Back on the horse...

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every

opportunity. The optimist sees the

opportunity in every difficulty.”

­– Winston Churchill

I have a love and not so much love relationship with teaching.

Until the fall semester of last year, it was only love. These feelings were kindled by fond memories of the classroom, watching young minds come to appreciate the wonders and workings of the human body.

Students may not appreciate this, but for the teacher, it is the opportunity to enrich their own minds. Classroom education can create one of the great symbiotic relationships.

The afterglow, remembrances warming and softening through the lens of time and gravity led to a yearning to return to teaching. When the chance presented itself, I was delighted. In short order, my reverie was interrupted by the reality of class prep and the delivery of high volume, densely rich material.

Hmmm. That had not been part of the remembrances.

Looking forward…

The lunch was excellent, and the atmosphere could not have been better. One of the small secrets in Tucson is the Café a La C’Art in the historic Stevens house at the Tucson Museum of Art. It isn’t really a secret, but if one doesn’t frequent the Museum or work in its vicinity, it is not particularly well known.

The day was warm, with light gusty winds. A sun shading canopy covered the eight or so tables in the outside court. Birds tweeted in the fresh air as the buzz of quietly chatting folks sat nibbling their meals. Aside from the lovely atmosphere, the menu was superb. I had the Bistro Salad, a huge plate of mixed greens, goat cheese, red onions, granny smith apples, dried cranberries, spiced walnuts topped with cracked pepper and raspberry vinaigrette. It was the perfect meal for the day and the impending conversation.

My luncheon companion was the Biology Department Chair at the community college where I taught.  We have a pleasant collegial relationship and had been trying to get together for several weeks. I had sent her my assessment and impression of how I thought the fall semester had gone. Now that she had my thoughts, I wanted hers.

As an adjunct faculty, classes are assigned when there is an overflow of students wanting to take a particular class. I had not gotten a course in the winter semester. Would there be another opportunity to get into the classroom?

The fall semester…

When the reality sunk in of what it took for ‘ready, set, go,’ I have to admit I was faint of heart. There were mornings when the thought of heading to class, was overwhelming. It took Molly’s support, coming somewhat from her youthful upbringing in a military household to help me get over the hump.

“Have you got your phone, wallet, keys, and ID badge?” She asked, in a motherly matter of fact tone.

“Yes.” I would dutifully reply.

“Good. Here’s your lunch. Now go teach!”

There was no negotiation. Tough love – yes sir, that’s the ticket.

Out the door, I would go whether I felt prepared or not. It was a strange time, because, for more than forty years, I have presented workshops and untold numbers of professional presentations all over the world. And yet…and yet…some days the thought of teaching this content-rich, high volume material to a group of youngsters, seemed beyond the pale.

Oh yes, the lunch…

Alex had just returned from Switzerland and was putting together the summer and fall curricula for the department. We chatted about her trip and reviewed the thoughts I had sent to her.

“You did well,” she said. “For a first time out, it was a good job.  No complaints here.”

"So, do you think there might be another teaching opportunity?"

I was prepared for a no and had made the decision if there were not an opportunity for a course in the summer or fall, I would not teach again. Being away from the material too long would be like starting all over again. Something I was loath to do.

“As a matter of fact,” she said. “I have an eight-week hybrid physiology class I would like you to teach this summer…if you want to do it.”

“What does that mean?” I replied.

In a regular semester, a new system (e.g., hormones, heart, immunity) is taught per week. In an eight-week hybrid course, a system is covered per day. Because of the shortened time period, the material comes twice as fast. The ‘hybrid' part consists of online content that must be mastered in addition to classroom presentations. For students to get through this course, they would need to eat, drink, breathe, and sleep physiology.

What about the instructor?  I have never done any online preparation. Taking this assignment means reorganizing the material AND creating online content acting as collateral material for the course. While by now, the content is more familiar, the online part is entirely new and will need to be learned.

So, the commitment has been made, and it is a mere forty-eight-days until a group of students show-up ready to go. The teacher? Yeah, I'll be prepared when they appear. At the moment, it's not completely clear how that will happen.

For me? What an opportunity…

ted

Fire lights...

“Wood can be used to build a fire; 

only a match can bring it to life.”

— Anonymous

It has been many moons since sitting in front of a roaring fire in the early morning hours. Little is more compelling than imagination-stirring shadows, created from its flames, dancing on the walls – the snap, crackle, and pop of burning wood and slightly smoky odor adding to the aura.

When the earth has rotated away from the sun, there is magic in a darkened room illuminated by fire. This day, the fire wasn’t roaring, nor was there the smell of burning wood, that is until I closed my eyes and drifted into the secret places of my mind.

He loved to cut…

It was Monday and his day off. As long as I knew the man, this was his day of rest. In warm weather, he could often be found in a narrow-shouldered undershirt, beads of sweat dripping from his body as he cut wood. He was a complicated man who worked in a complicated and unpredictable profession.  But on his day off when he could reduce medium-sized tree trunks with his single-handle cross-cut saw and split the resulting blocks into firewood, he was in a different and simplified world. The man was my father.

In the years I knew him, he – we – lived in many places. My first recollection him was in Burnhamthorpe, Ontario where he pastored a small country church, The building had no running water so, in moments of need, a two-seater outhouse served the congregation summer and winter.

The parsonage was just across the road. The house had a fireplace.  

I am not sure 'when' the love of wood burning came to my father. He was a city man. But it is my guess ‘the where’ occurred from spending part of his summers buried in the woods, on the shore of Lake Joseph in the Muskoka region of Ontario, Canada. Mother’s people had a sizable piece of land there and a family cottage that was parsed out to family members during different weeks of the summer. Their union made those summers possible.

The cottage wasn’t large but consisted of a rustic open-raftered room separated from the kitchen by a long wooden countertop. The cooking area had hinged windows that swung inward. On warm summer days, they would be pulled open and held in place by rafter hooks allowing in cool breezes from the lake. 

On the lakeside, a veranda ran the length of the cottage. It was a great place to sit and drink in the quiet solitude of pine-scented air combined with the sound of gently lapping of water along the shoreline. 

The centerpiece of the larger room of the cottage was an open-hearth fireplace. Old wicker cushioned chairs sat in a semi-circle in front of it. I cannot remember an evening when large wood-burning fires did not warm the cottage nor mornings when they did not take away the chill of the night. 

Most evenings were spent chatting around or merely gazing at the fire until the last embers lost their color and heat. The crispness of the air and the smell of crackling wood was otherworldly. Many a love was kindled sitting before that fireplace in those wonderfully magic woods. 

Great fires weren't limited to the cottage. Wieners cooked with broken tree branches, marshmallow, marshmallow smores, and corn roasts were, for many years part of our summer holiday tradition. There are few things more energizing and soothing than an outdoor fire, cooking, singing and sharing with people you love.

As the years passed, my father built a separate cottage for our family, its centerpiece a hand-built stone fireplace. He gathered granite rocks, residue from dynamite blasting that opened roads in the region. Many a trunk load of rock was transported to the back of the cottage where, with a hammer and chisel, he fashioned each stone to be lovingly placed into that hearth.

My dad loved to cut that wood and build those fires. And because of him, in subsequent years, so did his son.

He taught me how to fell a tree safely to a specific spot.  He taught me how to cut logs into the appropriate lengths and how to ‘…let the ax do the work…' when splitting wood.  He taught me how to carry and stack the pieces when they were cut. These are simple things and seem self-evident, but when he worked, he was lost...meditative…spiritual…zen. His body worked the wood, but he was not really there. The fires were the reward, the moments of quiet meditation and rest.

I learned to love cutting wood.  But watching and listening to him, I began to understand it was never the harvesting of the tree, it was the loss of one's self in the work. The tree? Simply the vehicle.

The years passed, and in the natural evolution of time, the number of visits home diminished. We still had cottage time together, but eventually, even that slipped away. As dad aged, he no longer had the energy or strength to cut wood. At his home, parishioners brought and stacked it for him, but in the end, it became too difficult for him to even carry it to the fireplace - the grates cold and empty.

Early morning hours…

Molly and I have been married for forty years, and during that time we have never had a fireplace in any of our homes – until now. The place had a fireplace with wood burning potential but a gas line and artificial logs were in place.

Recently, we made the decision to activate the fireplace. Feeling that storing, carrying wood was more than we wanted to do, we opted for the gas and replaced the ceramic logs with a different material that better radiated heat.

A few things are missing, most notably the pleasant smell of burning wood and enchanting crackle that comes with it. But, the look of the flames and heat it throws are comforting. It is a little strange that the logs look the same when the fire is lit and when it is extinguished. But staring into the fire in a quiet, darkened room and slipping into the solitude of my mind, brings a sense of peace and continuity to my soul.

This morning, as has been the case since activating fireplace, "...I closed my eyes and drifted into the secret places of my mind..." 

This morning, I found my dad chopping wood.

-ted

You end up where you begin...

“You think you escape the force of the universe? You do not.

Life is a circle; you will return from whence you came…”

– Anonymous

The little boy was six-years-old and lived on the corner of North Street and Chardon Road. North Street ended at Chardon forming a ‘T.’ Across from the youngster’s faded yellow two-story house was the school. It was a long, oblong brown brick structure that housed grade levels from elementary through junior high.

Behind that school was a playground with swings, Jungle Jim, wooden teeter-totters, open free-play area and a quarter-mile circular track. One morning during recess, the boy asked his teacher if he could run around that track. To him, it seemed huge – exotic, really. Many times before he dared to ask Ms. Johnson for permission to take this (to him) adventure, he wondered whether he could even get around it. She agreed, saying she would keep watch. She watched; he ran. He didn’t know why, but when done it felt kind of mystical. He never told anyone. To him, it was a secret between him and his teacher.

Unbeknownst to him, as the cinders crunched beneath his tiny feet and the fresh spring air brushed against his cheeks, ovals like this would occupy significant parts of his life. When those days came, each time he stepped onto a track, the little boy whispered…remember the magic.

A different day…

The skies were clear and crystalline blue. It was mid-morning when I arrived at the track. There was a slight nip in the air, and higher than usual humidity due to recent heavy rains in Tucson. It could not have been a better day for a track meet.  It would be exciting for the participants because it was a day when both high school and colleges were competing.

Had it not been for Richard, I would not have shown up.

The high school events began a little before ten. The college teams competed in the afternoon. It was great fun to watch young girls and boys run, throw and jump. Proud parents and friends sat in the stands shouting encouragement to the youngsters.  What made this meet more exciting for the high schoolers were the collegiate teams at this sanctioned PAC 12 Conference meet. It would be the most significant event of their season, maybe of their lives. These kids would go home telling stories of having been at the same event with high caliber athletes from UCLA, BYU, Arizona other well-known schools.  For them? Nirvana – trust me.

It began in a classroom…

I taught physiology in the fall last year after many years in the private sector. It was a trying experience. In the early going, it was all I could do to show up and get through the two back to back classes twice a week. Tuesday and Thursday evenings, my seventy-one-year-old feet felt like they were one-hundred — and yes, I will take a little cheese with that whine!

Connecting with students has always been a priority for me. I suppose it’s the influence of my mother, the friendliest and most curious person I ever knew.  She could practically engage a telephone pole in conversation. Before she was through, she would know the forest from which it came, how long it had lived before being harvested, and whether it enjoyed supporting electric wires. "Show an interest in someone, call them by their name" she would say. "And God will bless you both. Names are powerful symbols of recognition and respect.”

Richard shared a four-table in the center of my classroom. A tall, gangly and quiet kid, he was almost bashful.  But there was a crisp clarity to his eye, and he was an excellent student. His official name was Andrew, but he wanted to be called Richard, and so it was.

During the semester, I learned he was on the Pima Community College track team – a triple jumper. I had also been a collegiate sprinter, a long and triple jumper. I wouldn’t have to work very hard to find talking points with him.

Time, gravity, work, distractions…

This was the first track meet I had attended since competing and hanging up my track shoes decades earlier. In a millisecond, though, walking through the gate, my breathing unconsciously increased and my heart beat a little faster. It’s funny how that works. I was instantly transported to a world so familiar, so intimate, there are not sufficient words to express the sensations.

Track meets are unlike any other athletic event. There are distance runners, sprinters and hurdlers; Javelin/discus throwers and shot putters; long, triple and high jumpers with many events taking place simultaneously.  This day, there were probably a couple of hundred competitors needing to be in the right place at the right time to participate in the event for which they had trained. Running a successful track meet with so many moving parts, is like an orchestral conductor or air traffic controller. When things work right, it is a marvel to see. When they don’t? Everybody knows it!

What makes big outdoor track meets special, is the carnival atmosphere that permeates everyone.  Parents and friends filled with excitement wait for their son or daughter to compete. Unlike basketball or football games where crowds roar at special plays, track meets, due to simultaneous activities, are filled with non-stop undercurrents of cheering.

I found Richard and chatted briefly – just enough for him to see I had come and to wish him good luck. This meet was a big deal because as a junior college athlete, he didn't get the opportunity to compete against the kind of talent showcased on this day. He didn’t need to be distracted by me. In the end, it was a hard day.

Maybe it was the level of competition, maybe his nerves but he had three unsuccessful triple jumps and didn’t qualify to move on. Catching up with him after the event, I commiserated and thanked him for inviting me to come. I told him the day had brought back many memories. I knew he was hurting, but he was stoic and returned the thanks.

Getting in the car, I closed my eyes for a few moments to reflect on the day and the memories it had brought. In those quiet moments, I could almost feel the cinders crunching under my feet for the first time. I remembered the years that I ran and jumped and laughed and cried. Richard had given me the invitation for this day, but as I started the engine, I whispered, “Thanks, Ms. Johnson.”

– ted