It came in the mail yesterday. Just an ordinary reup for one of the multitudes of magazines that I subscribe to in any given year. Maybe it's the weather front moving through. Something about the words slayed me. How can this have happened to me? I love teaching. What am I going to move on to? I don't even know how to express the black pit of no more. I'm a born explainer. More importantly, I crave the feeling of seeing the joy on anyone's face. It's like childbirth- I can't recall the pain involved in the act of teaching. Now I grieve for the someone needing me. I could help in some way any child. When I looked into the face of the child, at any age, I could instinctively know where we were going to travel together. It was my one gift, my soul. The interaction with their needs moved me to any semblance of greatness that was going to flit through on my journey here in this place.
How do you type out being forgotten? Someone replaced me and I'm only a might-have-been moment. I need, just like when someone has lost someone, to go to that dragon room and cry. I need to creep in in the silence of the night, and touch familiar corners. I want to go and let the ghosts of moments gone forever be called up one more time. I always thought it would be after 35 years of teaching and a huge reception in the gym with powerpoints and punch that I would pass a torch. Instead, it was slip out, dragging into the mists of illness. Going away, leaving the train, jumping into oblivion and forgotten, no regrets from others. No," we can't do without you". Maybe that's what struck me about the magazine.....I'm afraid that I will only be like it, non-renewed, shelved, and dusty. Only pages turned long ago.
