Signs of Life (30 page)

“Was that better?” I yell to her. She yells something back.

“What?” I hold my hand to my ear.

“
Kick!
You keep forgetting to kick!” Kick. Right. I’ve got to remember that.

On the running front, things are going fine except for the fact that I am working with about a nine-minute-mile pace. Actually, let’s just say it’s somewhere between nine and eleven minutes. Every now and then I get Kai to go in the jogging stroller, which is awesome training. If I can push a twenty-pound baby for three miles, then maybe I’ll be able to finish six on my own.

I was looking forward to getting on Josh’s bike. Ever since Josh died, seeing cyclists on the road has always bothered me. Josh was an avid cyclist even after his trip across the country. When I see cyclists from a distance, they all look the same. For almost a year my heart has jumped every time I’ve seen riders fly down the street. I always think it’s Josh. It drives me crazy that this happens to my brain, and I really, really want it to stop. Somehow I believe that if I become a cyclist I can eradicate this problem.

So far biking has been fun. Actually, I can’t say I’ve been out
cycling yet, but I have taken Josh’s bike out for a few rides. I really do enjoy doing something that I know Josh loved. I feel like we get to have a conversation that we never had while he was here. Or at least it’s as close as I can get.

But something else has happened in the last few weeks. Ever since I took the bike out of the basement, I feel like I’ve reawakened the whole house. It’s like that scene in
Hocus Pocus
when the kids light the right candles and the witches appear, or when Aladdin moves the lamp. Something has changed. Now that I’ve turned the air-conditioning on, the house smells different. It smells the same way it did last summer right before I left for Miami. Things hit me unexpectedly during the day and I’m finding it harder and harder to keep it together. The Red Wings are in the Stanley Cup finals again and last night during game five, I cried during the first period. Who cries during the first period of a hockey game? But I could see Josh sitting on the couch in his Pavel Datsyuk jersey. We would have been in the basement together for every game.

The other day I got a letter from Dr. Harnish, the minister who officiated at Josh’s funeral. It was short. I opened it and read the first few lines: “First anniversary—Josh’s death.” It said that the next year may not be easier, but if I’ve made it through one year, I can certainly make it through the next. I just sat there and cried with the letter in my hand. I know this day is coming soon, and for some reason it hurts just waiting for it.

Every day I think about what I was doing last year at this time. What were we doing in June of last year? June 8? June 9? And we had no idea those were his last days.

The first Tuesday in June is the last staff meeting of the year for Berkley High School. I decide to make an announcement about my triathlon and let people know how they can donate money. I am nervous about this whole thing for a number
of different reasons. First of all, I am a horrible salesperson. I hate asking people for money and I hate pushing a product. If I ever did go into sales, I know I would end up telling people, “You know, you make a good point, and now that you mention it, you really don’t need our product. No really … I totally get it.” Even this time around, I’m pushing a cure for blood disease and I still get nervous about asking people for help.

Second, even though my job as a teacher includes the skill of standing in front of a group of people and delivering important information, I am horrendously nervous about public speaking in front of my staff meeting. I have a hard time talking in front of adults as it is, but I know that the idea of the triathlon and my brief explanation will conjure up serious emotions in my brain and I don’t know if I can hold it together. It may be my grief group breakdown all over again. Over the last week, I’ve been practicing my speech relentlessly. I say it in the shower, I say it while I rock Kai to sleep. I say it while I fold laundry and empty the dishwasher.

Finally, co-workers are such an intimidating group for me. They know what happened and they’ve all been incredibly supportive, but the hard part is that nobody ever has a profound conversation or connection with a co-worker. I do not like when people at work try to hug me or touch me; it makes me really uncomfortable. Adequate proximity, both emotional and physical, is a must in the workplace. Two years ago Dennis, my fellow English teacher, gave me a hug right before winter break and it was a horrible experience. I turned bright red and left awkwardly afterward, and he spent all of his Christmas vacation thinking he had done something wrong, probably because my posthug expression was similar to that of a boy who had just been made to pull his pants down for a stranger. The worst part was, after Christmas break Dennis approached me and we had
to have a conversation
about
the Christmas hug. I had to explain that he had not done anything wrong, that I was just a really awkward person. He said he felt so guilty because he could sense that I was uncomfortable. We never talked about it again.

Everyone is always a little on guard at work. I, for one, have never really opened up to my colleagues, except through thank-you cards, but at school, it’s just not the time or place to make an emotional connection with people. But in my little speech, which is about three minutes, I have to say certain things. I fear one reaction: I will cry. I cannot cry.

The meeting arrives. I go last, right before we do “good of the order.” I’ve been thinking about my speech the entire meeting, so by this point I am sweating. Right as I stand up I start to wonder if I smell too. Despite my perspiration and potential body odor, I start to talk. I tell them I’m doing an Olympic distance triathlon and raising money for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. Then I have to get personal. I take a deep breath.

“Last summer I really needed help from other people.” My knees start to shake. They are visibly wobbling. Shit. “I needed help and hundreds of people, people I didn’t even know, did everything they could to get me through a very difficult time in my life. The people in this room are no exception.” My face is red hot. I can feel it. I look around the room. I am starting to make people feel awkward. Shit.

“This summer I’d like to do something to help other people.” I stop and swallow. My voice is about to break. Swallowing is the first sign that my nerves are slowly creeping up my body into my throat and mouth. If I don’t finish this soon, the high voice is going to break through. “Which is why I’ve decided to do this triathlon for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.”

I tell them that by tomorrow morning they will have a donation form and official letter in their mailboxes. Checks can be
written to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. I sit down as quickly as possible. I feel someone pat me on the back. I need to get out of here before the patting escalates.

I am relieved once the meeting is over. I run out the door in fear that people will want to talk to me, which I can’t really handle right now. I feel embarrassed that I still have a hard time talking in front of people about things that aren’t even directly about losing Josh. I go back to my room to pack up my stuff.

Paul, our athletic director, walks in the door. “Excuse me, Mrs. Taylor.” He always calls me Mrs. Taylor even though I’m one of the youngest people on the staff. I look up. He is holding a pen and a checkbook. “How do you spell leukemia?” He writes a check for one hundred dollars, hands it to me, and walks out of my room.

•  •  •

My juniors are currently writing their college essays. At the end of every eleventh-grade year, each student’s final writing assignment is to find a prompt from a college that he or she would like to apply to and write the essay. I see it as a starting point. In the fall of their senior year, they will revisit their essays with their twelfth-grade English teacher and hopefully continue to improve the essay. Some of them won’t use the essay they write, but it’s still good practice. Secretly, this is my favorite assignment to read.

I tell my students that I will not be grading in the traditional sense. I will be brutally honest with my feedback, but I won’t “grade them down” for a mediocre piece. If they make the necessary changes, they get full credit. The idea is that the lack of a numerical score will help them be a little more creative and edgy. These are honors students, so most of them are used to
asking the question, “What are you looking for?” They excel at following a format and analyzing a text. But the college essay is the opposite. In answer to the question, “What are you looking for?” the college essay would answer, “We are looking for the essay that
doesn’t
ask that question.”

In giving them some guidance, I encourage them to be honest. We read a few interesting essays and articles by college administrators about the dos and don’ts on admission essay writing. Even so, I know some of them will still go home and write something like “Being captain of the soccer team taught me a lot about myself.”

Many of the essay topics are the same from university to university. They ask the applicant to talk about a moment of personal discovery or a “setback.” As a teacher of literature, I see it as the university asking about one moment or event where the applicants lost their innocence, or at least part of it. For these essays, so many of my students talk about a time when, for whatever reason, they realized the world was not the easy, fun-loving place they thought it was.

Rebecca Adler wrote about her eating disorder, which I had always worried about with her. She said for years she thought that there were two factors in her life that meant everything: the number on the scale and how other people saw her. Now after diligently working with a therapist, a dietitian, and a physician, she is back on track. She said now she focuses her “control” on school and other healthy forms of competition. At one point in her essay she wrote, “If my mind has the power to make my organs fail, then all factors of my life can be manifested in a constructive way.” After I read this sentence I just had to stare at it for a while. People spend a lifetime using their brains to make decisions that hurt their bodies. As a junior in high school she’s realized that her brain is a powerful force—so powerful it
can seriously hurt her, but now she’s turned a corner. She’s not even eighteen yet. Over this sentence I write, “You are so smart.”

Emma Dorset wrote about losing her mom to cancer, which I never knew. The question asked about a setback and how you “resolved” it. Emma wrote, “It seems odd to try to describe how I have resolved the death of my mother.” I write, “Yes, amazing point.”
Resolution
is a stupid word to use when talking about death, whether it is of a mother or a spouse, or at least that’s how I’ve always felt about it. But instead of saying, Yes, I have resolved the death of my mother by appreciating each day more and not taking things for granted, she says, No, it can’t be resolved. It is irresolvable. And she’s right. It can’t be fixed. But she doesn’t wallow in this. She goes on to describe her life now. She admires her dad and helps her sister, because her mom would be terribly disappointed if she didn’t.

I half-expected Leah Simon’s essay to be some sort of protest against the idea of evaluating a person based on one story. With her reputation for being blunt, cunning, and horribly inappropriate, I thought it might start with something like “This writing prompt can lick it.” But she didn’t. Instead she wrote about a tradition that was important to her. When she was little, at Christmas all of her cousins and she would try to find the “glass pickle ornament” hidden on the Christmas tree at her grandma’s house. All of the kids loved the glass-pickle hunt, and all of the aunts and uncles would take pictures and then the grandma would tell the story of the glass-pickle ornament to a floor full of squirming children. It is a beautiful opening paragraph; she uses vivid imagery and creates an overall feeling of her childlike contentment for the tradition. The second paragraph reads, “As their adorable young toddlers turned into rebellious teenagers, the tradition began to die. Half of the family would be missing
due to a divorce in the family. There would be too much arguing for there to be laughing and sharing stories. The holiday times became a hassle, and rather than looking forward to it for weeks, I hoped I got the flu so I could stay home.” I didn’t write anything on her paper initially because it was fucking perfect. I wish I could have said that to Leah on Monday; no student would appreciate my use of a swear word in a compliment more than Leah. She is willing to admit that there was something in her life that brought her an innocent joy and with time, it died. I want to underline the part about the flu and write, “I can completely relate.”

There are others that are just as good as these. Some of the best essays don’t talk about death, disease, or divorce at all. Andrea Davenport wrote about her teeth. When she was little, her teeth were so bad she was ostracized from social groups and stripped of all potential friendships in grades three through five. Then she got her teeth fixed and everything changed. She talks about how she realized how superficial people really are, even though we try so hard to convince ourselves we’re not.

For four years I try to get them to see this happening in literature. Everyone, no matter who we are or where we come from, goes through something where we realize … what? Hard truths. People die. Parents fall out of love. Parents were never in love. Holidays suck. Friends are mean people too. Didn’t they get this when Gene jounces the branch and sends his best friend crashing to the ground? When Roger kills Piggy? When Romeo and Juliet commit suicide? In
The Color Purple
, Celie gets raped on page
one
, for crying out loud. Almost every protagonist or main character that we have read about since the ninth grade dies. So what am I teaching them? What are the themes in literature that carry over to actual life? Equality is only a dream. Negative behavior always repeats itself. Evil conquers good. People die.
We are powerless. Even when we make choices, we are still powerless.