I’d like to introduce this piece as a prequel to TWIRL, and THE TEACHER DIARIES. Enjoy.
It probably doesn’t get more basic than a pair of black high heels, but I once owned the most magnificent and the most heart breaking pair anyone has ever seen.
They were the heels to end all high heels.
First, the color was a matte black – not too shiny, not too dull. It was a color that’d been around the block a few times, and hadn’t been phased by the journey. Second, the heel was ever so slightly higher than the standard teaching heel. It wasn’t an “out at the club” heel, but it wasn’t a “you’re not reading Twilight for the 17thtime, young lady, let me find you a copy of Middlemarch” high heel, either. Third, on the back of each shoe was a gold stud – no bigger than the size of a brass tack. I am a sucker for bling, but I like to think it’s tasteful bling, and those gold studs were fantastic.
These were neutral shoes, sure, but they held surprise. I hoped wearing them would remind me with their color, heel, and gold studs that there is always more to discover, to draw out, then what’s first seen.
I slipped the heels on and ignored the slight pinch I felt walking around in them. That’s what always happens on the first day. You have to break shoes like this in, develop a callus or two so you can walk in them.
I wore them on the first day of school the year I taught a group of 8thgraders that were the toughest group I’ve ever taught, and I was certain I would die. The shoes and my 8thgraders had plotted to murder me, I was sure of it. It wouldn’t be a quick kill, either. One shoe, for example, was painful, but it was the growing pain kind. I could get used to that. The other one, though, I swear had teeny, tiny saws at the heel and toe. They were hungry saws, and they were devouring my foot so that I was pretty sure all I’d have at the end of the day would be a stump.
My students were the same. There was a new girl, a ballerina. I knew from the moment she walked in – nervous but smiling and heartbreakingly graceful. She was putting her best foot forward even though she was scared. That’s the best kind of bravery to have in middle school. I could stick around for that. However, the class as a whole was obnoxious and they were scared, and they fed off each other’s obnoxiousness and fear. So for every good thing I saw that they did their best to hide, there was a crude joke, a shove, or a trip. That first day I realized my students must’ve been able to tell what I hoped for as I held the shoes and decided they would work together so that I would die footless; with a heart full of hope.
Most days, I went home crying. My commute was 20 minutes and sometimes I’d cry the entire time, pulling over around the corner from where I picked my daughters up from school so I could collect myself.
It wasn’t that I wanted this class to like me, though affection for each other does help, especially in English class. I wanted them to trust me enough so I could show them they’re more than what they’ve been identified every year since Kindergarten: belligerent, self-centered, awful. I wanted them to see something new about themselves that they could take with them into high school and adulthood. And I wanted to see something new about myself – that I could take on a tough class and show them stories they could layer themselves with, and be shaped into something more than they believed about themselves. I wanted to believe I could get a student to fall in love with reading and writing no matter who he or she was.
I thought the shoes would help me do that, as silly as that sounds, but I couldn’t wear them for more than 90 seconds before shouting, “Uncle!” That year, I was turning 40 and I thought maybe I was too old for the shoes. I put them in the back of my closet. Maybe I was too old for middle school, too.
At night, for most of the school year, I dreamt that we had grizzly bears in our kitchen. They made such a mess of things, and in my dream once, I said, “Jesse, Jesse! We have grizzly bears. In our kitchen!”
“I know,” he said, “you let them in.”
“Well, I don’t know what to do with them! What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“You have to feed them, Callie. You have to feed the grizzly bears.”
I woke up. From that point on, my 8thgraders were my grizzly bears, and I figured out how to feed them. While the stories I’d been teaching stayed the same, I re-wrote every lesson, adding more movement, manipulatives, I turned the lights off when they wrote, we went outside. Every lesson felt like an organized, three-ring circus and I was the ringmaster.
It was still painful, stepping into the classroom to face them, but it was a hopeful pain. I loved this group, and I wouldn’t turn away no matter the calluses that wouldn’t harden to cover the wounds. I would teach wounded. It was the best teaching I think I ever did. They pulled the best out of me, and I hope I began to pull the best out of them. I wouldn’t trade that class with anyone. I would’ve taken my grizzlies all the way through high school if I could’ve.
In the spring of that year, my grizzly bear dreams eventually stopped, but I still couldn’t wear the shoes I loved so much. That spring, we also found out we were moving from Maryland to Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I began to wonder if the shoes were trying to tell me something. Like, maybe it was time for something else. No more heels. No more middle school. It was time for sensible things. The thought brought tears to my eyes, and Jesse found me that way on a Saturday, sitting at the kitchen table with the heels in my lap.
“What’s wrong?” he said, filling up glasses of water, and bringing them over to the table.
“These don’t fit,” I whined.
“Why’d you buy them?” he asked, sliding a glass in my direction.
“Because I thought they wouldfit,” I said, running my arm under my nose like I was five years old.
Jesse took a drink of water, then asked, “What about them hurts?”
I turned the shoes over, and rubbed the brass buttons with my thumbs. They were so sassy.
“This one isn’t so bad,” I mumbled. “It’s this one,” I raised the right shoe, showing him. “I think there’s something wrong with my foot.”
Jesse took the shoe and turned it over, examining it. “Are you sure it’s not the shoe?”
“Yes,” I said, hopelessly. “I think my days of wearing high heels are over.”
Jesse rolled his eyes at my dramatics, took both shoes, and stood up. He walked to a wall in our kitchen, put the heels against it, then walked around so he was facing their profile. He stared at them, crouched, then stared some more.
He looked at me and chuckled. “The right shoe is smaller than the left.”
“It is?” I asked.
“Yeah! No wonder it hurts!”
We took the shoes back and I asked for a pair in my size, but they didn’t have them.
“I guess I can’t wear one shoe,” I half-joked, then passed the one that fit across the counter to the saleslady.
“No, you can’t,” she said with no sense of humor whatsoever. “That wouldn’t work.”
Duh.
I pivoted and walked down the aisle to find another pair of black heels. All of them were boring. No surprises at all. I guess it was time for something new, but I didn’t know what that was. Nothing seemed as fabulous as something that looked like you knew what you were holding, but turned out to hold surprise after surprise. That’s what I wanted. I never want to run out of surprises.
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