when teachers cry

Everyone needs a gentler life. Your daughter has an eating disorder and now she picks at her food and pretends that you can't see her hips poking out the front of her jeans that don't fit. Your husband lives in California, which is at least $100 for every hour that it takes to reach him. I want to visit North Carolina to be nearer to the student that you cried and told all of this to, but I can't because it is too expensive and too close to Thanksgiving. She is worried about you, and unnerved because to us you are and adult and have it all figured out. We are prolonged adolescents, but seeing our mothers cry gives some of us panic attacks and others headaches. I don't know what to do for you - I've made stupid decisions before but never like this. I want to sit down in the dusty light of a meetinghouse on Sunday morning and hold you up to it, bathe you in it, warm you there. But it is quickly November, and today is another grey sky. In Italian class, I tell my professor in broken pieces that I want to grow up to be a revolutionary, an artist and a farmer. But I will gladly settle for getting through the winter.