(no subject)
It's sweater time, and snow even covered Houston the other night. It was crisp, cold and the air bit at my cheeks and reminded me of how swift things can change, especially here. Twinkling lights atop tall buildings lining freeways strangely become beautiful, and they shimmer against the heat rising from the rooftops below them.
Things freeze over.
I was editing an admissions essay for one of my students last Friday. My heart hurt as I put the essay into an envelope addressed to a school that this student with a "Learning Disability" will probably never get into. I have talked to her about crossing the Rio Grande as a little kid, watching people die as they suffocated from the blazing heat, and I realize how hard she has worked to reach where she is. Yet, numbers mixed with more numbers will probably come between this student and her dreams. And, still worse, even deeper down, I know that it is probably for the best that she not get in.
Children dance in snow outside the glazed windows of my heated classroom.
The ice built up in the tires as I drove home from work, and I wondered what would happen if my car lost control and I flew off the overpass stories above the ground. A gruesome thought, unquestionably, but I thought about it indifferently. Not that I want to die, but simply thinking about how things can happen--things do happen--and that tragedies are mere occurrences until they crush the hearts of others.
Traffic came to a crawl, and fours exits and 20 minutes later I passed a car. No, not a car, the carcass of a car, crushed beyond differentiability. There were three ambulances. The frozen facade of my face fell to singular tears, not dramatic, but humbled. The thoughts that passed through my mind moments before fell silently into the frosted grass.
As the children belt me with snowballs I laugh and slip and smile, taking photos of some of the kids. I catch flakes on my tongue.
I do not have trouble sleeping at night because of the things I see as I walk through my life. I also do not think I walk through a life that has more things to keep me awake than the next person. I simply walk through life and try to notice and feel as much as I can. Sometimes I pause to write it down, sometimes it falls silently into the frosted grass. I walk through life, I smile and cry, and I live to see the snow, all the while waiting just as eagerly for summer swimming pools.
Things freeze over.
I was editing an admissions essay for one of my students last Friday. My heart hurt as I put the essay into an envelope addressed to a school that this student with a "Learning Disability" will probably never get into. I have talked to her about crossing the Rio Grande as a little kid, watching people die as they suffocated from the blazing heat, and I realize how hard she has worked to reach where she is. Yet, numbers mixed with more numbers will probably come between this student and her dreams. And, still worse, even deeper down, I know that it is probably for the best that she not get in.
Children dance in snow outside the glazed windows of my heated classroom.
The ice built up in the tires as I drove home from work, and I wondered what would happen if my car lost control and I flew off the overpass stories above the ground. A gruesome thought, unquestionably, but I thought about it indifferently. Not that I want to die, but simply thinking about how things can happen--things do happen--and that tragedies are mere occurrences until they crush the hearts of others.
Traffic came to a crawl, and fours exits and 20 minutes later I passed a car. No, not a car, the carcass of a car, crushed beyond differentiability. There were three ambulances. The frozen facade of my face fell to singular tears, not dramatic, but humbled. The thoughts that passed through my mind moments before fell silently into the frosted grass.
As the children belt me with snowballs I laugh and slip and smile, taking photos of some of the kids. I catch flakes on my tongue.
I do not have trouble sleeping at night because of the things I see as I walk through my life. I also do not think I walk through a life that has more things to keep me awake than the next person. I simply walk through life and try to notice and feel as much as I can. Sometimes I pause to write it down, sometimes it falls silently into the frosted grass. I walk through life, I smile and cry, and I live to see the snow, all the while waiting just as eagerly for summer swimming pools.