the beginning of endings

It's the last day of Santa Maria del Paradiso.  No smocks today and no ridiculously laden-with-books backpacks.  Still the navy pants and white shirts for everyone.  Still the mad rush of the morning and the walk to school (though Sebastian went in the car with Daniel, who was bringing a gelato cake for Hannah's class, and Connor arrived with Emanuele and Cristina).

When Sebastian was an infant, I asked a friend, "How can I make it so he's never not happy?"  She told me that I couldn't do it, and it wouldn't be good if I could do it anyway.  But gracious, the hardest part of parenting, I think, is seeing the kids struggle or be unhappy.  I know that they need to get through such feelings, learn, get up again, thrive, but my goodness, I find it tough.

One thing I have so wanted from this year is for our kids to love it here, to want to return to Italy in their lives, to feel attached to Italian life and culture and maybe even a friend or two.  I hadn't thought of what that would look like when it happened.  There are tears about leaving the life they've made and the friends they've made and the school that feels like a community now.  They tell me, "It's a whole year, and I've made a life here, and now we're leaving it."  One said through tears yesterday, "I'll be eager to get on the plane to go home, but I'm sad to leave.  This is my life now, and I have to leave it.  I don't want to go to Spain and France.  I just want to stay here and finish it out here."

I remember thinking, when we made the Spain and France plans, that it would be a good time to go this year, with everything over, and not having the kids sitting here in Viterbo with school and all activities over and just waiting to go home.

Alas.

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When we had the final SYA dinner a few days before the students left, I didn't well up even a little through the "Evviva Santa Rosa!" reflections and videos and farewells.  I mostly just felt happy.  In the end, English classes were good, and I connected with many of the kids.  I found it easy to jot them a note in their yearbooks.  The one-on-one relationships felt valuable and rich.  And while I gave myself a hard time for every class that was not super, every discussion that I should have led better, every detail I should have known, I also knew, in the end, that the students learned a lot -- about reading and writing, yes,  but more that mattered: many told me that they found their voices in discussions and in writing.  So those less-than-stellar classes became more shadowy and more forgivable when Quinn said to me through her tears, "I always felt supported when I came into your classroom."  Funny, I felt the same when she walked in to the room, and she was the student.  So I didn't feel sad seeing them end their time, but thrilled for their voices and growth and getting through a whole year in Italian households and a new school.  I was surprised by my lack of tears since I am a great crier.  (Preferably in private, of course.)  At the end of the evening though, as I said final farewells to a few stragglers -- Quinn (whom I adored near immediately when I read her first piece in which described Italian teenagers as "cooler than [she] would ever be" and having mellifluous names and knowing she'd never smoke, but my goodness, it made those Italian boys look sexy; who asked questions all the time even though she knew more and thought so much more than most kids her age; who loved to talk literature and books and ideas and Classics; who told me how she wasn't good at Latin grammar even though I couldn't imagine it; who just loved loved loved learning; who told me in October that she had a plan to go to Georgetown for undergrad and then Harvard Law, but by the end of the year had decided that she'd like to go to college abroad, preferably Oxford, and I thought, Oh, Oxford, take this wonderful girl; who came to me one day conflicted about what to do about a student who had cheated...she told me, "I could tell him, 'Either you turn yourself in or I will,'" and then did exactly that, so he could turn himself in with less grave consequences; whose moral compass and kindness ran so so deep; who cried at that last dinner; whose parents I kept wondering about because I imagined that they must be wonderful listeners and people; who read The Universe Versus Alex Woods in days late May for fun because I'd just read it and recommended it, and then told me about her uncle who had chosen to die when he was sick; who I so hope does keep in touch) and Genesis (who wanted to leave in December because she was so homesick; who stuck it out all the way until May 25 and was so glad that she did; who came out in a personal essay to me and then to the class when she read the piece out loud; who one day asked me if Mary could tell her how she made such good brownies from scratch because the ones Mary made that I shared with the students were so good and the ones Genesis made for her host family were a flop, so one Tuesday afternoon Genesis and Mary made parallel batches of brownies in our apartment kitchen, and from the living room I could hear them chatting and laughing, and our apartment felt so homey, so like home.) and Vanessa (who wrote her first personal essay on being taken out of her mom's house when she was in the fourth grade; who wrote brave stories about domestic abuse; who did her Capstone on domestic abuse services in Italy, eventually meeting a woman in this field, a woman who had been a guest lecturer one day at SYA, whose presentation Vanessa had to leave because it was too difficult to listen, and so she and I sat by ourselves in the director's office and just talked and talked; who blossomed and thrived and was funny and creative and positive and the first one to say, after someone else read a piece of personal writing, "Wow, that was amazing.") and Nicole (at whose host dad, director, advisor, advisee meeting I shed a tear...another professional moment that I berated myself for...for not being more professional, adept, detached...at the end of that meeting, as she walked out, she said, "Ms. Keleher, You cried!  That made me cry."  And all I could do was say, "I know.  I'm so sorry."  There had been such kindness and compassion from the host dad in that meeting, and I adore this kid and felt so proud of her, too.)  and Dylan (who missed his friends all year; who wrote so brilliantly that I had to gear up to understand what he was writing; who was miserable for months until he changed host families and then got to garden and cook and run run run; who made kombucha that I bought from him; who came to every class with his smarts; who turned down Harvard for Pomona; who found his niche in the end as he helped peers in their cannoli, pasta, chocolate making for Capstone projects) -- I was surprised to feel that bittersweet pang, the pain of leaving something or someone so good.

At the faculty luncheon days later, as I walked out of the restaurant Il Gargolo, saying goodbye to the director in a simple way, exchanging simple thanks, I welled up.  Him I knew I'd see again.  In fact, he stopped by half an hour ago to help me figure out how to lower our blinds.  (Actually, I helped while he figured it out and got the blinds lowered for the 80 degree plus day.)  But it was an ending of the year as a SYA teacher, of being part of this teaching group, and of working for him, whom I admired as both director and boss.

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So today I am underslept because yesterday I had a cappuccino and then ran on that energy to purge and pack and organize give-away and get treats for Hannah's class for today and make cookies for the kids' teachers.  And then I stayed up for the extra hour to do nothing and watch a predictable romantic comedy on neflix.  (When I was a kid, I watched any John Hughes movie I could.  I still love that kind of movie now.  I could still be at my parents' house, watching Pretty in Pink or Sixteen Candles, on the actual television with the VCR going.)

Lack of sleep, sensitive children, final day of school -- I will be so lucky if I make it past Paradiso pick-up without tears.  I am not attached to many people there, only Emanuele's parents really, but I still feel some connection with the people and the place, and perhaps especially the courtyard where the littles play each day from 1:30 - 2pm while they wait for the big kids to be dismissed from middle school.  At times they'd complain about waiting, Daniel would tell me, so very occasionally I'd get over there to pick them up and walk them home.  When I went over this week, trying to help them out so they didn't have to wait, they wouldn't leave.  They just kept playing and playing with Emanuele and Federico and Gabriele and Alessio.  And I thought, One thing -- waiting -- can so often turn into something else -- making friends.

We're not leaving yet.  But the process has begun.

If there were no tears, I imagine that I'd find that even more difficult.