Nostalgia

I am sitting alone at my desk in my classroom. It is after school hours and fortunately no students have dropped by. I am on the verge of tears. I miss Chelsea...

I never realized how powerful an experience my two years of working at CHAP were. The Chelsea High Alternative Program - a part of Chelsea High School so few people dared to venture too, but it was my home and the students and faculty there were my family. I miss Dave, the lovable security guard, who would laugh and tease the kids all day, but who always had my back when things got out of hand. 

I miss the students sulking down our short strip of hallway, pacing the floors with their fists clenched tight and their jaw lines rigid with a forced serious composure. 

I even miss the smell of ketchup packets and the sickeningly sweet smell of chicken burgers in microwaved buns. I miss them.

I miss everything. 

I miss my windowless classroom that I turned into a forum, a stage, an arena, a lecture hall, a personal temple of learning and place of peace (except for when students screamed profanities and hit each other and then it felt more like an asylum). 

I miss talking with my students. Each and every one of them. I miss hearing about the troubles in their lives and about the experiences they were going through. I miss their genuine laughs and even more genuine shouts. Teaching them was never the hard part, it was seeing them try to live in a world that was failing them. 

Though I have a wonderful job here in Saudi Arabia with amazing colleagues and phenomenal students, it is clear that I have most certainly left a part of my heart in the little city of Chelsea, Massachusetts.

But I also think I miss the freedom, the independence, the fact that I could teach my students whatever I wanted and question them and challenge them and write with them and read with them and engage them on interesting and relevant topics of study. I miss being able to take my time with topics and to leave school at 3 pm. I miss my little house in Winthrop and the sanctuary it provided me. I miss my pine paneled walls and chocolate suede couch. I miss my blue porch and view of the ocean. I miss the sounds of airplanes. I miss the smell of salt water and seaweed. 

I miss my gym. I miss kale. I miss mushroom pesto ravioli. I miss my little wine and spirits shop.

Yet, I also know that if I had stayed, I would never have grown as the woman and educator I have become today. I would never have travelled to Thailand to present at a conference or take a team of students to Cambodia to help build a library. I would never had taken 90 ninth graders camping in the desert or gone on weekend trips to Bahrain and Dubai. I also find myself wondering whether I would have fallen in love with the man of my dreams. We are old friends who reconnected over our mutual love of traveling and experiences of being single abroad. Would we still have fallen in love with my being in Boston and he in Japan? I am not sure. I'd like to think so, but still....I wonder.

Everything happens for a reason and the experiences of my life are no exception. I have taken advantage of every opportunity afforded me in this life and I have grown so much as a person as a result of my struggles and successes. So even though I miss my "old life" and my former students, school, house and routines, I wouldn't change the course of my life for anything. 

Though moments ago I was ready to burst into tears, I have now cracked a faint smile and am breathing a little more deeply and peacefully. How fortunate I am to have lived such a full life at such a young age...and how fortunate I am to have so much more adventure ahead of me