Finding Hope

I remember driving with real maps. Actual maps. This was already a problem for me because I am terrible with directions. Always have been. If someone tells me to make a right, there is a very good chance something inside my body will confidently prepare to go left. Apparently even my internal compass has authority issues. Before GPS, if I was going somewhere unfamiliar, I needed help. I would stop at a gas station, buy a map, sit in the car, and plot my route like I was preparing to cross the Louisiana Purchase. I highlighted roads. Turnpikes. Exits. Because without visual evidence, “head north for twelve miles” meant absolutely nothing to me. North? Man, I am trying to find New Jersey. And God help me if I unfolded the entire map. Once open, there was approximately a twelve-percent chance I was ever getting it back to its original shape. I folded left. No. Right. No. Somehow Connecticut was now underneath Pennsylvania and New Jersey had disappeared entirely. Eventually I shoved the ...

I’ve spent most of my life looking at the dashboard. Lately, people have started opening the hood. There is something I’ve discovered in my new job... or jobs, because apparently at this stage of life I have decided one paycheck is too predictable. I’ve met some of the most unguarded people I’ve ever known. Not realistic as in they understand compound interest or remember to rotate their tires. Real. The kind of real that makes you realize how much of your previous life may have been covered in a thin layer of professional varnish. For most of my career in education, I was surrounded by people who knew how to present the best version of themselves. I did it, too. Of course I did. I knew how to walk into a room, shake hands, smile appropriately and say, “I appreciate your perspective,” when what I really meant was, “That may be the dumbest thing I have heard all week.” We called it professionalism. And sometimes it was. Other times, it was simply a carefully edited sliver of who we rea...

A pparently, becoming a butterfly is horrifying. Nobody tells you this. We get the elementary-school version. Caterpillar. Cocoon. Butterfly. Three adorable pictures connected by arrows. Very Disneylike. What they leave out is the part where the caterpillar basically turns into soup. When a caterpillar enters its chrysalis, much of its larval body begins breaking down. Tissues dissolve. Parts of the creature that crawled in stop existing in the form they had before. Apparently the scientific process for becoming one of the most beautiful creatures on earth begins with turning yourself into something you wouldn’t eat on a dare. Nobody puts that part on the kindergarten bulletin board. Apparently “turn into soup and see what happens” isn’t much of a classroom theme.  But inside all that biological chaos are structures involving something called imaginal cells . They were there before the chrysalis and the wings. Before there was anything suggesting this thing might someday flo...

  W hy is it so hard for some people to say, “I’m sorry”? I feel like I say it all day long. Some mornings, I apologize to Erin before I even get out of bed. “I’m sorry.” “For what?” “I don’t know yet. But statistically speaking, something is coming, and I thought we could save time.” This is marriage after sixteen years. You stop waiting for the crime and just enter a plea. But real apologies seem to come few and far between. Not the quick “Sorry about that” we toss over our shoulder after forgetting to replace the toilet paper. I mean the terrifying kind. The kind where you sit across from someone you have deeply hurt, look them in the eyes, and admit that you were wrong. No footnotes. No closing argument. No PowerPoint titled Important Context Regarding Why I Was Actually Only Forty-Seven Percent Responsible. Just wrong. I have done things in my life that were very bad and very wrong. I have hurt people I love. Some of them have hurt me too, but that doesn’t erase what I did. Pa...