Just Look...

Just Look...

Friday, February 24, 2017

Another Letter to You

I dreamed about you again last night, a long deep dream that felt like it lasted all night and was filled with first meetings and long talks and everyday moments. My dreams are becoming more frequent as the time draws closer and I always wake up reluctantly, trying my best to hold on to any little part of you I can as I re-enter a reality that only includes dreams and thoughts of you. This whole experience baffles me a bit, even the romantic that I am, because it seems naive at best and just plain odd at worst to be in love with people you've never met, people you have only seen in photos and tiny scraps of videos, grouped into a collective.

 I find myself doing weird things like staring at every Filipino I know or meet, imagining you as you grow older. This week I taught a piece of poetry I have taught for 14 years and all of a sudden, it was different. The subtitle is "The United States and the Philippine Islands" and a place that had just been a country on a map and lines that had been a random people across the world suddenly meant something to ME. I found myself delving into the history of this particular event and context and, tragic as it had always been, seeing it through a lens of YOUR history and YOUR ancestors made it all look different. I saw in a very real way that my message in Holocaust education, to make it personal, is exactly the answer to connecting with and learning from history. We are living in a strange place with one half of our heart across the world from the other half and that plays out in lots of ways. I follow CNN Philippines news on twitter with the same regularity I follow US news, my weather app stays open to Manila and Cleveland, and where I used to have to depend on my world clock app, I now have developed an internal world clock and I am regularly aware of what time it is there and what you might be doing. I have always held a deep admiration and love for my ESL students but now I see you in every one of their faces. Every holiday and family event this year has happened with a joyful certainty that you will be here the next time these events come up on the calendar. 

When I was pregnant, I spent a lot of time imagining who my babies would be, what they would look like, how they would act, which interests and hobbies they would love. I do the same today but it's an unusual experience because all of the gaps are filled in already, just unknown to me. When we were only a week or two into the process, I looked at Kraig and said, "I already love them as my sons and daughter." We then had a conversation about the fact that my job is such that I make pretty immediate connections with people and they are deep and long connections. I say all the time that I love my students and what I'm not sure is clear is that it's a REAL love, not just an enjoyment of our time together. I love them deep and I love them long after they leave my room, I love them forever. I thought what I was feeling was the sort of quick connection a teacher makes but I have since realized it's something so much more, it's a real maternal pull and something that, even though I have always been a proponent of adoption, I would never have expected could actually take place without any true contact.

 I LOVE you. I LONG for you. My constant thoughts of you are as real as any flutters and kicks from the womb. My urge to prepare a space for you in this house, my obsessive need to talk about you to the people around me, my anticipation of our first conversation that isn't me talking to a computer screen where you are a product of the apostrophe*, and my dreams.... the only place right now where you are 3 dimensional and flesh and bone and responsive.... this is so very real. And for now, it's what we have. But I know the day is coming so soon when I will only need to reach out and look up and there you will be, always within my sight and not only the parameters of my heart. 

*Apostrophe: a literary device in which the speaker addresses a person who is absent from the moment. Most well-known example is "O Captain, My Captain" by Walt Whitman, a poem movingly addressed to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

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