December 2, 2022
Looking back to February: Two Turtle Doves
February began with snow. Lots of snow.
Here is a memory that’s concrete. I can still enter the headspace where it exists, where I am part of that moment and I can stretch it to the present, now. I was alert and present then and therefore I am alert and present to it now. Maybe there’s something about a fire that makes that happen, and it’s human nature to seek it: for warmth, for coming together, for light, for feeling alive. I love our fireplace.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, places started opening up while our lockdown continued here. The Beths were playing in Phoenix and apparently Phoenix was and had been fully mask-optional and “open.” We drove to Phoenix to hear The Beths at the Valley Bar and they were amazing.
It was strange to be in downtown Phoenix and see restaurants open and everything open as if there had never been a lockdown or mask mandates. I had heard students and their families going to Phoenix and returning to Albuquerque, but one really had to travel to see the stark differences. And that’s the story of the last two years everywhere: nothing was consistent anywhere.
The best part was that my younger brother, his wife, my nephew (turning 2 in a few days!), and his mother-in-law were also in Phoenix that weekend for my sister-in-law’s birthday. We hadn’t planned on that, but it was great fun to surprise my sister-in-law and have dinner together.
That month, I also travelled to California to see the rest of my family and had a wonderful time with my nieces.
A few days, maybe a week, after we returned the governor issued lifted the mask mandate. School districts had to give the order and the newly elected school board followed suit. I have a photo of my students throwing their masks up in the air as soon as that announcement came on the news. It was during 6th period. End of the day. Nothing else was happening but that. It’s surreal to look at those photos. Yes, the 2021-2022 school year was hard, but my students were so in sync with each other and my energy. It made for a really unique learning environment. Prior to August of 2021, remote learning had lasted nearly 14 months, longer than most districts. The hardest part was that other districts, states, countries, were at least having a dialogue about some end in sight to being completely remote and at least trying for hybrid. Not my district. In April of 2021 we did go hybrid and it was worse than remote if that’s even possible. August of 2021 was our first attempt at “normal”–distance seating and masks and ever-changing attendance policies made it absolutely not typical. Maybe that was the bond the students from last year and I shared: we were all just so happy to be back in the classroom, with or without masks. We used literature as our anchor and sail and came together despite the country falling apart. A group of girls in wood-shop class made me this treasure chest and it’s something I will always cherish.
I wonder about this cohort and how they are going to view the world ten years from now.
It is only now, while typing this–no drafting, just words as they come–am I realizing that it’s going to take some years to process everything. The kettledrum of “return to normal: nothing to look back and see” maybe loud, but memory is a thin membrane and I feel the louder the orders to keep marching forward, the higher the chances of the sound wave within to burst us open, to ourselves.
February WAS a good month, in a year that otherwise has felt like it barely happened due to the entropy. In theory entropy is nature’s way of preparing to start over, perhaps it is so and in action.