IN WHICH I STUMBLE INTO MOTHERHOOD

I’ve been under the weather all week. Monday (1/8) I went to my morning classes but briefly collapsed under the fever and the flu. That knocked out my afternoon classes. (China’s got no such thing as "sick days" and I hate taking sick days to begin with so I tend to push myself too hard when it comes to work and being ill.) I called my head boss, almost in tears because I was so frustrated with myself and this constantly-being-ill issue. (Not having my usual immune system is obnoxious as hell because I rarely get ill in the States.) He told me not to worry and he rescheduled other teachers to take over my classes for me.

He then left his work, fetched me the medicine the doctor told me I needed to be taking and showed up at my door to cheer me up a bit. We sat and chatted and he fetched me water as I did my best not to pass out on him. I then asked if he could call Z and explain to him what had happened as the news of me collapsing at work is most certainly too much information not to be flying about. I wanted Z to have the full, clear story and my boss promised he would do so. Unbeknownst to me, my boss headed back to his office, called Z and proceeded to inform a fleet of other teachers that they were to cover my classes for the next few days.

After he left, I took a round of pills and then headed back to bed and crashed, sweating, shivering and freezing the whole way. You know you’ve got a bad fever when you get your temperature reads "A little high" from your armpit after you’ve been standing outside in below-freezing weather for several minutes and you took fever-killing naproxen.

The next morning, I woke up in a pool of sweat but the ache of fever completely dissipated from my joints. I rolled into the shower and discovered that I had completely lost all sense of smell. I ate a minimal breakfast because I figured I should (despite my utter lack of desire for food) and realized I had lost as sense of taste. I realized I haven’t been this sick since I was a little kid and was still working on building my immune system. Considering my high fever, the incredibly dry and freezing air and the abuse my ENT system was taking from my constant, side splitting coughing, I wasn’t entirely confident I’d be getting my oral factories back.

"That would really suck. I really like taste and smell." I thought as I watched the yogurt reach my lips and then sensed the cool, smooth texture cover my deadened tongue. "Well, at least I’ll have a good story about how I lost my sense of smell living in China and I’ve already got my favorite perfumes picked out." I then thought about how I’d ever be able to tell if food had gone bad or if something wasn’t clean or how I’d know if my lover was near.

Nonetheless, I felt well enough to stumble to the Kindergarten and teach my Tuesday morning lessons and so I did. Granted, that hour totally wiped me out so I went back to my apartment and slept from 10-2:30 and then headed off to the Middle School for my afternoon classes.
Now, the thing about me is that I’m a control freak. I am most at ease either in safe environments (around my benignly crazy friends) or environments I’m able to be one step ahead of in my head. When I’m sick, I lack the energy to be one step ahead of anything and so all I can do is react without any premeditated anything. The last thing I needed was to be that sick heading into a Tuesday Middle School series of classes. (Tuesdays being the two nightmare classes that are the sole reason I get paid to be here.)

I showed up at my office looking a mess, I’m sure. I flopped down, gasping for air because when you’ve got the flu, walking up three flights of stairs is akin to running a marathon. Sitting at my desk, I waited for my heart to return to my chest and then the bell rang. Not a single one of my colleagues said a word to me. You can be assured that if no one says anything to you one of two things has happened; one, you’ve offended the group somehow or two, you look like hell and to ask you how you are would be to invade your privacy and right to be unhappy in peace. (I once had a friends tell me, "I know it’s rude to ask, but you don’t seem like everything is okay")
"Oh dear, sweet Jesus." I thought as I got up to go teach, leaving the deafening silence.

I reached my first of two nightmare classes and, upon seeing how utterly wrecked I was, they were surprisingly kind to me. They still gave me a hard time but their cynicism at having been labeled the "bad class" of the school was softened away by their sympathy for me. I gave in to an informal style class very quickly and they (for the most part) dropped their adversarial attitude. The bell rang and I went to my next class where most of the students melted their adversarial attitude, though a few still remained.

I was notably ready to kill this one student who felt it would be cute to reply to everything I say with "Ting bu dong." ("I don’t understand your foreign language.") Even when I said it in perfectly feasible Chinese. He’s a smart-assed little brat who seems to really like me despite the fact that I loathe him. I think he’s just entertained by my "stupid human tricks" factor. Rarely am I aware, anymore, of not being viewed as human… except when he’s around and then I’m constantly reminded.

As I was tired and sick and being baited to fight, I had a hard time doing much else aside from surviving the moment. A group of four boys called me over to them.

"Teacher, please write your name." One of the boys said as he held out a pen and pushed some paper towards me.

"My full name?" I asked. I have, already, written "Christina" more times than I can count so, at this stage of the game, it had to be about more than just my first name.

"Yes." The boy nodded.

I nodded and wrote my name on the blackboard so as to provide everyone with the same access to my name.

"Teacher, please write your name." Another boy from the group called out, holding the pen and paper.

"I just did. Can’t you copy it?" I asked, really wanting to get back to the lesson.

"Please, teacher." He insisted. Being raw and still edgy from the baiting, my antennae went up.

"Why?" I asked, as I approached the twittering teens. Clearly they were excited about something.

"Please. Write. Here." The second boy repeated his sentiment.

At this point, I was close enough to get in the boy’s face (which is what I do to intimidate students into honesty; it’s like a lie detector by proximity) and I did so. After all, the class before this one tends to forge my signature and alter their grades, so I’m not exactly trusting of students from Tuesday classes who want more of this sort of information on me.

I stared at the boy for a while, waiting for him to crack and confess his motivation for my signature. When I had stared at him long enough and I knew he would break, I gestured ever so slightly with my eyebrows and he spoke.

"Piaoliang" he whispered breathlessly as he gestured one hand over his face.

Now, my fever had just broken earlier that day. In a "When it rains, it pour move" my period started at the same time my fever broke. I was emitting more snot than I could possibly know what to do with. I felt weak and helpless. I felt emotional and raw. Essentially, I felt a great many things but "attractive" does not rank anywhere near the things I felt.

"Piaoliang" means "gorgeous" for the specific qualities of a woman (her hair, her dress, her, in this case, face). A beautiful, elegant women as a whole is "meili" but her individual parts are to be complimented like art, hence "piaoliang." There are many kids in that boys class who like to tease me and say, "Teacher/Chris I love you" or "You are beautiful" but this boy never does. He prefers to sit in the back of the class and not make much trouble.

I pulled back, as it was my turn to crack a little and the boy just kept staring at me wide eyed, enraptured. I looked at the other boys and they were staring too, nodding in agreement. As these boys never cause me much trouble and are certainly good-natured, I was pretty sure they weren’t jerking me around.

Having had my power role completely inverted, I simply shut the hell up and wrote my name.
Wednesday came and went without much note.

Today (1/12), Thursday, I had class with my puppy dog crush student. We were in the midst of a very informal class as I’m still ailing.

Towards the end of class, my puppy dog crush called me over and asked how it is that I’m happy every day.

"I’m not happy every day but I’m happy when I see you. So, it looks like I’m happy every day." I explained.

"I want to be like you. I want to be happy every day." He said. I knew there was more coming.

"Shenme?" I asked the Chinese equivalent of "What?"

"Please don’t tell my English teachers or my parents or anybody." My puppy dog crush asked for my confidence.

"Yes of course." I promised.

He then unspooled a story of love, loss, heartbreak and redemption the likes of which is only possible under Middle school pettiness. He ended his story with the Catch 22 he now finds himself in. Any choice he makes he loses and he wins.

"Have you ever been through anything like that?" He asked. In that moment, I realized I had motherhood staring me right in the face.

I don’t really think of the mark of motherhood as giving birth. I don’t even think of it as the marathon three am feedings. I think of the mark of motherhood as the blindsiding questions asked at the most random times about the true, gray nature of life and the pain all happiness seems to bring with it in some way. I think of motherhood as the day the kid asks you which is more important, the love of friends or the love of a lover. I think of motherhood as the day my son figures out that the damaged song bird he’s in love with is damaged beyond his ability to fix her and so he must mend his own heart or be lost to the abyss. I think of motherhood as the day my daughter realizes sexuality is so over powering it turns a reasonable boy into a callous moron.

I looked at my puppy dog crush and realized this was my first moment of motherhood. So, I called upon all my own mother had offered me; the truth. I said I had and I explained which person in the drama I had been. I explained that it was painful for me and that I was sorry he found himself in a similar situation. I hope that by seeing that I’ve made it through all of that a relatively okay person, he’ll have some hope that all will be livable down the line. I told him that the decisions he had to make about his life he had to make on his own and no one could make them for him but that I would always be there to listen to him if he needed someone to talk to. So, I gave him my number and told him to call me anytime he wanted to talk, even if I don’t have much help to offer.