I Must Have Won the Birthing Lottery

I find myself here, up after the others have gone to bed, trying to process my first semester of teaching. In so many ways, I feel discouraged and awestruck by what I did not accomplish. But in many ways, I glance at the journals my kids have been writing and I am overcome with an urge to hold each of them individually, to take them up, to transfer them to some new reality. I have two who will graduate this Christmas and I will miss them. Despite the daily difficulties and the frustrations, I find it nearly impossible not to feel overcome with emotion--mostly love and deep affection. The human experience is such a unique one and one we are all fortunate to live. There is indescribable beauty in this place, in this intangible and indescribable thing. There are places that leave one breathless and experiences that leave the cheeks wet with tears. And there are moments of such immense beauty that we feel we have lived a lifetime's joy in a single moment. And there is loss that leaves us feeling hollow, that can destruct who we once were and produce a product we no longer wholly recognize. I return to the thought I wrote over and over after I broke up with Mark nearly three years ago. The true beauty in this life is not in a picturesque sunrise, but with who it is shared. The true beauty in this life is in a connection made between two human beings that leaves each different as a result. Each of us is set hurtling at a high velocity in a certain direction the moment we are born. Those who most impact us, however, perhaps influence a single life choice that slightly angles the trajectory of our life and, as a result, changes everything. The influence of one upon another can not be overlooked. The influence of one beautiful heart and mind in a world in which there is too much cruelty is overlooked only by cynics who are too frightened to try, too frightened of failure or hurt to take a step into what they see as an overwhelmingly cruel world. Every day out here, I am reminded that life is precisely the way it is seen. We construct our reality. And we shape the way we live. Old news to some, perhaps, but one is never too old to remember that we all should, essentially, see the world with the innocence of a child. And, with the permission of a student, I am going to post his most recent journal entry. Perhaps it was powerful only because I know the student, but I doubt it. He is someone I have come to love deeply, to trust, and to pray with whatever power in my bones that he fulfills his potential. When asked the question, "what is the hardest decision you have had to make," he wrote: "What is the hardest decision I have ever had to make? That would be letting go of my sister when she had an accident that spared her life, if only for a moment. That was when I was twelve years old. I held her on my lap, her blood was coming out from her forehead and I tried to cover it but it wouldn't help. People there didn't help because they were completely shocked with my sister's wound. I could feel her squeezing my hand, but her eyes were closed and my dad's sisters (three of them) tried to get me away from her but they couldn't. I tried to tell them to help me, but they kept telling me that the ambulance was on the way. Finally, I lost her. It took four men to get me away from her. I left a lot of tears at that place of my sister's accident. That was the hardest decision I have ever made, letting go of my sister, but she is always in my heart. She was killed by her drunk friend. My sister's friends were all okay, only my sister and brother were injured..." Who am I, to be so blessed? Is it this white skin or the middle class background? Is it blind luck or is it God knowing if faced with the same difficulty, I would be broken in half? Somehow, I doubt there is any divine path laid before my feet, but some dice roll made at my birth, the combination of genes and blind luck, that landed me sitting in this heated kitchen with electricity and running water in the middle of a seemingly desolate desert, made beautiful by the spirit with which the people I teach live. I find, as with my experience in Africa, that I likely will be the one most changed by all of this and fervently pray that I may send a student or two into the world different for having known me. I think one of the reasons I have not been able to write here is because my heart breaks at least once a day. I find what I go through challenges my heart to the extreme, and then I remind myself that my students--most of them, anyway--have seen and experienced significantly more. In every action, word, and thought, I am forced to acknowledge my own privileged and pampered background. And at the same time, somehow come to terms with this desperate anxiety that there are seventy young people on the reservation who, during the work week, at least, split my mind in seventy different ways in an attempt to better understand how I can serve each of them. Maybe THAT is an example of true schizophrenia :). Anyway, I should have slept hours ago. Hours hours hours. Night.