Arctic Dance

Today, my sons are 6 and 13 years old. My oldest is a guitar-playing gymnast with a smile and a confident attitude that make him popular with the girls. What a contrast he is to the boy I was at his age.

I remember being in middle school in Alaska. My family moved there when the US Air Force sent my dad to Eielson Air Force Base, just a few miles from Fairbanks, in the heart of Alaska's interior. I remember vaguely a middle school dance at our rec center, and I remember showing up only to find that the boy to girl ratio was about 20 to 1. If there were three girls there, I don't remember the second nor the third. All I remember was the redhead from Missouri. She stood taller than her peers by six inches, and she had worn her arctic gear with as much grace as a middle school girl can muster. Golashes shed and parka neatly hung from a coat hook, now her white sneakers gleamed in the black light from the dance floor, as did her teeth when she smiled. I remember speculating with my peers about who would be man enough to walk over to the tiny group of girls and ask for a dance.

"I bet Barney will be first. He always gets the girls," suggested one spectator in a voice that was both reverent and envious at once, because he knew, as we all did, that Barney, the shortest kid in 7th grade, had some magical appeal to girls who hugged him and giggled whenever he smiled. I remember having no concrete imagery to illustrate what "getting girls" meant for us at the time, though there were tantalizing rumors that some girls used their tongues when they kissed.

"No, I bet Josh will, he's not afraid to look like a fool..." suggested another. Josh was a jock who seemed made for the Alaskan wilderness. He could throw a perfect spiral on the football field, or kill a moose with a single shot. I once walked in on him skinning a moose carcass in his dad's garage after a recent kill. It seemed that everyone on base hunted except for me and my family. Even though I started shaving at the age of 12, I questioned my own masculinity when compared to boys like Josh, whose broad shoulders and sinewy limbs seemed hewn from the spruce trees that spent nine months of the year bearing the weight of Alaska's frozen fury. Adolescence felt like a constant comparison chest hairs and bicep curls and other tests of manhood designed to embarrass the weak and the sensitive among us.

As I listened to the boys, I suddenly and impulsively took a step into the desolate space of the dance floor, ignoring the diamonds of light that flew like fairies around the floor and up the walls from the disco ball that spun radiantly over my head. In slow motion, I saw her friends look at me as I approached, her red hair fell in waves past her shoulder, and her smooth cheek was all I could see of her face as I slowly moved closer, one request poised in my mind, waiting for her to make eye contact so that the words could be released...hopefully without blunder, because if the first request failed, as I was certain it would, I would turn around and walk back, and then keep walking past my peers, down the carpeted hallway to the frost covered doors and back out into the arctic air, never to return.

Her friends froze in stupid shocked grins, waiting for my maneuver, and she turned. I distinctly remember her red hair seeming to fly in a silken arc that would sound like a cheesy shampoo commercial if I dared to describe it today, but then, I could imagine nothing more beautiful. Her eyes assayed my approach, and her lips smiled warmly, her freckles sandy on her pale skin.

“Hi, would you like to dance?” The words, surprisingly clear and strong considering their source, were received and accepted and she nodded, taking my hand and leaving her friends behind. We walked together towards the middle of the floor. Sadly, I can't remember the song that we danced to, nor can I remember all the details of our conversation, but I do remember feeling like a king. We were the only two kids to dance, and we danced three or four times, and for one night, I was envied and respected and even hated for my luck and my daring.

I think about that night sometimes, and wonder why I spent so many of my years shyly, lacking confidence, allowing opportunities to pass me by. Nothing became of that night. The redheaded girl and I talked only once more after that dance before her father was transferred to another base somewhere on the other side of the world. That was life in the military. Friendships often forged quickly, but were mostly short-lived. I spent my youth in transition, missing the idea of a hometown, of having roots, but learning lessons about life that are common to other military brats or children of missionaries.

In contrast, my sons have grown up in Fort Worth, connected to one place. My youngest seems more afflicted with the shyness I suffered than my eldest, who routinely performs in front of strangers, strumming his guitar with grace and poise. One of the blessings of fatherhood is the capacity for remembering...as I watch them mature, they take me back to my youth, and their struggles and victories become woven into my memories and we are connected, threaded through the unwritten narrative of my perception of now and then and what may be.

Golden Years

If tomorrow comes without me,
do not grieve about what could have been.

If you feel that business has been left unfinished,
take it up with the tax man.

If you love plants, visit my porch and take some aloe,
dig up the lavender, rosemary, and thyme.

If you save them, you may think of me when you snip a sprig for tea.

If not, no worries because I have lived, and no perennial memorial is required.

Tomorrow, if I am forgotten, know that today, I am a man.
I have been the student and
I have been the teacher and the sage and the fool.
I have done a hard day's work and
I have found pleasure and
I have found grace and
I have known redemption through toil and
I have been given gifts I never deserved and
I have seen treasures that
I have possessed, briefly, but that is enough, for true wealth will never abide in a       
     vault and
I have been loved and I have loved.

If tomorrow comes without me,
Don't let me hear you say life's taken me nowhere...

Shine, sun.

Brille el sol
And set those clouds on fire
But only for an instant,
and then
The delight Is gone
like the flash
Of a wind-exposed thigh
Or a bemused grin
Granted just once
For you-
Unseen by the rest-
A hint of a heaven
Ephemeral.

Social currency

On Facebook yesterday,
I saw a Buzzfeed post,
a photograph of a dead German Shepherd in a coffin
mourned by his handler,
a police officer in dress uniform,
and a crowd of sympathizers looked on.

According to the post,
the dog was slain by a suspected car thief,
who, wielding a knife, stabbed the dutiful shepherd multiple times
until he himself was shot down by the canine's officer...

And the caption and accompanying text did not name
the man who died in commission of the crime.

Rightfully so.

If only while reading a poem about mortality in English class,
I, this boy's teacher, could have had some special insight.

I could have looked him in the eye and warned him,
making those universal truths more personal...

Would he have believed that one day his death would mean less than a dog's?

Labor Day

Grandma Hardy knew labor.
I mined her for stories when I was little,
until I learned that she only had three or four
retold over the years
emphasizing the ironic pride and bitter love
that she wore like a badge over her heart.

"When your great grandmamma fell sick,
my daddy turned a washtub over and set it next to the stove
and told me to make biscuits.
And so I did."

"With no one to show you how?"

"Oh I had learned from helping,
but I was on my own.
Those first biscuits were as hard as rocks!
Your GreatGrandDaddy spanked my bottom and told me,
'Don't you ever make them that way again.'
and so I never did."

Grandma Hardy was always a good cook,
but the habits she learned in the farm kitchen of her youth
would make health inspectors sigh.
Late in her life, when the doctors forced changes on her,
she served her beans with an apology,
"There ain't but a bit of lard in them beans..."

When her eyesight was failing and the phlebitis was taking her legs,
her sons refused to till her garden for her,
demanding, good-heartedly in their stinginess, that she stay inside and rest
but they didn't consider what that kind of rest does to a laborer's soul.
She stood up at church one Sunday morning and asked for prayers,
"I ain't had a vegetable in the past six months that didn't come from a can!"
and the congregation murmured in horror at the thought.

One of her favorite stories seemed to go back to the Garden of Eden in its innocence:
She told about the time she was running back from the tobacco field
in her summer dress, and how she jumped over a branch that slithered away
and how the serpent nearly took her breath away
and how her brothers warned her that it was the kind of snake that "threw its sting!"
and I'd try to show her my Peterson's Guide to Reptiles of North America
to dispel the myth,
but knowledge had no weight in the guiding light of her upbringing.

She showed me how to make creamed corn,
slicing the tips of the kernels with a hundred-year-old knife,
honed so that its original edge must have been an inch away
from the steel that bit and sliced across the fresh juicy cobs of sweet corn.
She'd turn the blade and use the thick back to squeeze the remaining juice from the corn,
and bits of sweet corn splashed and dried on our forearms and faces and the smell of the earth's
richness filled the tiny dining room where we worked,
and I felt the ties that bound us to the field and the sun and the bounty
of labor.

A Loss

A Facebook post from a former colleague alarmed me. It was a news story from Oklahoma about a suspect being gunned down by a police officer. The photo under the headline was of a black German Shepherd police dog that died as a result of the suspect's having stabbed him with a knife. What alarmed me was that my former colleague described the story as having involved one of her former students.

I read the story until I saw the name of this former student. Mark Salazar. I knew that name. I saw the image of a nice Hispanic youth with closely buzzed hair. He was a tough guy, but never disrespectful. Surely, it wasn't the same boy. I scanned the story, scrolling until I saw the photo at the end of the story. It was him. 22 years old. The dog got top billing, and for many who read the news, this will seem appropriate. Just another piece of trash dealt with swiftly. He won't waste any tax payers' money by being processed in the judicial system.

But for those of us who knew him, the story leaves troubling questions unanswered. Why did our boy end up in a robbery in Oklahoma? What did we miss when he was in our classes? Was there something we could have done to turn him a different direction? When we spend 50 minutes a day, five days a week with someone who is in a class with 29 other kids, how well can we actually know him?

I have nothing eloquent to say about this tragedy. It just sucks. I'm sorry for the officer who had to kill this young man. I'm sorry for the dog who died doing what he was trained to do. I'm sorry for the Salazar family who will never be able to get their boy back. I'm sorry that for whatever reason, Mark Salazar found himself dying this way.

Thinking about the First Day of School

This weekend has been a pretty nice farewell to summer, despite the fact that my truck is in the shop with a $500.00 repair bill waiting for me on Monday. I'm excited about tomorrow, and not a little apprehensive as well. I will be teaching Art and Electives at the Alternative Discipline Center for our school district, which means I will be working with those high school kids who were suspended last year. I will be part of program that is completely new to me, with new people and procedures.

After years of teaching High School English to classrooms full of students, it will be strange to have only a handful of kids. I won't miss every aspect of teaching English, but I know I will miss the students I had the blessing of working with last year. They were incredibly conscientious and sweet-spirited, for the most part, and they made coming to work every day worthwhile.

I wish I could have been a better teacher for them last year. It was the worst year of my life personally, going through the separation and divorce, and having to get used to commuting again, after years of living one mile from my classroom. It literally took me less time to ride my bike from my front door to my classroom than it did to walk across the parking lot. When I got to school, seeing my students generally made me smile, despite the frustrations I was experiencing inside.

There were the sophomores who were a little goofy, but were still capable of communicating with adults like human beings, and there were the AP Literature Seniors who were ever aware that graduation was coming soon, yet still gave a solid try at most of the things I asked them to do.

I've never been a well-organized man, and grading papers has always been a challenge for me. After teaching for a full 8 hours, I found it next to impossible to sit still at the end of the day to grade writing. My eyelids are like the screens on a smart phone, if they rest idle for a moment, they black out. I've tried staying up with a fresh brewed pot of coffee, but by the time I had consumed 12 cups, I was just a jittery mess, and not really better focused on the task at hand. And last year, with the emotional turmoil of being alone, I found quiet time with a stack of papers very disconcerting.

I started making peer evaluations more a part of my day, when I realized that the kids could, when working in concert with a clear rubric, give fairly accurate evaluations of their own writing, but this was never as satisfying as it should have been. I remember my wizened old English teacher would write barely legible notes on my papers when I was a kid, and those notes could inspire me to write better or crush me when I knew I had not written up to her expectations. When you have 160-180 students, and you spend just a minute on each paper, the time adds up. I was never able to spend just a minute; instead, I would get bogged down, trying to think of the best advice to fix a poorly constructed sentence, sometimes rewriting a whole paper before getting frustrated and just writing a number at the top of the page that roughly represented what I thought they deserved.

Now, someone else will be worrying about that task, as well as the standardized testing our politicians have given us to make sure kids are learning. A.P. Exams are no longer my concern. Starting tomorrow, I will be in completely different world, and tonight, my thoughts are racing a bit.

Across town, I know my boys are in bed already. My youngest will be starting first grade, and he is excited because his kindergarten teacher has moved up with him. He learned so much from her last year, and he is eager to be in class again. My oldest will be returning to regular public school after spending two years at FWAFA, the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts. We were thrilled when he was first accepted into their program, but we had hoped that he would receive more support in his primary artistic concern, playing guitar. He learned a lot about music through being part of the Texas Boys' Choir, but he missed playing sports. Starting tomorrow, he will be attending the same school where his mother teaches art, and he plans to try out for soccer. My nephew, who lives with me, will be attending his old high school, and seems enthusiastic, if not for the work ahead, for the chance to see his close friends who attend with him.

My ex wife, bless her heart, is probably more stressed than I am. The last time we spoke, she still had not received confirmed schedules, so she will be unable to prepare for her first day the way she would prefer. She is a natural planner and a maker of lists, so not having her student rosters has got to be stressful for her.

It's time for the serenity prayer, I believe...