Toilet Cleaning and Balloons: A Semi-Serious Invitation

This newsletter is brought to you by desk-warming season, lots of free time, and a sixth-grade graduation.

It will be Wednesday, March 27th, when you read this (or sometime in the future), but for me it is Friday. Closing Ceremony was this morning at school, officially ending the 2023-2024 school year - huzzah! Classrooms are empty and quiet, and the lost and found has been scavenged by kids, leaving behind only the most unwanted broken umbrellas and lost shoes. My students are off for two weeks before another year begins, and I have a lot of time to sit around and find personal projects to entertain myself.

At some point during my desk warming, I stumbled across an artist, who paints the same phrase on a card day after day. The phrase is: And it never will be again. Today is Friday, March 22nd, and it never will be again. Today is Wednesday, March 27th, and it never will be again. I like these cards, though they prickle with existential dread. Today is the only Friday, March 22nd, 2024 I will ever have. What have I done with it? What will I remember? 

I probably won’t remember running late this morning and power-walking triple-time against the wind to make it to school. I might remember my ceremonial bento lunch of little purple octopuses and cucumbers in spicy wasabi sauce. I will likely remember the two hours of school cleaning when we had to move all of the furniture in the building to make space for an additional class next year (there MUST be an easier way than twenty teachers manually hauling every single desk, chair, and shelf from class to class - but I am not in charge). Unfortunately, I will absolutely remember teaming up with a few unlucky colleagues to scrub the fourth-grade toilets armed with latex gloves, reusable paper towels, and tap water. I wish I could say they got clean, but they didn’t. My damp towel smeared the germs across the walls and floors, leaving shiny streaks of unpleasant unmentionables behind. Despite wanting to, I did not burn all of my clothes when I got home, but I did throw them immediately into the wash. Parts of today might stick in my memory for a while, but for how long? Will today prove special enough to still come to mind ten years from now, or will it, like most days, fade into a wash of color and feeling that is indiscernible from tomorrow and yesterday?

Empty hallways at Kanan Elementary. We wait for students to return.

Thankfully, scientists have figured out why some memories last longer than others. We can go online and read all about the hippocampus, how grooves form, and where our memories are stored (obviously, I am not a scientist). Biology degree or not, we more or less know that core memories, as coined by the delightfully traumatic Disney-Pixar movie Inside Out, are formed when we experience moments of real emotional significance. But even core memories get shuffled around as our perspectives grow and change over time. 

My sixth-grade students experienced a lot of moments of emotional significance this week. We held a school-wide goodbye party, multiple graduation practices, and graduation itself. The whole school practiced every day for an entire week to perfect the ceremony. At the event, every student remembered their lines. They pivoted perfectly at each turn, stepping heel-toe, heel-toe, with arms straight and heads high. They sat straight-backed in their chairs and sang the school song proudly in farewell. They wore their best clothes, and each graduate received a beautiful diploma before bowing deeply to our principal in acceptance. I was amazed at their maturity and sincerity. In the end, they marched from the gym, two by two, not breaking into giggles and excited whispers until the doors closed behind them. I hope they remember the feeling of it - their camaraderie, how proud their parents looked, or that the sixth-grade teacher cried when they sang together for the last time. Her name may blur in the fog of time, but some details will remain.

Graduating always feels a bit weird. It is a day of pride and celebration, but at the same time, the graduate has one foot already stepping towards their future. Perhaps these ceremonies are designed more for the viewers than for the participants. I was always too impatient to be fully present at my graduations. I don’t remember my high school graduation much at all. As soon as it was over, I threw off the hat, posed for maybe one photo, and was outta there. My college graduation was a bit better. I loved college, so leaving campus and the friends I made was difficult. I remember trying to go to a party with my best friend the night before graduation. We only made it to the end of the block before we realized that a night in to process the change and say goodbye sounded much better than awkwardly sipping a beer with fifty other sad seniors. The ceremony was nice, if a little stressful. My goodbye to campus was tearful, but I bounced back quickly. Three months later, I was living in France. When I graduated from my master's program, I didn't feel much at all. I was proud, of course, and a bit sad to be leaving Paris officially in my past. But I already had a life and job set up back home, so I was only partially present.

We should value graduating; it marks the passage of time and gives us goalposts to look back to. Graduations help us remember who we were then, and then, and then. However, I don't think an official graduation ceremony is always required to go through a graduation process. Life changes all the time, and we change with it. Sometimes, we have a moment to stop, notice, and raise a toast to our past successes. Sometimes, life changes slowly without moments of emotional significance, and we don't even realize we have gone through a graduation process until it is already in the rearview mirror. 

I’ll provide a personal example. I remember thinking when I was 22, that I was ready to meet myself. I left college and was confronted by life without the structured support of school and sports. Truthfully, I did not know who I was without them. While living abroad after college, I spent most of my time alone. It was new, but I loved it. I fell into self-reflection like one falls into bed at 7 pm at the end of an exhausting week. Once in, I couldn't get back out. As the years went by, my body was moving and working and having experiences, but my brain was only half-focused. It's like I dozed for eight years. Maybe our twenties are always like this, but I thought they were supposed to be the best years of our lives! At least, that's how it always looks on TV. I blame the COVID-19 pandemic for some of my great twenties snooze, but most of it was me. I was chest-deep in early adulthood until age 28. Then, just like at the end of school, I started to get restless. Finally, I woke up. Maybe it was my move to Japan and career change. Maybe it was a definite recognition of my still TBD queerness. Maybe it was just that my timeline hit 30. Likely, I finally realized that I would never finish meeting myself, so the pressure was off. Whatever the reason, it seems that some of the hardest thinking is behind me (for now). I am awake. I am moving forward. I am proud of this. I graduated from one phase and am entering the next. Can anyone else relate?

Congratulations to me! Well done, Laura! Epiphany! Now what? Am I expected to get up and go to work on Monday as normal? I am an adult, so obviously, yes. This seems hardly fair though. I may not have earned any degrees through this process, but my mental work deserves at least a little celebration.

Proof of 2/3 graduations - high school photo is MIA. There are more formal photos than the two above, but I think these do the best job of showing the tone of each day.

If I could, I would text all of my friends and invite them to a Congratulations-You-Did-It-Welcome-To-The-World graduation party. Since this is all in my imagination anyway, you can all be magically transported to Japan! I made a playlist for the occasion (linked below). At my party, streamers will hang on the walls. Balloons will bounce across the ceiling. A table will be set with my beautiful party-pink depression glass set that has been slowly collecting dust in boxes. There will be many, many flowers. To put you on notice, dinner will be a potluck. Each guest is to bring something they eat as a celebration in their family: Olive Garden ravioli, buckets of KFC, homemade tamales, casserole, sushi, chocolate banana pancakes, or pizza; the more diverse and clashing the options, the better. I will order a cake from the grocery store that says “Congratulations Graduates” in red swirly writing. It's not a graduation party without games, so cornhole will be set up in the hallway. I cannot promise the pomp and circumstance my students got this week, but I can say we will have fun. Walking through my apartment, I will see the people of my life perched on chairs and counters, laughing, eating, and sharing stories of their own self-graduations. As the evening ends, we will congratulate each other on a job well done and a life, so far, well lived.

So, I propose more graduation parties. Cake and balloons for all! These parties can be huge blowouts with tents in the backyard or simple dinners for two. They can be themed or dress-coded however you like. The font doesn't matter as long as you gather and celebrate how you have graduated into the person you are now. When I began teaching at 24, I said I would never work in an elementary school. Now, I wear a fancy suit to a sixth-grade graduation and then clean gross toilets (also in said suit) with nothing but gloves, paper towels, and water. It is not what I pictured for myself, but I am happy with the accomplishment all the same. What about you? What have you accomplished this year? What about in the last five years? Maybe you have taken time to celebrate job changes or degrees earned, but have you celebrated who you have become along the way? Science tells us that we won’t remember most of our days, even some of the big ones. Moments of significance pass us by and get shuffled with time, so why not make one core memory to honor all the lost ones that brought us here?

Are you convinced? Are you calling up your friends as you read this to plan a party? If so, you know I’d love to hear all about it. If not, I hope you at least take a minute to consider who you have graduated into. Think about the momentous moments and forgotten days (which will never be again) that have brought you here. Congratulate yourself for crossing whatever metaphorical stage you’ve crossed lately. You may not have even noticed you were crossing it, but you did, and I think that’s worth, at the least, a piece of cake and a balloon.

Until next time, then - cheers!

Ending Notes

Listening To: I take playlists seriously. They are my love language. So, here is the aforementioned graduation party playlist. It should be long enough to carry you through a few hours of fun, and it includes a variety of genres – something for everyone. I procrastinated organizing my recycling by making this instead, so enjoy! A caution: There is some rhyme and reason to the placement of songs, but feel free to hit shuffle if you prefer. A second caution: some of these songs are true bops (peep the S Club throwback) – I am not responsible for any thrown-out backs or busted speakers.

(Not-so) Recent Eats: We return to Italy this week with Spiedini di Pollo, or skewered chicken wrapped in prosciutto. My father hates making this recipe because the chicken is a pain to wrap and is hard to grill to perfection, but it is always what I ask for when I have celebratory dinners at home (sorry, Dad!). These long kebabs of grilled bread, chicken, and rosemary are perfect for dinner on the porch. They may not be the most fun to grill, but they are certainly fun to eat. If you want to make it, there are many recipes online, but the one my family uses is from Cucina Rustica, by Evan Kleiman. If I had to bring a dish to a potluck graduation party, it would be this. Luckily, I don’t own a grill in Japan.

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