I teach. That's what I'm on medical leave from. My children, my goofy loveable weirdos, seven and eight.
I was not with my children today.
That's all I could think when I saw the news out of Connecticut. I don't know how I managed to miss it until now.
I've been reading this poem over and over again:
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is
-W.S. Merwin, Thanks, 1988
It takes a hell of a lot of courage to keep waving and saying thank you in this world--this world that keeps getting darker. Courage and strength. And maybe that's the purpose of it all? To just keep going.
To wade through the muck and grieve and love and win and lose, in intermittent joy and in overwhelming pain-- to keep going through, strong and courageous enough still to say thank you.
I'm not there yet.