"I Walked Into Your Class But Couldn't Find Your Name"

I was in grad school, in a never-ending quagmire that is EBD ("Everything But Dissertation"), finishing up a teaching certificate as a potential safety net, when I got divorced. My daughter was 2.5 at the time, and in order to bring in a bit of extra money I had started teaching computer skills at an Austin day care center chain a few months before The Event. It didn't pay much, but they provided free daycare for Adri, so it was a win-win: some extra money, and Adri got to socialize with other children her age. I also started subbing in these schools during the hours I didn't have computer classes, and eventually a director at one of the schools offered to pay me more if I exclusively subbed at her school. There was a signing bonus and everything: a gift card to TCBY!

Adri, therefore, became a full-time member of the Two Year Old Class. She got her own cubby, complete with hand-painted name card above her coat hook. I'd drop her off, teach computers at various schools, sub at her school, eat lunch with her, and take her home. It was wonderful, and I could have done that the rest of my life and have been happy.

However, that was not to be for a myriad of reasons that are not relevant to this post. Suffice to say that one day Adri no longer came to my school. Of course, she still went to day care, just somewhere else, because heaven forbid she see me more than her mother. No, I'm not bitter, why do you ask? However, the director, being a human being and all and sensitive to these matters, didn't remove Adri's name card from her cubby. I'd walk in to the Two Year Old class to get a student for computers, or fill in during the two-hour nap time while a teacher went to lunch, etc, and see her name there. It was comforting for some reason, perhaps because as long as her name was there there was a chance that maybe she'd return.

One day, a few weeks later, I walked in to the class and her name placard had been removed. It felt like someone had hurled me off a 20 story building and then kicked me in the ribs for good measure as I lay sprawled on the concrete below. I didn't cry, but probably because at that point anything inside me capable of expressing such emotion had been ground up and spat out months earlier. A friend walked into the room, however, and saw me. She did cry, I comforted her while really comforting myself, and went home.

On the plus side, I went home that day and wrote a song including the above incident that I've always liked. It's too bad that I require intense emotional pain to write music now. ;-)