August 2014

I swiped my key card and pulled the heavy brown metal door of the school building toward me. The vacuum created lifted my perfectly placed hair as I entered, and I wondered if the humidity of the non-air-conditioned, fifty-year-old building would be my hair’s next saboteur.

I also wondered if my deodorant would hold out. The open house wouldn’t start for another twenty minutes, and the building was nothing less than sweltering in the mid-August heat.

As I unlocked and opened the door to my classroom, I caught sight of the sheet just next to it, printed in bold, black font, announcing whose room this was. The secretary had remembered.

Mrs. Aimee Ross, it said. My married name. For years, I had been called the other name—well-known in this small town—by students and parents and colleagues. For years, I had worked hard to earn recognition and titles and awards for that other name. And now, after almost a quarter century, it was different. My new name. So strange.

“Uh, Mrs. Ross?” the nasally pinched voice of a stuffed-up teenaged boy asked.

I turned to see who had walked into the room, and I recognized him. He’d been in my study hall a few years back.

“Hi, Shawn,” I said. “Looking for Room 110? You’re in the right place.”

He looked up from studying his schedule, his face an inch from the paper, and then with the push of a finger readjusted the glasses slipping down his nose.

“Oooooooh, it’s still you,” he said.

Still me. Ha! If he only knew.

I was nowhere close to being the me I had once been. The past four and a half years of my life had caused a metamorphosis of sorts, one in which, more than anything, I had gained a certain wisdom about life: It could not be controlled.

You could make your own choices, maybe even set goals or a direction, you could even try to guide it, but most of the time, that would be knocked out of your hands without any notice at all. Sometimes you could get that control back right away, but other times—in fact, a lot of the time—you just had to wait. And either way, you could control only yourself—your own actions and reactions—no one or nothing else’s, because the reality is that life, no matter who’s writing the story, just happens.

And it’s short. Holy shit, is it short.

But whether you plow straight ahead or falter, you make your way through, dealing with whatever it is, being as strong as you can, taking one moment at a time. That’s all you can do.

And here I was, back in the place I belonged, my second home, feeling more grounded and happier than I ever had before. My heart had mended, my body had healed, and my soul had finally settled.

No, I was definitely not “still me.”

But Room 110’s English teacher, no matter her name, was—technically.

I laughed.

“Yep, it’s still me!” I said. “Were you confused?”

“Well, my schedule said I had this one teacher for English 12, but she was also my teacher in fifth grade. I thought maybe she moved up a few grades or something,” he said and shrugged.

I laughed again. Teenagers: my people.

“Nope, it’s still me, still my room,” I said. “Just a different name.”

“Ah, gotcha,” Shawn said. “I just wanted to check. See you in a couple days!”

And with that, he was gone.

Shawn was my only visitor for open house that night, but that was okay.

The excitement of a brand-new school year with my brand-new name had filled the air of Room 110—the same old classroom it had always been—with a bit of electricity. The same old classroom where I would continue to make my permanent mark.

I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

And now—finally—I was exactly who I was supposed to be.

Yes, I was still the same old crazy English teacher/Holocaust lady/aspiring writer in love with Ricky Martin—I was still me.

But this me understood her breakage.

And this me embraced her flaws.

Because this me, more worn, more authentic, and more valuable, was illuminated with veins of gold.

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”

~Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

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