Believe It Or Not!

One of the great joys of my career in education is having a few weeks off in the summer for vacations and other pursuits.  I love spending some of that time directing high school students in theater productions.  Each summer I find myself back at the theater program I founded ten years ago, working with a talented and motivated group of kids, putting on a play.  We have developed a tradition of creating fictional biographies of each other – cast and crew – for the program.

Our most recent play, this July, was No Crime Like The Present. These are some of my favorite bios – some were written by me, some by the kids.  Great creativity and silliness.

(I’ve removed names to protect the innocent.  You know who you are!)

Steve de Beer was originally born under a dark cloud in the mountains of Afghanistan, but at age 17, he dug a tunnel under the Indian and Pacific oceans to the United States with a plastic spoon. He surfaced at Broadway, breaking through the stage during a performance of Les Miserables, and thus his love of theater was born. He began touring New York City, discovering his love for theatre at every turn. Once atop the Empire State Building an oversized bird snatched him up and dropped him in Denver where he found his passion for fire breathing. 

EB was born in New Orleans, but was separated from her family during a rowdy Mardi Gras parade when a dancer tripped over her. The man who found her, Enrique “Big John” Sanchez, owned a Tex-Mex restaurant and raised her as a worker. He renamed her Emilia Tocino, after his favorite slaughtered pig on a childhood TV show. One day, a casting director came for a breakfast burrito and was astounded by EB’s raw talent for entertainment. He whisked her away to New Zealand, where she played a flatulent princess in a sci-fi film that never showed in theaters and was instantly catapulted to stardom. After years of movie roles and worldwide fame, EB sought normalcy while visiting her aunt in Denver. While she was hiding from paparazzi in Aunt Lucille’s cellar, EB found a flyer for Stanley’s Theater Camp. She bribed Steve to allow her to participate by offering him unlimited access to her professional makeup stylist, as his deepest desire has always been to be a clown.

JB first uncovered his love for the arts as a professional ballet dancer in northern British Columbia. Once he realized he was sick of tights, JB twirled his way all the way to Denver, where he was discovered, years later, living under a rock in Cheesman Park. It was his time coexisting with moss that made JB find his passion for the performing arts again, but this time, wearing tights while acting.  JB is the only male cast member in this show and appreciates all the backstage chatter about whether he should perform the whole show in just his boxers.  When asked about the lack of boys in the cast, JB was heard uttering, in a high-pitched voice, “Uh, OMG, that’s a lie!” and running out of the room.  He would like to point out that his feet are bigger than everyone’s, even Steve’s.

ZN is an Olympic bronze medal winning synchronized swimmer.  She thinks she looks particularly hot in a tight plastic swimcap and noseplugs.  After auditioning for and getting the part of the sealion in Cirque du Soleil’s aquatic extravaganza, “O”, ZN lived the high life in Vegas until she was way into her 30s.  There she developed an unfortunate addiction to playing nickel slot machines and, on her therapist’s insistence, was transferred to Theater Camp in Denver.  Bending to pressure from ZN’s agent, Steve regularly floods the ballroom so she can perform her best roles. ZN has won the acclaim of the critics, starring in several underwater roles at Theater Camp, including Ursula in The Little Mermaid, Bruce in Finding Nemo, and the pregnant reporter in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

JP was born in Tennessee to a very happily married couple – a rusty trailer and an antique guitar. She spent her youth raising cows, eventually learning to chase them with a bubble machine if they acted up. This fed JP’s naturally bubbly personality, and she soon sang and danced her way across the country as a famous bubbleologist. After years of blowing bubbles, she got tired. She stumbled upon Theater Camp and fell asleep in the costume rack in the library. She was discovered after she screamed because she saw a moth in the clothing.  Steve held her prisoner as a theater slave.  One late afternoon, he heard her muttering to herself, pretending to be the Sorting Hat. Steve was so entranced by her performance that he begged her to join a Theater Camp cast.

CS No one will ever forget CS’s stunning Theater Camp debut as an eight year old when she starred in the role of Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  She has been grateful to Steve for this casting decision ever since. It was nearly as good as the time she was cast as the lady who got locked up in a coffin or the fat guy with the mustache. As Sarah Palin’s 3rd daughter, CS did her first eleven Theater Camp plays in Alaska, right across the street from Russia. She rarely likes to indulge in politics, so she focuses more on her artistic life, most notably knitting. As a notorious communist, she always takes hair ties from the rich and gives them to the poor. She is Robin Hood in her spare time. CS’s most notable achievements are her numerous awards in interpretive dance, spelling, and Brazilian cooking.

OT was born on a miniature giraffe farm in the middle of Kansas. Her first sounds were those of a giraffe, as that was the only life she knew. After departing from her giraffe family, she backpacked across America to Nebraska. There she became a hippie where she learned the art of braiding armpit hair. From there she was adopted to a traveling circus, where she was the lead clown. After touring the world, the circus came to Denver, Colorado, where OT discovered Theater Camp. She left the circus and decided to pursue a life of theatre. OT currently resides in the little bookshelves of the library at Stanley. Look for a book and maybe you’ll see her.

CH never thought she would be in theater production.  She began her career at a pet store in Ogallala, Nebraska, counting dry food pellets for Chihuahuas but was soon fired for getting kibbles confused with bits.  After bussing tables on trains, training tables on planes, and planing tables on buses, CH tried her hand at performing acrobatics for Barnum and Bailey circus, doing rocket science for NASA, and acting as Mitt Romney’s face double.  She drives a different Honda each day of the week.

GH migrated from Bruges to Denver on Dumbo, the flying elephant. His ginger curls and obsession with Disney whisked him away under the sea to Ariel. When she washed up onto the beach, Ariel dumped GH for a brown haired beach boy. While heartbroken, he walked hundreds of miles until he reached the home of Steve de Beer. Steve, feeling sorry for GH, welcomed him into his home and employed him as a technical lackey. GH has been serving Steve as a live-in slave for seven years now and he could not be happier.

AW cannot believe she still has to hang out with her fourth grade teacher, Steve.  It sucks.  While living in Southern California, AW was a bodyguard and stand-in double for Lady Ga-Ga.  However AW became disillusioned with Ga-Ga’s conservative fashion sense and overall lack of creativity and she moved back to Colorado to pursue her dream of raising baby dragons and pitching alternative dance shows weekly to 9News.  After 9News turned her down for the 57^th time, AW finally got her big break on Fox News, where she stars as Attila the Hun’s 4^th wife in the show Designing Cupcakes with Rush Limbaugh.

WS was once the size of Stan Van the Weatherman’s marble and was plucked from a berry bush and planted in a box where he grew into a small boy.  With careful watering and force feeding of Miracle Grow, he is now a bigger boy.  He has been a translator for both William Penn and William ‘the  Refrigerator’ Perry.  WS’s hobbies include gilded picture framing, scrapbooking in pastel colors, and free running. Run free, WS, run free.

EH enjoys performing magic tricks, riding donkeys, and winning hotdog eating contests. On one of her longer donkey rides, the donkey veered out of control, panicked and sprinted all the way from EH’s home in coastal Uruguay to Denver, Colorado.  It was the fastest ass in South America. She took the donkey to a feed store in search of hay. There a family of dormice took pity on her and offered her a home in exchange for nightly magic shows. Her love of performing was born.  EH loves to manage props for the high school shows because she gets to play with wine bottles, cigars, and cigarettes.

A Man Walks Into a Bar and Encounters a Pirate

An Entirely True Story

This Yuletide past, a tall Englishman, visiting the former colonies, was wandering in New Orleans through the French Quarter.  It was mid-morning and he was in search of a small pick-me-up. With ne’er a Starbucks in sight, he stumbled upon a small hotel bar.

Entering the gloomy interior, he spied two people already in residence. The barmaid, whose back was turned as she towel-dried a collection of glassware, and a pirate downing a mug of grog. 

Seating himself on a stool next to the pirate, the Englishman surveyed him.  Stocky individual, perhaps 30 years of age, looking like he’d been up swabbing the decks all night.  Full pirate garb, puffed sleeves, striped breeches, blue bandana, tall black boots, gold hoop earrings, enormous belt buckle, his belt displaying his arms of cutlass and dagger.

For the Englishman, this was a new experience.  He had never before encountered a real-life pirate, particularly at 10:30 on a sunny morning in the year 2011.  I wonder, he thought to himself, what does one say to such a fellow.

“I say,” he began, “are you in for some swashbuckling today?” 

The pirate turned to him, a hard glint of steel in his eye, and responded. “Swashbucklin’  just be another word for a pirate, ye know.”

“Ah, not true,” the Englishman exclaimed, for he took pride in his language and knew an error when he saw one. “Swashbuckling is a verb, and could never be substituted for the words a pirate which are exclusively an indefinite article followed by a noun.”

He had thrown down the gauntlet and would not be challenged to a linguistic feud by a trifling buccaneer, cutlass or no cutlass at his belt.  For he, the Englishman, knew the very definition of swashbuckling, that it meant engaging in daring and romantic adventures with ostentatious flamboyance, and this pirate had the look about him that suggested he had never done anything of the kind.

“Yarr,” retorted the pirate, “I’d not be fully graspin’ o’ the origins of swashbucklin’, but I know it’s somethin’ that pirates do.”

Aha, the Englishman thought, an etymological confusion.  He could set this blaggard straight and explain the sixteenth century roots of the word, but there was something spiteful and foul in the pirate’s expression.  And the fact that the rogue was reaching for his dagger did not make him any further at ease.

“Ah yes, quite so,” the Englishman searched for the right words. “Well, this has been lovely, but I must be getting on.  Tally ho!”

Snoozy, Bee and Me and No Lunch at Updown School - Part One

Based on a true story with supplemental moments...


By my mother’s recollection, I only ever smacked her once.  I was four years old, or possibly five, somewhere in the early seventies.

She had taken me to visit a new school.  I hated my old one.  They didn’t teach me anything.  I was ahead of the class in reading and was therefore directed to read in silence by myself.  No further instruction necessary. The less work I did, the more bored I got. And the more bored I got, the more trouble I got into. My parents were apparently no longer willing to put up with any more phone calls detailing flying spit wads and the pulling of ponytails. Besides, the uniforms were scratchy, my teachers were spiteful, and the lunch counter served liver and spotted dick.

Visiting a new school represented new hope, a way out.  My mother had heard about this school from her friend Snoozy.  Not her real name, just the best I could manage when I was first learning to talk.  Snoozy’s daughter went there.  Her daughter was learning her times tables, Snoozy said, and reading Tolstoy, or something like that, and her calligraphy was up for nomination to the museum for perfect five year olds.  This was the school for me, Snoozy said, a place where I could be challenged, and where I could bring my own lunch.

I did not care about my times tables.  I was only four, or possibly five. Beautiful letters did not excite me. But I could bring my own lunch.  I had had my fill of indestructible bangers and mash and rhubarb crumble.  Most importantly I had a massive crush on Bee, Snoozy’s daughter. I was sold.

My mother set up the visit. It was for the following Tuesday.  I wore my special brown and orange striped shirt, my cobalt blue shorts, and I got to choose my very own lunch, a Cheddar cheese sandwich on white bread (was there any other?), a bag of Golden Wonder ready salted potato crisps, and an apple.  This last one was to make me strong, my mother said. I planned on sharing my potato crisps, and quite possibly even my apple, with Bee. It could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The school was in a village a few miles away. Its official name was Updown School, but it was known throughout the universe as Mrs. Brown’s school.  Mrs. Brown was the head teacher.  My mother informed me that Mrs. Brown was completely in charge and I was to be extra especially nice to her.  She had been at the school a long time and it was her decision as to whether I would get in or not.  The stakes were high.

Snoozy came to pick me up in her cream-colored Morris Marina coupe. I sidled close to Bee in the back seat. No seatbelts when I was four, or possibly five, somewhere in the early seventies. Bee was wearing a plaid dress in a gorgeous mélange of green, blue, yellow and red.  She had a red ribbon tied in her golden hair.  My palms moistened. There could be no more perfect start to my new life.

We drove to school, Snoozy chattering on about her new formica countertops and the demise of the shilling and half crown. I snuck furtive glances over at Bee, but she was absorbed in Enid Blyton, an author I would learn to hate.  We pulled up at a moss-covered flint wall, interrupted by grey stone steps.  We alighted. I grabbed my brown paper bag lunch (the much coveted green plastic lunch box adorned by the highly popular Wombles of Wimbledon Common would have to wait until unconditional admission), and climbed the damp stairway. What awaited at the top was a pleasant looking pre-war schoolhouse at the end of a rich English lawn against a backdrop of tall chestnuts.  A pathway wound quaintly to the front door.

Mrs. Brown was waiting. I’m not sure what I had been expecting, but a wrinkly stooped reptilian lady in calico was surely not it.  She looked like she was a hundred and forty years old. She told me to sit down, far far away from Bee, and next to a boy called Kevin. Kevin told me his dad was a fireman.  I had never met a real fireman before.  I didn’t even own a T-shirt with a fire engine on it.  Kevin had three.  My parents didn’t mingle with people who climbed ladders for a living.

Kevin and I were sitting on wooden chairs at a long table, with four other kids next to us.  It was one of four similar tables in the room, all one behind the other facing the front.  Mine was the third one. The walls were covered in maps, a collection of children’s artwork, some writing (all in perfect penmanship), and a poster that listed the school’s agreements about kindness, safety, respect, and responsibility.

Mrs. Brown conferred with the other teacher, a rather rotund Mrs. Boyd, and then came and sat herself next to me, armed with a small collection of books.  She had me read to her from a couple of them and that seemed to satisfy her.  She gave me some math problems which I managed to do without terrible trouble, and then it was time for milk.

This was a time in England when the government provided free milk to all school children under the age of eleven.  It made our bones strong, even if it didn’t make our teeth straight.  It must have been good policy, because a couple of years later when then Secretary of Education Margaret Thatcher eliminated the practice in a cost saving maneuver (thus becoming for a while affectionately known as Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher), the energy crisis hit, the unions rose to power, and the Empire collapsed.  It took her a decade of premiership to sort it all out.

The milk was delivered every morning to the school in one-third-of-a-pint-sized bottles.  Presumably because Mrs. Brown feared spillage, the oldest students in the school were given the job of piercing the little metal bottle tops with straws and parceling the bottles out to each child.  I got my bottle, sucked down the milk, and watched all the children head outside to play.

Mrs. Brown would not let me go.  We had work to do, young man.  She explained that I wasn’t staying for the whole day, that my mother would be here soon, and she wanted to get a sense of my writing.  Oh, the injustice! While Bee and Kevin and a couple of dozen potential new friends were kicking around a football, I was inside being made to write about my summer holiday.  And I had just been informed that I would be going home soon.  I wouldn’t even get to share my crisps with Bee.  This was unfair!  How could my mother have packed me a lunch and not known that she would be picking me up before I had a chance to eat it, denying me a chance to enjoy the gastronomic delights of the paper bag, a school lunch not manufactured by the proletariat classes of industrial postwar Britain?  I began to sulk.

           

To the sounds of children playing joyfully outside the window, I begrudgingly refilled my fountain pen at the inkwell (even in the early seventies, this was clearly a practice whose time had come and gone several decades before) and sat down at the wooden table, noticing for the first time generations of etchings in its surface. I harrumphed. I wanted to be outside.  I did not want to be sitting here waxing not particularly lyrically about what I had done that summer.  Mrs. Brown shuffled by every few minutes, a faint smell of onion emanating from her print frock, and made slightly worrisome clicking noises.

After twenty minutes, the bell rang outside, signaling the re-entry of a playground-load of happy, rosy-cheeked children back into the school.  Mrs. Brown bade me write on.  I had not finished.  At that moment, catching me fully off guard, into the school walked my mother.  She had arrived at my moment of maximum frustration. While Kevin and several others were clattering the chairs in an effort sit down, Mrs. Brown summoned me to the door.  I threw my chair back, stomped over to pick up my brown paper bag, ignored the friendly “Hello, darling, how was your morning?” from my mum, swung my lunch bag as hard as I could against her legs, and stormed outside.  The bag split. The brown paper failed me, catapulting its contents across the room, the apple rolling to a gentle stop up against Mrs. Brown’s feet.

           

“Well,” I heard Mrs. Brown exclaim as I headed across the lawn, “we certainly don’t tolerate that sort of behavior at Updown School.”

“But…but…” my mother stammered, “he really is a very nice boy…” which is all I heard as I made my way down the steps to the car, sniveling and sad.  After all, I was only four, or possibly five.

Afterword: 

Mrs. Brown informed my mother that my presence at the school was not welcome.  It took a phone call from Snoozy to persuade Mrs. Brown that I really was a very nice boy and would not only benefit from an education at Updown School, but that quite frankly I needed the challenge. Mrs. Brown relented and I was admitted the following week. 

Part Two to follow…..

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I’m wedged in behind a tall man. He does not have his seat back in the upright position. It is in my face forcing the compact TV screen up against my nose, rendering it impossible for me to bend my 6’1” frame and get any of the essentials out of my bag which is now crammed firmly under my knees. Yet it’s not the lack of space that bothers me most about the seat being shoved into my immediate field of vision.

It’s the close-up view of the back of the tall man’s scalp, his generous center parting, that unmistakable sign of depilation, his chrome dome. For this is a bald man. Correction. A mostly bald man. A mostly bald man in need of a haircut. The two inch wide strip of grey fuzz encircling the rear end of his cranial globe, sticking outwards, unwieldy and out of control, as if he’d just stuck his car keys in an electrical socket. White hairs protruding at all angles, some pulled down by gravity, some pointing sideways, others reaching for the ‘call the flight attendant’ button, making it look like he’s got the tail of a bichon frise wrapped around the back of his head.

Yet the hairs I can stand. After all, there have been many times that I’ve been seen sporting an uncombed do, misguided tresses reaching out at all kind of angles. It’s not the hair. What bothers me most is the unavoidable close-up view of the man’s follicles, the sheath-like cavities which once held his lustrous locks. All those thousands of tiny little holes that have now so clearly failed him. Orifices galore, intimate and personal. I might be looking at an enlarged image of his tongue, or perhaps a close-up of a moon crater, complete with crevices, crags, dark and light patches, even a possible site for a manned landing. This is a baldscape I have not asked for and do not want.

And why my adverse reaction, you ask. Simple. Fear. Dread. Absolute terror. That one day this will be me.

I come from a long line of bald men. Good men. Smart men. Tall men. But not men gifted in keeping what God gave them up on top. No coif of the year awards going to the fellas in my family. I am aware that male pattern baldness is supposed to be handed down on my mother’s side of the family gene pool. Try telling that to my brother, completely bald at twenty-four, oldest son of my father, not a cowlick left at twenty-four, only begotten son of my grandfather, shining like a billiard ball at, yep, twenty-four.

And now here come I, rapidly approaching my mid-forties, hanging on for dear life. Ever since I was nineteen, I’ve noticed the ebbing of the hairline on either side of my forehead. Year by year, millimeter by millimeter, the hirsute forces of my brow have been beating a steady retreat. I have been waiting for them to follow my forebears’ example and to begin stampeding at a high clip until I too shine like the dome of the state capitol building. But I have been fortunate that the inevitable retreat has been more tortoise than hare. Slow and steady, forever plodding onward, but taking its sweet time to get to the finish line.

Will I stay lucky? Will my present rate of receding continue – two inches or so every quarter of a century? At that speed, my hairline will reach the crown of my head when I’m close to seventy. Will I grow silver and distinguished in the manner of Richard Gere or Michael Douglas or will the current pace of hair loss accelerate at an ever-increasing velocity leaving me looking more like Ben Kingsley or Patrick Stewart? Am I destined to join the ranks of the men in my family, just a late bloomer clinging on to every strand? Will I end up like my father and brother, my glabrous noggin shining for the world to see?

Who cares? Well, quite obviously, me.

I’m worried that I’ve somehow developed an air of superiority over my less woolly friends and relations, that somehow I’m better than them because I didn’t draw the short straw when it came to hair loss. Am I really that vain, that shallow? Is this the same attitude aired pompously in TV movies of the week by the blond quarterback of the football team and the captain of the cheerleading squad? Because they were blessed with good looks, they deserve to be more popular.

My friend Fred, himself an early entry into the ranks of the smoothly sphered, tells me that being bald in college resulted in him looking older than his classmates, and therefore the one elected to buy the beer. A nice fringe benefit for having a composer’s haircut, and surely a ticket to popularity.

Yet daily I ponder and fret. What happens when the inevitable happens? Is there a way to prevent, or at least delay, a shining dome?

I read in a newspaper once of a Welsh farmer who had his cow lick the top of his head every day for years and that seemed to do the trick. Is that where the word cowlick came from? Unfortunately, I haven’t got a cow, and if I did, I’m not sure I’d want it doing that to my hair. It may be a possible cure for baldness, but fancy heading into work each day with bovine saliva running down your neck. Ugh! Would my cat do instead?

The Body Shop has a mint-based shampoo called Ice Blue which I buy religiously. I might really believe that that delightful, sensuous, minty tingle during my morning shower actually prevents an excess of hair falling out and blocking the drain. I continue to massage the diminishing areas while showering, hoping that a little additional blood circulation will put the brakes on my hair’s demise. And who knows? Perhaps it is working and that’s why I’ve been able to buck the trend established by the men in my family. Perhaps I’m saved.

Saved from resorting to products such as minoxidil or finasteride, marketed under the more commonly known names of Rogaine and Propecia, stuff that men less self-assured than I avail themselves of in the battle against their receding hairlines. Saved from looking into potential solutions offered by groups such as the Hair Club For Men whose website presents me with the delectable yet true possibility of delving into something called Non-Surgical Bio-Matrix Strand-by-Strand Process or, even more tantalizing, Microscopic Follicular Unit Hair Transplantation. What is most alarming is that if those two menu items don’t whet your follicles, they have a further link to Extreme Hair Therapy Products, as if the first two don’t sound extreme enough. I daren’t even click to find out, worried that I might come across an invitation to participate in Non Compos Mentis Lacquered Trichological Therapeutic Incisions, or perhaps just the names and phone numbers of some alluring and potentially nubile Welsh cows. I think I’ll pass.

I’ve taken to wearing my hair a little longer these days, letting it flop around a bit in the front. I used to think that it gave me a foppish air like those dapper and dashing blokes of the English gentry in Jane Austen novels and Merchant Ivory films. A bit like Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. But perhaps I’m just covering up the slowly expanding triangles of flesh appearing above my brow. If you can’t beat it, hide it. A prelude to the dreaded comb-over. John McCain on the presidential stump. Donald Trump on a windy day in Atlantic City. My image conscious teenage daughter thinks I should cut my hair shorter, so I would “look like a normal dad”. Whatever that is. Perhaps I should acknowledge that I’m involved in a huge cover-up operation, a Watergate of the cranium, and I should let down the façade for all to see. I should face up to the inevitable outwards signs testosterone coursing through my body like a man.

There’s always the option to shave. Michael Jordan made that cool in the eighties and the trend continues today. Don’t let them see you aging prematurely. Cut the receding hairline off at the pass. Go completely bald and they’ll never see where your real line of defense is. Bald is beautiful. How can Telly Savalas, Vin Diesel, Andre Agassi, Howie Mandel and countless others be wrong?

No. I’d rather keep my golden locks while I have them. They may be turning a gentle shade of grey at the temples. They may be continuing on their merry path northward. They won’t last forever. I believe I’m doomed to follow in my family’s footsteps, to be examined scrupulously one day by some guy behind me on a plane, the poor fool praying, not for a safe landing, but for a full head of hair. Please God let me not end up like that bald dude in the next row.

New Year's Day

I see the silver-haired couple through the window, walking arm in arm up the street. He has a scruffy grey beard, large eye glasses perched upon his nose, a floppy wide-brimmed hat, the kind favored by grandpas everywhere, today’s newspaper tucked under his left arm. His slightly protruding front teeth enhance the warm smile that glows from within. She is not as thin as she once was. She is wearing a blue and white sweater covered in dancing reindeers and Christmas trees. Her long ponytail spills down her back in a cascade of grace. Her gleaming eye takes in everything with apparent joy and acceptance. Her whole body speaks to the gratitude she feels. It is New Year’s Day.

They are headed to my favorite coffee shop where she orders a green tea, he a plain cup of coffee. He claims the best table, the one by the window bathed in sunshine, while she waits for the drinks and renews a conversation with the lady behind the counter. They talk about the joys of working with people and how lucky they are to know each other through this daily ritual. They wish each other a peaceful New Year.

He waits at the table, his hat now hanging with his beige windbreaker on the back of his chair. He stands to pull out her chair as she approaches with the drinks. He assures himself of her comfort, takes his own seat, and passes her the arts section of the newspaper. I imagine it’s the same every morning. He takes the front page. They sit and sip, sharing the news, chatting briefly, returning to a gentle quiet, exchanging sections and smiles, discussing the day’s events.

I sit at the corner table of the coffee shop, across from this couple, nursing my latte, reflecting on this scene, my first impressions of 2010, and return to my thoughts.

A friend of mine hosted a New Year’s Eve party last night. He said it was as much to celebrate the passing of a tremendously difficult year for so many of us as it was to ring in the New Year. Out with the old, more than in with the new. I know what he means. I am ready to say goodbye to the difficulties of 2009. It was a challenging year. I have been wallowing in self-pity and wandering in a state of confusion and shock. I am ready to turn my back on the last twelve months and to find something new.

I began the New Year rounding up glasses and finding myself up to my elbows in the suds of my friend’s ten quart chili pot. My head spun from one glass too many of Californian bubbly. My stomach complained of too much French cheese and too many bowls of fiery Colorado chili. Tired, discomforted, verging on nauseous, I finished helping my friend clean up from the festivities and headed home to bed.

My New Year officially began ten hours later in a contemplative frame of mind. I am not one for making New Year’s resolutions. January first has never been my New Year. I already have a couple of others that work better for me.

Springtime. The earth is re-born. I shake off the winter blues and turn my head to the sun. My markers are the first daffodils blooming, new buds on the maple outside my window, the first bike rides of the season. It’s the most exciting time of the year. New life, new beginnings, new hope. Endless possibility.

My second New Year is the first day back to school. I’ve celebrated more than twenty of them as an elementary school teacher. A freshly painted classroom, empty walls, blank writing notebooks, fresh faces, new clothes. A year of discovery ahead of us. I turn to my eager young charges and feel the privilege of embarking on this journey alongside them. New beginnings, new hope. Endless possibility.

I don’t feel the need for a third New Year, this one on January first, but here it is. The calendar tells me so. A whole other decade. 2010. Short days and dark, cold evenings. Snow remaining firmly on the Colorado ground. Freezing temperatures. Nothing growing. It’s just another Friday morning as I woke up in an emotional frame of mind. Yet, this year is different.

I am not one for making New Year’s resolutions, but some friends have been pestering me about it. They think I should. They think it will be beneficial for me. They think that setting good intentions here in mid-winter will bring me good things. They don’t understand that this isn’t my season. I’ve already got my time for new beginnings. A cold, hungover morning, slap in the middle of Christmas break, isn’t it.

I stretched my way out of bed and tumbled into a hot shower. Scrubbing away the last vestiges of the post-party blues, my mood began to lighten. I had a day in front of me with no commitments. Nowhere to be, no one to tend to. The day is a gift. I decided to spend a good portion of it writing. There was an essay about the landscape of my childhood that had been on my mind. I had been waiting for some time to explore it. Here was my chance. I got dressed and headed out to the coffeeshop.

I set up my computer at the corner table with a great view of the street. I like to see the world go by as I write. I ordered my latte and begin to take notes in my soft, green, leather-bound journal. A few minutes into my work, my eye was caught by the elderly couple wandering my way.

I watch them, fascinated, unwilling to get back to work. I make up stories: they have just celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary and are spending their golden years visiting grandchildren and great-grandchildren around the country; they set the alarm at 11:55 last night to get up and wish each other a joyous New Year and then fell back to sleep; they were childhood sweethearts, reunited after the tragic loss of their first spouses; she has vowed to spend his last weeks with him, her neighbor of thirty years, as he succumbs to a terminal illness. I lose myself in the reverie of my imagination.

After forty minutes or so, they fold up their paper, return their empty cups to the counter, gather up their coats and return outside. Arm in arm, they stroll around the corner, out of my view, and into the New Year.
More than anything, I notice the pleasure this pair derives from each other, from their surroundings, from what I imagine is a daily routine. So simple, yet so meaningful. I notice the gratitude, I notice the comfort, and I notice the love.

And I realize something. This is what I want too. I want to head into my last years with the same look on my face, the same warmth of familiarity, finding the same simple pleasures, the same gratitude. I want to create that for myself, make it happen.

It is New Year’s Day, and I believe I have found a resolution.

New Beginnings

It’s been a tough old year. My writing dried up for a while, and with it my attention to this site. I’m glad to be back.

Thank you to my friends and family for being there through the year, and to my new community of writing friends at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver for helping me to jumpstart my writing engine.

I have posted three new essays this month with more to come.

A Sommelier of Semantics is a light-hearted look at how we use different language when talking and writing to different people.

Seven Thousand Miles is an intimate portrait of a school I attended as a child, the one where I teach now, and the personal journey that lies within.

A Whole New World is an amusing take on how the books I read as a child might have affected my choices as an adult.

Enjoy these words and feel free to sign up to follow this blog, to leave a comment or two, to send the link to this blog to those who might be interested, and to check back here when you have a free moment.

Thanks for visiting.

Past Present Future

If you’re on Facebook, you know all about “25 Random Things About Me”. It’s become such a phenomenon that the New York Times recently wrote a feature about it. If you’re not, allow me to explain. Someone, anyone, writes 25 statements about him or herself: childhood memories, current beliefs, high school crushes, favorite books or movies, quirky information. He or she posts it on their Facebook profile for all their friends to see.

When I first saw one, I was amazed at the openness. I loved learning about a small slice of my friend’s background. It was fun, thought-provoking, and enlightening. Over the last few weeks, more and more friends have bared their souls. Never feeling like I was reading TMI, too much information, I have been pleasantly surprised at how carefully I’ve been taking them in. Windows have been opened and wonderful discussions have followed. I have learned things that I would never have discovered over coffee.

Inspired by my friends, I have just finished writing my own. It has been a fascinating process. What information would people want to read? How can I narrow it down to 25 things? Is this supposed to be a summary of my life or of my current thinking about the world? Should I be sincere, humorous, vulnerable? What would people think? What I discovered in the course of writing is that one ‘fact' flowed into the next. It doesn’t matter what people think and it’s not a résumé. It is simply an exercise in taking a little time, going inside for a short while, checking in with me, and seeing how I am doing.

I also discovered that looking backwards and looking inside isn’t enough. My random things are about my past and my present. As I wrote, I realized that where I really want to go is my future. So I have also generated some thoughts about where I’m headed. I have spent some time dwelling on where I want my life to go, and creating a vision for myself. I’ve called it Living My Vision.

Both my 25 Random Things About Me and Living My Vision are posted here. I have written them for me. But I post them here because I hope someone, maybe you, will enjoy them enough to be inspired. Perhaps inspired enough to go inside for a moment or to create a vision of your own. It has been a wonderful pause in my journey. Enjoy.

25 Random Things About Me

1. Being sent away to a traditional English boarding school at the age of seven has affected my adult life in more ways than I have previously cared to admit….

2. Negative impact: child abuse is never ever ever okay under any circumstance. Intimacy and trust are damn hard. But I’m working assiduously on both.

3. Positive impact: it has become very clear that my entire life has been and will always be about creating safe, happy spaces in which kids are free to grow.

4. Emma and Leah are the essential elements in my life. When I watch them sleep, I understand what is meant by ‘love hurts’.

5. Laughing with them brings me my single greatest joy.

6. I’ve never taken a class in theater in my life. I’ve acted in three plays, one in elementary school, two in college. All three were terrible. I was the only native English speaker in one – The Importance of Being Earnest – it was hilarious, but still terrible.

7. I am passionate about directing. Bringing a story from script to production is an awesome experience.

8. But not as awesome as seeing the light go on for one child.

9. I’m directing four plays this summer, bringing my total to 27 full-scale productions in the last ten years. My theater colleagues are among the most creative people I know.

10. I am an artist. I think I’ve always been one but nobody told me until a couple of years ago. I see the world in pictures. Books on tape are really hard for me.

11. I am grateful for those who see my artistry. You know who you are.

12. Writing is my thing. When the newspaper published my first essay, I wept. I plan on getting out there more. I know more about blogging than I ever thought I would. When I sit down to write an essay, I rarely know where I’m going. I believe that the Creative Spirit works through those who let her in.

13. I believe in Spirit. I am beginning to trust. I am learning to get out of the way. I’ve been here before and I know I’ll be back.

14. I believe religion is the root of much that is wrong with this world.

15. I love water – drinking it, listening to it, floating on it, walking through it, watching it, crossing it, standing under it, swimming in it. My best ideas come in the pool.

16. I am not a fan of movies or TV. I’ll go see live theater as many times as the budget will allow. Though I watch and know more about sports than anyone thinks.

17. I fantasize that one day I’ll still be teaching but earning the salary of a profession I value less.

18. Every year, I take the stage in Stanley’s Annual Deadbeat Coffeehouse. It is an amazing event involving the most incredible people. Every organization deserves such a night, a boost to the community spirit. I feel like an amateur compared to other performers. I am in awe of my musician friends. I wish I could sing like that.

19. I’ve played a lot of rugby, squash and water polo in my time, but I find it almost impossible to button the cuff on the right arm of my shirts.

20. At one point I was fluent in French and reasonably useful in Russian, Italian, Greek, Swahili and Latin. I have discovered that Colorado is not the place for honing those skills.

21. When I was small, my father owned the toy shop in our village. It was heaven for a little boy. I still feel guilty for stealing a plastic miniature Greek soldier. Sorry, Dad.

22. Some likes: Newcastle Brown, Brussel sprouts, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, beach vacations, kind people, Wings Seminars in Eugene, baseball.

23. Some dislikes: celery, beets, peanut butter, traffic, thoughtless and/or mean people, crowded places, shopping malls.

24. I don’t consider myself a material person, but I know that one day I will be the proud owner of a Mini Cooper S, a red one with a sunroof.

25. I didn’t plan on writing these, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how wonderful it’s been reading those of my friends. However writing what’s been before will never be as relevant as creating a vision of what’s to come. See below.

26. I’m not very good with rules (see #1), so I just had to write a 26th random fact – just to be difficult.

Living My Vision

I know who I am. I am grateful for the past and I know where I am going. I trust that I have everything I need for the journey. I am energetic, playful, humorous and kind. I am fully present and I dream big. I am courageous and adventurous and I take action, even when I am fearful, creating the results I want.

I am abundantly healthy, exercising at least twice a week and choosing a nutritious and balanced diet. I feel great in mind body and spirit. I always have choice and I am living a life of integrity. I am honest and joyous, celebrating my openness and vulnerability. I am emotionally connected to those I love. I am in a loving, supportive, mutually respectful relationship and I enjoy a close caring relationship with my girls, at all ages.

I work in a creative environment where I feel valued. I celebrate the artist in myself. I am writing and publishing, with positive reviews and strong sales. I am passionately involved in theater. I am assisting others to know and trust themselves, and I support them in pursuing their dreams. I am growing my wealth, investing in myself, my family, and for the good of the planet. I have enough money. I live in a warm and cozy house, where simplicity and comfort reign. I drive a car I love. I enjoy relaxing and exciting vacations at least twice a year.

I am a lifelong learner, seizing and embracing opportunities to grow. I trust the process of intention. I recognize the uniqueness and sacred in everyone. I know in my heart that each of us is capable, lovable, whole, and magnificent. I am building a culture which celebrates and honors children. I embrace service to my world and the people in it. I live in gratitude and bring joy and passion into my life and the lives of others.

I celebrate the happy carefree child and the wise guiding adult.

History starts now….

A Lesson In Real

I stop at yard sales. I enjoy poking around other people’s cast-offs. I’m softhearted when it comes to haggling over price, but I’ve picked up some wonderful books and great costume items for my theater productions. I like going with my young daughters. A trinket catches their eye, they ask a price, and invariably the kindly people trying to dump this stuff give it to them for free. If only I was that cute.

The best kind of yard sales feature a cherubic-faced child selling lemonade and cookies. I always buy, even if the lemonade is over-sugared and over-priced. I’m a sucker for misspelled signs – Limonaid 50 sents. I can’t resist. And I’m still waiting for that once-in-a-lifetime bargain. The painting for which I shell out $10, that I then take to Antiques Roadshow and discover it’s worth thousands.

The hardest sales to stop at are estate sales. A lifetime of memories at discount prices. Quite often, the family of a lost loved one has kept the choicest items, leaving the things nobody wants on the sale table. ‘We loved grandma, but none of us had a need for the crocheted bedspread or the china swan statuette.’

In some cases, there is no family, or none nearby, and the estate has commissioned an independent company to swoop in and sell off everything. These are sad sales. They’re great if you’re in the market for some antique crystal or collectible vinyl records, but I find it depressing to find price tags on a framed wedding photo or on the cans of soup or half—used garlic powder in the kitchen cabinets. You can feel the presence of the deceased. It’s only been a few weeks, but it feels as if they’ve just taken the dog for a walk.

I was at one of these sales recently. It was the last day of a three-day event. The antiques had been snatched up, the jewelry sold. The estate sale company was slashing prices – there were bargains to be had. Not much inventory left. Knick-knacks, some linens, assorted kitchen utensils, a box of Christmas decorations. I scored big on a circular saw that I found on a shelf in the garage.

On a table in the living room, between a silver-handled hairbrush and a porcelain creamer, was a small pile of papers bound in a rubber band. The hand written note on top caught my eye: “In Case Anyone Wants To Write Our Family’s Story, Not Just Last Names”. Clearly in the hand of an older lady, the invitation intrigued me. I picked it up and revealed a few newspaper clippings and a dozen or so envelopes containing letters dating from the years following World War Two. I was intrigued. An invitation from the past. A collection of correspondence which might reveal anything. My imagination soared. The old lady knew she had a story here and she just needed someone like me to come along and share it with the world. As a writer, I could not pass up the offer and secretly hoped for something juicy, a story I could turn into a series of magazine articles or, better yet, a bestselling book. An author’s version of the garage sale find on Antiques Roadshow: scandal, fame, fortune, love affairs, treachery, deceit.

The sellers gave me the papers for nothing, threw them in with the power tool. I was excited to open and read my findings. What kind of story would I find? I retreated to my favorite coffeeshop, almost drooling with anticipation. As I sat down with my steaming latte to unveil the package of papers, my eye caught a poster on the coffeeshop wall. Cups and words intertwined with the phrase: “Behind every good cup of coffee is a barista and a good story.”

How true this is. Behind everyone, there is a good story. We all have great stories. Some folks may lead more adventurous lives than others, some may be more widely traveled, their days populated by more colorful characters, but when we sit down to listen to each other, when we ask the right questions, when we take the time to be interested and to dig a little deeper, we all have good stories.

Turn on National Public Radio. For every David Sedaris, with his tales of Crumpet the Elf from New York city in SantaLand Diaries, there is a Bailey White, a small-town first grade teacher from Georgia who lives with her mother. For every news reporter painting a picture from the front lines of the war-torn Middle East, there is a new father telling tales from the front lines of Diaperville. Stories are not about the breadth of our experiences. They are about the richness that we choose to experience in our everyday lives.

A retired friend of mine bemoaned the fact that, despite owning aspirations to write, he may not have followed through, in his words, ‘due to the somewhat limiting outlook under which he lives’. I think that’s just an excuse. Not only are there interesting observations and stories unfolding every day in his walks in the countryside and in the characters he meets, I happen to know about quite a few hair-raising adventures in his lifetime. He’s told me of them. Great stories, all of them. When I tuck my children into bed at night, they are just as thrilled by the seemingly mundane true stories of my school days, as by the crazy capers I invent.

Robert Fulghum once wrote a whole book based on the premise of asking people to open up about their stories. He sat in a bar with a sign around his neck asking people to tell him their tales. He got spectacular results. I think about the ways that stories have come to us – from cave walls, animal hide, parchment, ancient scrolls, and simple oral tradition. It is hard for me to imagine writing my stories with out my computer, but the greatest books of countless generations were either handed down by word of mouth or written out in long hand. Everything from Homer to the Gospels to Laura Ingalls Wilder.

And now, sitting at the coffeeshop, I had in my hand a potential treasure trove of stories, found on a table where everything must go with an invitation to a writer. I opened the envelopes and read.

What I found was simple delightful sharing to a mother from her recently married only daughter. A newspaper clipping informed me that the mother, Lillian, was a twin born in 1891. Her daughter Betty writes often giving her news of her growing family. The letters are filled with benign chatter about everyday life in the late 1940s and early 1950s. There are frequent references to the state of the garden – how high the peas and sweetcorn are, how well the radishes and asters are doing.

Mother and daughter are clearly close, often seeing each other at the weekends despite the seventy miles separating their homes. Betty enjoys telling her mother about the social functions she attends and the clothes she wears to each. She writes about her young sons and the challenges of new motherhood. Both the subject matter and the language hark back to a simpler time. Some samples: “What are you going to do the fourth? We aren’t going anywhere because of so much traffic.” (June 28, 1949) Little did she know what was coming to the area over the next decades.

“Our trip to Dinosaur was less than we’d hoped for…about three days of driving for a 2-hr look in the museum. The scenery was horrible, the heat worse, the roads even worse, the dry ice in our refrigerator carbonated the milk, the campground was full, both boys were sick, we forgot the camera; other than that, it was swell.” (July 17, 1951) I laughed when I read this. It helped me appreciate how much simpler it is to take the family on vacation today.

Many parts of the letters were about the weather or the seasons. “Gee, I hate to see autumn come. Life is so simple in the summer.” (September 5, 1953) and “This beautiful spring weather sure makes me eager to get out and do yard work.” (February 4, 1954)

Later on, Betty became a little more feisty in her opinions. “We also enjoyed the Republican dinner. I was sorry that Michaels couldn’t be there, but this Edwin Bridges spat the vitriolic phrases about as well.” (February 22, 1954) or “I’m back to reading Steinbeck again. He’s nowhere near as vulgar as you would believe (Grapes of Wrath possibly an exception) and as a craftsman he’s unexcelled in my experience”. (May 1, 1954). I was pleased to read these – it put a little more meat on the bones of Betty’s character, although she also shared the sensibilities of the typical housewife of her era. After a visit to Central City, Colorado: “They’ve re-decorated a lot of the Teller House – you’ll really enjoy going up just to look. That’s the thing about those Victorian rooms – they’re swell to look at with their carving and brocade and satin – but what a chore to clean!” (May 13, 1954) Always thinking practically!

The adventurous writer in me was disappointed. There were no real stories here. Just the daily ramblings of a young mother sharing her life. It was not what I expected or hoped for. The letters were not exciting or filled with intrigue and mystery. In one sense, their greatest value may be the collectible 3c postage stamps on the outside of the envelopes.

However, in another sense, these letters are priceless. The surviving family may have chosen to discard these artifacts of their past, but here they were in my hand. Concrete evidence of a daughter’s love and her commitment to staying connected.

As I log onto Facebook in 2009 to stay in touch with my family and friends, as I send out another batch of impersonal e-mails into vacant space, I wonder when was the last time I put pen to paper and truly shared about my life in longhand, in a format that could stay with the recipient forever. It’s been a long time.

One of my favorite stories is Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit. The rabbit yearned to become Real. His dream only happened when he had been around a really long time and had been truly loved. The wise old Skin Horse had experienced life. He knew all about being Real. He told the rabbit “You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

It’s the same thing with the author and recipient of these letters. Betty and her mother Lillian may not have lived the adventurous life of the Skin Horse, but they were around a long time and they knew love. Perhaps their descendants or the folks from the estate sale company didn’t understand. Their letters are a gift. They did not provide what I initially imagined, but they lead me somewhere else. An appreciation of what is real and what lasts.

Author's note: The photograph shows the pile of papers I found. I have changed the names to protect the innocent....

A True Story

Overheard at a holiday party this week....

Her: (warmly) Hi!

Him: (somewhat hesitantly) Er, how do I know you?

Her: (a trifle irritated) You're my gynecologist.

Me: (complete silence - too many punchlines for words!)

A Black Man in the White House

Whether you voted for him or not, the election of Barack Obama is without question a watershed moment in the country’s history. Throughout the long months of the campaign, the so-called race factor was consistently downplayed. While African Americans registered and turned out to vote in record numbers, both the Obama campaign and prominent leaders in the black community were quick to stress that the candidate’s race was not and should not be a major issue.

Fast forward to the hours immediately following Obama’s victory. The mood among all his supporters was euphoric. The celebration in the black community in particular was ecstatic. African Americans danced in rapture in the streets. Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, such as Jesse Jackson and Congressman John Lewis, wept openly. Oprah became, in her words, unleashed. Whoopi whooped and Maya Angelou expressed graceful thanks. There was an outpouring of emotion and grand proclamations of the immense significance of the election. A black man was coming to the White House.

On the weekend following the election, my local newspaper carried a story by Wil Haygood of the Washington Post. It touched on the history of blacks in the White House. In 1901, “President Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington, head of the Tuskegee Institute, to meet with him at the White House. Roosevelt was careful not to announce the invitation, fearing a backlash, especially from Southerners.” Certain southerners found out and the response was swift and filled with hate.

According to Haygood, the first African American to work in the executive branch was E Frederick Morrow who was an administrative officer for special projects in the Eisenhower White House, appointed in 1955.

But someone had beaten him to it. Many blacks worked in non-political jobs in the White House. One of them was Eugene Allen who was hired as a butler in 1952. For $2,400 a year, Gene Allen polished silver and washed dishes. In the bowels of the President’s official residence, he plugged away at his menial job for thirty-four years. He felt proud to serve his country’s leaders.

Rewards came. Not only did Gene and his wife Helene shake the hand of every President he served, there was the special occasion in the mid-eighties when they were invited as guests to a state dinner. Nancy Reagan called Gene about the dinner, asked him how preparations were going, and then surprised him by inviting him and his wife, not to work, but to sit as their guests alongside world leaders. It was an honor they would never forget. Helene fondly remembered drinking champagne that night, champagne no doubt that her husband had stored.

Gene’s birthday was on the same day as Gerald Ford’s. When the Fords celebrated the President’s birthday, Betty always made sure Gene’s was mentioned as well. The Allens have fond memories of the Carters and the Kennedys. Through some of the darkest times in US history and through some of the best, Gene Allen was at work for his President. From the early fifties until the mid-eighties, there were some tough times being a black man carrying trays down the halls of power. Segregation, violence, protest marches and assassinations. Gene and Helene Allen saw it all.

Slowly, over the decades, they saw a few more African Americans creep into the influential inner circles, culminating in Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice’s consecutive appointments as Secretary of State. In Haygood’s words, “the butler remembers seeing both Powell and Rice in the Oval Office. He was serving refreshments. He couldn't help notice that blacks were moving closer to the center of power, closer than he could ever have dreamed. He'd tell Helene how proud it made him feel.”

And now this man. Obama. More than twenty years after Gene Allen stacked away his last wine glass, he and Helene were on the verge of seeing an African American man ascend to the highest office in the land. Some said he’d be the most powerful man on earth. Interviewed for the Washington Post, their excitement was palpable. Now in their late eighties, Gene and Helene prepared to get dressed up on Election Day and cast their vote for one of their own. How proud that would make them feel.

The day before that momentous day, Helene had a morning doctor’s appointment. Gene rolled over in bed to wake up his wife. She did not respond. He walked over to her side, but still she would not wake. After sixty-five years, the marriage had come to an end. On Election Day, Gene voted alone.

Helene never made it. But I know that, somewhere up there, this woman, who had shaken the hand of eight Presidents, knows who won. She knows that the baton has been passed to a new man, an African American man. There is a black man in the White House. For Gene and Helene Allen and for me, how proud it makes us feel.

Thanks to Wil Haygood. His article A Butler Well Served by This Election appeared in the Washington Post on 11/07/08 and is the inspiration for this story. Post photographer Kevin Clark’s photo of Gene and Helene appears here.

Handshake

Heroes come in all shapes and sizes. Family members, celebrities, teachers, historical figures, community leaders.

For me, growing up in southern England in the 1970s, my heroes were the stars of the Arsenal football team as they made their historic title runs – Brady, Macdonald, and others. Action shot posters covered my bedroom walls. In my early twenties, as college opened my eyes politically, I read voraciously the works of those fighting apartheid: Gordimer, Woods, Coetzee, Malan, Mphahlele, Paton. I met a couple of them – Donald Woods when he came to speak at my university and Es’kia Mphahlele when I taught his grandsons in Denver. I remember celebrating the release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990 as I had celebrated a few months before the last-minute goal for Arsenal which brought home the English championship. As we grow and change, so do our heroes.

I recently had the great honor of meeting my latest hero. A gentle and wise man in his seventies, he looks a lot like the Father Christmas of my childhood. He is blessed with a full head of white hair, a downy beard, a portly profile, a warm smile, and a bountiful heart. A storyteller, a gifted writer who describes the world as I wish to see it. For him it is a place of goodness and laughter, and generosity of spirit. He is quite possibly the single most influential voice in my own writing.

Robert Fulghum may still be best known for the essay that propelled him into the public eye - All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It remains a wonderful philosophy by which to live. He has since written eight best-selling books. A former cowboy, minister, and teacher, Fulghum now divides his time between Moab, Utah, Seattle, Washington, and the Greek island of Crete. Lucky fellow.

He also travels for speaking engagements where, last month in Lakewood, Colorado, I was fortunate to hear him reflect on his latest musings, share some wonderful new stories, and re-tell some old favorites. I especially enjoyed the one about Norman, the little boy who single-mindedly decided he was going to be the pig in the play of Cinderella. His wise and experienced teacher allowed him free reign and Norman stole the show. During the course of the evening, Fulghum had his listeners laughing and crying; he snapped a photograph of the audience – to inspire him during the lonely moments of the writing life; he even had us singing the words to Itsy Bitsy Spider to the tune of Beethoven’s Ninth. A delightful couple of hours.

Most memorable and inspiring was the opportunity to meet the author following his talk. The usual line of book buyers and autograph seekers formed in the back of the hall. I too joined the line. I had no clue what to say to the man who was expecting to sign a copy of his latest book. What could I say to someone I knew so well, through his reflective writing, yet not at all?

As the line in front of me got progressively shorter, I had a brief moment of star-struck panic. I am a sensible, even-keeled schoolteacher in my early forties. Fulghum is a self-described old geezer, a moderately well-known author who writes about the everyday. This was not the latest pop sensation confronted by hordes of adoring fans. I wondered about buying one of his books to give myself a prop, something to talk with him about, but I owned all the titles for sale that night. Now second in line, I worried that I would be speechless, or worse, mumble something inane.

My turn came. The author reached out to sign the book I hadn’t bought. He looked up at me. “I’m Steve,” I said, as calmly as I could. “Nice to meet you, Mr Fulghum.”

“Nice to meet you too, Steve,” the baritone voice of wisdom responded. Well, that didn’t buy me a lot of thinking time. A pause, enough time to tell my hero the only thing that really mattered. “Thank you.” I briefly told him that I was a teacher and a director of children’s theater, that I too had encouraged my own Normans to find their place in the limelight. And I thanked him for his incredible body of work and for being the writer with the most influence over my recent commitment to write and my decision to publish my work online.

Fulghum’s response? He reached his hand over the desk to shake my hand, to thank me for doing what I do, for inspiring children, and for pursuing my art. I was honored and touched by his gesture and his words. The renowned author, who had just spoken to hundreds, whose books have sold in the millions, wanted to shake my hand? It was the response of a humble and gracious man.

Mr Fulghum, I hope you have an opportunity to read this one day. You made my day and gave me further encouragement to follow my passion. For that, you are my hero.

Painting of Robert Fulghum by Dimitris Katsigiannis from www.robertfulghum.com

It Takes A Village

In my teaching, I believe in using all the resources at my disposal. I know I don’t have all the answers, so I seek out those who do. The Denver area is full of interesting places and people who can bring new insight to my classes.

We have museums and libraries galore as well as amazing outdoor venues. My students and I have been inside mines dating back to the gold rush. We’ve visited restaurants, banks and international grocery stores. We’ve hiked in the woods and howled at the wolves at the zoo. We have scrambled up ancient rock formations and taken in the theater. We’ve ridden a steam train and argued in the state Supreme Court. We have even taken a tour of the giant Coors brewery in Golden. No shortage of parent volunteers came along on that one.

However my favorite field trip may well be the place we visit the most. Next to my school is a shopping center and beyond that a place called The Village at Lowry. An unusual three-story building shaped in the form of an X. At last count it is the home of about hundred men and women aged seventy to ninety-eight, “a senior retirement community.” When I was growing up, it would have been called an old folks’ home. Visiting there is a delight.

For years now, my students and I have made the trek across the grocery store parking lot to the Village. Every school year, we parade our Halloween costumes, we sing, we create craft projects, and we play Bingo. Fifth graders don’t understand the meaning of competition until they’ve played a few rounds of Bingo with the residents of the Village. The seniors play for cash, fifty cents a win, and the kids play for candy, though I strongly suspect under-the-table wheeling and dealing.

My favorite time at the Village is “Story Collection Day.” It happens when we are studying our state’s history. The students begin the year by discovering their own families’ state history. They interview moms, dads, aunts, or grandparents about when their family first arrived in Colorado, how they got here, why they came, and so on.

After the kids have had a chance to practice on people familiar to them, we wander across to the Village to unearth some more stories. Some of the seniors have only moved to Colorado recently, usually to be close to a family member. Many were born in other places but have lived a long and full life here. And a few have long family histories in Colorado.

My students and I prepare a few questions ahead of time with which they can begin to explore, but they are strongly encouraged not to stick exclusively to those questions. Use them as a starting place, the beginning of the trail. Know that you will have no idea of which paths lie ahead. Be prepared to follow any of them. It will be an adventure and you won’t know where you’re going to end up until you arrive.

The residents show up in droves. A far bigger turn-out than Bingo. They are eager to talk, to share the tales of their lives and I wonder how many times they get an opportunity to talk about themselves. Many say that their families are so busy, they just don’t have enough time to visit them as often as they would like. Here was a willing audience of eager young faces, armed with clipboards and a fascination for good stories. Game on.

Mary is short and plump. Her gray hair is cut in a bob. She greets the children with a warm and infectious smile. Her sky blue sweatshirt reflects the gleam in her eye. My students are amazed to learn of her nine children, twenty-seven grandchildren, and seventeen great-grandchildren. They are all in town, except for one in the next state. She knows how lucky she is. She launches into an amazing story; “My great-grandmother was the first white person born in El Paso county. She was born in a covered wagon, yes she was. But her mother, my great-great-grandmother, took sick after she was born and died a couple of weeks later. Her father knew enough to know he couldn’t take care of the baby himself and he sold her for fifty dollars to another family. Fifty dollars.”

Mary’s husband, Harold, sits next to her. Tall and lean, more reserved as he eyes the students through his outsized glasses, he talks about his days in the Navy. Born in Missouri eighty-four years ago, he regales the kids with tales of bugs as big as horses, and how he loves the dry air of the high plains. “Not so good for ocean, though!”

Bob is losing his sight but still doesn’t miss his weekly poker game. Sometimes he arrives in the community room a couple of hours early, sometimes a few days. Poker is only on Tuesday afternoons. Bob was in the Air Force but he chose to describe the reasons he came to Colorado. He grew up in Virginia but his family came out on vacation to a dude ranch. He still remembers the names of the horses he rode all those years ago, Silver and Shadow. He loved the mountains so much, he brought his own family to Colorado to live and bought horses for his two young girls. “I just love them mountains,” he says. One of those young girls is a parent in my class.

Ethel is a sprightly ninety-eight, “the oldest broad in the place,” she claims and we believe her. Soft-spoken, the third grader asking about her stories has to lean all the way across the table to hear her. The image of the young girl making such strong eye contact with a dear old lady ninety years her senior, and holding it for thirty minutes or more, will be with me forever. Ethel grew up poor in Chicago and followed her older sister out west when the older girl got a teaching job at eighteen. Ethel still misses her sister greatly.

Jimmy is a character. Resplendent in his baseball cap, he loves to tease the children. It turns out Jimmy was a semi-professional entertainer. During WWII, he kept up morale in his troop with his song and dance routines. Later on, he flew into Vegas on the weekends for regular gigs, a means to supplement his income from his day job as a farm machinery salesman. The kids adore him. It also turns out that Jimmy lost his wife of sixty years a few weeks ago. The staff tells me how hard life is for him. I admire the valiant face he puts on for the kids and it is easy to see the small pocket of joy he finds in sharing his stories.

Oral history is alive and well. The children return to school passionate about the stories they’ve heard. They fall over themselves to share with each other the amazing events of their new friends’ lives. They are beginning to understand that they have stories of their own, worthy of sharing. Their stories may not end up on the front pages or in the history books but they are bound to bring joy to themselves and others. They are worth listening to.

Addendum: a couple of weeks after this story took place, my class and I returned to the Village for Halloween. The kids were in costume but the residents were not. With one exception - Jimmy. At eighty-two, he had on a blond wig and pink jumpsuit with a sign around his neck: Miss America 1910. A character indeed.

Photo: two of my students, Jayda and Hannah with a resident of the Village. Photo by Eileen Umbaugh.