So Much Noise in a Silent Woods

Some nights my meds kick in right away and I drift softly to dream land before my head even hits the pillow.

Some nights, like tonight, they're is so much noise in my head, so much going on, I have a hard time settling in.

Tomorrow I will go to sign Arianna's opt out paper for the PARCC standardized testing. There are rumors that it could affect her grades, her ability to move on in school, her ability to graduate, and her ability to get into colleges and get jobs down the road of life.

I've spent so much of my life relying on education, depending on it to get me through adulthood. I was the posterchild for school, both secondary and post secondary. I breathed education into my children. Education was my religion. Learning, my Faith.

I've lost Faith, folks. I've lost Faith in the system that is not only failing me but is now failing my children.

They told me if I worked hard enough, did enough homework, busywork, school work, curricular and extra curricular activities that I could choose my future. The told me if I just got good enough grades that I would never want for anything that I would have security and prosperity. They fucking lied.

All my work had gotten me no where. All of my awards and good grades have gotten me is a broken body, getting welfare that doesn't even begin to cover the bills.

I lied to my children because I still thought education was important but they took my son, who had so much potential and taught him the same things over and over until her got so frustrated he quit school. He's happier car hopping at Sonic than he ever was learning the Pythagoras theorem or how to correctly dissect a sentence. They failed him and in turn, I felt I'd failed him.

Now another child is pleading with me. Telling me that public schools are a waste of her time. Telling me that she could get twice as much done getting home schooled as she's getting done now simply because she'll be able to work at her own pace. She told me the other day that the after school tutoring program decided she needed a full time tutor. A girl who had struggled against dyslexia and ADHD is begging me not to let her slip through the standardized cracks and I found myself telling the same old lies.

"School is important. You need school. You'll get things out of school you could never get at home." And yet I realized with a sick, sinking feeling that I was lying right to her face. That she was smart enough and driven enough to succeed if only she wasn't hindered by the constant tug and pull off bureaucratic vulgarity she was the victim of day after day at school.

That the teachers were tired, overworked, underpaid, undereducated, burned out, and now we're expected to add two months of standardized test prep to their year.

That students were being asked to go to school year round to catch up for the failure of these tests that tried to pour all our little pegs, whatever their shape, into square holes.

I knew I could give Arianna better, often did just discussing her day over dinner. After all, weren't we talking about the little girl who had to teach her third grade teacher how to spell "entomology" and what it meant? We're talking about the little fourteen year old girl who has college honors level knowledge of Greek and Roman mythology and at least a college freshman level knowledge of biology and physiology.

We're also talking about the girl who spells completely phonetically and whose penmanship is about that of a third grader but who can paint, sing, cook, do mathematical calculations in her head, and can't watch black and white movies because the images jumble. My sweet, darling girl, who at the tender age of fourteen is doing the work of a master level shaman death worker as she blindly flounders her way to become one of the most powerful psychopomps. I've ever met.

How many other kids her age even know what as psychopomp is? How many girls her age skip datenight so she can help the little burned boy cross over?

I've told people for years I'm fourth wave feminist and to me that means realizing that women's rights are important and that we desperately need those rights but not at the cost of family and children. I'm choosing to become a housewife in order to make sure my children don't get lost in the cracks. To make sure they have a home and recognition. To give them teaching when the government makes the teachers unable to do their jobs.

I'm there, as a woman, as a mother, to support my child's journey and to understand, that while it might not always be the journey I would have picked for myself, it's still a long and scary journey but they've got my back.

Always.

And thank the goddess that Jason has my back because I couldn't do this alone.

Together. As a family. That's when it'll get done.