Walking to Harlem via Morningside Park

I didn't realize that my doctor's appointment was only 3 blocks from the school where I taught all year.  This morning I retraced the path that I took several days every week and remembered the hopefulness or dread that I felt as I descended down the Morningside Park steps, and the relief and perplexity I felt returning up them, after another day of not quite getting it right.  It's a beautiful park, overgrown now but still really beautiful.  I remember seeing that beauty at at times a distraction from what I was feeling or thinking and other times an affirmation of the good in life.

Things feel very different now.  Yesterday was a nearly euphoric day of teaching in Westport, CT.  The sense of nervousness beforehand is yielding to excitement, and afterwards an internal debriefing of a different kind.  What a strange thing that in this world there are families that although not without problems, are able to shelter and raise their children in a mindful and safe manner, and that there are others that cannot give their children this kind of attention.  There are so many threats and stresses to everyday life that there simply isn't the space to invest in the future.  The present is enough of a handful.

But it is a different story in Westport which means it is a different story for me.  It makes it much easier to teach, to have a parent there, taking notes, following through during the week, sending emails and messages about their child's practice and demeanor.  They have systems for behavior that I don't have to create or mitigate, ways of motivating that seem to do the trick.  It is really easy to teach in this way.  I am able to give what I have, and the children seem so much more able to receive.

It is not a simple thing to figure out what are the causes of this discrepancy and how they can be alleviated.  My time here in New York, spent with the incredibly privileged owners of several vacation homes, nannies, and teachers and tutors galore, as well as those families with single parents, multiple jobs, and distrust of authority, has really highlighted the disparity of living in America in a visceral way.  The same place is not the same place in a different state of mind, the same path is often not the same.