Remembering that the kids are the heroes is, today, the only thing that has returned hope to my weary soul.
I am tired. The tiredness I feel goes deep down into my bones. At my core I am tired.
A week of finals tutoring always does this to me. It is especially difficult in December when I am also shopping, baking, and crafting with little ones.
I have four hour sessions, broken into two two hour sessions, with my students, to cover the first half of a history or government class. Tutoring history and government is emotionally draining. I teach what I teach because I want to change the world. I tell my students the history of their country and the structure of their government so that they know their rights, so that they understand where we came from.
So we can make it better.
I am invested in this process, deeply.
“Why Don’t You Move Out?”
All the time. I get this all the time.
Even tonight, when I asked a student, after I explained the structure of the US government: “So? What do we do if we are unhappy with our government?”
And he, sweet, naive kid, responded, “Move out?”
“No! Hell no we don’t move out. We make it better!”
“Oh!” He seemed relieved.
“You vote, you march, you protest, you participate, you stay informed, you speak out, you demand your rights. It is your job to challenge your government, to question authority. You can change the country. It belongs to you.”
You can.
I believe it. I know it. I study history. I have seen it happen.
But teaching it, empowering people, supporting people, being the one who rah rah rahs all the time is fucking exhausting.
Mama Status
And when I’m not doing it at work, I am doing it at home.
“Tell Celaya she can come back to work with me for my last session tonight. Dress her in warm jammies and have her bring her iPad.” I texted Carlos on my way home on my break.
I had left my breast pump supplies at work the night before so I couldn’t pump milk, which meant I needed to run the milk that I pumped on break home for Matilda’s last feeding.
I debated sending that text. I was feeling selfish (self care!) I wanted the drive home at night to myself. I knew she would probably interrupt my session a million times. I knew she would bug me for snacks.
I also knew she would be thrilled to be thought of. I knew her little girl heart would burst at the chance to come hang out with me for my last two hours at work, up past her bedtime, being the cute kid in front of all my coworkers and students.
I also knew it would be a huge help to Carlos to only have to put one kid to bed.
So I Decided to Send the Text
I drove home and found Celaya waiting for me at the elevator on the top floor when I got out. She was jumping out of her skin with excitement, shrieking with glee.
I wouldn’t take back my decision for anything.
And she was great, coming over to my side of the room to hug my leg while I stood at the white board and drilled the Bill of Rights into my student’s head. She headed out into the center to explore a bit. She watched her iPad. She was, essentially, thoroughly, Celaya.
We stopped on the way home, me at the end of more than a week straight of teaching my heart out, her up way past bed time. We went through the McDonald’s drive thru. We have only ever been to McDonald’s once before. I bought her a McFlurry.
She played music on her iPad, she took two bites of her ice cream, and she fell, deeply, asleep.
I carried her upstairs, I put her in bed, I looked in on her sister in the crib next to her, and I came out to write.
Hope
I have spent all day sad, tired, angry (lots of fucks), and frustrated.
I feel at times like these, when our country is headed brutally in the wrong direction, like I am not doing enough, like nothing I ever do can be enough.
Sometimes I spend every single waking hour of the day, for days on end, working to make the world a better place, only to have it crash down on me with government action like the tax bill passed today.
But then I look at my students’ faces, I look back at my child asleep, dreaming of a bright future, I think of the work I do, and it dawns on me, a glimmer of hope.
No, I do not place any hope in a strong future for our kids.
But I do place a lot of hope in our kids for the future.
I am building a better future through our kids. I am teaching, raising, loving, empowering people who will be the future. That is how I make a difference.
In the last election, a running theme I heard was that we are the heroes we have been waiting for. But we are uneducated, uninformed, and, up til now, unmotivated.
The kids today, the ones we are sending out into the future, are the real heroes. We can wake them up, shake them up, educate them, inform them, and motivate them.
That is my hope. It is what keeps me going, spent, exhausted, delirious with the need for days on end of self care.
The kids.
The kids are the heroes. They are the hope.