For almost 8 years, I have been out of the classroom, out of my high school, out of the all consuming act of teaching, away from its 10 month pattern of fierce concentration and my machine-like routine. At the beginning of August I became an engine that did not shut down until mid-June. Those 36 years were accompanied by bouts of exhaustion and a delirious kind of ardor. Now it often seems that another person did all that, some other ‘mike’ who walks around in those many, many years like a familiar acquaintance who has since dropped from sight.
I have never been one to go back or to dwell on the past. There are weights of regret I carry for actions I took or missed taking, and sometimes, usually when I am driving, they rise up, suddenly vivid, full of spikes. If I drink a little too much wine, my dreams become lurid, and almost always bring forth school anxiety-visions — a shadowy classroom where I am waiting for creature-kids to enter. I can hear them making sounds in the hallway; or I am in a mad rush through my old school — accompanied by a flock of pit bulls — looking for my room because I am late; or I am in my empty high school, clean as new teeth, and I am popping from one location to another (including a rainforest in the gym) as if teleporting. The only sounds I can hear are of heavy, raspy breathing.
Booze brings these phantasms from somewhere deep but why they remain I cannot say. I loved my work, and I could count the number of really sinister children I taught without hitting the number 11.
Some skills never go away — like the ability to read a room of children (and mothers) and quickly change course if a song or book is not working, or home in on one child who is becoming restive or unhappy and drawing him or her in another direction. Or the patience to just listen … to police officers tell their stories or customers at the coffee bar, and then ask questions that help sharpen their recollections. Thirty-six years of teaching, the most performative of occupations outside acting, makes for all types of DNA additions and mutations. Other kinds of know-how not only endure but have become second nature.
Beyond all that, I think on those years relatively little, probably because I tend to focus on what comes next rather then on what came before. Too much gooey-sweet remembrances about the dear, done days or conversely, bitter griping about dusty grievances, and I am ready to hold my head in my hands and begin softly wailing. There is not enough time for this.
I did not reinvent myself. That would be a pretension. I stumbled around, first this direction, then that — tutoring for 7 years, sometimes three appointments a night. The experiences could be wildly different. For example, I might travel from a quiet house and quiet child I had to coax to open up to a study tumbling down with books, papers and old plates of food where an insane, leaping Weimaraner competed for the attention I was trying to give to a sullen teenage boy who smoked pot as if it were a competitive sport.
I did find Lamancha quickly, the animal rescue where I am in my eighth year, but only after 3 other rescues had turned me down. Dru* said come and I showed up, and on my first shift let an 80 pound lab-mix escape who, instead of making good on his freedom, behaved like the joyful maniacs labs are, running full tilt back and forth at us and laughing (I swear he was laughing) until someone got hold of him and the two went tumbling. I thought I was going to be fired after one shift, but Dru kept me on.
Two of the women on the shift have been there with me the whole time. A core group of us have walked dogs in sideways rain, over ice 2 inches thick, through snow drifts, across 95 degree days when we have to watch each other for signs of heat stroke. We have cleaned a thousand pounds of poop, received bites, chased down other runaways, received incalculable joy from more dogs than we could count, dogs of every size and type. I fell into this good fortune, this making of another small family.
At OJRHS “the family” shifted with new hires and retirements, but the bonds formed within what can be an insular vocation are powerful, especially considering the public’s fickle understanding of and appreciation for teachers. Us vs. the World creates cohesive communities. One also grows accustomed to being around very bright and often very funny human beings. Laughter breeds intimacy as does the sharing of challenges and struggles. Over time, teaching lays bare a person’s life. Spend thirty years in a hallway of friends and you will be able to write their biographies. It is the seeking after the next “family” that in some measure drives me now.
In one respect I have gone back into the deep past and that was in researching and writing, as best I could, the life stories of my father and mother. I am sure I cannot name all the motivations for having done this. The unconscious and my blind spots hold all kinds of reasons I cannot articulate, but the primary catalyst was my father’s life in the Pennsylvania State Police and the mysteries contained therein. That absorption and affection led me to my work now with a retired Trooper at the Academy. For two years we have been interviewing other retirees and recording their stories.
Their histories have become a long running serial on what it meant to be a cop in America during the mid to late 20th Century. Everything is here — all the extremes of human behavior, the vagaries of the law, the intersections of mercy and severity, the psychological and emotional toll policing takes on its people, how police corruption operates and why some officers fiercely attack it. Norman Mailer said we should never understand another too quickly. I have been reminded of that maxim again and again in listening to these men.
At Wellington a shift does not go by where I do not hear a customer’s story. For example, I have spoken at length with the CIA analyst who discovered the Soviets had built missile bases in Cuba and had transported weapons ready to be deployed. Or the China expert who accompanied Kissinger and Nixon to meet Mao.
Listen and you shall be told. I should make that one of my ten rules for a happy life. As I discovered with students and keep relearning now, stories open up the world. They break apart the tightening grip of aging because they ensure a freshness of perspective. Listen to others and you pay them the respect of believing their stories (and thus their lives) to be worth a great deal. More and more I realize that loneliness is the great enemy. There are many who have no one with whom they can share their anecdotes and tales.
The 28 months I have worked at Wellington has also made another “family” of colleagues who are a delight and the job is a kaleidoscope of movement and tasks — barista and balletic bearer of coffees, book seller, maintenance man, cleaner, children’s story time host, the guide to wishes with magic stones, hefter of boxes, arranger of shelves.
I am acutely aware of the tenuousness of this refreshed life. I try not to tell tales to myself about my mortality or that of others upon whom I depend for much that is good.
I wish I could say that I have a favorite line from Elizabeth Bishop or an aphorism from Philip Roth that stays with me as an illustration of this awareness of the contracting days, but honest to God, all I keep hearing is Vito Corleone saying, “It wasn’t enough time Michael, it wasn’t enough time.” There is no fooling around about this. I can feel the swirl of dizziness if I go at it too hard at the gym, the pressure of a rushing heart. I have to keep repeating, “Do not waste what is left,” almost desperately.
But not yet, not this morning. For as long as I am able to get up early, run the dogs, push iron, write clear sentences, move … move … move, then I am receiving better than I deserve, an hourly gift I keep trying to acknowledge.
*Dru is the all around Alpha, badass, patient, heart-of-gold owner.
