Saturday, January 24, 2015

In the beginning I thought we would have left by now.  In the beginning I was sure we would pack up all of our things and move east towards the middle.  I thought that would be fair and reasonable and right.  But we stayed.  We stayed in a big way and I am proud of those months of dying I did in order to really live here.  

This year I have come to know this familiar town in a new way.  I am ninety days in to the school year and I am still sometimes gripped with shock when I learn more of their stories.  Stories of three boys in one bed.  The story of why their clothes smell the way they do.  What the weekends feel like: hungry and loud and long.  

These monster students I have come to love, these absolutely wonderful  children sometimes go home to real monsters.  Some of them live with them.  And it left me furious this week.  Ranting mad.  I sat across from him and I told him: It makes me so angry with us, it makes me angry for ever complaining about anything because we have no reason to, we have too much.  And there are people who have worse than nothing.  Someday I am going to come home with them all, Cropper.  Someday I won't be able to let them leave.

The cousins and their dog are staying with us this weekend and I was so happy to have them.  So happy for their neatly packed bags and their perfect instructions and the late night giggling.  There is a splitting in this tilty world that I hope to never grow used to, I hope to always boil over.  It looks like this: the children living in a large lake house with wonderful parents and three refrigerators full of food while the other children across the highway huddle in a swaying trailer and cope with so much absence.

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