Devonne Brown

Today is the day I say goodbye to Thanksgiving break. Anxiety and depression levels are rising, tonight is a school night after all. No more messing around with cats, movies, music, and road trips. House cleaning and laundry will become more of the chore they were before, and less of a leisure activity, they were never enjoyable, but they haven’t been hair-raisingly stressful this past week. Grades and lesson plans kick back in. Kids. I have to deal with kids again.

Today is also the day I begin to resurrect the brass on the bed that my aunt gave me. I rented a van to go get it, then got the vehicle hung up in gravel and mud at her doorstep. The old mountain man that came to the rescue made fun of me the whole time he was easily backing the damned thing out of the mudholes I dug deeper with the wheels. He’ll be laughing about it in the holler for years to come, I’m sure. At least I didn’t need help carrying the bed into the house. It will be beautiful when it’s polished up, the only piece missing was a pole from the middle of the footboard, like the front to of a hillbilly.

It came from Clay County.

Today is the day I try to stop my mind from jumping back and forth from home to school. Data, numbers in boxes, dividing fractions when I only know words. I don’t want to learn to divide fractions, not even a little bit, but I promise I’ll find a YouTube video that will show me how, so I can show the kids how. I hate it when the blind leads the blind and I’m the blindest of them all. I kind of feel like a con artist when I do that. I like being honest with folks. It’s better to be honest, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Today is the day I am going to clean my room. It’s not dirty, but I do need to fold and put away clothes, and then do more laundry. I need to make decisions. Some of them are easy, like what kind of jeans I’ll wear to work. I can only wear blue jeans on Wednesdays and Fridays. There’s no dress code for teachers in our school district, our principal doesn’t want us to wear jeans except on Wolfpack Wednesdays, and Capital High Fridays. Black jeans are my compromise.  I do not like themed clothing days. They stifle my creativity as a snappy dresser. My brooches and bracelets just don’t work with Capital High shit. I rarely wear anything in public with words or flowers anyway, even to school. I have standards, just like the standards we’re supposed to be teaching and must write on our white boards in our classrooms. 

Today is the day I remember my standards.