And Sometimes We Lose It

When my neighbor and colleague lost her chap-stick, she predicted her mind would be next. “Is it going to be like your box of tissues?” she asked turning her car into the school driveway. “Is my missing chap-stick going to be the thing that pushes me over the edge?”

At least I’m smart enough to laugh. I laughed then and I am laughing now as I sit here typing outside a shopping mall in Bloemfontein where Mother’s Day is being observed by young men in tuxedos handing out roses to every female who looks old enough to reproduce (a category which I apparently do not fall into) and a woman with a severe, Elvira look about her is serenading diners with the Afrikaans rendition of “Memories.”

A year ago at this time I was finishing my last grad school papers, and recently looking back through some of the writing I did, I have no idea what I was talking about. I can only vaguely recall when research meant more than typing, “play dough recipe” into Google, most things I read these days begin “once upon a time,” and if I happen to pick up a piece of text with no pictures, my eyes begin to glaze over. I graduated from Harvard and all I have to show for it is trigger finger from bending 100 coat hangers into bee’s wings for school play costumes.

Please don’t think I take myself seriously because I went to Harvard. I don’t. I generally avoid letting people here know that fact about me because then they want me to do math in my head and spell things for them. Or we have conversations like this:
New Acquaintance: What did you do before you came here?
Me: I was in school.
New Acquaintance: Where?
Me: Massachussetts
New Acquaintance: Where, though?
Me: Um, sort of near Boston.
New Acquaintance: No, I mean which school?
Me: Harvard
New Acquaintance: And you teach preschool?

Then there was the conversation I had with a middle-aged, Ugandan colleague after watching a screening of a Barack Obama documentary on election night. Commenting on Obama’s Kenyan father attending Harvard University, Norah said, “For an African at that time, he must have been very clever to get to Harvard.” I agreed that it was quite an accomplishment given the odds. She continued, “That is why I am afraid of you.” “Sorry?” “You must be so clever to go to Harvard so I am afraid of you.” By so clever, I don’t know if she was referring to the time I got lost on the way to work and ended up at the Chinese Embassy, or the time I went without electricity at home for 36 hours because I didn’t check the circuit breakers and see they were turned off, or the time I melted a piece of Tupperware to a burner on the school stove. I assured her I possess nothing that she doesn’t except for an expensive piece of paper and ten years worth of student loan payments to prove it.

My school does not take professional development seriously. My school does not take preschool seriously. On good days, (and most days are good), I tackle assignments I give myself and believe in the importance of the work that I do. Then there are less good
days . . .

It may be the fact that the expansion of the early childhood program I proposed sounded great to my boss a month ago, but now he’s rethinking it because if I take that on, who will assistant teach swimming (perhaps somebody who actually knows how to swim would be a start)? Or it may be my stress level has been heightened since my health insurance company shut down without bothering to inform me (at a time when I feel very compelled to see a dentist, an allergist, and after reading the rest of this post, some of you may suggest adding psychiatrist to the list). Or was it the teenage girl that knocked on my door looking for work cleaning and asked to speak to my parents? Or maybe it was the man who sold me electricity, who when I asked what to do with the pin number on my receipt said to me, “you bring it home and ask your husband.” Perhaps it is the fact that my boss is giving me a hard time about taking a few days off in June when I have not taken a single day off all year, that I taught while burning up with tick-bite fever, and when I had a stomach virus, excused myself from art class, regurgitated in an empty classroom and returned to finish the lesson. Perhaps it’s that I live in a place where the most stimulating evening I’ve had recently was spent getting dizzy off a turpentine bath following painting my coffee table. Even Bob, my 57 year-old neighbor and another teacher at the school, who spends most weekends in his classroom and most evenings stretched out in front of his gas heater reading historical fiction or thinking up new spam recipes, tells me I need to get out more.

But it was the tissue box, the empty tissue box that really got to me. I had gone into school on a Saturday, to do a little pedagogical preparation, but mostly to tidy up the classroom. I straightened the blocks on the shelves, mended broken books, scrubbed paintbrushes and all those other little things implied in the job description of preschool teacher that there never seems enough time to do during my prep periods. I put Monday’s schedule on the wall, selected the story I would read, pushed all the chairs into the tables and made sure we were stocked up on paper and cups and tissues. Yes, tissues. Before I went home, I even stood in the doorway smiling at my perfect classroom. I remember the contentment well. On Monday, I arrived at school an hour early (an hour and 15 minutes before the bell rings) as usual. I filled up the water pitchers and turned on the electric space heaters. It gets chillier and chillier every morning. I have started this season’s perpetual winter sniffles. I reach for the tissues. Nothing but the cardboard bottom of the box. It was the missionaries. The goddamn missionaries. The goddamn Louisiana missionaries who pay rent to invade my classroom on Sundays with their obesity and saving and baptismal wading pool and tissue-stealing flock. (And since it’s Mother’s Day, I’m now going to apologize to my mom for writing “goddamn” because I know she doesn’t like it, and also for using “goddamn” and “missionary” together, as she is probably offended on their behalf even though she’s Jewish and they condemn her to hell every Sunday.)

So what did I do next? I threw the empty tissue box at the wall, and stomped around campus for next thirty minutes in a silent temper tantrum. I thought of this as Karen launched in the “i-lost-my-new-chap-stick-get-no-respect-from-the-boss-and-my-students-don’t-do-their-damn-homework” blues. The blues morphed into a rant that nothing ever changes here, and ranting loves company. I reminded her that when I first arrived, I was invited to a “single’s dinner” by an American diplomat. It was him and his wife, Bob, and a short-term intern from a college in DC. We ate soup and played with the cats, and for about two months, I thought we (not including, of course, the diplomat and his wife) were the entire single expatriate population of Lesotho. This was a year ago next month. Other than the fact that I have found quite a few more young foreigners (which isn’t really the reason I moved overseas), I reminded Karen that not much changed. In fact, I had spent the weekend simmering a pot of soup on the stove and scrubbing cat piss out of the spare room carpet. I don’t have a cat, but one’s urine was there none-the-less. “Soup and cats again. I’ve gone full circle.” Then Bob piped up from the back seat, “Full circle means you’ve gone somewhere. That’s not full circle. That’s staying in one place, not moving at all. . . You really need to get out more.” I laughed until I cried, and Karen said, “One day you’re going to think about this and only cry.”

She was right, except I already had cried. At the conclusion of my stolen-tissue foot stamping, I sobbed briefly and gracelessly into a roll of toilet paper, locked in the bathroom with another teacher. My choked out words were something along the lines of “Why did I come here?” My bathroom companion reminded me that we had this exact conversation six months ago, except she was the one crying and I was the one saying it wasn’t that bad. I have since come to the conclusion that living in Lesotho is a little like having a carbon monoxide leak; it slowly and stealthily suffocates you.

My yoga teacher tells me to breathe well, and I think this is good advice. He tends to say it when I am having trouble sitting still (standing still, lying still), which tends to be all the time. Yoga, which I am new to, is difficult for me for this reason. The class takes place in my room at the school and the instructor is the grandfather of one of my students. His wife is often the only other student besides me. She does yoga in her sari, he teaches in khaki pants and a polo shirt stretched over his potbelly. I wear whatever I taught in that day, and am glad there is no spandex involved in the situation. So I sit or stand or lie and fidget in pinstripe pants and a green tie-dye dress while Raj tells me to “breathe well.” He also lets me know that I am pretty bad at yoga. This doesn’t bother me. He says it as if, as a new student, there isn’t anything else I could or should be. I like this advice too.

Then there’s this advice, too, from my brother. “hows about you pick the antelope and ride it to the nearest bus, and take that to the nearest town and get to the nearest phone and call....someone who wants to hear you complain.” I like that also. I have to laugh, right?