Plenty More To Do
After a year of memorable moments, memorable achievements, memorable trips, I feel compelled to share one of my favorite and most underrated. But let me first put the past twelve months in perspective, because that last, best, and least regarded moment is probably worth the context.
Little more than a week after the terrifying violence of January 6, my class hosted a sitting U.S. Congresswoman, someone who was there that day, with students asking her questions that brought a room full of teachers to tears. Two months after that, Melissa and I visited the Virginia graves of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, each marking the origins of an already imperfect and imperiled union. The week after visiting those graves, I published a memoir on teaching, the second book of my life, hoping to inspire more of my colleagues to stay in the profession. By the end of April, I had written and published my first children’s book, composed for my wonderful and blissful students, about a group of kids enduring the pandemic with the most endearing sense of humor. And by May, I stood in the auditorium of Lancaster Bible College, applauding my brother as he walked the stage, graduating after more than a decade of classes.
The world looked reasonably bright.
In June, we flew out to Lake Tahoe, drove down to Yosemite, and spent a day with a beloved friend I hadn’t seen in two decades. Less than a week after we got home, I flew back out to Los Angeles, walked along Sunset Blvd, Mulholland Drive, Venice Beach, Malibu, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I also stepped onto the original Air Force One, bowed my head at the graves of Nixon and Reagan, and witnessed the horrifying homelessness that adorned Southern California’s richest communities, an observation enshrined in my memory when I saw the tents and the tarps below the land where Robert Kennedy was killed in 1968.
Maybe the world looked a little less bright, but I remained hopeful.
July was a personal and professional turning point, with a left shoulder surgery that still plagues me five months later, a rise in COVID cases that led to an unproductive and vile war between politicians, parents, and educators, and the news that several people I cared about were either getting, fighting, or losing someone to this exhausting pandemic, including students, friends, and family members. Everything after that felt like a ridiculous and frustrating blur. I certainly won’t deny the last six months had a few positive, comical, and optimistic moments, but I’ve been feeling pretty beat up lately, going through a lot of the motions that come with the holidays and being with family. Case in point, I drove an hour on Tuesday to a shoulder MRI that got cancelled at the last second, which seemed like par for the course.
And then last night, with my parents safely back home in PA, with the house to ourselves, I set down a book I was reading, stepped into the hallway, and took note of all the gorgeous decorations my wife had spent so many hours and days setting up around the house. It was just after midnight and she was downstairs in the dining room, working quietly on a puzzle. I went down to tell her not just how much I loved her, but how amazing she was. What I didn’t realize was how sad and low she was already feeling, worn down not just by this year, but by the past three years of fighting for silence, wrestling with muscles and tendons and nerves, trying to get the pulsing, scratching, piercing sounds in her head to quiet down for once, for good. So we talked and held hands until tears became laughter, until her forehead was resting on my forehead, until we finished setting up the border of a complicated and two-sided puzzle, together, around 2am. There is plenty more to do, plenty more to put together, but that simple, underrated moment might just be my favorite of 2021.
Much love to all on this otherwise lovely afternoon.
