Just One - Part One

JUST ONE

If she had have known, she would never have made the commitment. Had she been more informed of how difficult it would be, she would never have signed up. If it had all turned out differently, maybe her days wouldn’t be so hard, maybe the tears wouldn’t sit so near the edge of spilling, perpetually building up a persistent force of pressure behind her eyes that was held back by forces beyond her own.

Still, she had chosen, she had signed up, she had to keep lifting the pain, the weariness, the fatigue and sadness up to a power higher than herself to get through yet another day.

 

She hit the snooze button for the last possible time, knowing that she had to get up. Just get up. Get up and shower. Just get in the shower. One step at a time. Grateful, so very grateful for the crystal water; warm, nourishing liquid pouring from above. Spraying down in therapy as her mind reeled through all the needs around her. The needs of family, the needs of friends, of colleagues, of those she would encounter in a day that would take forever to start, and by an amazing grace would end itself without her encountering or creating any more pain in a world so riddled with complex hurting. The stars of light reflected off the streams of water as they kissed her skin, soothed the inner turmoil and fulfilled their duty to run and clean. Why couldn’t people be as peaceful, graceful and beautiful as water? Asking nothing and serving in a capacity that simply gives life and serves, cycle after cycle after cycle.

 

The routine of the lather, the cleaning of her skin, a spiritual moment of motion meditation carrying with it with each circular clean, one more release from within that she could do this. She could and would carry on. She would enjoy the shower, enjoy the light and let the inexplicable peace from within get her through the day.

 

Wiping the mist from the mirror, encountering the face that had aged so much in the last few months. Why had she thought she had a purpose to be here? Why had she believed that The Universe was moving to use her for good in a place that was draining her life? The silver-grey hair, the lines etching themselves into the painting opposite her, where the painter no longer used a fine-tipped brush for either. All the creams in the world couldn’t hide the grey under her eyes or sheening from the stress in her being. When was the last time she had slept through a night?

 

She couldn’t remember.

 

The last day where she hadn’t walked with her bones aching from chronic fatigue?

 

She couldn’t remember.

 

She could only see what was here now. The overwork, the stress of underpay, the demands on her time and resources etched in her face. For what? To keep her faith? To stay committed to the invisible?

 

Others had it so much easier. Colleagues who ditched responsibility and passed it on to others. Colleagues who put themselves first, and put blame on others, asking: “Oh, didn’t you do it?” Like it was ever on their ‘to do list’ in the first place. Why stick to these ‘convictions’? Why try and live to ‘be a role model’? Did the young eyes observing the elders see the stupidity in working hard when it was clear that others did not? The young eyes that viewed her colleagues daily, chose the ways of the apathetic and absentminded, the gossips and the blamers. And why shouldn’t they? It is the easier path, it is so much easier.

 

She looked at her face. Looked at what caring was doing, looked at the self-damage she was inflicting and asked herself again: “Are you going to give up today? Are you going to throw it in today? Today is a really good day to end it, leave, drop them, go on…”

 

Leaning in she found her own eyes, paused to touch deep in her soul, the place of truth. She closed her eyes and sighed in resignation: “No, not today. It will not end today. They will give me hell today, but one person, just one, may give me a glimpse of something better. Just one, I ask for just one.”

 

Amidst the insecurities, the self-denials, the power struggles and control freaks, someone needed to be there in case. . .  In case a seed needed to be planted that would take years to bear fruit. In case a tender word would change someone’s destiny. In case, someone she met felt as drained and used as she did. Just one case, giving someone one less burden to carry, one less reason to feel alone.

 

Routine creams. Routine brush. Routine dress. Routine eat. Routine pack. Routine to get her to open the door and step out. Routine trip. Routine route. Routine to find the strength to smile at another. Routine to find the patience to go beyond her life and provide for others. Routine to empower herself to serve. Routine to use all that self-talk of gurus, psychologists, Oprah and all those whose ideas dictate the practises of a society so easily manipulated, so easily shaped without a whimper into the moulds others give them. Routine prayer, that never ceases. Love, focus on Love. Love that is founded somewhere outside of her life. Love, that so many by the signs for, but have no idea how to live it out. Love, that people place in hearts and emoticons so easily, and then sign divorce papers as swiftly. Love that used to mean eternity and now means ‘as long as you ‘LIKE’ me’. Love that this world does not understand. Love as sacrifice, love as truth, love as pain and aches that will push through and get a person to work for no reason other than to serve.

 

Self-talking the love, revisiting the signature in her mind, making the promise once again, forgiving those she needed to every morning in the hope that one day she would no longer remember there was a need to forgive.

 

A journey from bed to work that spanned a thousand consciences, the experiences that would not let go of her, despite all her desperate and varied attempts to let them go. Her daily agony, numbed, buried, put back into its pressure cooker to survive another day.

 

The gates were open. She walked in.

“Morning ma’am.”

“Morning, Simon. How is your football injury healing up?”

“Ma’am it’s getting better. I’ll be back on that field this week for sure.”

“Good to hear Simon. Take care though.”

“Ahh ma’am.”

A girl whose parents are getting divorced. A girl whose parents have both just been retrenched. A boy who perseveres to walk with severe disability. An obese child who hates himself. A beautiful child bathed in insecurities that have dulled her entire being through self-choice. A bully. The bullied. The broken. The shy. The depressives. The attention-seekers. The heart-broken. The lost. The exposed. 80 per day, an hour for each set in her six hours. She needed to get through another day, just for one of them. Just one. She signed up. She committed.

 

A staff meeting after trying to make several learners feel they were cared for, because no-one else would. Berated again. This hasn’t been done, that hasn’t been done. This timetable is changing, there is more teacher substitution. We are losing lessons to photographs. The Government’s Body will be checking in soon, have paperwork for every child, every lesson, copy every piece of paper, back it up with another piece of paper. Work people. Keep working.

Meeting dismissed, more work on the list. Colleagues ignore, just like they complain that their learners do. Colleagues arrive late, just like they complain their learners do. Colleagues don’t have the work printed and prepared for their lesson yet, just like they punish the learners for not doing. Their most important agenda: The weekend action. The sport. Sharing and playing with electronic gadgets and dispersing destructive gossip and negativity with the most silently stealthy knife of their tongues, just like they complain their learners do. She listens. She feels drained. Routine. She has to grab her routine. A coffee. Strong, empowering addiction. One addiction to prevent her observations and the complaints around her from drowning her in the pressure of the tears pulsating behind her eyes.

Breathe. Breathe. Sip. Sip. Breathe. Breathe.

“Morning lovely lady, you’re awfully quiet today. Was it a big night last night?” Nudge, nudge.

A trained face replies: “No, not at all, just trying to get through that marking, you know how it is.”

“This place is ridiculous, those deadlines, with insufficient lessons and more syllabus to cover… “

The complaining would go on until the bell, it always could. The truth of the story piercing her: Her mind reeling at her helplessness to change anything. Her heart aching with the knowing that complaining would just circulate, reinvent itself in more forms, like a virus amidst all those too closed to notice that they had said the same thing season after season for years.

“… and it’s been like this for as long as I can remember. That bell, I’ve never liked the sound of it, I don’t know why they had to put in an electric bell, the old one was just fine. Off for round one. I will win this time. I know it.”

A practiced face moves into response mode, the receiver gestures in repeat, moves the same steps to the same destination with the mind set of going to battle, not of going to teach.

A slow rise, another coffee sip. A corridor battle like a mobile game, dodging teenagers from every direction, missing decapitation under a thread of conversation yelled without awareness across a corridor as school bags seemingly live separate lives to their owners.

 

The classroom threshold arrives. Over it. Safe. For now. May the Universe provide another safe day. Just one.

The first class, grade 8s, most have not brought what they need. The majority, once again, have not done their homework. Many have forgotten what was done in the lesson before and argue with her that she: “never said…” when her daily write up of each lesson clearly shows ‘she did’. At the side of the class, one boy keeps quiet, one boy sits with all that he needed to complete, done and ready. And her heart is crushed by an invisible fist that can’t ever be opened whilst the majority keep it so tightly closed, so firmly resistant to improvement, so defiant to being accountable and responsible; suffocating in a circle of blame and selective hearing.

 

Perseverance gets her through. Patience to re-organise stationery so that each child will at least attempt to write something, as she skilfully works around their near illiteracy, around both a social and educational system that let them down many years ago. She manages through experience and expert lesson planning to see that one boy and check his work. He has improved. His eyes shine at her praise and it is good.

 

Through Grade 9s, puberty, conflict, a racial class divide, she weaves through the context and intricately brings peace to the room. Partly through learned technique, mostly through the prayers that haven’t stopped since she began the day’s journey. The energy becomes positive, the learners yield, drop the desire to mask their insecurities with nonsensical behaviour and engage. They perform at a level that shows just a tiny bit of improvement, and that tiny bit builds a few more concrete rocks of knowledge to their foundation that may make a difference to them one day, if not only for today where they touched the feeling of ‘purposeful’ which chipped away another stone from their walls of inhibitions.

 

A break. The irony. So much more is broken than anyone realises.

A moment for emails. An unhappy parent to reply to. One of 20 sets of Grade 10 parents confirms attendance at the parents’ evening that night. Another late night awaits. The sports department removing football players from their lessons, that’s another mark to find in their absence, another test to set, another swap of lesson plans to fit in with management changes. Another change in report comments, they will have to be reformatted, again. The break ends.