“The move, how is the MOVE going?”
“Oh, da move. Well, Grampy is useless. I told heem, don’t poot your clothes in a place where you will loose dem. Put dem in a box so we can get to dem today. So today I say, ‘George, where are your clothes?’ He says, ‘I don’t know, Mom, I put dem in wid every-ting else.’ ” (My grandpa calls my grandma “Mom.”) She rolls her eyes.
My dad walks in and asks my grandma if she needs anything. My grandma looks around and says, “Yes, Vito, please, where did dey put da grapefruit tree?”
My dad tells her that he’s sure it’s still in the van, but he can go check.
“What do you need now, Mom?” my grandpa yells from the other room.
“Where is da grapefruit tree? If dey moved dat grapefruit tree wit out me, I will be so mad.”
Grammy turns to look at Kai and me. “I grew dat grapefruit tree from a seed!”
This is true. Grammy has had a grapefruit tree for over twenty years. She considers her grapefruit tree to be one of her greatest accomplishments. A few years ago, Josh and I went to my grandparents’ house on our way up north. My grandma took him around the entire house and told him about each plant. The grapefruit tree, of course, was the main attraction. He was so into it. He asked her all about it, how she watered it, what she did with it in the winter. To my grandmother, having that grapefruit tree is like having an Egyptian pyramid in her living room.
My grandpa walks in from the living room.
“Hi, Nads!” He has to stop walking to say hi. Once he says hello, he continues to walk toward us. He walks slowly with his cane. He sits down at the white table in the middle of the kitchen.
“George, deed you hear me? Where is da grapefruit tree? And where is dat box I told you to poot out with da stuff on top?”
Grampy looks forward for a moment to think about it. My grandma stares at him, waiting for an answer. Then he says in a voice like he is proclaiming a hard-earned truth, “I don’t know!”
She flashes me a look and takes her walker to find the moving crew.
I can tell my grandma is stressed. I know this move is really hard for her. When she was eight years old, she lived in a small town in Poland. When World War II started, the Russians came to her town and kicked her and her family out of their house. Her dad was taken to a prison, and she and her brother and mother went to live in Siberia in a work camp. They stayed there for four years until the war ended. I think after being evicted to Siberia, no matter how old you get, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth when it comes to moving.
My grandpa, on the other hand, is thrilled to be moving closer to us. He loves being around my dad, and I know that seeing Kai and me is really important to him. One of the saddest things I’ve ever seen was my grandfather at Josh’s funeral. He came in with his cane, moving at his slow pace. I remember seeing him up by the casket. I remember not really being able to articulate what was so sad about it. Or maybe it’s just that at that time I didn’t want to. My grandpa had been in Europe during a world war. He saw his neighbors and friends disappear. He saw the fall of a dictator. He saw people from around the world put their lives on the line for an idea, something that doesn’t really happen as often as it used to. He came to America believing in the American dream, and for him, it really came true. He has seen the planet at its absolute worst, and over time he has dealt with some serious problems in his own life. But seeing him next to that casket, it was like nothing made sense to him anymore. Seeing his shaky, unsteady body up there, his body that had endured so much and his brain that had tried to work hard for his family no matter what was going on outside; it was as if he was silently confessing to whomever, “This is too much.”
“Here you go, ma’am,” I hear one of the movers say. He places the grapefruit tree in the corner of the dining room. My grandma walks in behind him.
“Tank God!”
My grandpa lifts his head up like a tortoise craning to see the sun and says, “Tank God! What would we do wit out da grapefruit tree?!” He looks at me and smiles. He is making fun of my grandma. Clearly she knows this too.
“Shut up, George!” She slowly walks out of the room. “Eediot.”
After an afternoon with my grandparents, Kai and I go home to our house. August evenings in Michigan are the best. Things slow down, we can feel September looming, so we savor the free time and peace that comes with no school nights. Grandma Deedee has been up north for the last several weeks, or pieces of weeks, getting her last moments in at the lake. Kai and I haven’t gone up in a few weeks.
Without Deedee here, I realize that I really miss her when she is away. I miss seeing her car pull up at expected times. I miss her unannounced visits and her communication with me via Kai. I miss watching her sit him up on the counter (which I never do with him) and letting him splash his feet in the sink. She always lets him do things that I don’t allow. Initially this frustrated me, but now I get it. Josh would have done the same thing. Josh and Deedee are so much alike in how they play with children.
When Kai was up north with Deedee and Ashley, they took a video of him sitting in his high chair splashing water everywhere. He just kept slamming his little hands down on the plastic tray and squealing as the water flew all over the floor. There was no mom there to say in a slightly irritated tone, “Kai, the high chair is for eating, not for playing.” Sometimes I really struggle with the fact that I never get to say, “Kai, let’s pull out all of the toys and make a giant mess,” because I know I’m the one that cleans up every mess we make. Josh would have made a mess with Kai. Josh knew that when you are a kid, everything, everything is for playing. I know that he was this way because his mom taught him that.
Now that I am a parent, I am beginning to understand that I have no idea what Deedee is going through in dealing with the loss of her child. Not a clue. I knew Josh for four years in college, then we dated for a year, and then we were married for a year and a half. Because I’m twenty-five years old, that seems like a lot of time. But Deedee grew him from a seed.
When Josh was in the hospital after his accident, I saw his body once, and then I had to leave. I never went back. Deedee stayed at the hospital for days. Long after he was pronounced dead, he had to stay so they could remove his working organs. She stayed by him until they wheeled him away for his final surgery. I couldn’t be there because to me he was gone. That body wasn’t him. But as a mom, I know why she had to stay. When you watch something grow from a seed, you have a very different relationship with it than the rest of the world does.
I know Deedee spent those days staring at his body, taking in the last images of the body she had watched for twenty-seven years. Dead or alive, that body was too special to leave in an empty hospital room. She had been by his side since the day she brought him into this world, not to mention the nine months prior to that. You better believe she would be there on the day he had to leave. Right up until the last second.
When I was in high school, the minister at our church lost his son to suicide. After some time passed, Dr. Logan spoke about his son’s death in front of the congregation. He talked about when kids are little they love to jump from high places into the arms of their parents. Every parent has the image of their son or daughter yelling, “Catch me, Dad!” as they jump from the tree branch or the jungle gym. And the child knows that those strong arms are always there. But there are times, he went on to say, where as a parent your arms aren’t long enough to reach your falling son, and that is the pain he has to live with for the rest of his life. The death of a child is something different from any other loss in the world. It is the most unnatural circumstance. Parents are hardwired to protect their offspring. Every single species since the beginning of time has one thing in common: We all protect our young. So when a child dies, it goes against the fibers of our brains and souls. Dr. Logan’s metaphor has never left me. I miss Deedee. I wish she wouldn’t leave so often. Someday, who knows when, I want to tell her how sorry I am for her loss. Because her loss
is not my loss. And it’s not about whose is worse, but I just want her to know that I love her, I love Josh, and I will always love Josh. I want her to know that she can have all the time in the world.
september
One always dies too soon—or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are—your life, and nothing else.
—INEZ REGAULT IN JEAN-PAUL SARTRE, NO EXIT
this morning on my way to work I am listening to Mojo and Spike, two radio deejays, talk about how today, September 2, is the first day of school for every public school kid in the state of Michigan and they are sad for those kids because nobody likes school. They rail about how no teenager can possibly enjoy this day.
First of all, it should be noted that Mojo and Spike are radio hosts on a popular FM station, so it seems like part of their job is to say things that are so outrageous and inaccurate that I just can’t change the channel because I am so appalled. I really should be listening to Detroit Public Radio, I tell myself. I’d be embarrassed if anyone at school, students or co-workers, knew I checked in on Mojo and Spike every now and then. But sometimes it’s impossible to turn them off.
On Thursday mornings, for example, they do this thing called War of the Roses. They have girlfriends, or even wives sometimes, call in and nominate their boyfriends or husbands who they suspect are cheating. Then Mojo and Spike have one of the women at their station call the alleged cheater and tell him he’s just won a free bouquet of flowers from Flowers Forever or something, and he can send one dozen roses to whomever he chooses. So, for example, Lynette calls Mojo because she suspects Ed, her live-in boyfriend, is cheating. Lynette stays on the line, and the woman from the radio station calls Ed. She pitches him this line about some contest he entered online, and usually the guy is surprised and says what anyone would say (“I never win anything!”). Finally, once she knows he’s in, she says, “All right, Ed, so who would you like to send these flowers to?” And then, you wait. All you can think is, Please say Lynette, please say Lynette … Ed thinks for a second and the whole time his girlfriend, Lynette, is right there listening. Ed takes a deep breath and says, “Um, I’d like to send them to Renee.” I hit my forehead on the steering wheel. My heart stops every time. I so badly want to turn it off because I feel so horrible for Lynette. It’s like when I watch American Idol, and some of those kids cry because they actually thought they were good singers and Simon just likened them to bad cruise-ship karaoke or said something like “You can’t be serious.”
So then fake Flowers Forever woman says to Ed (in this real serious voice), “Ed, you’re actually on Mojo in the Morning War of the Roses. We have Lynette on the line. Lynette, what would you like to say to Ed?” Just like that. They switch it up on the guy so fast, he can hardly keep afloat. Of course, you can imagine, tears and swear words follow. “Who’s Renee, you cheap bastard? When was the last time you slept with her?” It’s brutal. I don’t even know why I listen to it. It’s so sad and depressing. You’d think once in a while the guy would just play it safe or maybe he really wasn’t cheating at all, but no, he’s guilty every time. I’m sure they record innocent ones, but they probably never play them on the air. Nobody wants to hear the ones that end nicely. It’s like casting for a reality television show. Nobody wants the stable, even-keeled people. For whatever reason, the emotionally volatile are always more intriguing. War of the Roses is the same thing. Everybody wants to know about the bad ones.
One time Mojo and Spike were giving away passes to see Justin Timberlake rehearse before his big show in Detroit. In order to win, they held a contest called “Tattoo Your Grandma.” You had to get your grandma to get a tattoo and you got the tickets. And, no, it didn’t count if your grandma already had a tattoo. You had to bring your grandma into the studio and have her get a tattoo right there. How can the BBC World News compete with something like “Tattoo Your Grandma”?
That’s the kind of garbage on this radio show. And now, this morning, they are going on and on about school and how much kids hate it. I desperately want to call in and yell at Mojo and Spike and tell them that they are wrong, but then I would have to publicly acknowledge that I listen to them, which I can’t do. I work in a public high school, and although I’ve only been there for three years, I still feel like I’ve got some street cred—more than Mojo and Spike at least. I know, despite what any teenager or moronic radio deejay says, kids love going back to school.
This morning I walk through Berkley High School and here is what I see: a lot of girls running up to each other and screaming, “OH MY GOD! I missed you so much! You look so cute. Oh my God, who do you have for math? Do you have Wayman? Please tell me you have Wayman …”
Students wave to teachers they had last year. “Mrs. Taylor! I’m in your third-hour!” Liz Adary yells from her locker. “Yes!” I do the arm-pump thing.
They love it here. Their friends are here. The opposite sex is here. People expect something out of them here, which for a handful of students may be different from what happens at home.
I love being here again. I love setting up my classroom, getting my class rosters, and thinking about all the things I’ll do differently this year. I think for both teachers and students, there is a certain amount of relief in that no matter how bad last year was, we get to try again this year with somewhat of a clean slate. Few jobs seem to have this type of annual renewal.
During my second-block class, all of my new eleventh-grade students are chatting as I pass out the syllabus. A skinny, short boy walks in the room and looks around awkwardly. I can tell without even asking him that he is a ninth-grader and he is completely lost. He looks very scared, like he just walked in on a meth lab. “Um …” he stutters, and looks around the room for a teacher. He is visibly shaking.
“Hi there, can I help you?” He pieces together that he thinks he should be in this room—“I thought … my algebra class …”—and hands me his schedule. I look at his crumpled half sheet of paper. He is in fact a ninth-grader and has no idea how to read his schedule, which, to his credit, is more difficult than it needs to be. I tell him where to go and not to worry, that he won’t be marked late. He bumbles back toward the door.
“It’s okay, man!” one of my students shouts as he walks out the door. “Happens to the best of us!” I give her a look that asks why she is shouting across the room. She shrugs. “Sorry.” I have no idea how they come into this school being insecure and self-conscious, and by eleventh grade they think they are smarter than everyone in the world.
I had a large number of these eleventh-grade students when they were freshmen. I think about how the last time I saw them in desks, I was married to Josh. He died on Sunday, June 17, two days after these kids ended their freshman year. I know I shouldn’t be mulling over these facts on a day like the first day of school, but I can’t help it anymore. I have learned to let things wander in and eventually they wander out.
I direct the students to their seats and ask them to take out a pen or pencil. There is some shuffling and chatting as I walk around the room. Then I hear a voice say, “Um, Mrs. Taylor, do you have a pencil I could borrow?” I look up. I don’t know this kid. You may think that I would be shocked at the idea that some eleventh-grade student did not bring a pen or pencil on the first day of school, but I’m not. This happens every single year. Even today, after second period, it will happen again.
“What’s your name?”
“Eric Heller.”
“Eric, do you show up to track practice without your running shoes?” I pause for a second. I have my hand on my hips and my eyebrows are furrowed. “Do you show up to work without your uniform? Do you show up for a Red Wings game without your tickets?” I throw four more syllabi on the table at the back of the room. I’m still facing Eric. “No. You don’t. So why would you show up to English class on the first day of school with no pencil?” Eric kind of does this shrug like I’m the one asking the stup
id question and could I please just give him a pencil. I ask the class if anyone has an extra pencil that Eric could borrow. Some girl at the table behind him, who probably has thirty pencils, hands him one.
Teaching is this funny thing where some days you feel really inspired and grateful that this is your job. You feel like you are lucky because you get to be a part of a very important experience. You watch kids grow and change and learn. Then there are other days when a sixteen-year-old asks you for a pencil on the first day of class, and you really believe that they are paying absolutely no attention to you at all.
I think about calling Eric’s mom after class, just for the hell of it. I’d explain to her that right now, American schools are on the bottom of every single academic totem pole in the world. China, Japan, India, Russia are all crushing us in math, reading, and writing. There are a million studies that try to explain why this is and a million different philosophies as to what teachers need to do to close the gap.
“Do you know what you can do to help this cause, Mrs. Heller? You can do your best to make sure that your son leaves the house in the morning without his head up his ass. You could start with giving him a pencil … That’s right. Let’s just start with a pencil.” I would explain that the twenty-first century is a cutthroat place to be and ever since Sputnik, American educators have been doing their best to catch up. “But, Mrs. Heller, we can’t do it without your help. We’re not asking for much. But I think a writing implement would at least get us started in the right direction.”
At the end of the class period, I have students fill out a short survey. It asks questions about what they read over the summer, how they learn best, and some random questions like “Identify one major character from literature that you can relate to.” Question number fifteen asks, “Have you changed since the ninth grade? If so, how?”
Signs of Life Page 27
