10.28.2010
Last week, I went to my elementary school for an open house. Not only am I an alumnus but I also taught there for a year. This school is part of the Archdiocese and so it's on the brink of being closed down due to all the financial issues the Church is having; therefore, I try to support any activities they have whenever I can.
At the open house, two students took me on a tour of the premises, although most of it looked the same from when I worked there 10 years ago which, at that point, hadn’t looked much different from when I graduated. Both the 7th and 8th graders flooded me with questions about my experiences there as a student, and it was during this spontaneous Q&A that I was reminded of what it is exactly I miss about teaching. It’s also the only thing.
One of the questions posed was whether or not there was anything I missed about the school. This gave me pause. I then began my answer with, “I know this won’t mean much to you but what I miss is being your age and having time. Time to play, time to be with friends and having one of my biggest worries be about completing my homework.” There were, of course, other things going on at home that I don’t miss but I miss having two hours to write in my journal, for example.
I never appreciated all that my mom did, and as a single parent at that. There are choices she made that I certainly wish she made differently, but, today, every time I have to stop a project to make dinner, I think about how, as a kid, I could just keep going.
Parents bring a child into this world and raise him/her, teaching him/her how to be self-sufficient and productive (or at least they should be). Parents parlay their values and have hopes and dreams for and expectations of their child only to often become disappointed with the choices that he/she has made (because it wasn’t the vision that they had for their child). Parents invest so much of themselves physically, emotionally and spiritually into these little carbon copies of themselves who will end up maybe never appreciating, let alone aware of, all the sacrifices they, as parents, made and continue to make. Isn’t that painful?
I’d like to return, even for an AI-like moment, to a time when I was working on some school project while my mom prepared dinner (if she was home) and, instead of being annoyed by or annoyed with her, I’d like to appreciate that for that moment in time she was letting me be a kid.[1]
[1] I am referring to the Stanley Kubrick/Steven Spielberg movie AI (Artificial Intelligence), 2001.
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