As a teacher, I looked forward to my summer break with the same excitement as a small child anticipating Christmas. My colleagues and I had a countdown on our office door. We had yellow post-its with the days written on them in reverse order. Each day, one of us would have the honor of pulling the number down, leaving us that much closer to freedom!!! It’s so funny, but most teachers love their jobs. Let’s face it, we don’t get in this profession to become rich. As a special education teacher, this is perhaps even more true. Special Education teachers have increased paperwork, increased stress and increased insomnia.All teachers work well beyond their hours and spend a great deal of their own money on supplies, but if you’re a special education teacher, you have all that plus holding the hands of your children’s families. I teach preschool special education. My students have varying degrees of disabilities, including autism, emotional disabilities, intellectual disabilities and cerebral palsy. We are often , kicked, hit, bitten, spit on….and that’s just the kids!! Seriously, it is a challenging job and each year the paperwork and responsibilities increase, taking us away from the thing that motivated us to become teachers in the first place, our students and their families, while our salaries never reflect the increase in responsibilities. I only mention this, to highlight how incredibly excited I was to begin summer break!
I always had such big plans. One summer I was determined to get my house in order and my body in shape. I was going to purge my bedroom closet, clean out the pantry, finally get caught up on doctor appointments and start and maintain an exercise program. I began with such promise and vigor. I walked every day. Bought healthy foods and actually began meal prepping to assure an always healthy meal at the ready. I even started purging my closet. I had so many clothes that I was sure would come back, but after looking objectively, I realized, does anyone really want shoulder pads and bell bottoms to come back?? So I pulled them from my closet, proud of my endeavors and how on task I was…..Then it happened….one unexpected problem and……paralysis!
I was working upstairs in my bedroom and realized I was very warm, unusually so. I immediately got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. When you have an ancient air conditioning unit, each summer, you turn it on, cross your fingers and hope it lasts another season (did I mention I was a teacher and can’t afford things like new air conditioning units???), but eventually, you know your luck will run out. Well, mine just did that day. I went to check the thermostat and there it was…..79 degrees, mocking me. I knew it would only go up from there. I immediately called my home owner’s warranty and that was another nightmare worthy of its own post!! But to get back to paralysis. It took almost two weeks to get the unit replaced. In the meantime the temperature continued to rise in my house (of course this happened during the worst heat wave of the summer), reaching a balmy 97 degrees at one point upstairs. I tried to sit and/or sleep in front of fans, but blowing hot air around only gives you so much comfort…so I took shelter at the home of my ever patient friend Kathy. It was fun to hang out with her, but I was also freaking out because my summer chore list was falling by the wayside. I couldn’t stomach working in my house during a heat wave with no air conditioning! So I now had clothes all over the beds upstairs, some sorted, some in trash bags for Purple Heart.
As far as eating healthy and exercising….Well, when you’re staying with your dear friend and just “chilling”, watching chick flicks, gossiping, complaining about kids and ex husbands…that usually calls for junk food. As for exercising?? It was hot out, but she did have a pool, so we exercised our right to walk outside swim a little and then float in chairs and exercise our vocal cords some more. When my air conditioning was finally fixed, I headed home, determined to continue my summer “to do” list. But then, I got a phone call from my brother in LA saying he was going to be in NJ visiting our father. I couldn’t resist the chance to spend some time with my big brother. We are all together so infrequently, so I packed a bag and headed to NJ. Once there, my father, who has barely stepped foot outside of our house since Mom died, suddenly asked if he could come back with me for a week. I was thrilled and we had an amazing week.At the week’s conclusion, I took him home and finally came back home to tackle that list. I walked into my house, marched up to my bedroom and ………turned around.
I went downstairs and poured myself a glass of wine and sat on the deck to enjoy one of our last nights of summer. And in that moment, between the wine, and the beautiful moon and stars, I realized….my “to do” list was not getting done. I only had two weeks left of summer..I was panicking….My closet was such a mess….My weeks of hanging with my friends and family had taken a toll on my exercise and diet plans….I was overwhelmed when I looked in my closet…I was more overwhelmed when I looked in my full length mirror. I realized I never went on the trips I had planned in my head before summer actually hit. I never got up to visit my friends Karen and Bill at their new home in Delaware.Never got to Chincoteague…..Summer was almost over and well, my life was as overwhelming as it was before school got out.
Then it hit me. I was paralyzed.When life gets so out of control, we can’t move, we can’t think, we panic. I had too much junk in my closet. I didn’t know where to start. I had too much weight to lose, so I didn’t even try. Paralysis. Life is too difficult to know where to even begin….so we don’t. The key to breaking that paralysis?? I wish I could tell you, but I’m so overwhelmed, I don’t even know where to start….so I’ll have another sip of wine and think about it.
New Endings 