Derailed Discovery

February 2019

She knew there would be no other school now. After all, what could ever match a campus nestled among evergreens, populated with eager young minds hellbent on claiming their empowered womanhood, ready to devour all she had to offer them? 

There was more to consider now. Mainly, the ever thinning tightrope balance of self-hood and parenthood and teacher-hood and wife-hood. She knew the public educator’s life, what the job relentlessly demanded of a person. She wanted more for herself; longed for the envious ease of mindspace. 

No, this moment was a closing chapter. The series of her life was ready to begin a new novel, one that didn’t take place in a classroom. 

March 2020

The curved monitor was a monstrosity, awkward to grip. It slid down her slick palms, and she attempted to push it back into a more secure position with the top of her thigh. She paused at the top of the parking lot; only a month into the new office space, and  moving again. 

For weeks they had tracked the spread, watched the virus jump from country to country, certain it couldn’t cross an ocean. And then, there it was. Cases like wildfire across Seattle. Parties, vacations, field trips canceled, dominoes tipping one by one. Everyone sent home.

She stared at the mountains in the distance, the day a gray haze. Fear bubbled, a faint simmer at her throat. She drove home to start the temporary isolation, slowing her car at a light. As she waited for the green, she wondered how many of the people in the cars around her were like her. Abandoning their office spaces for the protection of home. Cocooning in; safe and lonely. The light glowed green, and as traffic began to move, she was struck by the acute sense that she would never see the office again.

September 2020

She was wrong.

In a cruel reversal of that March day, she did see the office again as she returned items no longer hers.

The writing was on the wall, maybe even in bold; she just didn’t see it. There was a message about layoffs followed quickly by an entire team meeting invite and…bam! Less than 18 hours later, she and her team were another pandemic casualty.

January 2021

The halls stank like the stale pages of a neglected book. She had been here before, but she truly thought she had left these stories behind. Dammit, she had been on that shiny new adventure! 

But now? Now she was just another salmon in the river of bodies flowing through the overcrowded halls from classroom to classroom, leaning in so she could hear voices muffled by masks. 

Maybe the silver lining was the familiarity of this world – numbers, equations, students. The quest to convince reluctant teenagers they could do this, if only they paid a bit of attention. She knew how to navigate this world – she was good at it. It was a skill she could lean back on because she had to. Had to because what else was there? Weeks of a job hunt, hundreds of resumes submitted and only a handful of responses, most of them rejections. The whole thing felt like desperation. One day salaried, the next not, and the only way she could slow the tsunami crush of panic was to apply, apply, apply. 

Then there was this. A teaching job midyear, mid-pandemic. She knew she was a shoe in and would probably be one of a few qualified candidates. Maybe this whole experience was the universe’s sign. Girl, do what you’re good at. It was a solution, after all. 

February 2022

That fear-suck simmer has been on a low boil for years, and sometimes she wonders what the hell the effects of such a prolonged just-make-it-to-tomorrow mindset will be.

Covid cut short the job meant to buy her time while she figured out her next move, what her next career would be. 

Yet, here she is, still teaching, stuck in her Plan B. Every morning when that damn alarm chirps before the sun is even a blip in the sky she thinks, “Is this really it?”She fries her thousandth egg breakfast and thinks about how she doesn’t know fuck about Waiting for Godot, but she’d probably make a great character in it today.