Editor’s note: This is the final column from Nancy Alvarado.
Thank you for joining me to take a peek at The View From Down Here for the past few years.
“Down here” has been the south, the shared border with Mexico, where life comes with a particular set of benefits and challenges. Traditions leak over the border fence, joy squeezes through the bars, problems slip under, grief slides through. Some days it’s a hassle to go south, some days it’s a struggle to get back to the north. Deportees, refuges, and immigrants all congregate down here. Down here, family is divided into who can and who can’t cross, who has Sentri and who doesn’t, who receives money from the Tooth Fairy and who is visited by the “Ratón de Dientes.”
“Down here” has been also elementary school. Thank you for joining me in 5th grade, that magical age at which a student will write “If I could meet a famous person, I would want to meet Santa Claus because he’s the nicest person I’ve ever heard about,” and later the same day while studying the solar system, ask me, “Wait, Jupiter is real? Where is it?”
Down here, life in the 5th grade is a juggling act as students and I, and sometimes parents, balance Common Core with basic English skills with lessons in kindness and motivation and on a lucky day, art, while throwing in “Yes, I see that the marker fits sideways in your mouth. Congratulations. Now get to work. And wash that marker.” Down here, some days greater issues intrude – poverty, disruption, trauma. Learning sometimes gets put on hold so we can talk about Miguel’s grandmother’s chemotherapy or how we can work together to help 11-year old Sandra learn the alphabet. Down here, I smile because “patiently” was a vocabulary word this week, so now everyone says, “I am waiting patiently,” even as they jostle and bump each other. Down here, we struggle with pronunciation; a student proudly holds up her finished Christmas tree project and says, “Teacher, look at my three!”
“Down here” has been the landscape of the childhood of my own children. Some days down here, I’m the world’s okayest mom. I growl at my son in a manner I would never speak to my students, because we’ve been at the kitchen table for 3 hours and homework isn’t done and who the heck invented this common core math anyway and doesn’t the school think we’d like to have a little family time sometimes and will you just please focus, for crying out loud? Down here one child spends her days with her heart in her throat, waiting to see what awaits her after college graduation and dreaming of fame and fortune, and the other child has given up on higher education and is headed for the military. You accompanied us as we lost pets, failed classes, learned to drive, triumphed over fear, made hard choices. Thank you for visiting our family down here.
“Down here” has been a socio-economic place as well, in which teachers like me are neither the top nor the bottom of the heap. Down here, I work to balance what I have with what I want. I confess to a severe case of house envy. I’d like to live in a nicer place than a tiny condominium down here, and I can’t understand how everyone else has managed to buy a four-bedroom house. We’re a nice family, we work hard; why shouldn’t we have a house, preferably with a garage and an extra bedroom? When I visit students’ families in their cramped rooms or tiny trailers, though, I often wonder what I have done to become so fortunate. Down here, my own children have heard, “Do you live in a cardboard house? No? Then what are you complaining about?” so often they’ve become immune to its effect. I say it to myself almost daily, singing the praises of running water and electricity to offset my grumbling about housecleaning or lack of space. Thank you for joining me in the tension of feeling like both a “have” and a “have-not” down here.
Down here, life can be challenging, but there is enough laughter and joy to counteract the difficulties. I’ve been beyond delighted to be able to share it all with you. Thanks for joining me down here. I hope you enjoyed the view.
