Don't Mess with (me when I am leaving) Texas

I move very, very soon. My messy mid-packing apartment is a constant reminder of the rapidly approaching departure. Currently, we don’t know where exactly I am moving to; this includes both city and type of residence. Joe has bounced up and down and then up and then down again and then back up this season enough that we haven’t settled on what we should do about the roof over our heads. Polly says she isn’t worried about it.

We totalled up how many miles I have traveled this year thus far: 18,000 miles between January and today. The world is 24,0000 around so I am almost guaranteed to have traveled “around the world” by the end of the season. To those of you who have jobs like George Clooney in Up in the Air, you have far more patience than I. 

Can you imagine if Clooney sat next to you on a flight?
I might not get off the plane.
Oh, come on, even Joe might stay on the flight next to George!

Things I will miss about Texas:

Good Co. barbecue 

Goode Co. on Kirby

Dr. Pepper
My familyPeople saying Coke, but really meaning any carbonated beverage
“Y’all”
Cowboy boots in a non-novelty way
The Guadalupe River. By the way, this is my first summer in 4 years to not be working at Mystic and my first summer in 16 years to realize I can't go back and work there.... or be a camper.

The Guad at Camp Mystic's Waterfront

My friends
Steak
The Galleria
My church
Finding any item of clothing you can imagine can, in fact, bear the Texas flag

I think my sister owns one of these
shirts. They have
the real thing too, if that's what you're
looking for

The Rodeo
St. Arnold’s and Shiner Light Blonde
Swimming in October
Texas Country Music

In honor of my hiatus from Texas (as if four years of college were not enough), I am going to write a few little vignettes about the Texas I know, the Texas that has been created around me and the one we so love to romanticize when we have to be away.


Water from the sprinkler turned to steam on the concrete. Everything was wet and hot. Even the cars’ hoods looked like water as the heat rippled over them.  Somewhere in the distance an ambulance drove by, its siren’s tone getting lower as it passed. Zoe played in the soil with naked Barbies. Her toddling sister slept inside, her hair curling on her forehead from the baby sweat. Later their father would come home with his dry cleaning and golf shoes. Later they would eat Kraft macaroni and cheese and drink milk from cups they bought at the circus. Zoe’s was a pink elephant. Its trunk was the handle and it had long black eyelashes. She made the Barbies do the splits and tried to make them hold handstands in the grass. One of the Barbie’s hair was brown, which meant she wasn’t really a Barbie, but Barbie’s friend Susan. Or Brenda. Some name that was not Barbie and did not have an “i” with a heart on her box. A boy rode his bike, without training wheels, down the street. Zoe wanted her baby sister to wake up so they could fill up the inflatable pool and make the Barbies, and Brenda, go skinny dipping. Zoe liked to go under the water and open her eyes. She could see the pebbles and sticks poking at the bottom of the soft plastic pool and her hair stuck to her face when she finally came out. Her mom did not like it when she put her face under. Her mother, now, was moving the sprinkler to make sure her begonias and monkey grass got enough to drink. It had been many days since she watered the plants so much of it was dead. Little brown buds fell off and ran in streams to the hot, wet street.

The second canoe was smoother than the first. The Guadalupe water was still and green before the dam and we could see turtles heads pop up and the outline of their shells. Sweat prickled on my back like the insects that landed on the water. Their legs twitched and spasmed, then they flew to another spot. Or went to the tall grass on the road side of the river. I asked West if he wanted to turn back before the dam; he said no. We didn’t talk for a while after that, just listened to the sound of our paddles dip in the water and scrape against our old metal canoes. Sometimes my Dr. Pepper cans rattled by my feet. Sometimes West was so silent I could have sworn he was a Hill Country Indian. His bandana was tied around his head and his shirt, long discarded, was tucked into the seat of his shorts over his butt. He stopped paddling and looked at me while he took a drink from his water bottle.
“You’re doing a pretty good job there,” he said to me.
“I like the river.” He smiled but didn’t say anything and went back to his silent paddling. West’s back was burning and I was sure that mine was red, too. Later we would have to take turns putting cold aloe vera on each other’s backs. West would tell me to put it on my hands first before rubbing it in. I wouldn’t say anything. And maybe he would pat my shoulder as a way of telling me he was finished. The dam was upon us. We had to pick up the canoes one at a time and walk them down. Though the water was more shallow, the river floor was clay and dipped down in tubs. West got a leech on his forearm. He pulled and flicked at it till the leech fell off.
“So do you have to suck the poison out?” I asked.
“No, that’s snakes. This will just need to be cleaned. Plus, if I was bitten by a snake, you would have to suck the poison because I would be too weak.”
“I would do that. For you.”
“I know.”
The current moved us for a while without having to paddle except to stay straight. We would need to turn around soon to make it back before dark. Or we would just stay on the river till the breeze picked up and the water turned black beneath our canoes.


They sat on top of the picnic table with their feet on the bench, just like they had done in high school. They’d eat cafeteria yogurt and talk about their days, uniform skirts tucked between their thighs as to attempt modesty. They had on jeans and boots so there was less balancing involved now. There was also no yogurt, just some beers in plastic cups and a poorly sugared funnel cake. Marcy wore a push up bra that night and it was riding up her back and she was certain one of the straps was twisted. When she got dressed she looked like a sexy cowgirl, she thought. But now, sitting next to Allison and a few hours into the night, she felt like she had tried too hard. You could tell she had tried to look like a sexy cowgirl, and what she really was was a sexy cowgirl’s overly primped friend. Allison, who did not own a push up bra, wanted to get a cinnamon roll and maybe ride the ferris wheel. They got up to find the tent with the cinnamon rolls, but there was a cluster of high school students flirting and laughing too loudly. Marcy suggested they still wait in line, but Allison said she changed her mind about the cinnamon roll and she just wanted to go sit and watch the ferris wheel and finish their beers. Marcy had wanted to finish her beer in line with the high schoolers, but followed Allison back to the picnic table that now had two Hispanic boys playing with one of the prize stuffed animals. It looked like a squid. Marcy almost made a joke about things that look like squids; she decided against it though.  They watched the boys play for a while then looked back wordlessly at the blinking lights of the ferris wheel.

The Heels Were Made for Teaching

Bookshelf at Shakespeare and Co. in Paris, France
One of my study abroad trips in college

“Wait, what do you mean ‘Free Read Day’? I don’t get it." This was the general response from my students when I told them to bring a book, no iPads, Kindles, eBooks, magazines or comics, to read in class last week. (Note: A student brought Captain Underpants and actually tried to make an argument as to why he could read it as a junior for Free Read Day. A book that comes with stickers is not going to fly for Free Read Day.)

This face would probably shock
my students

When they were unable to bring a book to school, I let them borrow some of mine.  
I shocked my students with the fact that the books I gave them were not 17th century poetry or written in Old English. The books I gave them were by modern and contemporary authors with some elements I know they weren’t expecting (“Uhm, this book says the word ‘beer,’ is that okay?”*) and with endings they certainly were not anticipating (“Why does he just walk away? Why did she still love him?”**). But I loved that they were holding books from my personal library, with my old notes and scribbles in the margins. I know they felt like they were looking into my diary or something, and in a way they were, by my diary as a reader not as a writer. 

Student A: “Are we going to find notes to ex- boyfriends in here?”
Me: “Would I still have the book if I wrote notes to other people in them?”
Student A: “Guess not.”
Me: “Besides, I would never let an ex-boyfriend keep my books.” Student B: “ Wait, You have ex-boyfriends?!”


This is the same reaction to my having a doctor’s appointment, as though we, teachers, do not go to doctors or get sick or leave the school campus for anything. Did I think that about my teachers? I guess to some degree I did, but when I came back to school after the doctor they were very inquisitive then as well.
Student A:“Are you sick?”
Me: “Nope.”
Student B:“Are you getting sick?”
Me: “No, just a check up.”
Student A again: “Were you faking sick?” 
Student B:"I bet you were faking."

Me: “Okay, time for a pop quiz.”

With this year winding down I keep wondering if I have made any impact on them besides my clothing-- which is still commented on daily (“I don’t think you have worn the same shoes twice,” said a male student to me. “Yes she has, she wore those before Christmas break. That is two times this school year, gosh, you idiot,” said a female student in my ‘defense.’)
But I think about my most influential teachers, the ones that made me want to be a teacher; I wonder if I have done even half of that, a third of that, for my students. I know they will not leave my class dreaming of being an English teacher. I know they will not go out and buy every Barry Hannah, Miranda July, Mary Karr book they can find.*** I know that they don’t think Shakespeare is cool or that Old English is easy. But I want so badly for them to think something, to learn something and most importantly, to feel something. That is what reading and writing does that no other subject really can, it makes you feel. I want my students to have read something, even if it was just a page and the rest was Sparknoted**** I hope they read it and had to look inward at themselves in a way they hadn’t before. We have talked about pride and greed and lust and love and death and creation and isolation and abandonment and fear-- oh goodness have we talked about fear. The most fearful thing, after all, is that someone can look at us and see us for who we truly are. Reading is that, it forces you to look inward. I want them so badly to have studied these themes and thought, I know what he/she feels, I have never killed anyone to become king, but I know how it feels to want something you can't have or I know what it feels like to be alienated, I know what it feels like to reach out and have no one reach back-- I didn't know other people ever felt that way.


I personally fear that I did nothing but show them how to write a proper thesis statement and insert page numbers on a Word doc.

A student from the other 10th grade teacher’s class said that all we do is color in my class. He said this to two of my girls who are not making very good grades and that all they have to do is stay in the lines in my coloring books and they will get an A. My teacher friend teaches the class that this conversation was taking place in. She said the girls stood up for me, but mostly for the rigor of my class.
“It is, like, hard. Like, we really have to read and learn stuff. She grades our essays hard and she makes us like, go deeper”
“Yeah, you don’t even know. It is a hard class and we are trying really hard to make good grades. It is hard.”
                         
The girls also told me about this the next day. We joked as a class about if that was actually the case, than they should all have made A’s on the test I just handed back, which they did not.


Being the young, new teacher I am an easy target. 
Being the young, new teacher means I will quip right back at you. 

My teacher friend said I should come meet this boy, the naysayer/hater, so I did.
Teacher Friend introduced us: “Boy (name omitted to protect his identity), this is Mrs. Savery. She wanted to meet you.”
I smiled big, gave a firm hand-shake and said, “Hi, Boy. I hear you really want to come to my class to color.”
He looked at me wide eyed and shocked, “Uhm, no.”
“Really? I think you should just stop by sometime. I have plenty of extra coloring books if you want a break from Mrs. Other 10th Grade Teacher’s class.”
“I like Mrs. Other 10th Grade Teacher’s class.”
“Oh, that’s great! I will let her know. But in case you need a break from all of your learning and test taking, I have all of the Crayola crayons you can imagine and we don’t even have grades. Just stick figures.”
Still shocked and stammering he said, “Oh, okay.”
“Okay, great! Well, come by sometime. It was so nice to meet you!”

My girls, who were listening from the hallway, all hugged me after like it was an episode of Saved by the Bell and I had confronted the bully. They thought it was, like, so awesome. Which it kind of was.
(Boss, if you are reading this, please don't fire me. I was standing up for my students! I was standing up for literature!)

What was even better was that the next day a few students stayed after class to tell me how much they had learned this year and what a good teacher they thought I was.
“I would take your class every year if I could. Even if there was a coloring class, I would take yours instead!”

What did we learn from this, class?
We learned that teachers talk. That you shouldn’t talk about what you don’t know.  That maybe I have done something for my students.

And don’t mess with the teacher in the red-soled shoes.







*Reading Larry Brown's Big Bad Love; which is not, in fact, about love being big or bad. Well, maybe a little bad.
** Reading "Up In Michigan" after I told them that Gertrude Stein told Hemingway it was the cruelest story she had ever read. And it is pretty cruel. So of course, they wanted to read it.
*** All amazing authors, very contemporary and not for everyone.
****Sparknoted: a verb meaning read the first and last page of a book and used Sparknotes for the rest.