Who Will Take Care of Us? A Teacher’s Goodbye

I’m going to the beach tonight to scream out on a wave breaking the shore before the sun sets at 7:29 p.m. It will be 54 degrees, so I can wear shorts and a T-shirt. 

My friend Vicki once brought me to Lake Michigan under the dark of night and told me, “Jonathan, on the count of three, scream what you need into the water and let it go.” I screamed, “fuuuuuuuckl” That struggle is now with the water and only lives in stories I may or may not have flowed from fingers onto pages over the years, releasing the burden of what is no longer in my control. Tonight, I'm going to the water to celebrate and cry if I’m not mistaken. 

I will go alone. I will kneel in the sand and wait.

I exit my Uber, wishing I’d worn a light jacket, and I walk past Leona’s, the restaurant I celebrated undergrad with my family so many years ago, now boarded up, but the 7-11 I used to buy my smokes when I smoked remains. I smile. I return to Loyola Beach when I don’t feel at home in myself. The laughter, the drama–so silly now, and the haze of my youth remains, swirling in the air from the lakefront. 

I don’t live here anymore. 

I reach the beach and it’s dark. Twenty-year-old me would have ventured forward. I pause where the concrete meets sand and close my eyes. I breathe.

I  resigned from my teaching position this week, and over the waves, I hear one of my seventh-grade boys say “Who’s gonna take care of us?” I breathe and look up. There’s a Pink Moon–new beginnings–the return of life after winter. 

When I unexpectedly returned to teaching, I was in a season of brighter, warmer health. And that ebbed and flowed as I moved from two legs, to three, to four wheels once more in a well-loved, but elderly building with no elevator. My legs, that I never dreamed would carry this body again, bore the burden of 43 steps each day as I volunteered to scoot, my mother beside me, guiding me inside with one wheelchair while my custom chair sat quietly at the top of the stairs waiting for my return each morning. I wrote a piece for graduate school, “Ordinary Moments,” tracing my flow through flare-up and back to health for a second year of teaching in my school.

October 2023: “Ordinary Moments”

It’s back.

It’s October, and I sit on the first-floor landing. I am tired. I hold the rail with my left hand and push off the step with my right hand, inching up 38 stairs to my classroom. I arrive as the sun subtly pushes through the night. The darkness shields my vulnerability while the sun streaming through the stained-glass window of this Catholic school guides my way.

 I arrive at 6:30 in the morning with my mother in tow, holding my backpack, the door, and the handles of my chair lest I fall as I transfer. It has been almost a year since I rolled in my chair. The summer was spent walking the joyful rainbow streets of Andersonville, sipping tomato soup and grilled cheese on rustic wooden patios I spent years missing, places I would have happily had a beer at when I wanted the world to be blurred in colors I didn’t yet know how to blend into portrait. Remission from illness will sober you into painting each brushstroke with sober care; anything reckless is done with intention.

This morning, I watch the sunrise over the city, stretch into the suburbs, and make my way up the stairs. I accepted the teaching position by the light of day when my body was young again, but an internal combustion of forces I still have yet to understand has begun to attack itself. So, I find myself hurrying up each stair before my students can see me. They’ll see me in my chair soon enough. The darkness affords me the fantasy that nothing is wrong when, in fact, nothing is quite right, but today, Federico, in maintenance, accompanies me up the stairs, making sure I make it up the 38 stairs with my mother. I want to stop and catch my breath as I hear: “Maestro. You ok?”

 We don’t have an elevator or a first floor in this old building, just a second-floor walk-up, so there is no possibility of a room switch, and I want so very much to stay. I don’t want to go. I stop after pivoting onto step twenty-something and read the mural on the wall: “Respect. Perseverance. Compassion.” The lights stream in brighter, although I’ve only been climbing for 2 minutes, or has it been eight years? 

My breath becomes ragged, and God, please don’t let them see this. I want very much to stay here. I continue to climb on my behind; my second wheelchair waits for me on the third-floor landing.

 I scoot up another stair as the darkness gives way to murky blue and pink—Cotton Candy. I signed the contract when everything was Cotton Candy and drafted this exact plan just in case I were to get sick again, never believing I would need it. I can fall apart for five minutes in my classroom until it’s time for the morning emails and visits from co-workers. I reach the 38th step, grasp the red plum frame, and boost myself onto the soft cushion. The three of us smile as I fly down the hall into my room, where Federico leaves my mom and me to set up. She asks if I need anything. I say I’m good. She kisses my forehead and leaves. I wheel to the cages of our class pets, Carrot, Oreo, and Scholastico, our Guinea Pigs. They squeak for me as I begin to cry while I feed them hay, reassuring them that all is okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Maestro is tired. 

My legs began to buckle again this January 2025, marking the milestone of earning my MFA, where “Ordinary Moments” was crafted. My goal was to stay three years, see my sixth graders through their eighth grade graduation, and begin seeking adjunct work. I would then shift my focus to teaching writing, to teaching through my writing–living a career in the arts. That was my promise—to myself and to others. 

I close my eyes to the moon, asking, “Who’s going to feed the child who stops by my room in the morning to ask for a snack because he forgot to eat at home? Who’s going to apply the ice-pack to his neck when he gets one of his chronic bloody-nose gushers? I always know when he gets one because no matter what class he’s in, he comes over and taps me on the shoulder while holding his nose with the other, and who’s going to keep his bullies away?”

I breathe. Who’s going to care for me when my body can go no further? 

The Pink Moon looms low in the night sky, with no stars surrounding it. It shines, beautiful in the darkness. My answers are written clear as day across the sky. The world will continue without me. I am unable to continue at the pace I am going. Of course, a teacher leaves their position for more than just one reason, but those are for another moon. Another story. In the end, my question becomes, what am I worth? What are my goals worth? What am I financially worth? What are my boundaries in this body that sets its own boundaries for its occupant? 

I’m worth the moon. I’m worth another season in another town. I’m worth the dreams that the boarded up memories of Leona’s graduation table held. I’m worthy of cherishing who I used to be, and allowing myself to embrace the buzz of excitement change brings, along with the grief I feel as I walk these streets where I no longer live. I carry all this in a corner of my heart that houses the dreams of a 23 year old seeking “To make a change in the world through teaching and art,” to 44 year old me seeking “To give hope to others through storytelling while fulfilling a spiritual, artistic, and if I’m being honest, financial need,” even if it means walking a tightrope on a wheelchair to make this come true. Otherwise, what else is the point of having these waves, this beach, this moon–if my body cannot sustain responsibilities that others will learn to share, fill, and carry, while I move into a role I can handle with joy. What is that role?  I don’t know yet. I have more resumes scattered than grains of sand on this corner of beach where I stand. Will it involve teaching in an accessible building for one year while I freelance? Will it bring me to a university for my first lecturer position? Will I have a day job in a bookstore while I write at night? I don’t know.

Will there be joy that my heart has not felt lately with the weight of each step I take up those 43 stairs in my well-loved building that no longer meets my needs? For those wondering, there is no first floor–it’s just a foyer, and a room switch to the second floor was offered to me, but sometimes a decision is not based on just a flight of stairs–my view of the sky is changing.

I don’t scream into the water tonight, but I do that deep, gently breathing I remind my students to do when I need to regulate them because I feel as if the sky might just suck me into space if I don’t remember that it’s okay to place a boundary between my heart and my head as I remember, “Who’s gonna take care of us?” Hopefully, a community of educators, families, peers, and lessons I’ve taught will remain. They will take care of each other. 

It’s getting cold now. I begin the journey back to Sheridan Road, walking, something I don’t take lightly, and I pass Leona’s. I close my eyes for just a moment and breathe, remembering I used to be joy before the cloudy nights came. I used to ride the ebbs and flows under a Pink Moon. I just never knew what that was called. Now I do.

It’s called grace.