I stand in the exact midpoint of the tired hallway and look around, observing and considering my options. The day, already having rolled out and around me with a lurching, struggling gasp, rages even more intensely in the fulcrum of where I stand; shifting uncomfortably from my left foot to my right foot and back.

I retrieve a group of ten rapscallions every morning at 10:30. Retrieving them is similar to capturing a riptide; children bounding down the hallway, tumbling over each other, tripping to run and administer hugs to me; hands raised wildly to tell me the latest cafeteria chaos; wide open mouths wailing over injustices experienced in the stairwell. They vacuum every ounce of remaining oxygen from the surrounding air. They do it twice. They do it in English, then repeat it in Spanish. Or, they do it in Spanish and repeat it in English.

At 10:30, I witness three events. The ten miscreants are hauled back to the classroom over a serious issue of bullying and name calling. The classroom teacher, beginning with a slow gurgling angry tirade, works himself into a raging diatribe, which spills out into the place where I wait. A couple of teachers stick their heads out the door to see what is going on.

I look to my left, down the length of the other side of the hallway. I notice a crowd of third graders gathered anxiously around their teacher, who I realize is administering the Heimlich maneuver to a smallish boy; the one with the long braid down his back; the one most likely to be in his own center of chaos, misbehavior and obstreperous action. ‘Of all students in this hallway,’ I muse, ‘he would be the most likely to have brought himself into a dangerous state of choking’. I am surprised at my disconnect; at my lack of fear in this moment. I trust that teacher. She is medically trained. I trust the deep interior silence into which I crawl more and more when I come across these scenes of chaos. I trust the power of prayer.

There is never enough time or mental energy to consider it all; to order rational chronology; to create meaningful sense of it. More and more, I move quickly into that deep inner space. Perhaps others do this as well. Perhaps this is why, teachers are always tired but there are no outward signs of physical illness. There are individuals who beat others so bruises do not show. Systems do that.

I stand in the middle of rage and danger. I look down at my feet and the wall across from me. There is a line of forgotten children, sitting on the floor, waiting to return to their classrooms with their jackets and their lunch boxes. Considering what is happening around them, they behave quite well. Two of them spread out on the floor; backs completely flat on the cold tile, both waving their legs madly up in the air. They look at me. I look at them and ask, ‘What are you doing?’ They laugh and say, ‘Look, look at us. We’re turtles, Miss. We’re turtles!’ They have come up with their own version of coping; too young to have developed a deep sense of inner life; that secret hiding place. But they know that turtles can pull themselves into themselves and disappear. In the middle of the hallway, between the raging and the danger, they have morphed into turtles.

I respond, ‘If I were a turtle, I would get up off of that floor because it is cold and it is dirty!’ But I don’t say that with much conviction. That is my ‘teacher’ voice; spilling out automatically after so many years of teaching. It’s reactionary; not deep.

If I were a turtle, I would stay in my shell and commence slow crawling movements toward the exit.

It was that sort of a weekend. The Owl and the Pussy Cat spent the day eating excellent food…pancakes with real maple syrup…homemade chicken soup marinated all day in cooking wine, mysterious sauces and peppers…pumpkin chocolate bread with nutmeg sauce…chocolate cherry coffee with cream.

We did not dance by the light of the moon, but we sailed away for a very long day and ate with a runcible spoon.

Around seven months ago, a number of guests descended upon our home and remained for several days. Weeks later, after they had all flown, a pair of black shoes was located…left behind…nesting quietly and hidden on a shelf in a large coat stand. No one. No one will lay claim to these shoes. So…there they sit.

Over this past weekend, more guests descended upon our home and remained for a number of hours. After having waved them off as they headed off into the night…I returned to the living room and promptly tripped over a pair of…brown shoes. I’ve already inquired. No one. No one lays claim to these shoes.

I know where all my shoes are, although I’m mostly in slippers now, due to working from home. So actually…I may not really know where all my shoes are. Or socks…

And in the end, as all things including ourselves become stories, these shoes write their own stories; to whom did they belong? How did they arrive here? What led them to stay? Where will they journey next?

We have been working on sentence flow and syntax, along with new vocabulary this morning with a large group of first graders. ‘For dinner I eat…’ and students follow my lead answering with examples. All goes well until one little girl claims simply, ‘I want to be a mermaid”. So there’s that.

We continue work in the afternoon on sentence syntax and language flow with a different group of first graders. ‘For dinner I eat…’ and students continue following my example with a variety of food ideas. All goes well until another little girl states, ‘I eat cat’. I can’t win with this…

Overheard mid day: ‘Are you in control enough to go to fun lunch?’ I think to myself…’Self, you will always be in control enough to go to fun lunch’. Priorities.

We are working inside the darkness. Anyone teaching these days is shadow walking. There is nothing solid; there are rumors and possibilities existing always just a step ahead in a dimly lit alley. The alley keeps opening out into nothing solid again. I sleep badly. My dreams are confused images and patterns. Everyone keeps saying, ‘every day is a new normal’. There lies a great chasm between hearing that and living through the middle of it.

I exit the salted parking lot at day’s end, folding up my mind into small pieces I tuck away. Years ago, I carried my teaching job around with me like a beloved and naughty rag doll. I thought about it. I planned around it. I hovered over it. I nurtured it. I scolded it. Now I don’t make livable sense of it. It keeps shifting and rolling over. It flops and stares. But then, going on is in the nature of things and so we do that.

Some don’t go on. A young teacher stops me in the hall. ‘I’m getting out’ he says. ‘I’m looking for a new career. I did not sign up for this’. He asks me, ‘How long have you been here?’ ‘Twenty-five years’ I respond. ‘God bless you’ he mumbles heading toward the elevator. I look at my watch. He’s leaving early. I’ve left early. When there are no students on Zoom, why stay? I’m one of the dinosaurs now. Now, I am one of the old guard.

Regents exams, an educational pillar in New York, are cancelled again. With this cancellation comes the strange sense that the sacred cow has been slaughtered. Nothing is forever. Nothing is indispensable. The plague of Covid has done something nothing else has been able to do in decades. It has shaken public education to its core.

On my lunch break I think that if I hear the word ‘unprecedented’ again, I shall remove it from Webster’s with a shiv.

I have hardened over the past few years; not toward people, certainly not in my own physical person. On the contrary, I feel more deeply the vulnerability of things in my own body and mind and in the fragility of the children I teach. I am hardened up against systems; against this system which refuses to die, which refuses to root out mismanagement and pretense, refuses to rip out unreachable mandates and poor choices in spending; a system calling our students ‘scholars’ when in fact a number of them are actually thugs. My little ones are not thugs. But someday they might be.

Passive resistance means I am ignoring most of my emails; at least for a few hours. I am not jumping quickly anymore.

We are back online; sentenced to remote learning until the 18th of January. Staffing needs can’t be met. Another 15 teachers and administrators are out today.

First morning back on Zoom…screaming in the background, ‘Are you harassing your brother?’ Silence. ‘Yes. Get off…you can’t listen to it…get offfffff!’ ‘Wait. Eat your breakfast and I am muting you’. ‘How do I take attendance now?’ ‘Wait, the code comes on your phone? On your phone’. Silence. ‘Miss…can I go to the bathroom?’ ‘Yes”…hmmm…absent/excused…absent/unexcused, tardy/remote…tardy/in person. No…no one is in person. Except me. Our students are home on remote. The teachers are in the building. ‘Good morning! Good morning…unmute yourself!’ Three children lying sleepily in bed, stretch and stare at me.

In the afternoon…’Get closer to the MiFi…get closer to your MiFi’. ‘Are you doing okay? Can you hear me? There’s a lag. Now you’re frozen again. Try to find another spot. Okay. We’ll come back to you’. “I never thought we’d go back on remote learning, Miss’. ‘Ok. You’re going to go into the break out room, so please join. Press the button. The button! Press. The. Button!’ One child eats spaghetti with great gusto…tipping her head back…dropping a large quantity of noodles into her mouth.

Broadband width is wobbly at best for a number of my students today. We descend into a cacophony of staggered speech, frozen screens, staccato words and finally black rectangles. We joke about it. ‘There he goes!’ and ‘Oh, we just lost her!’ ‘Why is he back in the waiting room?’

Mid-week and the energy shifts. Nobody wants to do this. No one. The parking lot is half empty when I pull in at 7:30. I sip hot blueberry tea and watch my students dribble in; popping onto the Zoom screens; a sea of rectangles. They crawl out from under blankets. One child sits with a large cat on her lap and stares blankly at me.

The weather alters and the remaining ground snow is wet and soggy. Patches of stiff grass and stalks stand up in a polka dotted pattern across the front yard. Someone has walked their dog late in the night or very early. Large paw prints and small boot markings run the length of the end of our driveway. The house is dark and disappears as I drive away.

I think about the dream I had last night. I was on a date and it did not seem real. In my dream, I knew the man was too popular, too handsome for me. We visited his family homestead in Pennsylvania. We met his family in a huge, well lit, decorated barn filled with tables and food and white linen. I wore all black; a swimsuit cover up which flowed and gapped. I was exposed everywhere. I soldiered on through dinner. I knew if I pretended, everyone else would pretend as well. We are doing that now.

Some teachers bring their dogs to work this week. I am startled more than once to encounter a large dog in the silent hallway. They don’t bark. They don’t run around. They lie on the floor or under the desk next to the teachers instructing on Zoom. I see them in the hall with their owners several times and on camera as I share a Zoom link with certain classes. They bring life to the building which is deathly quiet. No children in the classroom. No noise in the corriders.

When I enter the side door, I hear a few voices somewhere, closer to the main office. I drag several heavy bags and the metal doors slam behind me. I lower my mask since I do not see anyone. Around the corner, I pass closed classroom doors. There are quiet murmurings as people start up their Zoom links. One more turn and I see the elevator. The empty cafeteria at the far end is dark and I see stacked tables and chairs. I swipe my badge and press the button. I enter as the door opens and wait as it closes on a silent, empty hall.

I fell into an odd space the other day. Someone who did not mean any harm pushed me in. She sat down next to me and asked, ‘So how are your parents doing? Are they both well?’

Right after I slid into that odd space, my brain opened up and there was a long tunnel into which I stepped. It was the day of the season’s first real snow. Our neighborhood lay deep in crystal sugar buttercream and the rows of stunning eggplant red maple trees, which had not yet shed their leaves, were startled into suddenly dropping thousands of red gems on top of the white stuff and everything looked like a marvelous cake. Dad loved cake.

‘My Dad died almost six years ago’. I responded without rancor because I did not feel rancor. It was truth and I wasn’t interested in watching this well meaning soul attempt to dig herself out of an awkward social moment, but of course that is what she started to do. It seemed to limp along forever, but the whole conversation lasted ten seconds. ‘Everything is good’, I responded. ‘No worries’. She dug herself back up and out and faced me eye to eye.

‘I’m so sorry. I did not know…’ she faltered. ‘Really, it’s fine’ I tried again. ‘He’s fine. We are fine. Don’t worry’. I was back in the tunnel walking through, thinking to myself, ‘How much is actually back in here?’ We climbed together, she and I, side by side out of that hole and I excused myself, moving on to other conversations.

I drove home and as the car bent around the corner of the swirling Genesee river at the edge of the boat houses, I watched a whirlwind of grey snow surge up over the road, grasping and slapping at another tree. It was an oak which was chock full of bright yellow leaves. They skittered off and up and around and over the road, some landing on water to sink and others left skipping reluctantly along the road’s edge. The brute force of the new season required it.

You caught me on the day of the season’s first true snow, when everything looked like a marvelous cake. Dad loved cake.

Laughing at ourselves; our fears, foibles, failings. It is marvelous.

I chuckle when I think about that wonderful day in college; after having had to run a mile for a particular physical education requirement. It dawned on me that at the end of that run, at the finish of that class, I would never, ever have to participate in anything again…ever…which bore the name ‘recess’ or ‘gym’. I laughed and I laughed and I laughed…

The month has turned dreary; grey with a hint of wet, followed by an indication of inclement; swallowed up in uncertainty. Therefore, I am forever thankful for the promise of wild roses.

Driving along damp, bumbly and down lowly deserted western New York roads last summer, Eli looked at a slightly crumpled road sign upon passing and asked, ‘Have you ever driven down that road?’ A thousand winding roads upstate never taken; but there is one hidden back road I did travel one summer day with my Mother; when I was very young and the summers spread out long, hot, sweat filled and slow. A last minute lark; a deviation from the plan of groceries, blue moon ice cream and heading home and we landed upon a rutted and dusty lane. It curved behind plowed fields and streams and we watched sloppy farms roll by our windows and we lost our way suddenly and completely. The road on both sides of the vehicle was lined with towering, overflowing and unkempt bushes of wild roses. I was close to five years old at the time, sporting long braids and parading around in dirty bare feet. Dust flowed through the open windows and a bushel of corn sat on the front seat. We did not wear seat belts. We were surrounded by pink gems everywhere; hanging in sweet air.

We made it back home before dark but I will never find that road again; lying amongst miles of back paths and ruined hunter cabins; crumbling and lost amid rural wilderness and the civilized withdrawal from all things fast paced, loud, conflicted.

But I know as sure as I know the dust of those paths and the sound of ripened corn being shucked for dinner; certainly that somewhere out there lie a million rose bushes, waiting for me…requiring only a turn of the wheels and no plans…

‘Have a good weekend’. ‘Yes, you too’…’enjoy your free time; it’s a three day weekend!’ ‘Yes. You as well’…the elevator doors close and the conversation is silenced. I ride to the third floor. The intimacy of strangers; we strive toward keeping that intimacy alive. Wearing the finest threads of civilizations, past and present, we agree to agree that those persons with whom we work are valuable; unique. They deserve the peaceful rest of a lengthy weekend, away from nonsense and chaos and failure. They are workmates and also strangers. I won’t know if any one of them has a weekend full of blessings or days off which are less than ideal. But I extend well wishes. This is a good thing to do. It is a sacred practice from ancient days.

I step out of the elevator and walk to my office. A member of the cleaning staff greets me. ‘Hey there. By the way, be sure to put that bag of candy on your desk away before you leave. You know the problem with critters’. He rolls his eyes. I nod. ‘Yes. Thank you for the reminder. I will. Have a good weekend’. His heavy booted footsteps drag down the hallway and then disappear as the stairwell swallows him whole. The building is silent.

I enter the office and close the door behind me. I clear my desk of several papers and I pick up the large plastic bag full of of candy; chocolate kisses, mini-candy bars, several packages of Swedish fish; a couple leftover candy canes which have softened in their plastic wrappers. I pull open the top metal cabinet drawer and plop the bag in the space where it rests on top of empty manila folder files. The drawer clicks shut heavily. I take my coat off the back of the door and I sit down in my chair.

On January 12, 1888…135 years ago today, my grandfather Walter Jewett Allen lost his way on the plains of South Dakota during what came to be known as ‘The Children’s Blizzard’. Hours later, his brother Will stumbled over him, finding him buried in snow and unconscious. More than one hundred children froze to death during that storm. My grandfather made it home, by the grace of God. His son, my father…lived to be ninety years old.

Thank you God. Thanks to the unknown Angel assigned to my grandfather that day. Thank you great Uncle Will for risking your own life to save your brother, my grandfather; with whom I sat on hot summer days, wedged into his rocking chair with him…silent as he smoked his cigar and I brushed cigar ash off my legs as we rocked and thought…