Unexpected Tidings
This month in 2019, my grandmother – my only remaining living grandparent – died of bone cancer.
She’s been on my mind a lot this month for many different reasons. She always is in March. She was the first great love of my life. So many of my childhood memories are of her. The games we played. The manufactured home she lived in. The school where she taught in Merced, California. How every morning on her way to work she’d eat a banana and toss the peel out into the corn fields; she always said it was “to keep the crows away from the corn.”
She died early in the morning on March 4th, 2019. It was the event that changed the entire course of my life. By July 10th, 2019, I had left my abusive husband and began the MFA program that allowed me to rebuild my life and process just how abusive my marriage had been. My grandmother never liked my ex. I don’t think she would have liked any man I chose to be with, but I like to think she saw something in my ex that I didn’t. She would be proud of me if she could see me today. And fuck, I wish I could have talked to her during my divorce.
This week, I started a new career. I had been working at an engineering firm, but I wasn’t happy there. I liked the work, I liked my coworkers, but management was terrible and only getting worse. So I left to finally pursue my lifelong dream of being a teacher. I’ve wanted to teach since I was in the fifth grade, and my grandmother – who was, herself, a teacher for thirty years – always supported this goal. She was the first person who told me I would make an excellent teacher.
Monday was the start of this new career. I felt her with me all day, as though guiding me through my first substitute teaching assignment. It was a fabulous experience. One of the shyest kids gave me a hug at the end of the day and thanked me for being such a kind teacher. I cried on my way home because sometimes the thing we want to do isn’t something that comes naturally. Sometimes it’s an enormous struggle. But I was confident and calm and collected throughout the day. And to have that validation really hit me hard.
And, as of today, I was offered a permanent position to teach for a special education class on Mondays and Fridays for an elementary school. The director said she felt pretty much instantly that I was a perfect fit. I was and still am elated because my grandmother specifically taught special education. I feel like she’s not only been watching over me, but that she’s guiding me, fueling me, urging me forward. Today I found the school where I genuinely hope I get to work full time some day. And I feel I have my grandmother to thank for it.
Embrace the unexpected today.
