Return to Start
It is time to figure out what to do next–what I feel next needs to be sorted because I have no idea. It’s been 24 years and an ocean of adventures since becoming an adult. I look at my planner and it’s blank. What’s a teacher, actor, writer…person to do in their next act except live it? I look to the sky and the words pour forth. I’m living somewhere in the middle of life amongst the unknown, the unspoken, my ellipsis…this is where I currently live. –Blog Post Something Blue. July 1, 2022.
It’s been a little over a year since I left full-time teaching to focus on my MFA in Writing, continue acting, and find stability with my illness. In fact, when creating my portfolio, the SEO description was:
“A former special needs educator faces a rare disease, using writing to learn to live with disability in this next chapter of life.” As I would for a student, I’ll break it up for myself. I’ll chunk it. “Learn to live with disability in this next chapter of life.”
That’s your chapter right now. I’ve faced the disease–now it’s time to walk with the illness. From surgeries to being hit by a car, I faced a few things that seem like a really twisted fairytale this year. Very unexpected things. I’ve gone to rehabilitation to get back to where I was one year ago. I returned to start.
I have subbed in my old classroom that I handed to my successor when I knew it was time to go. It stung. She’s a great teacher and person. Still, when I step foot in my old room, it feels like an amicable divorce: the furniture is arranged a bit differently and I feel the love in that room. Ghostly moments flicker with abstract memories of joy, chaos, learning, and “Mr. S. How's your cat?”
I learned to teach with no voice or leg movement in that room due to my accident. Funny how life works out, huh? Last week I wrote:
A Summer Remission is here. I don’t look ill, nor do I feel ill this evening. These are not ordinary moments for me. I see framed artwork and paintings I have only seen as memories still to be experienced etched on my mind. Abstracts of children nursing, a modern take on the Virgin Mary. A ghostly white candle flickers, holy, beside me on the table.
I type this entry as I look at a blue sky and hear bits of the past whooshing through my ears:
The chair of the MFA Program at Lindenwood University sat down with me over a Zoom and Tea during the shutdown in 2020 to help me frame my ideas for a novel: “Jonathan, how about a series of vignettes to weave your manuscript together?”
I hear myself telling my friends: “What if I still have one more year in this body to do this job? What if I can finally afford to live my life with illness? What if I can afford to go to Italy and teach TESOL (Teaching English as a Second or Other Language) for a summer because I have an opportunity? Getting sick isn’t cheap. It isn’t convenient if you love adventure, or even if you don’t. To go for a walk is that ghostly candle that shines hopeful in my mind.
A new vignette is about to begin; new voices to call out, “Mr. S!” All good things don’t necessarily end, but they change like the seasons. With the click of my touchpad, I accept an offer to take over as the newest English Language Arts Teacher for a small school that is a short walk from my home on days when the sky is blue, and a long walk from an ICU room in the hospital almost eight years ago. Suddenly, something blue has emerged for as long as I am blessed to walk through it.
The blue sky off the Gulf of Mexico where I spend most summer’s.
