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| Ever and always a Led Zeppelin fan, that's me second from the left. Age 16ish. 2002-03. |
Here we are, the 6th day of Advent, or night, rather, since the sun disappears so early this time of year. It was cold a one, purple-gray and a little rainy, as it should be on Dec. 2nd, as it should be during Advent. This is Ironic Advent MediCATION #6 and I promise, dear reader, that I’m going to get better at using irony.
I did a little substitute teaching today for some 5th graders. When I say, “did a little,” I mean that literally. The teacher’s assistant did most of the work while I sat and re-read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She knew the class routine, so it made more sense that way. Bluffton-Harrison Middle School still has the same smell it did when I spent some of my pre-teen years there in 1997-98. It’s not a foul odor or anything like that. It’s just a smell...a familiar smell, the kind that hits you and a part of your body and heart feels torn between two worlds, and time...gets weird. Sort of like Advent, waiting for the coming of a king who’s already come, to defeat an enemy that’s already been defeated, to save a world that’s already been saved. We know It Is Finished, but we also know it’s not (sorry if I’m getting too Eastery for you). “Time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, stuff,” so sayeth the Doctor. Walking into that west-facing entrance/exit at BHMS, when that smell hit my nostrils, I could see my 12-year old self standing there, in a 90s Starter winter coat and Converse sneakers, and I felt a pull towards old friends, also there, spectre-like, who no longer exist as I remember them (they’re doctors, and programmers, and farmers now, or dead), and I felt a pull towards times which have already had their say; times that, truth be told, weren’t so great to actually live, but somehow seem so lovely to remember.
As a student, I didn’t get along too well at that school. I guess a piece of my subbing there is a way to mend fences, not with any particular person, but with myself to that place. This all feels too much like Sisyphus. What’s the point in chasing down these ghosts and grabbing them by the shoulders and screaming at them, “Look at me now! I’m still here and I’m okay!" My therapist and I were talking about waiting for a savior and he asked me, “What do you want to be saved from?” I gave him the sort of embarrassed smirk you give someone who’s asked the right question. “My past,” I said. My chest burns right now, thinking of what to write next. I want to be saved from whatever mistakes I made that have turned my older brother against me; I want to be saved from growing up in a house where I was given most anything I wanted; I want to be saved from all the fear I felt in middle school and the bad habits I learned; I want to be saved from reading Ayn Rand in high school instead of playing sports and learning how to belong; I want to be saved from spending my first 3 years at HU writhing in loneliness and adjustment and heartbreak; I want to be saved from a particularly painful stumble into codependency when I was 19; I want to be saved from the caffeine binge of my mid-20s; I want to be saved from those times where I didn’t love enough and the shame I feel towards those times where I might have loved too much.
Okay, that’s a lot to ask of a savior. So I’ll compromise: I want to be saved from the feeling that my problems are insurmountable or unique or even all that serious. My Ironic Advent compatriot Ben Camino has been writing about roots. I think that’s as good a way as any to come to terms with the life you’ve been given, the places you come from, the things that were out of your control, and the things that were in your control but you bumbled anyways because you’re a flesh and blood human in need of two scoops of grace in a waffle cone. Don Henley’s got a song about life outside our control:
Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say good bye
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence
“Somewhere back there in the dust,” that’s where I went today. Maybe it’s a place worth visiting, but it’s not a place I want to live. Trouble is, I do live in that “same small town,” and that dust is kicked up all around me. But I’ve gotta figure it out, or eat a gallon of grace straight from the carton, because this is where I am, this is where I work, this is where I cook sweet potatoes and sit in my papasan chair and write about Advent. I never expected my old middle school, which I hated so damned much, to teach me this sort of thing at age 30. But I guess that’s irony. I guess that's Advent.
I did a little substitute teaching today for some 5th graders. When I say, “did a little,” I mean that literally. The teacher’s assistant did most of the work while I sat and re-read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She knew the class routine, so it made more sense that way. Bluffton-Harrison Middle School still has the same smell it did when I spent some of my pre-teen years there in 1997-98. It’s not a foul odor or anything like that. It’s just a smell...a familiar smell, the kind that hits you and a part of your body and heart feels torn between two worlds, and time...gets weird. Sort of like Advent, waiting for the coming of a king who’s already come, to defeat an enemy that’s already been defeated, to save a world that’s already been saved. We know It Is Finished, but we also know it’s not (sorry if I’m getting too Eastery for you). “Time is a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, stuff,” so sayeth the Doctor. Walking into that west-facing entrance/exit at BHMS, when that smell hit my nostrils, I could see my 12-year old self standing there, in a 90s Starter winter coat and Converse sneakers, and I felt a pull towards old friends, also there, spectre-like, who no longer exist as I remember them (they’re doctors, and programmers, and farmers now, or dead), and I felt a pull towards times which have already had their say; times that, truth be told, weren’t so great to actually live, but somehow seem so lovely to remember.
As a student, I didn’t get along too well at that school. I guess a piece of my subbing there is a way to mend fences, not with any particular person, but with myself to that place. This all feels too much like Sisyphus. What’s the point in chasing down these ghosts and grabbing them by the shoulders and screaming at them, “Look at me now! I’m still here and I’m okay!" My therapist and I were talking about waiting for a savior and he asked me, “What do you want to be saved from?” I gave him the sort of embarrassed smirk you give someone who’s asked the right question. “My past,” I said. My chest burns right now, thinking of what to write next. I want to be saved from whatever mistakes I made that have turned my older brother against me; I want to be saved from growing up in a house where I was given most anything I wanted; I want to be saved from all the fear I felt in middle school and the bad habits I learned; I want to be saved from reading Ayn Rand in high school instead of playing sports and learning how to belong; I want to be saved from spending my first 3 years at HU writhing in loneliness and adjustment and heartbreak; I want to be saved from a particularly painful stumble into codependency when I was 19; I want to be saved from the caffeine binge of my mid-20s; I want to be saved from those times where I didn’t love enough and the shame I feel towards those times where I might have loved too much.
Okay, that’s a lot to ask of a savior. So I’ll compromise: I want to be saved from the feeling that my problems are insurmountable or unique or even all that serious. My Ironic Advent compatriot Ben Camino has been writing about roots. I think that’s as good a way as any to come to terms with the life you’ve been given, the places you come from, the things that were out of your control, and the things that were in your control but you bumbled anyways because you’re a flesh and blood human in need of two scoops of grace in a waffle cone. Don Henley’s got a song about life outside our control:
Who knows how long this will last
Now we've come so far, so fast
But, somewhere back there in the dust
That same small town in each of us
I need to remember this
So baby give me just one kiss
And let me take a long last look
Before we say good bye
Just lay your head back on the ground
And let your hair fall all around me
Offer up your best defense
But this is the end
This is the end of the innocence
“Somewhere back there in the dust,” that’s where I went today. Maybe it’s a place worth visiting, but it’s not a place I want to live. Trouble is, I do live in that “same small town,” and that dust is kicked up all around me. But I’ve gotta figure it out, or eat a gallon of grace straight from the carton, because this is where I am, this is where I work, this is where I cook sweet potatoes and sit in my papasan chair and write about Advent. I never expected my old middle school, which I hated so damned much, to teach me this sort of thing at age 30. But I guess that’s irony. I guess that's Advent.
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