Time to Rest

Last weekend, on an unseasonably warm and sunny Saturday, I went for a stroll from my neighborhood up into the Berkeley Hills. My initial destination was Tilden Park but it is really! far! up! the! HILL! (huff...puff...) and so once I arrived at Cragmont School, wowed by the panoramic view of the entire bay from Tiburon to San Mateo and soothed as I always, strangely, am by the presence of playgrounds and pogo sticks and kids playing a Saturday afternoon away, I sat down on the soccer field. Africa, Africa, I thought...I am leaving Berkeley a week from tonight. I wrote in my journal and I closed my eyes to daydream and I felt a renewed sense of connection to all I could see apread out before me in the late afternoon sun, this slice of California that has become my home over the past ten years. I felt fully grounded here and ready to leave and go there.

On the way back down the hill I saw this graffiti, Sharpied onto the sidewalk not far from the intersection of Marin and Regal where the hill turns towards the north and continues up in the direction of the park. I stopped and looked at it for a long time, photographed it with my fly new phone, and decided it would make a good blog post...something about a sunny East Bay afternoon and exploring a new part of this, my temporary neighborhood, the place I have for now been calling home.

Until Sunday morning when I awoke feeling as if I had been smacked in the head by a board...well, not really the head. Actually more the heart, and the soul. I realized with newfound, profound, nauseating awareness: I did not want to go to Africa. I wanted to be there, but not to go. I wanted to want to go, but not to actually leave. I wanted to stop living this nomadic life and to find what I am really looking for: not a savory blend of tarragon and sage with cashews and raisins from the spice dealer in Jerusalem's shuk, not a piece of handmade local art by a craftsperson I would get to know in equatorial west Africa, but what to do next in this life.

I have been a teacher for twelve years. I have taught at my current school for half that time. I am an excellent, accomplished educator and I know I am very good and very well-regarded for what I do. I use the positive feedback and the empowering feelings I have about work to distract me from the yucky stuff in my life where I feel less successful. We all do, I think. So for that reason I am actually doing something perhaps more courageous than getting on a plane to a place where there are water systems that are home to snails that harbor worms that carry death (schistosomiasis, also known as 'snail death'--read about it online, or...don't). I am facing something more daunting than ten weeks of life in a community without running water. I am ready to stop and actually admit I don't know what I want to do next.

You see in my world, there is What We Do. What We Do Next, of course, is a mere extension of that, and this year's sabbatical was meant to facilitate What I Was Going To Do Next: use the research I was conducting on teacher training in global educational settings to write my application to a joint Masters in Jewish Studies/PhD in Teacher Education program at Stanford. Because what do people who are excellent educators, who have already done extensive work in teacher training, do? Go back and become professors and do it for real, marry theory to practice, prepare and instruct and inspire the next generation of constructivist, multi-lingual, urban educators in our own images--in my own image, because I am all those things. Except you know what? It is hard to see my image, that picture of What I Was Going To Do Next, because I am not sure it is really what I want to have happen.

I lived in Jerusalem and taught English and did research and learned Hebrew for three months. Hmm. Sounds like school. Then I came back and was preparing to go live in Ghana for three months and teach people from the community how to be more effective educators in their own classrooms. A-ha! Also sounds like school. But as Judy said, "You know the word shabbaton (the Hebrew word for sabbatical) has the word shabbat in it, right? I don't hear that you are doing a lot of resting this year, Sarah..." Someone I hadn't seen in a long time was listening to my story of this year, just the other day, and said "Here's the thing: It sounds like you know very well who Ms. Kotleba is, and it sounds like you are just about ready to learn a lot more about who Sarah is." Damn if they weren't right.

So that is what I am doing, and it is hard to write about it because I feel awkward or embarrassed or even a little ashamed: I was going to go to Africa! I was going to save the world! Everyone was going to think it was so cool! Think of all the people who encouraged me (or dared me) to go and think of how much I'd be letting them down! I was going to be the ultimate traveler in the developing world!

But I realized, you know what? I have walked really far---this year, and the past six years at Brandeis, and both times I went to graduate school, and ever since I started teaching full-time, thirteen years ago now. It is just about time to rest. Because I have done What We Do. Now I need to figure out What I Want To Do. It might involve teaching in some form or it might not. I might work in a classroom or a school garden or an organization that prepares teachers. Or, I might apply to culinary school or become more focused on my writing or, as my usually very conservative father said on the phone, spend a few months doing something involving drumming and carpentry. Whatever. But I am going to find an apartment in Berkeley, and I am going to get my own dishes along with all the rest of my stuff out of storage, and I am going to set up my new house and I will go to Trader Joe's for all the fresh healthy foods I love, and I will make dinner and sit down and eat and then I will not leave my new house for like a week. Except maybe to go swimming and get ice cream. Because I have walked really far and it is time to rest. I don't know what that means I will have to write about here. Maybe nothing. Adventures at the Berkeley Bowl don't really compare to adventures in a UN refugee camp, I don't think, although hopefully the rate of infection with snail death is lower. No matter what, all of these journeys would have been my adventures and all of them will still be my own adventures and that is the important thing.

And then, just as I was starting to realize that this is indeed the decision I am making, that I am not actually going to Ghana for three months on Sunday, I got this email from Aaron and was reminded, again, how wise he is and how much I adore him completely:

running away from oneself by trying to save the world is problematic for three reasons: 1) you can't run away from yourself because that's who you are, 2) you can't save the world, and 3) you can't even make a dent if you're just trying to run away from yourself. now, if you told me that you needed to stay in san francisco to each cheese puffs and watch daytime tv i'd be worried. if you're staying to do work you feel you need to do, well, then that's a different story. in every good kung fu movie there is a moment when two people are fighting. both of them are confident, but one of them knocks the other down. the one who falls is shocked. the one who knocked is sometimes a wily but benevolent teacher and sometimes the bad guy, but the knocker always says the same thing: "Ha! Your stance is not strong enough!". sarah, if you're going to go struggle with angels or educational inequities in Africa or finding love, you need to have a strong stance. you need to have some grounding, because that's what allows you to use your energy. and energy, as the physicists say, is the ability to do work. so it sounds like maybe this is the part in the movie where you do one-handed pushups and run up mountains carrying your master on your back and practice all your kicks at dawn while balancing on top of a pole. it can be a bitch to shoot, but it's always one of the coolest parts of the movie.
peace be witcha, my sister.