Tales from a Teacher-Mama

Ahh, December, with all the holiday festivities, twinkling lights, smiling Santas, tasty cookies and goodwill to all! Tonight, Sarah seemed utterly bewildered that her daddy had yelled at her; “How can he yell in December?” she asked.

Her innocent child’s observation might lead you to believe that it’s because we’re “grown-ups” that we give in to stress during the holiday season, even yelling in December. But as a teacher, I’ll tell you that not only adults feel the pressure of the most wonderful time of the year. This is also the most dreadful time of the year.

Case in point: I had a rough day at school yesterday. The morning started out okay, with only minor resistance to get to work on daily tasks. But as the day wore on, it wore hard on one particular boy. I’ll call him Finn*. Finn has some difficulties with anger management, and on top of that he has a significant language delay for a boy of 10. So as his frustration builds, his resources for coping appropriately diminish. Finally a day like yesterday comes, and he loses it. When his 1:1 aide tried redirecting him, little Finn spouted off like a volcano. “I’ll slit your throat! My dad will beat you up and pound you into the ground!” I removed him from the rest of the class, which was going to do some yoga with our OT, and so he turned his anger on me. He screeched at me, waving me away and signing what I understood to mean, “I wish I could punch you out!” He retreated into our empty, darkened classroom, slamming the door behind him. I called for back-up from our crisis team, then stood outside my room to wait, keeping an eye on him to make sure he was safe. He destroyed a pen then crouched in hiding behind the oversize chair in our reading area. It was about ten minutes before I asked if he was calm enough to talk and he said yes. He was still seething a bit, but when my reinforcements arrived he admitted to what he’d said and apologized.

While the principal led Finn away to spend the rest of the afternoon in the in-school suspension room, I returned to my other students in the OT room. I met Micah at the door who was on his way to the nurse after vomiting. I left my remaining two students with the OT (bless her) for a bit longer while I walked Micah to the health clinic. When I completed my circuit back to the OT room, Dominic and Carly were still barefoot following yoga but now wandering the room, turning somersaults on the mat and playing with toy trains despite the OT’s repeated requests to put their shoes back on and get ready to leave. (I have to admit, the OT room is full of cool stuff to play with, and my kids have lots of sensory needs so I understand their hesitance to leave.)

Finally I got those two out of OT and dropped them off at art class so I could return to my again empty, darkened classroom and try to breathe. By then I was tired enough that the last hour of the day passed in a haze.

And I got up this morning to do it all again. Today all five of my students were present (Angel having been absent yesterday), and we were baking a cake almost first thing in the morning. Skip to 10:30 a.m. and I was already exhausted. After lunch we had a practice with a middle school class for the skit we will perform next week at our annual holiday show. My class is playing the elves, and they have loved wearing their little elf hats and pointy elf ears almost every moment for the past three days. But wouldn’t you know it, when practice time came, Angel, Micah and Carly suddenly wanted no part of them and would not join the rest of the little elves! I think I started twitching. I was too tired to argue with them. Somehow I managed to get the three of them into the practice: I had to cajole Angel with the thought of her mom watching her in the skit next week, put Micah in a brief time-out, and ask one of the middle school students to get Carly involved.

The small triumph of the day was no death threats from Finn. I wanted to collapse at the end of the day, but I had to straighten up the room and clear out a desk for the new student who will be joining my class tomorrow! That’s right, I get a new boy on a Friday, six days before Christmas vacation–and on Micah’s birthday so we’ll be having a party too! Why was I not in bed two hours ago?!

Oh yeah–because I’m blogging about this, the most wonderful time of the year. The two weeks before winter break…full of sugar highs and mega-meltdowns, overwhelming stimuli and disconcerting changes in routine. Yep, it’s great. I will be joyful if I make it to next Friday without fa-la-la-la-la-ing all the way to the nuthouse.

*Of course I changed the students’ names!

  This was my momma. Ellen Louise Enocksen Lawrence.

On December 1, 1993–fifteen years ago today–at age 47, she died.

Of course I feel sad on the anniversary of her death. She was one of my best friends, and I miss her every day. I feel her absence at every milestone in my life. I wish that my children had had a chance to know her. There are so many questions I never got to ask her, conversations I never got to have with her. It’s a wonder I ever shopped again without her to advise me–sometimes with brutal honesty–on what clothes looked good on me. So for countless reasons and in innumerable ways, I miss her, and I feel sad.

But there are also many reasons I feel happy when I remember her. I can remember her funny ways, her toothy grin, her cute pigeon-toed walk, and her fixation with pinching people’s rear ends. She taught me to love poetry and language. She modeled what it is to love children for who they are, no matter how goofy, annoying or difficult they might be. She brought me to faith in Jesus and shared with me the joy and comfort of faith.

She did all these things and more, literally up to the moment she died. Before her death, she was hospitalized for two weeks. During that time, many people came to visit, and in a few cases it was remarkable how she ended up ministering to her visitors from her hospital bed. One nurse, who had been a high school friend of my mom’s, spontaneously confided in her one day that she got “so angry.” I don’ t know the rest of the conversation, but it seemed helpful simply that my mom was there to listen to her old friend’s distress.

Another visitor was my uncle, with whom my parents had never been close, to say the least. He didn’t live near the hospital but somehow ended up “stopping by” one evening. He stayed for an hour or longer, and I remember my mom telling me how candidly he spoke with her. Usually he tended to talk about his work, his house, his cars; he bordered on bragging. But that evening, he genuinely shared his concerns about one of his sons and compared notes with my mom about my brother, who had presented his share of challenges to my parents in raising him. My mom seemed touched by his visit, and I hope my uncle felt the same.

Silly things I remember from her time in the hospital too. She made up a song about a little red dump truck that she sang often, until she decided that she might just become a country-western singer. She would call herself Winona Butthead, and since she didn’t like to travel, she would take the Little Red Dump Truck on a telephone tour.

My close friends came up to visit, too. My friend Heather was not usually the type for a lot of hugs, so my mom gleefully told her now she had to hug her since she was in the hospital. And Heather obliged. I think she even allowed one of my mom’s infamous butt-pinches.

Before all the visitors and goofiness, though, my mom was first in the ICU on a ventilator for about three days. I thought that alone would kill her–not being able to talk for the tube in her throat! The first time I saw her was hard, hearing the machine tick and seeing her chest rise and fall in time, realizing that she wasn’t even able to breathe on her own. I left her room and went into the bathroom and cried. I cried and prayed, “Please God, don’t take my mommy.” That was the very hardest part: understanding that my mother, who had hardly ever been sick a day in her life, would die. It wasn’t that day, and I didn’t know how soon it would be. But realizing her mortality was even harder for me than her actual death.

Our pastor–one of the greatest men I’ve ever known–also visited while Mom was in the ICU. Out of his conversation with her came my greatest comfort. He asked her if she wanted to die, and with the tube still in her throat she could only shake her head “no.” Then he asked her if she was ready to die. She shook her head “yes.” She didn’t want to leave this world with her family and friends behind, but if the Lord called her, she was ready to go. She knew where she was going, and she was not afraid.

At her funeral, the pastor read her favorite Bible verse, Philippians 4:8: Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. We sang her favorite hymn, Amazing Grace. Ironically Mom had told me just about three weeks before she died that she wanted that verse read and that hymn sung at her funeral. I wonder if she had somehow known that time would come so soon. I was glad she had told me so I knew exactly what she wanted.

Our church was small but not tiny, yet it was filled with people for the funeral. Maybe because it was a Saturday, maybe because my mom was so young. But maybe it was because she had touched so many lives. Our family numbers were small: my dad, my brother and me; my mom’s oldest sister and her husband and two sons; my cousin representing my mom’s other sister living out of state; my dad’s sister and her family; and a handful of other aunts, uncles and cousins. That left hundreds of others of no blood relation. Members of our church. Neighbors. Members and leaders not only from our 4-H club but also from many others in our county, and even from other counties. Avon ladies my mom had worked with. My friends from both high school and college. My brother’s friends. My dad’s friends. My mom’s friends. Some lived only minutes away; others traveled hours to be there. I had only seen the church that full on Christmas and Easter.

When the service ended, my dad, brother and I were the last to stand at the casket for our final farewells. My dad laid a hand on the casket and said, “We’ll meet again.”

And so we will. It’s that thought that has carried me through my grief over the past fifteen years. And time does ease the pain. I try to remember her as she was. As I’ve “grown up” during the years since my mom died, I’ve gained perspective and moved past idealizing her as almost saintly. She was wonderfully human; she was overweight, she smoked, she swore. Now that I am a wife and mother myself, I see other shortcomings in her too. My husband has said he wishes he could have met her, and I think his first question to her would be WHY she didn’t teach me to keep house better. But I love her still. Maybe I love her even more for being able to see her for more of who she was–not just my mom, but Ellen, with all her unique talents and all her imperfections.

Now it’s December 1 again. Over the weekend, I read 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper. It was good timing; I wonder if I subconsciously held the book for this anniversary. Most of the book focuses on what happened after Don died and was miraculously resuscitated after 90 minutes. What I needed to hear was in chapters two and three where he describes his visit to heaven. Everything was light, and his loved ones who had died before him were there to meet him. It was indescribable joy. There was music that was beautiful beyond words. I believe what he experienced was truly heaven. It makes me smile to know my mom is there with her family and friends and Jesus and the angels, wearing her size 5 jeans and laughing and singing and praising God. She’s not sad that she missed out on seeing her children and her children’s children grow up, but she’s waiting for us. That makes me happy.

She was ready. She’s in heaven. We’ll meet again.