I Miss

I miss writing. Terribly. Every time I give my students a writing assignment I become jealous, wishing it were me writing up an essay about being sick, or what I did over the Summer.

They are becoming strong writers under my tutelage, learning to replace pronouns with the specific reference, add those gritty, fabulous details, and vary their sentence length. I forced them to learn the difference between "its" and "it's." They got it. If I can now teach them "a lot," I will be infinitely happy. I feel such satisfaction in what I do all day. I made Freshman read Tobias Wolff! Sandra Cisneros! (Now that girl can throw together a sentence.)

Charles comes home with his writing assignments from school. He has to write an experimental novel this semester. I ache every time I see him read a new school-assigned text or spend hours at the computer assembling words. I don't miss school, really. Graduate School was over-the-top-self-absorbed for me. The old adages of "Am I smart emough? Good enough? And Blah Blah Neurosis" are gone. The energy of teaching feels much better. But I do miss new books, authors, and those eccentric professors forcing me to write.

I do spend the day celebrating language. Relishing words. Being with the most awkward people on the planet.

Melanie Rae Thon was a favorite professor. I think about her all the time. I think about how she would love my students like I do, especially the boy who can't smile and had to get a "smile surgery" where they put part of his leg onto his face and still can't smile. I know when he is smiling anyway, because I can figure those sorts of things out. I wish I could tell MRT all about him.

I think about how if MRT were me, she would write for hours in her writers notebook about the wet ash that floats off of the mountain, weeks after the fire.