the apartment is really cold haha

I think I first discovered this one during some kind of exam... SAT or AP English or maybe the Language Arts Praxis. Regardless, I thought it was just beautiful and it's really stuck with me since then.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

And put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love's austere and lonely offices?

-- Robert Hayden

One thing that really resonates for me in this poem is how the father's love is expressed in such a powerful way, but the son doesn't even notice until years later. The reason I though of this one today is that I've been thinking a lot about different ways of expressing caring as I begin to teach. All semester we've all been talking about how important it is to care for our students, but at the same time I feel very aware that I can't just care them into good grades, or healthy choices, or even make them aware of my caring. I had a student test me on my very first day in her classroom and I felt like I didn't handle it as well as I could, yet I tried to make it right and even as she refused to make eye contact I could see (wishful thinking maybe?) that she was listening, but in such a short time it may not be possible to get that relationship to where I would like it to be. A week or two ago one of our professors said teaching is a lonely profession, which I thought was ridiculous because I think it's a profession where colleagues spend a substantial amount of time supporting each other and working together, but these first few days in the classroom have made me see that it can be lonely when you're trying so hard to connect with students and a misstep makes the connection more difficult. I guess all I can do when that situation arises is not take it personally, keep caring and hope that we find some common ground.