We affectionately called her The Beast.
Four wheels. Sliding doors. Grey interior. A long nose and faded blue finish. 8 seats, if I remember right. She would pull into the apartment complex’s parking lot at 6am in all of her wonderful minivan glory. She was, by far, my most difficult classroom to date.
This was the semester I was supposed to complete student teaching and as luck would have it, my lovely friend Amy was assigned to the same tiny little school in rural Missouri. She in English, I in Social Studies. We carpooled, and the Beast would faithfully cart us down country roads before and after the school day. My, the stories she could tell.
There were jokes, and enormous amounts of giggling. We chugged coffee while prying open our droopy eyes. I yelled at traffic, and Amy roared in support. We argued over who would get dibs on Brandon Flowers and settled on Amy, since she found his solo album first*. A semi advertising a giant picture of toast followed us one day and we dubbed it “Happy Toast Truck” in tribute. I earned the title of “The Cookie King” at the staff potluck. We ran late. We came in early. Snow fell and melted. Students grew taller. Daily stories were traded and we developed playlists of epic proportions—mostly of The Killers, and some Billy Joel for good measure.
Most of the joy stayed in the car. Most of the pain, too.
I wish I could say that I rose above every obstacle that came my way and crushed that semester. The very real fact was that I crashed and burned...hard. It almost seemed senseless. I was nowhere near a perfect student, but I worked hard towards this very specific end. I was ready to fight for the humanities in education. I gave up entire family holidays to write papers and turn in assignments. I did extra observations in order to make sure this was what I really wanted, and put in time over the summers learning to build relationships with diverse age groups and demographics. Every opportunity to perform up until this point, I passed with flying colors. I even spent the last summer working a camp, putting my girls to bed at ten o’clock, and then locking myself in the bathroom until two in the morning to write papers. I practiced, and trained, and learned ...and then suddenly it all stopped. That spring, I found out I was awful at something I so desperately wanted to be good at. I dreamed of being a teacher for years, and that dream died. Violently.
The Beast held a lot of tears that spring. I made a mistake that was expensive** and disastrous.
But man...how I learned.
How to have hard conversations. How to re-evaluate. How to have grace for each other. How to pick up the pieces left over. How to keep getting out of bed, even when it was useless. How lucky I was, to have someone like Amy and The Beast to usher me through it.
I still mourn sometimes, and the reality is that I need to stop rereading this chapter of my life. I love what I do and who I am.*** These days, the rereads are fewer and farther between.
But you know what I also do? I listen to Billy Joel.
“Vienna” is my favorite. It’s a love song I sing to my former self—the Melinda who remembers those hours and keeps pouring over everything that went wrong. That Melinda deserves a love song, and Vienna is the perfect one for her. I want her to have it.
Slow down you crazy child,
And take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while.
It’s all right, you can afford to lose a day or two.
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you?
I’m sure Mr Joel has his interpretations of the song, but every time it comes on I relax into this exceptional anthem for the young and dumb. I often forget that we’ve all been young, and sometimes dumb, and sometimes new at all of this. These reasons alone are enough for grace. I don’t know why this melody is the thing that unlocks my heart to receive this particular mercy, but I’m ok with it. I’ve been withholding forgiveness from myself for so long.
Sing love songs to yourselves, my dears. I give you permission. You deserve a breath of fresh air, even if your mistakes tell you otherwise. They don’t get a say in your life anymore. You do, and you know what?
Vienna waits for you. And it waits for me too.
Footnotes:
*Even if it is your fault Elton John is gay, you dirty pirate hooker.
**My parents are exceptionally kind humans who will never remind me of this, but they sacrificed quite a bit for me to go to school. Quite a bit.
*** Mostly.
