Member-only story
A Nativity Scene
A birth on Christmas Eve
The day finds me already overwhelmed and it’s not even dawn. It’s Christmas Eve and I just woke after a short sleep to sit at the dinner table to pore over stacks of student assignments. Final grades were due days ago. This semester I somehow found myself teaching the equivalent of seven classes across two institutions. For me, that’s more college students than names I can recall. I feel foolish. My own words have dried to not even a trickle. My thoughts, unfocused for months without end. Little more than confusion and anger. I’m unsure now what I am capable of outside of the perpetual motion of marking papers. I feel diminished.
I managed though to clear enough static to come up with a useable thought, a plan. Some days before, I had ordered a gift into a store for S., my seven-year old son, and as soon as the store opened I’d take a respite from these thousands of pages to pick it up. After that, I’d return refreshed to grade for several hours, finishing just in time to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. I imagine the night as the beginning of a short period of renewal and recharge after the months of anxiety and diminishment. A reclamation of my powers which have atrophied from disuse. I’d spend these few weeks of winter break recharging and preparing to soon be utterly burnt out once again.
