I am an 8th grade English teacher

I'm sitting in my kitchen, surrounded by books marked with my middle-school hand.  Their pages have begun to yellow, and they seem so thin, so old, and so indicative of that life I once lived when I my mother was still alive, and I was still a child, and decisions were things that were never made alone.  Was that me who flipped through these books' pages ten year ago, accidentally crossing out words I mean to underline and drawing flowers in the margins of pages that were too boring?  I remember the girl. Hair done-up in 15 different ponytails so that she could stand out in the uniformed sea at her school.  Chocolate brown eyes that glistened and glowed... and often cried because she still didn't understand why her father had left and why her mother had to sell the house that she had grown up in.  I can see her in my mind's eye.  But is it me? 

A week from Wednesday, 120 boys and girls like this one will stroll into my classroom.  They will see a teacher.  They will not know about the girl their age with 15 ponytails and 5 million questions.  They will sit down and lean over to talk with their friends.  They will wait to see what I am about, to hear what I have to say.  They will chose whether or not to listen.

And what will I see? What will I do?  What will I say?

I am the girl with 15 ponytails.  I am Ms. Ray.  I am trying to be both and ending up neither, caught between on an adventure that I do not yet understand.  Am I who I wanted to be when I grew up?  Am I making my mother proud?  Do I have any right to be going by her name?  Do I even know what I am doing at all?

I am an 8th grade English teacher.  I am an 8th grade English teacher. I am an 8th grade English teacher. 

The pages here are crisp, white, unfrayed...blank.

It's time to start writing.   Let the chapter begin...