Five a.m. walk

It is hard to believe how much the prairie can change in just a week and a half. The golden Alexanders and beardtongue litter the bike path with yellow and purple. Monarchs settle onto the tight buds of milkweeds, impatient. Birds of all kinds squawk and sing loudly enough that I can barely hear my own thoughts--which is a relief.

At five a.m., and, after an hour of trying my best to overcome my panic with meditation and prayer, I finally get up and start walking, half-dazed, toward the bike path that will take me on a seven mile hike through prairie. The fog is thick enough in places to make the path feel most intimately familiar and completely unclear--much like the path I'm walking at the moment.

For the last four years and two months of my life I have been battling my daughter's school practically daily just to ensure that she get a good education. I take that back. I had expected a good education, fought for it for two full years at the beginning. Then I gave in, took things into my own hands. I let her stay in the building just long enough that she would still get her diploma from the school, then homeschooled her for the rest of the day. For the subjects she was taking at school, I eventually stopped expecting her paras to help her learn to take notes or even to understand her assignments--I began communicating directly with her teachers and doing my best to help her complete assignments and study for tests at home.

In short, I stopped expecting the school to help with social skills or life skills or notetaking or, well, anything, really. But, I wanted her to have the experience of sitting in a classroom, being around peers, even if only for a couple hours a day--and honestly, I couldn't quite afford to cover the cost of her activities for an entire day.

The schedule worked well this year until three boys in S's grade began to harass her, and the school was unable to effectively deal with the bullying. She decided she no longer wanted to go to school. At first, I fought her on this--she was a month away from graduation, and surely we could come up with some coping mechanisms to deal with this, even if the school wasn't doing its part. But then her therapist told me in no uncertain terms that it would be a mistake to make her go back into an environment where she didn't feel safe. Around this time, her piano teacher, who was also a substitute in the school and the Gay Straight Alliance advisor, was fired for coming out to his class--that was, for S, the last straw.

"How can I feel safe in a school full of bigots?" she asked me. Finally, I listened.

We had an IEP meeting at which I said clearly that S would still graduate, that her missed days were entirely the school's fault, and that they would agree to allow her to complete her two remaining required courses from home. They agreed.

In the midst of this trauma, we began to explore our options for next year. We revisited the assessments she had done last summer and the recommendations that had come from those, and went about visiting each recommended program. To make a long story short, S and I chose a program that seemed ideal in every way. Only 45 minutes away, it offered her the opportunity to learn social and life skills and to get some job experience with animals. We had another meeting with the school a week ago to finalize the paperwork for this program. Everything seemed to be in order. The meeting went well, and our local school district agreed to hold her diploma and provide transportation--which they are required to do by law. She would be able to walk through graduation if she had completed her academic classes (which she has), but she would technically still be a high school student until age 21 or until whenever her team decided she had learned all she could from the transition program.

I went home and told S the good news; she had refused to attend the meeting because she has panic attacks whenever she enters the school building. "I thought they were going to fuck us over," she said, incredulous. It took a couple days for the news to sink in, but once it did, she was visibly less anxious.

She had good reason to believe the school would "fuck us over." A few days earlier, a school official had talked privately with me about how S is "really much more functional than the kids at that program," and I had gone home believing her until S and our family therapist talked some sense into me--we had visited, she wanted to go there, there was no reason to believe a school official who, although she's never met S, is now somehow involved in making this decision.

When I showed up to the meeting a week ago, I expected a battle, but we didn't have one. This official said she would prepare the paperwork, and I could sign it the following week. By Thursday, there still was no paperwork to sign. On Friday, she called to say she was calling another meeting because S had not been admitted--her IQ was too high.

I was flabbergasted. We had visited twice, talked with the director multiple times. She had told me a week earlier that her supervisor had agreed to admit S. I called her, and she said, "I have no idea what they are talking about."

I called the school official back and said that there must be some misunderstanding--the program was ready and willing to accept her. No, she said, that's not what she was hearing. Well, I asked, can we all get into the same room and talk about this in person to clear up the misunderstanding? Oh, if my supervisor thinks that's necessary, he will invite the people from the transition program, but it's probably not necessary.

Luckily, I knew my rights, and told her I would be inviting them. I pressed her, saying, "If this turns out to be a misunderstanding and they have, indeed, accepted S, will the school district allow her to attend the program?"

No direct answer. I had caught her in a lie, and she knew it.

I am back to lining up my allies, planning my strategy. A week ago I was looking forward to getting the house and garden ready for S's graduation party on Saturday. Now, I can't concentrate on all we have to celebrate--the arrival of beloved family members, the friends who have supported us so faithfully who will arrive on Saturday. It is so unfair--to me, to S. She went from being relieved that the school had not "fucked us over" to saying "I knew they would pull this at the last minute." Sometimes she is smarter than me.

Which brings me back to my sleepless night.

I walk for awhile, in a daze, down California toward South Street, not knowing exactly where I'm going until I'm on Columbia headed for the bike path. I am weeping, trying to catch my breath, glad it is too early for anyone else to be out.

I text my significant other. "Awake?" My hand hovers over the send button, but finally, I send it, even though it is 3 a.m. where she lives and she is most certainly not awake.

Immediately, she texts back, "Yes, actually."

I call her and burst into tears before she has even finished telling me that she'd had a bad dream and was lying in bed wondering if she should text me.

So I walk into the sunrise with her on the phone, talking about the nightmare I am living and the one she dreamed. I walk past the gazebo where I remember first feeling the urge to kiss her. I walk past a field of milkweed plants she had taught me to identify, past the wind turbines, only one of which is spinning. I watch a doe cross the path just feet in front of me. She doesn't see me until after the fact--she pauses, turns back, and we lock eyes for a full five seconds before she turns and leaps into the distance.

I tell my beloved what has happened, my voice full of awe. "I love that I can picture where you are," she says to me.

"I love that I get to see you in a couple weeks." She won't make it to S's party--she is back in school pursuing a new career path and has finals the same week--but then she'll be here for the summer, and we'll see what living together for three whole months is like and what will happen next. It is a relatively new relationship, long distance, but it started slowly as a deep friendship last summer and grew into love over the phone and through a few visits back and forth in the last year.

The bike path ends at a local highway just a half mile from the campus where I work. I cross the street and walk along the edge of the horse pasture, where S spent so much of her first year with me until Honey, the horse she loved maybe more than she has ever loved anyone or anything else, died suddenly. I am struck by the memory of this loss as if it has just happened, and feel it in my chest.

I pass a grove a trees that have been planted in memory of employees and students who have died over the years. There were two smaller trees, but I can't remember which one we in memory of my student M, who killed himself two years ago--they are the same size and several yards apart, but I can't for the life of me remember where we were standing on that autumn day when we broke ground and put the tree in. Both trees are flourishing, so I run my hands over their leaves before heading home.

"S will remember which one it is," my beloved says to me.

"You're right, she will." S has a much better spatial memory than I do; she'll remember how close we were to the road when we planted the tree. I sigh. "I'm so glad you get us."

"I'm so glad you get me." There is a short pause, and she adds, "I miss S, and you, so much. I can't wait to be there this summer."

I feel the tears again, happy ones this time, and then I am on 7th Street heading toward my house, and I stop to chat with the two old veterans who are getting the flagpoles ready for the Memorial Day ceremony. My beloved sits patiently on the line, laughing because she knows how much I love to talk with old people.

"I can't wait to come there," she repeats as I move away from them. I see two people putting up garage sale signs, wave at a passing biker. I realize it's almost 7 a.m.

"Really?" I say.

"Really."

"I keep thinking I want to leave here. I keep thinking there's nothing left for me here, especially after how miserably the school has failed my family," I say. "But then I take a walk at five in the morning through the fog and end up a block away from home, and I can see the flowers in my front yard and I think about how beautiful this town is, how much I have loved living here overall. I've lived here almost as long as I lived in my hometown, you know?"

"I know." There is a pause. "Do you feel better now? You sound better."

"So much better," I say. "I can get through this. Whatever happens, there's going to be a party on Saturday, and then in another week after that, you'll be here."