missing siding, or hanging over the crumbling cement walkway anymore. My dad took it down, and never got to the second one. I liked those bushes lit up at Christmas; they looked just like giant candy gumdrops flanking the front door.

Sometimes I visit and stay the night if I have to work really early the next morning because their house is closer than mine to the store by an hour. I breathe cigarette smoke lingering on the couch pillows, and count the click click clicks of the clock hands in the adjoining room. In the morning, the water pressure in the shower makes washing the conditioner out feel like a marathon race I might never win before the cold sets in.

Dad started to take apart the bathroom and even had a whirl-pool tub out on the back porch, but he’ll never get to install it. My parents had big plans for a master suite. A few times I’ve been allowed to go to Dad’s job sites and I’ve seen the caliber of work my dad has done in other people’s houses, but ours always came last. He used the rich people’s castaways, or else stowed them in the garage with the intent to.

They have bankruptcy court tomorrow. Over the last few months, my mom has pruned their belongings down to a room full of cardboard boxes stacked like soldiers waiting to board the moving van. They knew it was coming; dad’s self-employed in a recession and they haven’t made the mortgage in longer than they’d care to admit.

In the coming weeks our family’s house, my childhood home, on Charlton Road will be on some bank’s foreclosure list. I will have to assume a new last name for my stripper identity. Somehow, Fifth Ave doesn’t work either. I never thought I'd be cut out for that profession anyway.