Letting Go

It seems so simple. I mean, little girls can belt it regularly and you can tell they mean it. They are ready to LET IT GO! They sing with wild abandon, sometimes wearing a green dress, sometimes sitting on their sister, sometimes into a hairbrush. Let It Go.

The Serenity Prayer asks for the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. "Change", in my life, means "control" and I really can't tell the difference.

See the thing is, I'm right. I'm  100 % of the time categorically and inarguably right.

Always.

It's a burden.

It's a gift.

It sucks.

It causes major anxiety, as I worry and pace because I know someone is making a stupid choice and they aren't listening to me and if they would only just listen and let me run their life it'd be so much better. Learn from my mistakes, I'm begging you! Please stop making your own.

This was only irksome in my twenties. At 52, and as a parent, it is positively debilitating. And my children, being my children with mini invisible mohawks but every ounce of that attitude, refuse to listen to me ever ever ever because they think I just have anxiety and that I am wrong, even though they have evidence to the contrary. Every time something went wrong, I knew it was going to go wrong and I gave them a heads up to avoid what I see and they chose, instead, to tell me to let it go!

Aaannnnnnd....I was right. Every. Freaking. Time.

And this time, this time I really have to walk away. Let it go.

It hath made me mad. Mad, I tell you. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, and I now understand why people say they "throw themselves into work to avoid their personal life." Well, I threw myself into my personal life to avoid the trauma of my work, only to discover that I have no idea who I am or what I want, and my children are stubborn, and I overlooked my personal life for years to throw myself into my work, which no longer exists so...

My definition of "support"  has apparently been tied to control. I had a principal (four principals ago....three principals ago...?) flat out laugh and tell me I was a control freak. She was addressing my approaches to teaching, and I was pointing out how student led my department is. And while she acquiesced to the later, she still claimed that I was a control freak, and I needed to let things go. I mistakenly thought she was talking about my teaching methods, but clearly she was calling me on something much bigger that I did not see at the time.

And so, as the universe is wont to do when you refuse to let go, it will do it for you. And it won't be pretty, it won't be subtle, it will be wrenching. I  first experienced this when I started teaching. I was holding on to a dead end but well paid job waiting tables, being a stay at home mom and generally doing nothing about a career. It was a routine and the money was good. Then, suddenly, and without warning...I was fired.

Well, shit.

Jim and I turned to one another and started quoting Dory in Finding Nemo.
   "Let go!"
   "How do you know it's going to be all right?"
   "I don't!"

So we did, and I embarked on a teaching career, that I thought would be my final career. Letting go was scary as hell, we worried about money, about how I could possibly work full time with the girls in first and third grade, but once we let go it just happened. The job at Littleton literally fell into my lap, and there you have it.

For the first few years the struggle was awful, but I loved teaching and building the department,and magically babysitters and rides just appeared to help manage the girls' schedules. I cried a lot, I screamed a lot, but I wanted to run the department, so I persevered.

I cite the first two years as hell and the next five as almost heaven.

I had complete control of the classes, IB Theatre, the shows, training actors and techies, training designers, hiring alumni to help with tech, everything. Then the administration changed, and the renovation ripped Maris apart from stem to stern and everything that was under my control...was no longer. Just like that.

Well, shit.

Fourteen years after letting go of what was and embracing the moment, I have been stripped of directing at the school, my stage is dead and my department as a whole is on the ropes. I've tried for a year and a half to hold it together with little success, manically waving my arms in an attempt to regain control. In the meantime, my beautiful and talented 21 and 20 year old children are embarking on their own lives, making their own difficult and beautiful and difficult life choices. And I look at them and become anxious and controlling and they need support, not control and it turns out...I have no idea what "support" means. I am looking to them, because I have lost control of my theatre and anything that was a career. It was taken from me, because I needed to let go (apparently, I'm still unclear in this area), and did not. So it was taken. And without directing and designing and building and producing and shopping and all of those things that go with running the department, I'm assigning four page essays to LA9 Honors freshmen that I then have to grade, and back to freaking out because my children will not let me run their lives.

But dammit, I know what's best.

This is why I am not, nor will I ever be, an adult.

I think adults have the serenity to accept the things they cannot control, to control the things they can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

In short, an adult knows how to Let It Go.

These are my thoughts,
respectfully submitted
K.Martin
Physically 52 years old but clearly not an adult.

Not My Finest Moment

Not My Finest Moment Post:
First, I have 65 LA 9 Honors Lit students. I am a theatre teacher.
Second, I have to smash my Acting 1 and Acting 2 into ONE period, two completely different syllabi...syllabuses.
Third, I work directing jobs outside because I am not allowed to direct inside.

I have 65 Of Mice and Men outlines and intro paragraphs to grade, as well as 3 plays by student playwrights and 12 Director's Notebooks, in addition to regular planning and IB deadlines. NOT complaining, Explaining.

An LA9H kid, who has done NOTHING so far for this essay, butted in line whilst I was sitting with other students---who were patiently waiting their turn--to go over their intro paragraphs. He then interrupted the student I was talking to ABOUT HER ESSAY, to demand if I read poetry. When I did not answer- because they know I do not answer if you have not waited your turn-he began to pace. (YES, there is an IEP involved but this is HONORS, people) When I did not give him the attention he wanted, he butted in again and said "I'm sending you my poetry, when can you read it?"

I stopped. I apologized to the delightful and patient young lady with whom I was working- on her assigned essay. I looked at the student who had interrupted.

And, before I could stop myself, I said "UGH".

Is it Thanksgiving yet?

The Millionth Colorado Native To Bitch About Traffic

 
      Jim and I tried to drive up to  see the colors change last weekend,but ended up having to come back early after stopping at the Conoco outside of Conifer where Every Old Person  Ever had to use the one functioning bathroom, so I  kept letting them go ahead of me. After ten minutes Harper was done--it's a delicate thing with Harper and timing---so we came back down and went to the pub. It was fine.
      So this weekend, we headed up without Harper---who is almost 20 years old,by the way--and  spent the day driving up to Guanella via 285 and back down I70. We got stuck in traffic on 285, twice. No deer in the road, no car accident, nothing. Just stopped. Because there were too many damned people on the road.
      I remember going up to see the leaves change as recently as five years ago, with little traffic until I 70. Which , frankly, has always been a shit show, even before The World decided they needed to live here.
      First, we, from Colorado, do not call it "Leaf Peeping". That sounds naughty. The first time I heard this term was from my Canadian friend. Then another friend from Vermont, or Connecticut, or some damned east place, also said it. We never had a cute little phrase, guys. When I was a kid "the leaves are changing colors" is what we said. "Let's go see the leaves change", or "Go see the colors", and we knew what that meant, and it sounded like what it was: watching nature change seasons.
       "Leaf Peeping", however, seems to have a naughty connotation, like we are spying on the leaves whilst they are showering. Ewwww.
       Last week on the morning news,  Ernie Bjorkman said "leaf peeping" and I lost my shit. That is not what we call it here, Erns, and you know that. Stop cowing to the foreigners who came here who think it needs a title. Honestly, if you're from a state that calls it "Leaf Peeping", I don't understand why you moved here. Your state it plenty pretty, I assure you, and is likely maintaining its beauty better than CO because not everybody needed to move where the pot was legal.
        Colorado is not the only state, guys, you can go to Washington which is also beautiful. Go muck up their air quality, drive up their property values and spray paint in their national forests and leave us  alone. We won't miss you because we don't need you. Shoo.
         So we come up the back way through Morrison, and then pick up 285 at Conifer. There are few cars along the way, once you get past the Puddle Park that is Morrison, and then through the Street Clog in Evergreen. It was nice, I felt like nobody knew about this road as we drove and enjoyed the fall air and view. Then we turned on to 285 at Conifer and were immediately in a traffic jam. Both confused and trying not to be grumpy, we hoped that a herd of deer had decided to cross the road, and that's why everyone was stopped. Remember Back in the Day, when you'd go to RMNP and everyone was stopped and pulled over because a herd of Elk had decided to stand in the road? And you happily pulled over, or stopped, depending on the width of the road, and got out and stretched your legs and smiled at your travelmates who were also stretching their legs and watching the Elk with a bemused  smile that said "God I Love This State", or they had their camera out, kids on their shoulders so they could see.
          Nope. It was a traffic jam due to traffic. That's all. Too many people on the road.
          The next jam was right outside of Bailey, just past the Old People's Conoco. Again, we sat, not moving on the two lane road, right past Coney Island, wondering what could possibly be holding everything up? Moose?  Deer? Elk? A UFO?
          Nope. Traffic for traffic.
          Made worse, of course, by a hundred cars pulling over to take photos but not pulling into a pull out, just stopping at the pavement edge. You're wrong, that's not how you do this. Find a pullout. Can't find a pull out? Then move back to where you came from. Before you moved here there were plenty of pullouts for all of us. Even the switchbacks on the back side of Bierstadt, before Georgetown, had cars just pulled over! ANOTHER SMALL JAM was caused because the descending cars and the ascending cars did not have enough room to pass one another, we had to pass one at a time because both sides of the hair pin turn were blocked with FUCKING CARS WHO JUST STOPPED and the people from the cars trying to dart across the road ("If you can dodge a car, you can dodge a ball.") to get their photos of the Aspen grove.
           The mountains used to be where you could go to lose yourself, to breathe and drive and have a sandwich. It's now a cluttered, clustered mess where you cannot lose yourself because you have to pay attention to other drivers, and you cannot breathe because you may hit some human being trying to waddle across the switchback, assuming that you will see them and stop.
          And pee before you leave and drink no fluids, the bathrooms are jacked.