Chapter 55

December 20th, 2019

Rory stood in front of senior class at the final period of their last school day before Christmas break. She was still in disbelief that she'd indeed been trusted with 12th graders, truth be told, being still a very young teacher despite her age. But Hanlin seemed to have a soft spot for her, or at the very least trusted her abilities to understand the gravity of impact she could have on them.

It had been a hectic few months, the first few months when she'd actually been teaching full time. And it really felt very much like more than that. When she'd substituted during her studies and filled in part time at Chilton, she'd largely done that based on what she got from the teacher normally in charge or used her lesson plans that she'd compiled during her studies. For these past months, however, she'd had to compile every lesson plan, every test and every excersise almost from scratch, even if she was naturally borrowing ideas from others. For this reason she knew that the minute the bell rang on a Friday night, she'd have at least two half days full of prep-work to do at home. A teacher's job never seemed to be done.

"Before we all go our separate ways to enjoy the holidays, I would like to leave you with this one holiday thought," Rory began and opened her notebook in front of her. She was dressed festively, wearing a vintage wine red velvet dress with a bow tie neck, humble in anything but the material and the bow, that she'd found at a thrift store in Manhattan when she'd last been to visit Paris.

Paris had just gotten the yet another Business award and she'd gone as her plus one, not caring about potential lesbian image that they'd left going to a fancy gala together like that. They both found it entertaining at best, and had gotten a good laugh about actually having that one kiss up their sleeve. But they were both in a similar position in life - both two well-educated women in their 30s with children, alone without a significant other. It was a moment to lean on each other yet again.

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world," Rory read out an excerpt, and closed her notebook in her palm. "Can anyone tell me who wrote it?" she asked the class.

"Ms. Walsh?" Rory gestured towards the red-hair with her hand up.

"Dickens?" the girl replied, not sounding too sure in her answer.

"Not quite. Anyone else?" Rory asked.

"It's from The Hobbit, right?" another student replied, after Rory had gestured her hand towards him to answer.

"That's right, written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, originally first published in 1937. When he wrote it, he never even thought anyone could be interested in something so fantasy-rich and it was a mixture of luck and persuasion that the book is here for us to read at all," Rory continued, picking up the book from her bookshelf in the classroom.

"So as some of you already may have guessed, this title is your next book to read. I know many of you are desperately looking forward to taking things a little easier now that your college applications are submitted and you're just anxiously waiting on your results. But trust me, this is something I actually think you'll quite enjoy," she explained. She gave her students the reading list for the whole schoolyear in advance, but left a few surprises in there which she liked to either give them freedom to choose or let them find out through some other assignment.

"But as you read, try to think what it would be like being Susan Dagnall, the person who discovered this piece of fiction that was originally meant only for the author's children," she continued. "Think what you would've done - would you have published it and why? And don't forget to think about what it was like in Europe in 1937," she added.

The bell rang.

"And happy holidays to everyone, see you next year!" she added and smiled. Deep down sighed deeply, feeling relieved, as her students began to pack up their belongings.

It was her first lesson plan that had gone exactly according to plan and she felt a sense of success. Every exercise had gone according to plan, she'd made it through all the material she'd wanted to, even the timing had been as close to perfect as it got. She'd even anticipated which of her students was going to answer her questions, and she'd also heard a few of her top students discussing what book they were going to be given next. She'd intentionally gone ahead and thrown them a curveball on that too. It had taken nearly four months to really get to know the class and really grasp what she was there to do.

As the class scattered, she was left to pack up her things herself, feeling content. She finally felt like she had a purpose, something that she was actually good at.

And since it was a few days until Christmas, her favourite time of the year, and just a few more until Jess was about to move out and move to Stars Hollow full time, she felt like all the stars were aligning.

Every day she did this successfully, she felt less and less bad about her first career not working out, about her book not working out, about so many of her plan A-s not working out. She was hopeful, but at the same time clueless as to what waited ahead.

Would being alone, with Em, and happy with what she was doing bring her closer to finding her own happiness?


November 16th, 2021

Rory was pacing back and forth her classroom, waiting for the senior class she was teaching this year to finish their assignment. Occasionally a student might invite her over to ask her something, which she happily did, at least knowing then that the student was taking the assignment seriously.

But she had to admit that her mind wasn't nowhere near as clear and focused as she'd liked it to be.

Last night she'd compiled the letter to Jess listing her suggestion for their shared custody, which she wouldn't have minded, putting it into writing. She would suggest extended weekends to Jess, leaving her with one and him with three weekends just like now, but overall the number of days for Jess would increase by one each week. She was proposing alternating holidays, except for the summer which they would divide equally. This way Jess could get Thanksgiving, and she would get Christmas, Jess the New Year and so forth. But she was being generous here as well, and for example offering Jess to come over and have Em open his presents on Christmas morning nevertheless. She was offering flexibility when one of them was sick or had a busier work streak. She'd also added Em's medical and educational costs to the mix, but added that she wasn't expecting him to share these, despite Jess having suggested he do that. She had teacher discounts and an insurance plan her dad had set up for them - there was no reason to mess with things that were already working well.

She'd reasoned, giving examples from several sites and studies she'd looked up and added references that supported what she was suggesting. And while she knew these things needed to be agreed on in writing, she was also proposing they meet up and discuss it calmly. She needed to show that she wouldn't be bullied. But she also new she needed to bite the lemon on giving Jess the extra days he was asking for.

Now she was just waiting for the 24 h Paris had insisted on before actually sending it. The worry was that perhaps what she was suggesting would sound too self-assured to Jess, too scholarly in her argumentation - too cocky, which she knew sometimes set him off. It wouldn't have been the first time when Jess had told her to pull back on her 'condescending Ivy league demeanor' when they'd fought. She didn't want to it to sound like she'd had a lawyer look it over, which she had. She didn't want Jess to jump the gun and take things too far. She wanted to be those parens who did this calmly.

On the other hand, her mind swirled around Logan, their little morning treat from the other day was still freshly in her mind and boy did she crave a repeat. She was falling hard, as if no time had passed. On top of that Logan was coming over for dinner and a movie that same night, and while she'd proposed the idea to Em as her inviting over a friend, yet again, she was seriously considering opening up a little to her daughter and saying she was, in fact, dating him. After all, the little girl wasn't clueless to her mother's dating life, she'd asked before and she'd told her of far less significant dates. She just didn't want her finding out from somewhere else or feel disappointed if they spent time together and then felt blindsided by it being more than friendship. But she was sure some might argue it being too soon.

"Ms. Gilmore?" one of her students jolted her out of her thoughts.

"What?" she responded automatically. "Yes," she said quickly, giving her student a word.

"We're done," Lexi replied.

As she looked around the classroom, it indeed looked like everyone was finished, staring at her, and she'd just completely forgotten herself in thought. It was a miracle there wasn't a furrow worn into the floorboards where she'd paced back and forth.

"Right, excellent," Rory quickly recovered, and tried to recall what they were supposed to do next. "Ms. Cartwright, why don't you start from the first assignment," she suggested, giving herself a moment to catch up to what she'd asked her to do.

Lexi continued to describe how the two texts they were comparing were alike and different.

Without feeling like she had much to add, though she probably should've, she gave the word to Mr. Villarreal and from there on to Ms. Craig.

"Alright, and as our time is running out," Rory began to say but realized they still had 15 minutes of class time left. "I'll hand out the homework," she added, and headed for her desk to search for her materials. Usually her desk was prepared for the entire class, all her materials and assignment sheets easily found according to her system. But there was nothing on her desk that could help her now and she went through her laptop sleeve just in case, finding just some assignments she'd taken home to be graded last night but had never gotten around to it. She felt a sense of panic - had she really not brought the assignments?

She then realized she must've left them at the copy machine. It was a prime example of how scattered her brain was these days.

"Alright, I need to go make a few additional copies, I thought I had enough," she said apologetically, despite knowing that she was taught to never directly apologize or admit mistakes in private school settings unless they were of significant nature. Anything less would be seen as a weakness that could hurt the way she was trusted by her students. "Until then, you have five minutes to brainstorm on the blackboard about your Christmas holiday reading," she added and suggested one of the students take on the role of the note-taker.

She slipped out of her classroom with a single A4 paper with something belonging to the 11th graders programme on it for cover, and made her way hastily down to the teacher's lounge where the copy machine was. She felt embarrassed, tardy and distracted. It wasn't like her.

She hadn't felt that clueless to what she was doing since she started doing this, painfully recalling this one time she was called in to substitute a history class on a topic she hadn't looked at since high school last minute once.

"Looking for these?" Max said, as he stepped out of the teacher's lounge. He'd really turned things around at the school since Hanlin had retired, having also altered the list of assignments his assistant did. He even made his copies on occasion, like today. He held in his hand Rory's pack of assignment printouts.

"Yes," Rory replied, in relief, feeling even more embarrassed as she was essentially caught by her boss, no matter if he was a friend too. "Thank you, I'm so sorry… I don't know where my head was at," Rory apologized, and took the papers from his hands.

"We all have bad days, Rory," Max replied in a friendly tone.

Rory smiled meekly and began to hurry back to her classroom.

"If you want to talk about anything, you know my door is open," Max added after her.

She nodded lightly and hurried off.

Rory felt a sense of relief and worry at the same time. Was Max actually noticing her being all over the place? Would her students gossip?

Thankfully her class had been fairly productive in generating ideas, despite the fact that the blackboard also contained several books one might consider scandalous. There was 'George' by Alex Gino, 'All American Boys' by Jason Reynolds, 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood, 'The Color Purple' by Alice Walker and even 'Fifty Shades of Grey' by E.L James. Some were clearly put onto that board to shake her a little. There were some very good options there as well, ones that she might be actually able to include in their syllabus that were without as much controversy.

"Here you go, these are your home assignments for Monday," she continued, deciding on the go ahead and give them some additional time to do them.

"And I congratulate you on compiling a list of controversial literature on the board," Rory continued, underlining those that she knew to fall into that category. "Your assignment concerning this list is to each pick a book, and no I am not saying read it because that might get me in trouble. But Google it - and try to map out what makes it a controversial book, and think whether it was something the author did on purpose or not," Rory added, finding a way for the students to explore what they were clearly so interested in without her actually suggesting they read any of them officially. Some still might, and that was kind of what she hoped, recalling well what it was like to read something that had been forbidden from schools when she had been their age.

"Ms. Gilmore?" Lexi asked again.

"Yes?" she replied, pondering if she'd forgotten anything else.

"Also for Monday?" Lexi asked.

"Umm...," Rory needed a moment, having improvised. "Yes, Monday is fine," she added.

Thankfully, she was then saved by the bell, and sank down on her desk chair after sending her class off, disappointed in herself.

Her teaching job hadn't made her happy, it had made her okay. This much she'd learned. She knew it wasn't entirely appropriate that a man could fill her glass like that nor that being very close to being happy would lead her to become this distracted. Could she even be both - a good teacher and someone whose personal life wasn't in shreds?