I am full of faces. They gather in my imagination, quiet, but luminous. They never speak, but I often see them as my memory preserves their faces, smiling, in those moments when eyes meet eyes for a brief instant of timeless human recognition (“thank-you”); recognition outside of role, age, or gender. I see their faces in the dark, and their faces are also the scattered pieces of me, and I (perhaps) of theirs.
At this time of year, I see students’ faces, often. They drift; I am reminded sometimes of leaves on an autumn current, seasons passing, changing, and the changing of ourselves. And ourselves as a whole entity, not only a thing to fragment into myself and you. Ourselves. The classroom is an ourselves (or it can be), a place of shelter, of belonging. What I have found startling this semester (walking, surprised, into an intense ray of sun after cold days, a warmth that seems fierce, a near-memory of childish delight, foolishness, simplicity) is that I have belonged there, too. I had forgotten, in my impetuousness, my rush and haste to teach, to impart knowledge, that I am part of the pattern.
I drew hexagon tiles in a pattern on the whiteboard this semester, the shape of a beehive. We talked about the lines making the shapes and that the shapes shared, as relationships, empathy, love. We are not made by our own successes, struggles, hopes, habits, tendencies, happinesses, loves – we are made by these in connection with the same of others. We are clouds of faces; we are each our own and part of another’s and others are parts of ours. But we are not alone.
Of all things, perhaps, pain makes us kin. Deep, guttural pain – faced pain, especially; the kind that has not been ignored, but accepted, made place for, finally grafted in. Grafted branch to grafted branch to tree. That grafting – I wonder if it is our shared bridges, or the lines we share, “blood-relatives” they might call us, born from the same race who bleeds.
Pain and love are so deeply inter-rooted. The shovel bites deep and hollows out the place where roots of that vigor can take hold. Pain and love seem to grow from the same place. The strongest tristezas I experience now are the biting pain of having loved. To tear that connection rips away more than itself. Goodbyes didn’t use to be this hard before I learned to love better (just a little better, just enough to know the bite of loving, the hurt and pain of it, the claw of it).
I am wandering in the dark again. But it will never be so dark. Not while their faces are glowing all around me, quiet, like hands, hands in the dark, gently directing me on. And sometimes less than hands, they just stand, like sentinels, like witnesses to my survival, and to theirs. We are clouds of witnesses. We are applauding each other, silently. Silently, we are telling each other to go on.
I told my students this (not all of it, perhaps, not in those words, but I wanted to, in moments for wisdom on Wednesdays, in praying for them, in orange bread). But I preached to the choir and forgot I sing. Now I am aching because all my loving was little and small – I keep thinking of all I wished I did better, more thoroughly, more attentively – but I realize, now, I realize: their response to me was as important as my word to them. I am loved by them (strange) and that is as important as that I love them. I am supported by them, in ways and manners different than I support them – I as teacher, they as students, but in the end, all as humans.
We are the ourselves of our classroom, the total pattern of 003. And with our different roles but our same brokenesses we met each other in the shared empty space that was our ignorance of each other four months ago, and in that space we have sown something with roots. The roots are love and pain. I am sad to leave again, but we have had joy. We leave each other with parts of ourselves. May we always take care of them, may we treasure the faces we see in the dark, may we know they are also our own.
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Empty Spaces 