In the Darkness
Lara Colleen Alvarenga
Keywords: parenting, teaching, Zoom, death
Categories: Parenting and Possibility in Impossible Times; Teaching as Carework, Teaching as Dangerous Work
Content warning: death
Prologue
The pandemic and the personal events that I traversed during this time profoundly impacted my experience as an educator, writer, mother, daughter, and woman. Not only was the world around me changing in dramatic ways, but also my personal world felt, at times, to be crumbling. Four close family members died in the space of eleven months. Additionally, my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I wanted to fall apart, I wanted to cry, I wanted to stay in bed all day, but my reality was that five lives, the lives of my children, depended on me to maintain some sense of normalcy. My world was not the only world that was rocked. My children were schooling from home because we were doing everything that we could as a family not to further jeopardize the health of my father as his immune system was extremely compromised.
So, within the space of my home, I had to find a way to express myself and sort through my pain without infringing on the lives that everyone else was living within the same walls. During this time, I was taking one of the required courses for my doctoral studies with Dr. Rene Saldaña, and he introduced me to Nikki Grimes’s book Legacy, where she engages with the women poets of the Harlem Renaissance through Golden Shovel poetry. This poetic form was created by Terrance Hayes in 2010 and further developed by Nikki Grimes in 2021.
In Golden Shovel poetry, the writer takes a “striking line” from another work to create a new poem using the words from the original line (Grimes, 2021, p. 7). Once the writer has decided on a striking line to use, the words from this line are arranged in the right margin and then bolded. This offers the reader two ways to read and glean meaning from the new work; they can read the new poem horizontally to see how the writer has incorporated the striking line within their work, or they can read the original line vertically to understand how the writer is, as Grimes would say, “bound by the words of the original poem”.
Not only did I find a way to express myself through this poetic form, but also, I was able to rediscover my voice. So, though I am bound by the words of Anzaldúa in the piece that follows, this work is a reclaiming of these words within my own experience.
In the Darkness by Lara Colleen Alvarenga
A Golden Shovel from Gloria Anzaldúa’s “Letting Go”
Working in the darkness
I am careful not to wake you.
The pressure of what must
be done is compounded by those to befriend.
Focus. Stay in the moment. If
I am able to work in the absence of the sounds that you
make, I just might finish what I want
to complete in this stolen instant. To
feel a sense of accomplishment worthy of the sleep
that I deny in the nights.
Day breaks. Little voices sing out. It’s
time to change diapers for two, not
forgetting to match outfits of all three. Enough!
Already they are in a power struggle letting
their tempers fly and their personalities shine. Go!
The three littles settle; I call twice
for the two bigs. Now three
times, and I wonder how many times
it takes to wake a
preteen, perhaps a hundred.
Am I a mother, an educator, a grad student or a short-order cook? Soon
everyone is settled again for a moment, and everything
has quieted. The bigs in virtual school. The TV is
temporarily entertaining the littles. A dull
sky makes for an unsatisfactory
pause in the day, as I drink my coffee and process my night’s
work. The questions of little minds open
up my perspective. The looks on each little face
brings a smile. Full of wonders and interests.
Back to work. Shall I grade this, or respond to you?
As I look over discussion posts, I see no
reserve. My students pour themselves into this space. No longer
do they want to be in their rooms. They too miss the classroom, and
somehow this space has become our way to interact. Soon
we will return, but for now this is what we have, and again
I am impressed by how they have dug in. You
do with what you have and when we return
I wonder, how will we do differently? To
be able to experience people in the flesh again—those outside your
immediate family. Hyperaware of each element.
Conscious of each moment. Sensitive to what was taken for granted and
determined to keep doing things differently.
There are things I like
about the changes that have come. But this year has brought a
level of pain that has made me a fish
Out of water. April brought the first, much too young to
leave us. Then July the next, and the
sobs shook me and the tears flowed and the air
forgot to come to my lungs as I tried to catch my breath. You
think that you can get back up, and then another will come.
This time in October, and I didn’t think I had anything left to
give, but I did. The aching that filled my heart, the
sorrow that filled my soul. I got up the next day and forced open
my eyes. Work to be done, children to care for—the only
choice to be made. Then came February and in between
proposals on the importance of diverse literature, breathings
of the ones that I’ve loved and lost tried to suffocate me. But
I keep going. March—another call. I yell out, ENOUGH ALREADY!
This fish’s gills
are straining and gasping. And yet I must grow
I must push on
Through all of this loss, through this isolation, your
focus must remain fixed. In the end, milk will flow from these breasts.
References
Grimes, N. (2021). Legacy: Women poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Bloomsbury.
Bio
Lara Colleen Alvarenga is an educator, researcher, and writer committed to diversity, equity, and critically compassionate intellectualism. She was born and raised in Southern California and currently resides in North Texas where she and her husband are raising their five children. She holds both a bachelor's and master’s degree in English Literature and is in the final stages of doctoral studies in Curriculum and Education with a concentration in English and a minor in Cross-Cultural Studies. As a full-time faculty member of Tarrant County College, she is dedicated to access issues in higher ed, particularly as they impact dual credit and first-generation college students.