Chapter Forty-Two: Christmas Break

Chapter 42: Christmas Break

Daphne keeps calling it “Winter Break.” I am usually pretty sensitive about political correctness, but clear communication trumps PC and “Winter Break” can be misconstrued to mean the week school is off in March, so I use the designation the rest of Herald County employs: Christmas Break. My husband, son and I spend the first half of Christmas Break in Florida after which my son returns to his college dorm to work at his part-time job, my husband returns to his job and, so I can be near him, I spend the remainder of Christmas Break doing Prospect work in Rochester, New York.

Alone in the tiny Rochester apartment while my husband is at work, I attack two front-burner projects: spending the Title One money and hiring more teachers. Just before Christmas Break I received formal approval to hire two Title One teachers for January through June and an okay to order books – literature to supplement, not supplant. I am making a list of books I want to order with the Title One money. I was finally able to get a few suggestions from staff including, surprisingly, several from Stone. I want to order most of the items from Amazon but I can’t just order them, I have to print out the desired order on Title One forms including title, author, quantity, price and publisher, get final approval from Corinna, the Title One liaison, then place the order. The joys of Federal funding.

To find new teachers, I gather scads of resumes and conduct dozens of phone interviews. I line up several face-to-face interviews for January with some good, strong candidates, I hope.

Over Christmas break, my husband and I drive from Rochester, through Syracuse to Cazenovia, to visit friends. From I-690, I can see my old Verizon building. I find it hard to look these days, my Verizon job feels like paradise lost.

Once upon a time, when I was working at Verizon, as a senior manager in the training and education department, I had a corner office. It was in downtown Syracuse on the third floor of a landmark art deco building. It was this great spacious office with a wall of windows and a door that closed and locked. Outside the office, in a large room, were secretaries and receptionists and then along the exterior walls were more offices like mine along with a huge conference room. In one office was my friend and coworker, Mack. At least once a day we stopped by each other’s office to share news and views.

In my office I had a radio/cd player so I could listen to NPR’s morning edition and later in the day, to soothing classical music. Music to help me write reports, design multi-media presentations, analyze spreadsheets, conduct conference calls and meet with coworkers and employees. I remember standing by the window, sipping hot tea from a ceramic mug, looking at the snow falling on the park across the street while children bounced about to keep warm in the bus shelter waiting for the school bus.

When my computer had a problem, Sandy came and made it right, joking and talking about his motorcycle and his plans for lunch at Dinosaur BBQ. When people spoke with me their voices were mostly muted, quiet and calm. Even the angriest union steward was unlikely to shout loudly, at least not very often. Mostly my boss, my coworkers and employees liked me and complimented my work. And even when things went wrong, politeness prevailed. Most days I took a lunch break: went to the library, met my husband for a sandwich or just took a walk. I usually arrived at work by 7:30 and left by 4:30 permitting me to run in the morning or evening depending on the weather and my mood. I had time after work to read, write, laugh. I didn’t take this life for granted. I knew it was good.

I knew I’d take a substantial pay cut to become the Prospect principal. I knew I would give up many of the material, tangible perks of my corporate life. I didn’t know how much I would have to sacrifice. I never expected abuse would come so often, so harshly and from so many people – even from a boss who I expected to be an ally. I didn’t know that “doing the right thing” would hurt so much.

Mack tells me our co-worker, Norm has my office now. He got it when he had an affair with rising Verizon star, Natalie. That affair ended her second marriage (or was it her third). So my office is gone, my Verizon job is gone. The woman at the window, tea in hand, is gone. Driving by the Verizon building, I am painfully aware of what I lost, what I gave up and what I left behind.


Christmas Break also provides me with much needed space for reflection. When Al Gore was campaigning for the Presidency, he made references to an imaginary “lock box” into which he planned to put Social Security. I have a similar lock box, but mine is for emotional security. I work hard at squelching emotion, especially at work. Wrapped up now in sweatshirts and blankets in the chilly (to me, of thin Florida blood) Rochester apartment, I read through my journal entries from the past seven months thinking about where I’ve been and where I am going. I allow myself to open the lock box a crack to take some of the pressure off.

Some of my sadness comes from being apart from my husband. When we’re apart I ache for him. Sometimes my arms want so much to hug him they twitch at the unrequited urge. We talk on the phone at least once a day, often more, but it is not the same. I miss him when we’re apart and when we wave goodbye at the airport security line on Sunday nights, often some of the sadness leaks out of the lock box and drips down my face.

During this past half year, there have been many, many days when I wanted to cry. I rarely permit myself the luxury of tears. But so many times I was so frightened, so angry, so incredibly sad. Displaying these emotions at work does no good and has the potential to result in real harm since I don’t want my staff or students to think I can’t cope. I know I need to be tolerant when these emotions spillover in others, but I don’t accept them in me, at least not in school and not in public. Sometimes at night, alone in my apartment, when it is so late that neither my boss nor my staff is likely to phone, sometime after my nightly call with my husband, the tears flow. And flow and flow.

Sadness isn’t the only emotion in the lockbox. I also trap that emotion for which Emily Dickenson said she had no time: hate. It pounds on the lid and bulges the seams. The Boss is the most common catalyst. His lack of support and frequent harassment are breaking me down. Sometimes when he talks to me I wonder if he can see the hate in my eyes. It takes some conscious effort to keep my face blank.

I know it is wrong to hate The Boss. I have lectured myself on the pressures I imagine he faces and the life experiences that made him what he is today. But what sounds logical in my mind has no effect on the boiling emotions in my lock box. I use my journal to try to ease the pressure on the lock box. I write what I can’t admit or say aloud.

But it really is mostly sadness that fills my lock box, it flows from the gap between the tragic horror of my students’ lives and my very limited power to change it. I can’t give their parents well-paying jobs. I can’t cure the mental and physical illnesses from which so many of my students suffer. I don’t have the resources to make a dent in the drug, alcohol, physical and sexual abuse that have damaged them and continue to do so. I don’t know how to take away the hunger, anger and violence my students consider a part of normal, everyday living.

When I let down my guard, when I loosen the latch on that lock box and imagine what it would be like to be one of my students, to be Karla, Darius, Perry or Tyryona, I feel searing pain and profound guilt. If I took them home, just a few of them, I could keep them safe and warm and fed. I could rescue them. Karla, Darius, Perry, Tyryona and all my other students are not merely names on a spreadsheet. Every day I see them, touch them and then return them to their lives of hell. Is being their principal really enough? Am I making any difference at all? If I didn’t have the lock box, I would cry every day like Rosie, my counselor, who is often in tears as the reality of her students crushes her.

But my lock box is not just for the empathy and concern I feel for my students. I am also worried about me. I often feel overwhelmed and scared. I try to project confidence but I feel vulnerable and unsure. Have I bitten off more than I can chew? What kind of leader am I? Have I become what my disgruntled employees call me: a witch, a jerk? Sometimes I look around and feel surrounded by incompetence, but is it them or is it me? These self-doubts are disturbing. I shove them deep into the lockbox knowing they will slither out in the dark of night when my guard is down to steal my precious sleep.

On the second to last day of Christmas Break I stand up to stretch and gaze out the sliding glass door at snow blowing sideways on I-490 . I am thinking that when my husband finishes work we should go to dinner at that new noodle place. Then my cell phone rings. It is not The Boss. It is Daphne. She almost sounds drunk as she spins out fragmented thoughts stringing together paragraphs without topic sentences:

a graduate program University of Florida some night classes but day classes can’t get into program college picks classes for you no control of schedule was your grad school like this education classes landscape design student loans classes full only one car mother says husband’s job roommate gone money classes money job

Finally I interrupt and take a stab at her meaning, rather like I do with some of my less articulate Prospect students.

“Daphne are you planning to take some graduate classes?”
“Yes I…”
“Will these classes impact your teaching?”
“I can’t, I mean some are day classes and…”
“Would you be able to teach at Prospect at all, even part-time?”
“No I…”
“How soon do classes begin?”
“Monday and I…”
“Monday as in two days from now?”
“Yes.”

I tell Daphne she needs to come to school to say goodbye to her students, she owes them that. She reluctantly agrees.

I am pretty angry at Daphne. My best teacher is quitting and giving me 60 hours notice. In part I blame myself. I recall once telling Daphne I needed her to stay at least through Christmas. I guess she took that as a hard and fast deadline, while I expected her to give me more warning, perhaps two week’s notice. If she had told me BEFORE Christmas Break, I could have been searching for her replacement. I open the lock box and toss Daphne in. There is nothing to be gained now from fuming. I go through the resumes I collected over Christmas Break. I look for teachers who might be able to teach English and could work well with Jordan and Sam. Another item for Monday’s to do list.