The Dance Between Darkness and Light (girlxgirl)

Emily

I know my fiancé is from here, and I know it was his dream to come back to Rosewood, but I don't know if I can survive this place. I miss Minneapolis.  My whole family lives there; my mom and dad and my brother. I miss going to Caribou Coffee, shopping the Galleria, wandering the skywalks downtown at night, and that view. The downtown skyline view is breathtaking, oh, I miss it. I'm a city girl through and through, and I don't think there's a single person that can change that for me.  There's nothing that could get me to stay here forever, nothing. Not even my fiancé.  I said I'd only move here if we lived here a short time, a few years at the most. I've looked around these past few days and there's not a lot for entertainment or solace.  What saddens me the most is that there's nowhere to go to lose myself, to disappear among a bustling crowd, for me to be anonymous. We've been here a week now, and I've been stared at everywhere I go as if I've got an extra limb attached to me. What is that? I mean, I don't think I'm any more or less interesting than the next person, so why stare at me? Is that how it's going to be here? I am legitimately worried.

Why would I be concerned about being able to have some privacy in this small town, leading my life here with at least a shred of anonymity? Because I can see Rosewood Day Elementary School at the next intersection, and I start work there in about 20 minutes. Because my fiancé is the new principal of Rosewood Day High School and because my mother was a teacher for 25 years in a small town and everywhere we went people said, 'Hi, Mrs. Fields.'  I lost months, maybe years of my childhood in stores, classrooms, you name it, all because I was waiting for my mom to get done talking to people. Everywhere she went, people knew her.  At least if I taught in Minneapolis, I could go out, shop, do things without being bombarded.  I could be a nobody walking around.

But, whether I like it or not, I am about to become very visible, just like my mother. I'm excited and I'm also about 5 seconds shy of wetting my pants. I'm a teacher...well a first-year teacher actually, and I'm going to be teaching kindergarten at that school. Hopefully my forehead doesn't have a flashing neon sign on it that says 'scared shitless' because tonight is the school open house and family picnic. I'm meeting my co-teacher and mentor tonight, and I'm beyond intimidated already. All I know is she's been teaching like 8 years and the parents and children worship the ground she walks on. Everyone requests her, I mean everyone. Now that there's only one large class, I hope the parents don't get upset. I just want my first year to go smoothly. Nothing unexpected, no drama, just smooth sailing.

It's no shock I ended up as a teacher.  It runs in our family. Both my mother and grandmother were elementary school teachers, and my grandfather was a law professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  When I started college I knew I wanted to be a teacher, but it wasn't until I started my student teaching in St. Paul that I knew I really loved working with the littles.  Do you know that look on a child's face when they experience something for the first time?  The way their eyes light up?  Tell me you've seen that, that you've been there?  If you ever want to truly witness innocence and sheer joy, visit a kindergarten classroom.  Take a field trip with them, or just sit and visit for a few minutes. I promise you'll leave smiling for the rest of your day.

But there's also a side to being a teacher that's painful.  It's not all fun and smiles you know. Children are brutally honest, sharing all their family secrets.  And they don't censor either, the good or the bad, or the truly awful. Some of the littles I worked with in St. Paul were already scorned and angry at the ripe age of five. Can you imagine having your spirit snuffed out that early, to already be emotionally cut off from the world? Maybe it was because of family situations, some form of trauma, or maybe it was continual disappointment from adults in their lives.  Either way, it doesn't matter, those kids are sometimes so damaged you wonder if there's any hope for them to heal. Those are the kids that I live for, that I try so hard to bring back and show them love. The ones that you know are hurting and just need an adult to love them and make them feel they are wanted. Those are the ones I wish I could do more for.