Darkest Heart

These days I often find myself profoundly stressed by an American real estate developer. I live in Ohio, a state that is likely to vote for he-who-must-not-be-elected. Hope, peace, and calm fade when what cannot be is about to be.

In that state, I walked outside to feed my pond fish. They’re very old fish but they respond to the sight of me hold the coffee can in which I keep their food. Bodies moving in water have a grace and elegance earthbound creatures cannot achieve. Is he-who-must-not-be-elected proof that we made a mistake when we crawled up onto the land those millions years ago?

And then I turned around and clumsily brushed my face into my Japanese maple tree. Each leaf suspended four or five perfect globes of water, alight and transparent. I could not find in them any hint of politics or monsters and calmed enough to start my day.

Dark Heart

It’s been two and a half years since I retired from forty-three years of public education.I kept myself busy during the first two years. Unfortunately, I’ve been ill a lot this winter. Idleness and discomfort lead to dark thoughts. Many years of my half-century of teaching may have been productive, but those aren’t the times that come back to haunt. Success is rarely the subject of a nightmare.

Today marks the Challenger launch. Thirty years ago, we had daily updates broadcast throughout the school in the weeks leading up to the event. This launch was of special interest because a teacher was riding along with the astronauts. That morning all eight hundred of our students watched the disaster in realtime. This wasn’t a news story, it was something that they witnessed. The impact was like witnessing a car accident.At class change, a twelve year old student — an exceptionally bright, creative young lady — came skipping down the hall singing, “A teacher died, a teacher died,about time.”This bizarre reaction has haunted me for years. Had our teachers tormented this child? 

That day marked an awakening for me, as time passed I began to realize how little we know of our children’s hearts. How we were stumbling in our own darkness.