Just Keep Swimming, Swimming, Swimming

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

We once had a bi-polar goldfish. Fortunately, Daughter #1 was getting a graduate degree in psychology, so after observing the fish for several days, she diagnosed  his/her? aberrant behavior without difficulty. Definitely bi-polar. I sympathized with the fish. We acquired him from a tank at Walmart with a huge sign on the front that said “Feeders—5 cents each”. Knowing your life’s goal was to be someone’s dinner would make anyone crazy.

The poor little fish swam frantically round and round his bowl for upwards of an hour at a time. Then exhausted (I assume–do fish get tired of swimming?), it sat motionless hovering an inch or two above the bottom for hours. Repeat. Ultimately, the goldfish committed suicide. Daughter #1 didn’t actually know if it was intentional or not, but the results were the same. In one of his frenetic spins around the fishbowl, he skewered himself on the spine of a plastic seaweed. It was kind of grotesque, except he was a goldfish. So, there’s that.

Bi-polar is exactly how I felt all the years when my life was split in two—teaching a couple of hundred seniors by day and the mom in a household of semi-independent, opinionated kids by night. I’d been pretty smug about my ability to balance the two the two sides of my life until they unexpectedly collided.

I was in the middle of a late-start teaching career when we moved to a new neighborhood. Many of my neighbors were still in the “young kids at home” stage. I found those mothers delightful, energetic, multi-functional, and exhausting. Having already shepherded more than half of my kids through the public school system, I must admit it was fairly entertaining to sit back and enjoy watching other moms tackle the problems of multi-children families.

One in particular stood out. She had four or five kids, all of whom came to church looking like they walked out of a Family Circle magazine. They were well-dressed, admirably groomed, and mostly properly behaved on the church pew where they always sat. It didn’t seem in the least fair that she managed to look slim, glamorous, and relaxed in the center of what I knew had to be a hectic life.

One afternoon while we were visiting in her front yard, Jamie mentioned to me that I knew her sister.

“What?” I said. “Does she live around here?”

“Nope, but she works at your school.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she’s the deaf interpreter for one of your students.”

The light dawned. I only had one deaf student. This was her second year in my English class. She was a bright girl with an artistic gift. But I knew her road wasn’t easy. As Helen Keller once said when asked if being blind or deaf was the worst disability: “Blindness separates you from things; deafness separates you from people.” A quote which rang with particular authenticity to me, as I was in my mid-forties and already required hearing aids. I was determined this young student would not be isolated simply because she couldn’t hear.

Jamie’s sister was an invaluable ally. She accompanied my student to my class for 90 minutes every other day on our block schedule. She patiently sat signing all the discussion, lecture, team assignments, and sometimes just plain teen-aged silliness so well that as far as it was possible, my student became just another class member for the majority of my other students. Since she had been deaf from birth, even the sometimes awkward sound of her laughter became a familiar sound in my classroom.

“Wow! Jamie,” I said. “Your sister is remarkable!” And I went on and on about what a huge contribution she was making for this special student in my class. “I had no idea she was related to you.”

There was a long silence. Jamie gave me a decidedly odd look. “Janice,” she said. “That’s my twin sister. My IDENTICAL twin sister.”

Turns out the goldfish and I had a lot more in common than I’d thought. A whole lot of swimming doesn’t necessarily mean you’re paying attention to the scenery.