Reflections on a Life...(Nostalgia...or Growing Up, Again)

So there we were, driving along in Yonkers, on the I87, about to exit on Central Park Avenue, and suddenly the tears were right there...behind the lids, behind the whites, behind the brown eyeballs. They welled up, and sneaked down my cheeks. I tried to resist the urge to wipe them away. I lost that battle...

It's 1983. I am 24 years old and newly married, living in my sister's house (no, she's in the US then), working in a Catholic public hgh school (someday, maybe, I'll explain that phenomenon!). My husband is teaching art in another secondary school. We are poor - teachers in Jamaica then made precious little. But we were contented. We owe no one anything, aside from student loans. We love the work we do. We have an extended family, in case of emergency.

It's 2007. I am 48 years old and 24 years married, living in our fairly newly-built house, working in a prestigious New York City public high school. My husband is an assistant principal in another New York City public high school. We are not poor, but what we are defies explanation, or, quite frankly, understanding. We owe everyone, including student loans for our sons. We wonder about the work we do. We have an extended family, who often depend on us in an emergency.

The feelings that overwhelm me in the car are so powerful, it is all I can do not to cry out with the pain of them. I know now, in an instant, what "heart-wrenching" means. It isn't that I wish for "the good ole days" back, although I do. It isn't even that I worry about the bad new days, although I do.

It's more that I cannot fathom the losses I have sustained, in my pursuit of the gains. The questions I live with now would never have occurred to me, naive as I was all those years ago. And my inability to find even the glimmer of an answer that does not tease more tears from my already leaking eyes, or wrench them from my aching heart, is the most frightening feeling I have ever known.

Perhaps, one day I'll get it. Maybe when I'm older...

Ha! I AM older, and I get nothing!

Maybe when I'm wiser... *sigh*