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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