Waiting For My Wings to Dry

If you had asked me at the beginning of the pandemic, or even in the middle of the storm, what this was, I would’ve called it a nightmare. My nightmare. So many of my worst fears coming to life. A global plague, isolation, quitting my job, changing my 20-year career and with that losing my sense of identity, losing our support community, and so much more. Let me explain:

I was a teacher. Was. In the before times, specifically March of 2020, with a middle school science classroom full of science fair projects, we were preparing for the next week’s upcoming science fair. On that fateful Friday the 13^th, with only an hour and a half notice, the other teachers and I frantically scrambled to prepare our students for the looming disaster. “Send everything home with them that you can,” we were told. In addition to passing out notebooks and materials, I spent much of that frenetic time reassuring worried kids that it would all be ok. We’d pick up where we left off with presentations and projects in 2 weeks, when school reopened. For me, it never did.

 I finished out the school year virtually, like everyone else. Stumbling my way through recorded lessons, virtual labs, and frustrated phone calls. To the best of my ability, I learned new programs and formats as fast as I could trying to help reach and support struggling families and impart information from a distance, which was not an easy task with my subject. The stress on the faces of my colleagues during our virtual staff meetings became replaced with apathy and resignation. I don’t think I’m the first person to liken what we went through to trying to fly an airplane while building the airplane … on fire.

It was never enough.

Teaching is very often a thankless profession in normal times and these were definitely not normal times! Don’t get me wrong, as the daughter and grand-daughter of multiple career teachers, I went into this profession with very open eyes and a full understanding of it’s necessary sacrifices and short-comings. But this was something else. There were a few “How do they do it?!” on-line videos of appreciation for teachers across the country, but for the most part what we received was frustration.  And for every “Teachers should be paid a million dollars!” post from a frustrated parent on social media, there were double or triple that directly to us in the forms of demanding e-mails and phone calls. I don’t know if parents forgot that we were human or that so many of us were parents too; trying not only to shepherd their children through this crisis, but trying to get our own children through it as well?  All of my efforts for going above and beyond were met with either silence or complaints, deepening the growing senses of isolation and failure. I tried to take it all with a grain of salt and understand that parents were lashing out due to their own stress and frustration. It’s much easier to send an angry e-mail to the person you perceive as making your struggles harder than to an invisible virus. We became verbal punching bags for angry parents whose lives felt out of control. Even some people who I had considered friends and allies distanced themselves and relationships became instantly frosty. It was devastating.

At the end of the school year, I returned masked to my time capsule of a classroom, and prepared to send home the tri-fold boards for students’ unfinished science fair projects. I tearfully put encouraging and colorful stickers on the boards before loading them into the gymnasium for parents to collect, along with any other forgotten supplies, like an education dumping ground. It was both a completely anti-climatic and completely fitting end to the school year.

I retreated to the sanctuary of my home and tried to both recover from the stress of the year and prepare for the next. Over the summer, it became increasingly clear that I would need to leave the classroom to be at home with my remote-learning children.  I was so burned out and singed that when that year ended, I decided not to go back to the classroom again. At all.

“So what now?” became my daily nagging question. What do I do? Teaching is what I’m trained for and what I believed I was called to do. It seems I’m not the only one with these questions. In due course, every member of my immediate and extended family, former coworkers and well-meaning friends have asked some variation of the question, “Do you think you’ll go back to teaching?”

No.

 No, I don’t think I will. Which breaks my heart. I was a 3^rd generation teacher. And to be clear, I still believe in education and its power to change lives and be a force for good in the world. I have so much respect for those who are still persevering in these unprecedented times in the classroom! But too often I have been bruised and battered by this system that I was trying so hard to work with and improve; it’s time to preserve myself for my family and find another way to do good in the world.

So now what?

Transformation takes time. Reinventing yourself takes time. It takes effort and patience and grace. A lot of grace, especially toward yourself. I am not particularly adept at that part. Grace and understanding for others I can do, but for me? I needed to get my mess together yesterday! Added to that is the weight (self-imposed of course!) of producing something tangible and worth-while; something to show not only to myself, but also to my former colleagues, and to the world, to prove that I still have ambitions and capability and therefore, value.

I’ve always liked the image of butterfly metamorphosis and transfiguration as metaphors for major changes we go through in life. That helps in these times, because even though I want so badly to take off and fly freely in a new direction, most days I feel as clumsy and slow as a lumbering caterpillar, plodding along routinely and unsure of what’s to come. Do caterpillars know what to expect? I’ve always assumed they do, that somehow when they begin to curl up in their chrysalis, they aren’t afraid of what the uncertain future holds. But maybe they don’t? If not, that takes an impressive amount of faith and bravery to move forward not knowing what or who you’ll become!

Let’s be very clear, metamorphosis is an unpleasant process! The caterpillar basically melts inside its chrysalis and is rearranged and reformed into a butterfly. That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me though I can certainly relate to feeling like you’re melting from within and everything you think you know is fading away! But that moment of emergence – of being made new – that must be worth it!

 Here’s a cool thing I learned recently about butterflies, their wings were always there. Even in their larval caterpillar stage, the blueprint for their future selves is encoded in their DNA. So, when they go through the very challenging and one would assume painful process of metamorphosis, the spectacularly beautiful end result is assured even if it’s not visibly obvious yet. The caterpillars don’t design their wings or will them into existence. So maybe I don’t need to fretfully try to find my new form and new path with so much pressure. Maybe I just need to rest and wait and trust that my wings, which have really always been there, will emerge.

 Ugh, waiting! But that’s what caterpillars do; rest and wait for new wings to present themselves.  And while that might be (is) extremely difficult for me, (for many of us) to do, it is an important part of the process. Even when the new form is achieved, and the chrysalis is opened, the butterfly doesn’t flit off immediately. They hang upside-down from their chrysalis and let their amazingly beautiful and delicate wings slowly unfold and dry in the sun before taking off into the sky. That’s where I am now.

Throughout the past few months, I’ve rediscovered a passion for writing, for creating art and photography. These are things I’ve always loved but never believed that I could make a living at. That may or may not end up working out, but I’m willing to at least give it a try. Finding a way to use talents as a force for good in the world, take care of my family, and my own heart at the same time is not easy, but it’ll hopefully be worth it.

If you had asked me before what this pandemic time was, I would’ve said it was a nightmare. But now, I’m choosing to call it my chrysalis. I cocooned at home, was broken down, rested and reformed into a new version of myself. I think I may have found my new wings. They were always there. Now I’m just waiting for them to dry so I can soar.