I watched my daughter race into her girlfriend’s house, all giggles and smiles and excitement, and I smiled. More than anything else, I felt….relieved. Grateful. Finally, finally she seemed to have found a group of girls to bond with and share typical for her age experiences. It hasn’t always been that way. While I always [...]
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I can still remember the moment when I learned I was going to have a daughter. I was flat on my back in the ultrasound room of my doctor’s office in Stillwater, Oklahoma. R was with me waiting with baited breath as the technician measured the femur, checked the heart chambers, and did the full [...]
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“It’s good to see you back,” Julie said as she poked her head in my classroom, gauging my response before she entered. “Thank you,” I answered foggily. “I suppose it was time.” I’d taken off a whole week even though my D and C was an outpatient procedure that I should have been able to [...]
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“Are you all set for tomorrow?” Julie asked from across the lunch table. One of the things I loved best about my schedule at work was that all of my coworkers, those that shared the same students that I taught, all had the same scheduled breaks throughout the day. This set up was intended to [...]
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“Wow, are you serious?” It was 4pm the following Tuesday, and I had just finished practice with my newly formed Academic Games team. We were going to our first competition the following weekend, and the kids seemed excited and ready. I had been so proud to bring the program to my new school, form a [...]
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It reminded me so much of the middle school I’d taught at when my mother was ill, for so many reasons. First of all, everything looked different than it had in the city. I had a brand new classroom, with brand new desks, a closet which held brand new calculators and textbooks. There was a [...]
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I reached next to me and turned off the clock alarm. Obviously blissful sleep wasn’t right around the corner, as I’d kept hoping every time I’d rolled over all night long. The red numbers had inched forward, excruciatingly slowly. I’d replayed the evening over and over in my head dozens of times in the darkness [...]
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“Is that it?” I asked R on the phone that warm, May day. I couldn’t wait to break the news of my new job to R on the phone. I was over the moon, had been bursting with the news that I was finally, finally leaving the city for a job teaching 8th grade math [...]
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“Are you really going to?” Carol asked me quietly as she handed me my slice of pizza. We were sitting in her classroom over lunch, which we’d ordered for delivery from a Greek pizza place a few miles away. It was definitely an indulgence: thick like Chicago style pizza, loaded with cheese, thick crust and [...]
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“Well, how’d it go?” Carol poked her head in my classroom. It was the end of our first day of school; she and I had carpooled into the city together. She took in the disarray slowly, and walked in. “Well…” I started, looking around and trying to see what she saw, how she was interpreting [...]
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