Trust and Round Trips

Trust is the daughter of truth.


I've never been happier that it's sixth period.  Today--the second-to-last day of school before we disperse for Winter Break--has been difficult.  Difficult in a vague sense because we're all a little edgy these days, a little worn out and short-tempered, looking ahead to the rest or excitement or trouble coming in the next few weeks and reacting accordingly.  Difficult in a specific sense because I've just finished hosting five fifty-minute parties for teenagers.


The parties are typical school parties: menageries of flavored potato chips, whole cities of two-liter soda skyscrapers, the driest of Swiss Misses waiting for transformation.  They get snacks, cocoa, drinks, and sit down in the large circle Period One made of the chairs, and we play games I've borrowed from a my heritage of camp and church ministry.  The kids like the games, are shocked they like the games, express their liking for the games in cries of accusation or shouts of boasting when they lose or win.  It's fun, I think, for them.  As for me, I'm exhausted by the time I get to my last class of the day.


The journalism students are having a party as well, but theirs is the low-key kind.  No games for these sophomores, juniors and seniors, who just worked incredibly hard to get their newspaper done (on time for the first time since I've been in charge!) in time to hand out before the break. I'm proud of them and we're all tired as we gather around a table of chocolate mousse, eclairs, Chex Mix and spritz cookies.  I've been trying to avoid gluten lately, so I content myself with my still uneaten squash-and-rice-pasta lunch, sitting down in my corner to watch and be quiet for a while.


Trust talks to people who need to hear her; she listens to those who need to be heard; she sits quietly with those who are skeptical of words.


Ninth graders never come into this remote corner of the room where I have my desk and computer, as barriers of desks, wall and windows enclose it on three sides.  Journalism students have no such scruples, and soon three or four of them have migrated over, bringing chairs and pastries and conversation.  They come without demands; I can speak if I want to, but more often I like to listen, and they're fine with that, too.  It's my favorite place in any social setting--being in the presence but not center of conversations that interest me and people I enjoy--and I'm surprised and grateful to recognize it here.


After a while Frivolities Editor (generally she's the Back Page Editor, but for this holiday issue we created new titles) turns to me.


"I made you a card.  It's this one."  She hands me a square purple card with a paragraph glued to the front.  "The quote is from this book that personifies character qualities.  I thought that the one that someone gave to me was amusing, and this one... this one sounds like you."  I thank her for the card, and she turns back to a conversation on convex geometric shapes while I read.


Trust rarely buys round-trip tickets because she is never sure how long she will be gone and when she will return.


It has been a hard week, month, year so far.  Not hard like when I began all this, the hard of knowing just what to do and when, what to look for and how to see and hear and be all at the same time.  Hard because even if I become the best teacher in the world, I'll never be able to accomplish everything I want, nothing less than peaceful lives and a tolerant, critical, intellectual attitude toward the world for each of my students.  As pessimistic as it seems, I think I'll still be making calls home in twenty years, as I did yesterday afternoon, notifying parents that their sons/daughters are not coming/not performing/not listening as they should.  I'll still hear the heartbreaking news of warrants out and results just in, of interventions and the deaths of beloved family members.  It's hard because I keep hitting these limits and having to remember that I'm not God, that I can't make everything well just with concern.


Everyone has daydreams for discouraged moments, and mine involves moving away, teaching in a different and easier place.  It's selfish, I know; these kids who need so much won't go away if I stop teaching them, if I cross the ocean looking for adventure.  I'm humbled as I read the card, read this character of Trust to whom she's comparing me.  I wonder, did I buy a round trip ticket to Ingraham?  I know I began with an end date in mind, a June that meant the dissolving of some ties that kept me in Seattle, but that year has come and gone.  


I'm here.  


I have no idea if this is the last year or year four of forty, but I realize that on a day to day basis it doesn't matter that much.  There's today, with all it's parties.  There's tomorrow, when I'll miss my students as I board a plane to Germany for Christmas.  There's two and a half weeks from now, when we all start again, resolutions unwrinkled and ready to keep or start trying.  There are six months after that.  Who knows what each day holds, each hour, each minute?  The longer I teach, the more I'm learning that the most I or anyone can do is fill these minutes together with as much love and peace as I can, and that the best days are the ones when I can accept that it's not my love, my peace, my strength that makes this beautiful.


Trust is at home in the desert and the city, with dolphins and tigers, with outlaws, lovers and saints.


Frivolities Editor whirls out with the rest of them as the bell rings, crying "Have fun in Germany!" as she goes.  A few moments later she returns.


"There's a back to the card," she points out.


"Thanks."  Such a little word to express a magnitude of gratitude for the amount of confidence and, well, trust that her gift expresses.  It's the common thread, perhaps.  The trust I place in my students to make a poster in a group, or to become young men and women of wisdom and responsibility.  The trust that they place in me to tell the truth and not waste their time.  The trust that I learn again every day to place in the God who knows about this trip, whether it's round or one-way, who gives me just enough of love and wisdom to last each day.


...she is the mother of Love.