One Year Later

I'm coming up on a significant anniversary this week.  One year ago, I began my pre-student teaching at my alma mater, Hillsborough High School. 

I had finally begun the core degree courses at Drexel then had to jump through 100 hoops to secure the placement at HHS -- but don't get me started on the field placement office or those charming individuals who work at the boro Board Office.  It had been an incredibly stressful lead up but everything worked out in the end and I got to teach with my own former English teacher.  I had him for 10th grade Honors but now he had inherited 12th grade AP Lit from my dear mentor.  Four classes of overachieving 17 and 18-year-olds later, and we were reading Hamlet together.  I only had five days in their classroom but they graciously accepted my presence there and didn't challenge my authority, even when I openly mocked the Kenneth Branagh film version (I think they agreed.) 

It was a glorious week for professional and biological triumphs.  The morning before Halloween I received the gift I'd been waiting for all month: my period!  That meant we could finally, finally start start our third and ultimately successful IVF cycle.  As I put on my spandex leggings and white puffy shirt (I was dressing as Hamlet) I wasn't thinking of anything but get to RMA first thing and wait for Nurse Anne to call back later with instructions.  Halloween in a high school is a waste of a teaching day, anyway, with all of the shenanigans and mainlining sugar with subsequent crashing. 

I remember driving to my lining check alone, full of excitement, ignoring sideways glances in the waiting room as I was dressed like a glam rock pirate, and just willing everything to look good enough to get the green light.  This time, I'd be using a new protocol -- a more complicated, invasive one -- but one I had pinned every last hope to.  Dr. Shastri loved my costume and delivered the good news that I'd be hearing from my nurse about my dosage that night.  wohoo!  Then I sped off into the darkness to grab a celebratory Starbucks breakfast, as it was 6:15 AM and I didn't have to be at school for another hour.

Hard to believe that was a full year ago.  It seems, on some days, like it just happened and then on others, when I read back through this blog or look at the living proof of this saga napping so peacefully beside me, it seems worlds away.  It's almost like it happened to someone else and I suppose in that sense, I am a different person than I was a year ago.