In another life, the one I could have lived, I am at home now. It's 8:30 at night, where else would I be? I've finished grading papers, and put everything back in my satchel, neatly.

The students papers are all marked with green or bright blue ink, neatly and carefully and copious notes are written out on a separate page - for those who need them. There's nothing worse than getting back a paper all marked to hell with red ink, great swaths of sentences bulldozed by red marker and inflammatory comments a person can't refute jammed into the margins. A person would never look at those kinds of notes, never try to improve. Instead, in the life I could have lived, I try, doggedly, to accentuate the positive even as I insist that there is always room for improvement.

I won't stay up much longer. Unlike the life I'm living now, in the life that could have been I'd have conquered my insomnia...

or circadian rhythm disorder, or whatever it was. Or maybe just years and years of getting up early to teach school tamed the owl in me. Maybe insomnia never really got a grip on me, though I certainly stayed up late enough in college. But, after all, I graduated when I was 22, since I went to college right after I graduated from high school.

Probably, in that life, there was no misunderstanding with my parents. I was maybe a little stronger, able sooner to get rid of the abusive boyfriend. Maybe I even got rid of him before he actually had the chance to become abusive, thereby making me, in some ways, more confident....and in other ways, less so.

But, because I was in college, I never had the misfortune to encounter the child molester with the movie star name. He never had a chance to meet me, while young, not even yet 20, who bore a striking resemblance to the last of his string of victims. I even had the same first name as his step-daughter. But I was over 18, working in his office, living on my own, so he could manipulate and confuse and pinch and grab and have it only be sexual harassment, at most, which was practically a sport in the 80's. But lets not spend too much time on him. After all, in both of these parallel universes, he's dead now, and buried in Arlington National Cemetery in spite of all of his sins and crimes.

So, you see, in the life I could have lived, I'd be much more calm, much more certain of my ideas. But I also would have questioned them less, which is why I am teaching in a Catholic school. 8th grade. It's not that I don't remember all that craziness and abuse that happened when I was a kid. It's not that I came to side with those in authority who thought banging kids heads into black boards and such-like were appropriate behaviors. On the contrary: I remember it very well, and don't want it to happen to anyone else. And what better way than this? To be there in the position of authority to lead and guide, to create change from within?

Besides, it's all so different now. Those people who threw whatever came to hand at whomever annoyed them were dinosaurs in those days, the last of the old guard. Not that it's unheard of for one of the male teachers to throw a piece of chalk. But it's not so much a culture of violence any more. The nuns are all involved in outreach, the only nun in the building is the principal, who dresses like a CEO, if CEO's got dressed at the Goodwill.

Of course, some things are still the same. Earlier today I substituted for the 2nd grade teacher while she lay on the sofa in the faculty room with a cool cloth over her eyes. Migraine. Everyone teases her that teaching second grade is a poor choice for someone with her condition, but she can almost always get rid of them with medication these days. This is the first one she's had all year, so no hard feelings. I passed out a color by numbers worksheet and pushed the desks together so the students could share crayons. And passed the time by doing a better job of arranging the spring flowers the kids brought in to lay at the feet of the statue of the Virgin Mary. My colleague might get a little cross with me, when she sees it. She's big on letting the kids decide where to set the vases. But they're only seven, they tend to leave things where they fall, and after awhile some of the little girls told me it looked nice.

That reminded me of all the work I have left to do for the May procession which comes up in two weeks. The truth of the matter is that I have a love hate relationship with the May procession. The other 8th grade teacher, Mr. Fritz, does as little as possible to help with it. I'm pretty sure he's gay, though not sure he knows he is. I think he's under tremendous stress, and therefore have sort of a love hate relationship with him too. Love in the Christian sense, of course. Not withstanding that he's probably homosexual, he's too young for me. And we'd probably kill each other. He's very conservative, and every time someone asks him, in social studies, what the liberal point of view is on something he says, "You'll have to ask Miss H. She's the free thinker."

But, my point was my conflict about the May procession. The 8th grade students are supposed to elect a May Queen, and less importantly, a May King. They're supposed to select the students for this honor based on their classmates values. Who most exemplifies Christian principles? I am always trying to hammer home this point: it's not a popularity contest. But, of course, it IS a popularity contest. There have been years where popularity and character have met in the same person. It's just not most years. The Queen and her court, the four runner up girls, who to greater or lesser degrees stuff their jealousy under the bouquets they get to carry, wear the most fabulous dresses it would be remotely suitable to wear to mass, while the rest of the students have to wear their uniforms. The King and his court would rather wear the uniforms than the jackets and ties required of them, but they always manage to rise to the occasion. The boys carry the statue of the Virgin out of the church back into the grove where she usually stands. And it's not an easy job - the statue is heavy and Mr Fritz and Father Greg have the boys duly terrified of dropping it. Of course, that's never happened, and it's on a special platform made easy to balance, but every year I have at least one nightmare where the Virgin Mary topples and roles through the parking lot, doing untold damage to the vehicles of the parents.

Anyway, once they get the statue outside and return her to her regular spot up on the brick stand that elevates her above the crowd (the janitor has taken this opportunity to clean her up a little bit) they go to the back of the assembled crowd. Then, while hymns are sung, the King and Queen and escorts all walk at a stately pace down the center of the grove. The "princesses" carry bouquets, but the Queen carries a floral wreath which seems to get more elaborate every year. At this point, I try to forget about the pagan roots of all of this, and pray that the next part goes okay. To wit: the King offers the Queen his arm, leads her up to the front of the statue where they genuflect, then around to the back where a small ladder has been set up. The most intelligent May Queen to date wore a long dress concealing her trusty basketball sneakers. The Queen's job is to climb up and crown the statue with the wreath. The King's job is to make sure she doesn't fall off the ladder. The crowd bursts into Ave Maria, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. And then Father Greg hands out all the special awards for the year, and I get called up and thanked for all my hard work ( making sure the kids know where to stand, how to act, we rehearse it a few times, etc,) of the ceremony. But really it's to acknowledge to the parents that, if their kid got into the high school they wanted, it was probably because of me tutoring the hide off of them at the last minute so they could pass the entrance exam. One year the parents were so stunned by the turn-around I got a basket of roses so big it didn't even fit in my car. The whole thing is very embarrassing.

In this other life, this parallel life, which has been so much more neat and orderly than my normal one, that'll all happen in about 2 weeks. In my parallel life, it's just after 10:00, and I've finished brushing my teeth. My black cat, Benedict, is giving me the hairy eyeball, wondering I'm going kick him out of the bedroom. He tends to want to sleep on top of my head, otherwise. He showed up as a kitten in the parking lot of the school last year, just as the new pope was being elected. I've had a series of black cats, almost all of them named after religious figures. People ask me if I'm being ironic, and I've done it for so long I'm no longer sure myself.

I decide to put on another coat of nail polish, the quick kind, that dries in 60 seconds. In my other life, I still enjoy makeup and jewelry. Sometimes parents are surprised by the nail polish and bright, somewhat trendy clothes I wear. But I don't want to be mistaken for a nun. It's about the time of year that a rumor will start that I am in love with Mr. Fritz or he is in love with me. In this other life, I have never been married, let alone married twice. I was much too independent, and a little too in love with my orderly, simple life to make the adjustments required for relationships to go quite that far. Not that I don't date. Just not compulsively.

Besides, there's plenty to do. I'm never bored. I read a lot, I draw and paint, and because I kept working at it all these years I've gotten fairly good at it. I've had some poems published - the principal likes to tell the parents that. And I travel a lot in the summers, though, of course, I have to take a summer job, my pay being what it is. "You and me against the world, Ben" I tell the cat. I rarely have the heart to kick him out.

Sometimes, as I walk around the campus for exercise or sit in the grove eating my lunch (not out of devotion to the Virgin, but to get out of the noise of the faculty room) I think of another person. Another me, somewhere, who had a different life. Made more compromises, had more life experiences, was a little less cautious, and therefore became both sharper and more afraid. I imagine complex relationships, the buying and selling of houses, the clatter and noise and politics of an office job. The jarringness of numbers and the ringing of phones. Adventures, not like climbing a hill, but of the heart, invested, all or nothing, in one man. Deep and abiding friendships, undertaken without fear of what some parent might see if they saw me in some other part of town.

Of course, you know the person the teacher imagines. Some Winged Creature, with an exaggerated flight response from all my trials, all of which I probably could have avoided with a little more caution, a little more steadiness, a little more concern for convention, and a willingness to put the breaks on my feelings for other people. She and I diverged somewhere, yet I know her as she knows me. What step did I take that she didn't? What step did she take that I missed? I don't believe in predestination. Like all Catholics, I believe in free will.

But no matter what I believe, and no matter where one path started and another ended, I can only go forward. Life isn't like the path in the park, where, if you get confused you can turn around, retrace your steps, and start over again.

In life, if you get confused, you can only go forward, confused, and hope your next choices will bring you some measure of peace.