loss
Yesterday I thought I lost my favourite hat. I even went running back 10 minutes through the silent rush of early morning commuters to try and find it to no avail. I was surprisingly sad, I guess because I get attached to things. I mourned a little bit on my way home, but then tried to let it go, because I tell myself I've gotten used to things coming in and going out of my life. Then, to my surprise, it appeared on our banister last night. I must have dropped it before leaving the house.
Today was the last class for the English course I've been helping with for the last six months. It was a nifty full day of using glitter and glue together to make a giant map of "our local community." I'm telling you, it ended up being a sweetly optimistic view of the borough. I'm sure I haven't seen that much green from one end of it to the other. During the day the women all took a placement test as they will be moving on to full-fledged English courses at the local college.
I'm going to continue to help out at the centre, but it will no longer be these women I've come to like so much. I know probably the women in the new class will be as wonderful, as a whole, but it was still hard to say good-bye. As I said above, I've gotten used to saying good-bye, so I was surprised to catch myself tearing up as they all left the classroom.
I walked part of the way to the tube with one of the women who has the least English, and who consequently I worked with one on one quite a bit. Her biggest handicap is being reserved, so she doesn't practice as much as some of the more out-going women. I can empathize with that. Today walking down the street she became absolutely chatty. I think she said more to me on that little walk than I've been able to coax from her the entire rest of the course put together. That made me want to cry too. But in a happy way.
All this to say is that I thought I was sad about my hat yesterday, but that was nothing compared to today. But mixed in with the sad feeling is a happy feeling that these women are moving on to bigger and better things, which ultimately makes the sad good, better and best.
Today was the last class for the English course I've been helping with for the last six months. It was a nifty full day of using glitter and glue together to make a giant map of "our local community." I'm telling you, it ended up being a sweetly optimistic view of the borough. I'm sure I haven't seen that much green from one end of it to the other. During the day the women all took a placement test as they will be moving on to full-fledged English courses at the local college.
I'm going to continue to help out at the centre, but it will no longer be these women I've come to like so much. I know probably the women in the new class will be as wonderful, as a whole, but it was still hard to say good-bye. As I said above, I've gotten used to saying good-bye, so I was surprised to catch myself tearing up as they all left the classroom.
I walked part of the way to the tube with one of the women who has the least English, and who consequently I worked with one on one quite a bit. Her biggest handicap is being reserved, so she doesn't practice as much as some of the more out-going women. I can empathize with that. Today walking down the street she became absolutely chatty. I think she said more to me on that little walk than I've been able to coax from her the entire rest of the course put together. That made me want to cry too. But in a happy way.
All this to say is that I thought I was sad about my hat yesterday, but that was nothing compared to today. But mixed in with the sad feeling is a happy feeling that these women are moving on to bigger and better things, which ultimately makes the sad good, better and best.
posted by dm at 3:40 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home