We watch the same sunset
It’s good to practice writing a gratitude list. One day you might be too tired to create fresh, hopeful ideas and can rely on gratitudes you already know by heart. Nature usually takes me out of a bad head space and most thoughts are forgotten when I’m lost in the wings of a dragonfly.
Tuesday I was driving home from a long day at school, sleep deprived and not exactly proud of the way I had shuffled through my work. The clouds to the west were streaked with a fading orange. This was the same color that made me happy at daybreak, when I saw the sky on my way to school.
A sunrise and a sunset reminds us that there is beauty in the bookends of darkness.
The chemotherapy that was intended to kill dad’s cancer cells decided to attack his kidneys. The blood test caught the damage quickly, and it might be OK. My step-mom Lynda and Auntie Pat rushed him to the hospital, where no visitors were allowed and no hospital beds were vacant. He had to wait, alone, wearing the athletic shorts he was wearing before the rush out of the house. He likes those shorts because they don’t fall down after his rapid weight loss.
We were glad he was at the hospital. He’s close to folks who will check on him and know what to do. But then there’s people coming and going, and these people are strangers. In haste, he forgot the charger for his iPad, and people might join the waiting room because they have COVID … But you just can’t think about all those things because it’ll drive you crazy.
Tuesday morning I was reading “The Outsiders” to my 7th Grade distance learning class. I’m thankful I teach online. It’s lonely in my classroom. I dash to the gal’s room when I know all the students are behind closed doors. Yet, isolation means I can visit my Dad on most weekends without fear of bringing the pandemic to his living room.
“The Outsiders,” is the best book ever for hooking children into reading novels and the worst book for teaching young girls to have crushes on bad boys. We recently reviewed plot elements. We made predictions about our story, and which twist in the novel may have been our climax. The children have also learned foreshadowing, so they knew that chapter 9 was likely to hit some somber notes.
The kids probably weren’t expecting their teacher to cry.
In the book, Ponyboy and Twobit rush to Johnny’s bedside at the hospital. Johnny was a hero after saving a group of children from a burning church, but his back was snapped from a burning hunk of building.
“Stay gold,” Johnny gasps before he dies.
It was the sad part, as the children had predicted. In the same chapter, Dally pulled an unloaded “heater” from his waistband and is shot like a clay pigeon at a New England lawn party.
This was the morning after my dad had finally been given a hospital bed, and COVID prevented us from being at his bedside.
My kids know about dad’s cancer battle. I’m not well-trained in hiding my emotions. After the business with Johnny and Dally, I started to lose my teacher façade.
I was grateful when two sweet students volunteered to continue reading the story out loud.
Likely, I was not the only reader who had a hard time with Chapter 9. Some of my students have had COVID sweep through their households. A few have lost members of their family. By working together, we managed to keep the pages turning.
Next, it was time for history. I put on the red, fur-lined hat and delved into the history of Santa Claus. Our timeline plopped St. Nicholas of Myra before the reign of
Justinian, and long before the fall of Constantinople. Later, we read the epic poem of the Night Before Christmas, 1823, which forever changed holiday shopping in America. We ended by talking about the cost of virtual reality headsets.
At the lunch break, I was able to reach my dad by phone.
If all goes well, he’ll be home before the winter solstice and our family will resume joking about whether elves from the shelves are eating the Trader Joe’s chocolatecovered peppermint cookies.