I miss meeting you here in this space.  It is at first so very, very empty.  And yet, with you in my mind and these words to fill this page, somehow what was once blank and devoid of meaning becomes a place we share.  I find you here, my dearest.  Always here.  In the words we have shared.  So many, many words.

I find the passage of time creeping into my thoughts without my permission.  I find myself longing for you and for the time we spent preoccupied with development of the soul.  Absurdly overwhelmed with all the nothing.  I had a paper due in four weeks.  And so instead of writing it, we sat and listened to good music.  We talked abut the world as though we could know it.  And perhaps we did.  Perhaps better than we do now what with the rushing and obligations and growing up.

Growing up is rather dreary work, isn't it?

We took our pups to the dog park tonight.  A cool, summer night with ample grass and pups walking around joyously and being nothing but mundane creatures who find love in every beat of the heart (a rather goofy species, aren't they? which is why we must love them so dearly?).  As I was driving home, I thought about all the times as I got older that I put off playing kick the can or some other crazy kid night game.  How many times did I think to myself, "I'll just do it tomorrow night."  In some kind of crazy blur, doing it another night has disappeared and now I am far too old without the excuse of my own child to go gallivanting through the streets playing with other humans.  And yet, from the very depths of my soul, it is so desperately what I wish to do.  I wish to stay out too late with the smell of grass worn into my knees and my muscles exhausted from the kind of running only kids do.  The kind of running that is NOT forced on a treadmill for the sake of blood pressure.  The heart thumping dear-lord-has-he-seen-me hide-and-seek kind of running.  I want to dash about and find new friends and be friends simply for having played.  When we were younger, having played was enough.

I have to imagine we still have that in us, even after all these years of drudgery.  Surely, underneath it all, we all just want to be barefoot.

I showed my good buddy Shannon the "Scared is Scared" video you posted on my facebook wall a bit back.  I made some off the cuff, conversation-making comment about how neat kids are.  And with great sincerity, she responded, "It's marvelous, all the things they have to teach us.  Think of all the things we could learn from them."  It struck me how outlandish and preposterous that thought was.  In our society, kiddos are the idiots.  They're the ones who have the growing up to do.

What if, all along, we were smartest--bravest--at the age of six?  Maybe we knew more then.  Maybe being here longer than twelve years is the thing that makes us stupidest of all.

I know adulthood has good things for us.  I know I should be excited to do adult things like work a job about which I feel mostly apathy and raise life-sucking money-squandering kids of my own, but I don't.  I want to curl up in a tent pitched between two couches in a living room and play forts with my brothers.  I want to find you there on the couch in our dorm room with a good microbrew and dear lord I want to waste so much time.  I want to waste and waste and waste and find at the end of it all that I am rather the opposite of empty.  That, indeed, I am so full there is hardly room for Moonstruck.  And yet, you know me, I will always find room for cocoa.

And so my dearest, we will go out in the rain-soaked evening.  Our clothes are still damp from our walk up the hill, but we will go, anyway.  And we will drive through the tree-lined streets in the darkness, up and over the hills, and there, strip mall lights beaming out of the Portland gloom, we will shop the pastries and the chocolates and we will ultimately decide on the cocoa.  Because we always drink the cocoa.  Always.

I did not realize at Lewis and Clark how finite our time was.  I thought the rest of life must necessarily march on in the meaningful way our education did at that particular Hogwarts.  I have found in my adult life, more often than not, we are adult zombies.

Which brings me, of course, to the speech I made at Pete's wedding.  I haven't been writing.  I am sure you have noticed the lack of words here (or anywhere).  As such, I was nervous to write a speech.  And being who I am, I put it off.  Until the day it was to be given.  I awoke that morning in quite a fright (mostly sad because it struck me how awfully much my family has changed) and realized I had better get to writing.  And so I awoke in a mansion overlooking a golf course and the Lake of the Ozarks and I peered through a wall of glass out to an approaching storm and convinced myself I could be inspired.  But it didn't come easy.  Not at all.  Not like it used to.

Perhaps because I wanted it to mean something clear and perhaps because I was a bit rusty and perhaps because feeling as sad as I did about all the people around me changing I couldn't think of anything nice to write.  Imagine standing in front of a crowd of room shouting out some depressing Kundera nonsense.  That would not do.  It simply would not.

And so I took my time and I listened to Valley of the Shadow and This Is Neverland and Mayan Bowl Breaks and I wrote what I could and I slipped in as much Kundera as possible (emphasizing, of course, the positive points...the few that exist:).  And I wrote this:

As a group, humans are undeniably infatuated with dreaming.  We are asked from a very young age where we see ourselves as we get older and imagine up wild realities.  From becoming the president of the United States to escaping this reality for that of Tolkien or C.S. Lewis to pursuing the life of a vagabond writer or musician, caring neither for money, food, or company, we humans are nothing if not fantastic creators of fiction.   And I will not stand here and argue that any of those pursuits, particularly that of running off with Frodo, Gandalf, or Gypsies, is ignoble. 

This life, however, is unceasingly fleeting.  It is an inconvenient truth that while the years of our lives seem endless as children, they progress so steadily that it is difficult to account for all the time.  And worst of all, so glaringly apparent in all of the difficult choices we make, there is no dress rehearsal when it comes to the thousands and thousands of decisions we are required to make.  We get to do this thing once, one time, and with blind faith pray that our hearts, our dreaming, has not led us astray.

All of this, the wild sprint from an adorable little zygote in the belly of our mother to that of a tottering old woman without the opportunity for a redo, is enough to drive any reasonable person mad.  And yet, despite all this, the graces of this life are innumerably present.  From the powerful meander of a thunderstorm to the kindness of strangers, we humans fill pages with the beauty held in any particular moment.

While there are multitudinous graces in this life, the greatest and most important—the only one worth taking our time—is present in all of its diverse forms here today.  From mother to son, brother to sister, dear friend to dear friend, the greatest gift of this life is having found others with which to share this journey.  There is little else that can hold such deep or resonating importance as to courageously make this walk with a group of humans whose hearts and souls and desires are inextricably tied to yours.

And so, what I dream for all of us here today is not a life filled with wealth, power, or prestige.  What I dream for each of us is the pursuit of a life filled bursting at the seams with meaningful moments with those we love.  I dream of long nights with too little sleep stuffed uncomfortably full with deep conversation.  I dream for all of us, but especially these two, on this day, their lives be inordinately filled with love.

I wrote that because it was all I could think of.  Sometimes I don't know what to say in my adult life.  Sometimes it is all too much.  But love, at least, has remained the same.

Which is why I miss you here, in this place.  In these words.  Because it has (and will remain) a place I love you so well.  

The greatest gift one can give is that of truly devoted listening.  I find that to be true in all facets of my life, but especially so with the very young and the very old.

Tim and I recently visited his 102 year old grandmother in her nursing home in Des Moines.  We spent the first twenty minutes trying to engage her in group conversation that I am sure was gibberish.  She doesn't remember anyone from her current life because in her mind she is a twelve year old girl walking her horse, Bonnie, to her piano lessons in the grand old year of 1920.  As the family spoke, she grew more and more agitated and those around her grew more and more desperate for her to remember.  One memory.  One mention of Steve or Patty or Tim or Char or a singular name that would indicate she was truly with us, that she truly understood who we are and the year in which she's living.  It's a gift every family in every crappy Lifetime movie is given, that one last moment with a loved one in which they bust out every person's name with a vivid flash of life and everyone hugs and then the person dies but all are vindicated by the return of Memory.  Good old Memory.  The thing which ties us to this life, to this person, to who we perceive ourselves and our families to be.

When in actuality, we are much more than memory.  Memory is just a thing, a recollection of things which have happened.  At our essence, I imagine memory does not factor in a single bit.  Except, of course, that it can shape our ability to be courageous or fearful based on previous success or failure.  But when it is gone, we still exist.  We do not cease to be, I don't believe, simply because the context of history has disappeared.

So after a half hour of feeling fearful of overstepping boundaries, I sat next to Cleyla and we had quite a raucous conversation.  Out of pearly, glaucoma-ridden eyes she and I planned a party in which she would wear red and I would wear blue and we would bring a picnic basket.  Tim, we decided, could attend if he continued to be good, but the others would all be joyfully welcomed.  We had already finished the ham and Mom was finishing up the potatoes and we thought the best place might be down by the river, next to the old scraggly oak that tipped at such a precarious angle we were certain one day it would wash downstream.  In moments of worry, Cleyla would wonder if we were chatting too long, if she had missed dinner.  When I assured her Mom would certainly save her some, we continued planning, talking about the Christmas gifts we would buy the ghosts of a past only she recalled.

And so I found sitting in that room that as memory evades us, we do not cease to be at all.  We can still be storytellers and feel the joy of Christmas and the sweetness of fudge on our lips.  We can smile and laugh and be joyous, even if most of who we perceived ourselves to be has disappeared.  Although the lack of memory is a painful, debilitating fact to those who loved her most and knew her when she still "had her mind," I found our interaction to be meaningful and love-filled.  I found parts of myself in her and, deep in the secret recesses of my heart, wished we could throw that party together.  We told a good story, one so compelling I am certain we nearly dreamed it into existence.

The greatest gift we can give, indeed, is love.  Love not tied to the dreadful weight of memory.  Love not obstructed by our own wish for someone to be different than who they are.  Love fully entangled with a deep commitment to listen deeply and, especially, with the heart.

Accidental Babies

I love the song "Accidental Babies" more than is probably healthy.  It's an atrocious song, right?  Filled with regret and wish and the acknowledgment that life moves on, that we move on, and that some things can never be the same even if they seemed so desperately right in the moment.  Love between two people doesn't seem to follow rules.  Life happens and gets terribly in the way.  One is immature.  Or one feels a desperate yearning for something that turns out to be a shallow, misunderstood desire. Or one finds another love only to realize the first was, indeed, the superior.  Is this, then, a part of the path we walk?  Unfulfilled, unrealized, almost somethings between friends or strangers or roommates or old loves?

"Does he drive you wild, or just mildly free?'

How many people, do you think, end up with someone who drives them wild?  How many people are lucky enough to do forever with someone who makes them feel so alive?

Is it healthy, even, to maintain that pace?

I had a teacher in high school who maintained that the most boring man you meet, the one who absolutely drives you to tears with his unexcitability is the one you should marry.  She insisted, in fact, that he would be the stable father/husband figure about which every woman dreams.  No wild, passionate break up notes followed shortly by desperate reconciliations.  No letters of poetry insisting life without the other is equivalent to a death.  Nothing exotic or crazy or world altering.  Just a constant, stable love.  A dinner on the table, a consistent income, and a father who would desperately love children.

What do I do with the almost-had moments of my life?  Do I put them on the shelf and dust them off from time to time and reminisce about what those days were like or do I, in a moment of absolute insanity, pursue them?  Do I write an illicit letter in the dark, secretly relaying feelings I thought I had put to bed?  Or do I forget them?  Forget them forever.  Bury them deeply. Pursue my automaton lifestyle in which I do not think too deeply or too long upon anything that troubles me, upon the imaginings that sneak up when I am close to sleep, or in the moment I make eye contact, across the room, with someone who used to mean so desperately much to me.

I like this song, I think, because none of us is without regret.  Because life would not be without opportunities missed.  The point, I suppose, is to think about those moments in which you felt so god damned alive and to relish them for existing, while whole heartedly appreciating precisely where you are and precisely what you have.  I'm not talking about putting blinders on and trudging on if life is awful.  But in the case that you have found another who drives you wild (and not mildly free) and is bold enough to take you on, then I suppose you should relish that person.  And, perhaps, have accidental babies with him.

Maybe the real lesson here is simply to have Accidental Babies.  Does that seem like a good plan?

I wish there was a way to remember, every single day, that we are all connected and that we are only as good as the sum of all our parts.  The hospital where I am a student serves a lot of at risk patients.  We scan numerous people with chronic, awful illnesses that are often behaviorally contracted.  Lots of Hepatitis C, lots of AIDS, and lots of Cirrhosis.  And it is so easy when I am in a room with a patient who has contracted AIDS to blame them.  To go to that place in my mind where only derelict, irresponsible people get themselves sick.  Disease is like that; it's easy to make someone who is ill not like you because it means maybe (just maybe) you're less likely to get the disease.  If only idiots get AIDS, then somehow white folk like us are safe.

But as I go through an exam (and our exams are LONG) and I begin talking to the patient, I find we have much more in common than not.  I find we may agree on politics or a favorite food or simply in relishing these last days before winter hits.  The things that unite us are so much more gargantuan than the things that separate us.

And then, inevitably, I find myself thinking about what it would be like to grow up in the really rough parts of Denver as a young, black female.  Having worked in Denver Public Schools, I know that the education is about as thorough and quality as a safety check point in a small, off-the-map airport.  I know that a lot of my students didn't have a parent at home because they were working two jobs just to pay rent.  And I know a lot of my students were lonely.  So terribly, desperately alone.

And if you do the addition on that equation, you find a really lost, scared human.  And it is no wonder, really, that they may find themselves in bed with someone they shouldn't or sticking a needle full of something in an arm.  It's no wonder that when kids like I was sit at the kitchen table with their parents, working on their homework, another fraction of the population is searching for any place and any person to call home.

And so I remind myself, again and again, that we are all so much alike.  If only we could listen long enough to appreciate just how much we should love one another.  And we should, truly.  It's not some cheesy, stereotypical line.  It is the truth.  What we owe one another, every single other living thing in this universe, is the love, compassion, and respect of acknowledging them in whatever place they may find themselves.

Let's be clear that life is hard.  Life is so, so, so impossibly demoralizing.  It is full of loss and sadness and sometimes a desperate loneliness that seems like it will never dissipate.  But life, above all, is beautiful.  It is two lovers sitting on a park bench, holding hands in the moonlight.  It is the irreversible love of a parent for their child.  It is the ridiculous connection we're capable of with the natural environment.  This world, this very one that seems so drearily long and difficult and exhausting, is truly a place of enchantment.

It is all the richer for each and every patient I see, in whatever state they arrive.  It is richer, even, as a result of all the angry, lost souls.  And it is all the richer, especially (my dearest), for containing you.

You, my friend, are beautiful.  I owe my life to you.  And to all the oh so very lost souls in the world who make my longest days that much more tolerable.

I spend more time every day doing worthless things.  I use my hours stalking my old friends and gaping at who has gained weight or who has married or who has ten children and another on the way than I do thinking about important thoughts or talking to those I love about the state of our respective worlds.  It is easier to turn the computer on and to turn my mind off than to live vigilantly and deliberately.  It is easier for me to be part of a mock world than to venture forth and say hi to my neighbor.

Being honest is so difficult.  Not honest in the biblical sense of telling the truth about having eaten the last cookie from the jar, but in the sense that seeing reality as it is becomes more difficult as one ages.  We are all storytellers; we see something happen in the world and internalize it in our minds and that is the fiction that we choose to live.  When I was younger, however, I was less scared of the things I perceived.  I was more liable to look someone in the eye and tell them precisely what I saw, fictional storytelling or not.

When I was in Africa and I was torn apart by the rage I felt at organized religion for decimating the indigenous tribes, I wrote vehemently and passionately, journaling with tears pouring from my eyes at the injustices I had seen.  I sat inside a tent in the middle of the Maasai Mara, my world inalterably changed by the experience I was having and I simply felt it.  I cried until there were no tears left and I listened to "The Arrival" until it put me to sleep almost every night I was there.  I was livid.  I was seething.  The childlike glee with which I had approached the world for 21 years prior was disappearing.  I was becoming something new.  Altered.  Permanently.  For better or worse.  But I was, in the least, very much alive to the newer version of myself.

In the wake of the shootings in Aurora, a gun threat at work, and an absolutely joyous celebration with good family, I have written precisely zero letters to document or process my world.  I have sat in the passengers seat and simply allowed life to happen to me.

I am edging dangerously close to a stereotype in saying that I "allowed life to happen to me."  This is something people say to one another all the time in coffee houses.  It is vague and lacks meaning and is probably most often muttered by self-help coaches.  It is an avoidance of saying something with merit or value.  It is a filler.

What we should say instead of such a meaningless phrase, is that which digs at us most deeply.  We should decry the shootings in Aurora as a beyond awful event, as something that rips at the fundamental fabric of the way most of us see the world.  We should decry the death of so many young people as utterly, terribly heart breaking.  We should look with pity in one moment and rage in the next at the shooter and try with all that we have not to hate him and not to want to kill him with our bare hands and not to want to put him against a wall and shoot each limb individually and watch as he suffers so that the world will hold some form of karmic justice.  And we should not, in a moment of enlightenment (however brief these moments are), be ashamed to admit that there is room for empathy for a human being so tortured and sad and alone that he would go so far as he did on that Friday morning.  It should be okay to go from hatred to love to anger to deep sadness in a matter of moments.

What I should say, instead of saying nothing, is that incidents like that remind me of my own mortality.  They remind me of the fact that I might not wake up tomorrow.  That, despite my youth, I am still vulnerable.  And, if nothing else, I should admit that sometimes there is not order and there is not justice for those who are good.  Sometimes things just don't make sense.  And although there is often overwhelming beauty here, there is also the potential for heartbreaking tragedy.  Gut-wrenching, life-altering pain that leaves the loved ones of victims on a path completely altered from the one they presumed they were walking.  There is room for all these things in life, it is simply nice to believe that perhaps, the events that leave us altered for the better happen more often.

What I would like to learn to do again is to be honest.  To write what I think, without shame or embarrassment.  As I have gotten older, it has been hard to give an opinion on any event because my world has become so gray.  I used to be more black and white, to cling to my beliefs vehemently.  Now, though, I can see a picture in a hundred different ways over the course of five minutes.  I am less certain than ever about truth.  Less certain than I have ever been that it exists at all.  And if there is no truth, how can one share what one sees?

Perhaps even more frighteningly, if there is no truth, is there meaning?

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.

The Forgotten

The real thing to do is simply to write. Write each day. Even if the words are incoherent and strung together illogically. Write even though you have nothing to say, write even when you draw a blank. Put the words down, see how they weave themselves, and wonder at the product. I think many people have the same thoughts, but those who are most successful have a natural inclination for where certain words should be placed. Place them here, replace one word with another, and an entire phrase can take on a different meaning. One word can have a clear, specific connotation that can be changed by the placement of a specific word in front or behind. Write simply because you can and it is evidence that you are here in this day, thinking and breathing, perhaps happy or sad, but here nonetheless.

I often wonder what I would be without the words written here. Would I be the same person, with the same complexity, views, and depth? I think about my students and who they are without an advanced skill for any language. They cannot write their own feelings much better than they can spell their own names in cursive. What do they do with the toil of thoughts spinning in their minds? How do they express their desire to escape the reservation, to run with all their might from a life into which they were born? Without the correct words to say, how can one know to any extent one's deepest desires? Or is my language a crutch? Because I know the words perhaps I inhibit my own emotion, cutting the depth of it with the shallow words we have used to label emotion?

I have had such a difficult time writing about my experience and I keep writing that again and again as though it will change the fact that I have ignored this journal for the last few months. But the honest truth is that I do not know what to say. To some extent, I think a part of you has to shut down to do the job I am doing. How could I over analyze what I see out there without going slightly insane? If I didn't remove myself from it, if I faced it with full force like I did my college experience, could I bare to wake each morning? And so I do not write and I do not play the piano and I stare night after night at a movie and wake the next morning praying that I am doing some good in the middle of nowhere in a place I do not know, understand, and cannot pinpoint on any map that currently exists. It is a vacuum of thought because it can be nothing else. If I were to truly face the circumstance, I would be overwhelmed with something--loneliness perhaps--and utterly unable to tolerate my new reality.

Life is too quick. It is already November AFTER I graduated and I am in a whirlwind of "saving the world" through teaching. I am doing something through teaching. I am experiencing a part of the world I did not know existed nor could I imagine existing.

It is difficult to put into words the isolation of the place I live. Imagine driving for one hundred miles (two hours) from the biggest city you know and ten minutes outside of it, the landscape turning dry and brown, the dust collecting under your wipers as you drive, and the only thing in sight being a field of dry, brown tumbleweed. Imagine driving mile after mile without seeing a person, without passing a car, turning on streets without names that do not appear on maps and are often unpaved and quickly destroy any motor vehicle. Imagine being two hours from a grocery store, from a hospital, from "civilization." In so many ways, it offers respite from city bothers, but also teaches a lesson in the necessity of others. Even in a city, you are not entirely alone. In a city you can sit in a coffee shop of bustling people and feel their humanness. Out there you are crushed by the big blue sky, alone with the exception of one sane roommate who is equally stifled by the openness and insurmountable problems faced by the students in that area.

It is one thing to put it into words, to paint the brown landscape, and another thing to live. It is trying and tiring and terrifying and it is something I never imagined myself doing. There are so many words to describe it and none at all because no one who hasn't lived that far from other people can imagine it. A school that sits on a hill, not surrounded by a town, but isolated from everything and everyone. And I cannot understand how any school district or person in the world could be happy in that environment.

People need people to find contentment and there are none in Pueblo Pintado.

It is another country, one that is indescribable because it has no name and no one is from the place. The people are Americans but not treated as such. There is no town, no typical American activities. There is only a school and about a hundred lost children. And a school district and state that neglects the fact it exists. Even Teach for America, to an extent, has forgotten those of us placed there. We are and we are not. We exist and we do not. We are, essentially, forgotten.