Sunday, June 19, 2011

Chuck

His name was Chuck. I will tell you upon seeing him that I judged him. He opened the door for my family as we walked into Waffle House this morning. He was kind enough, and I didn't think about him because of his kindness. I judged him only in the sense that I was a coward for not going up to him and introducing myself. Why? It was his look from the counter on my family and the one next to me. It was his smile. It was more because of his eyes.

I've always been an observer. I spent more time in school sitting in the back because I wanted to see everyone in front of me. I wanted to see the glances across the room when the teacher turned around. I wanted to see the yawns and leans over the desk when pencils fell. Still to this day, I normally sit facing the door in restaurants. I love to see couples come in, the dads struggling with rambunctious boys, single women who look like more concerned with their phones than their meal. Delcina and I, waiting to catch a flight to Houston sat in the airport once and just watched people. We made stories about them. We chuckled at the reunions of couples that didn't match and kids who didn't seem appreciative of the person walking down the runway.

In one of my writing courses, probably my freshman or sophomore year in college, our professor gave us these well-glossed photographs of people. A woman sitting on a bench, a homeless man, kids running through a sprinkler. We were to write compositions about those pictures, an essay about these people's lives. I'm sure then the professor, upon reading our papers, found this a futile exercise in just how naive and immature we were as people and especially as writers. I don't remember what I wrote or the photograph I used, but when I used to write fiction I frequently tried to place myself in other people's shoes. I wanted to wear their lines on my face. I wanted to feel their pain and love and depression.

On my first night of my Emmaus walk, I brought this imagery and the deconstruction of people's faces into that church. I sat among the 30 or so men, most of them white and silently judged them. I pegged them as country boys, white trash, biker trash and hillbillies. I saw them as stuffy button-shirts and academia snobs. I firmly felt I had nothing in common with these men and they surely saw me as that minority guy they don't want moving in their neighborhoods.

And I've always felt this way. When I moved to Ohio, I moved into a small town where just about every business was located on, where else, main street. I would pull beside people on the road and they'd wave. I wasn't used to that. You pull up next to someone in Houston, they give you the finger. I would routinely go along with the misconception that I was from the Middle East (typically Libya for whatever reason) or that I somehow actually celebrated Cinco de Mayo by doing something other than drinking a Dos Equis.

And so I'm back to Chuck. The couple next to us brought in three boys. I too was amused by the high-chaired lad whose cheeks were covered in pudding, and the one son who was eyeing the kitchen. While I looked on at them, at my own kids, so was Chuck. Now I knew his name form the work uniform he was wearing. And it's here that I started my inner story, that judgement.

I took the work clothes and grimy hands that he was a hands-on, mans man. I don't know if it's a deep down resentment of these blue jean clad men who can erect houses in hours or the guy who can repair a motor with a wrench. I am not the working mans man.

I took the expression on his face as something wholeheartedly more. Was this a man who raised his own children? Did Chuck ever have these sit-down moments with his own kids? So here I am answering these questions and painting the picture of a lonely grandpa without anyone share breakfast with. By the end of the meal, all I wanted to do, was shake the guys hand and talk about his life. I wanted to know if his son ever talked to him, or how many wives he had (there goes my judgement again). But I didn't.

I'm thankful I get to share my meals with my loved ones, worship with friends and my nights with my loving wife. One thing my dad and step dad both possess is that willingness to be secluded. My dad is perpetually alone in the house he was raised in. I wonder if the walls ever seem smaller to him. Do the sounds of the past ever keep him awake? My step-dad has remarried. We talk infrequently but when we do I hear the voice of the man who raised me. I know both men's efforts have resulted in me. Their like the Chucks who follow me around even when I don't know it, holding the doors for me, smiling down on my kids.


Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Fishing

Summer is two weeks gone, and it's feeling like an entirely new year. Delcina nor I received summer school opportunities, so we pretty much thought we'd be twiddling our thumbs and wondering what to do. For me, this meant I would get the chance, perhaps, to serve more at church, to actually attend church consistently and to live within our means.

Living within our means will be the toughest hurdle to leap. We have active/busy lives that lead to poor eating choices, late nights and an entertainment bill that sometimes soars. We like our movies, our favorite restaurants and taking the kids somewhere to play.

The serving part has been easier. This was supposed to be the week we started school. Instead, I volunteered for Vacation Bible School. And I went in full force by becoming a large group leader, which means I rotate with two others and teach the lesson of the day. I get to dress up like a cowboy (well, one who wears funny looking chaps made out of bathroom rugs), and be silly. It's pretty much me doing a monologue, reading lines and playing games. Aside from Emmaus, it has to be one of the most fun experiences I've been a part of.

Being a teacher, I guess it's not a stretch to teach the same lesson to 4 different groups, ranging from pre-K to fifth grade. However I have been blessed by their intelligence, patience and willingness to allow a grown man to be silly in front of them. This past week has led a lots of reflection of where I am and where I am going.

Recently, it seems as if God has been pin pointing me for something I am not too sure I can handle. You know, it is said that he will give you only what you can handle, but sometimes the earthly, worldly living wants to take over. It wasn't too many years ago that I was doing things my way. Avoiding church, seeking out selfish endeavors and basically trying to be the biggest ass in the room. Now, this is not saying I don't still do these things! I'd like to think I do them with less frequency, with more forethought and reflection afterwards and with a feeling of becoming everyone's best friend.

Recently too I've been receiving challenges to do even more. Friends that are dealing with pornography issues, marriage issues, running bible studies and coordinating life groups. This is from the same guy who would seek out the foulest video store just to view their curtained back room where the XXX tapes awaited. The person who has thrown countless hundreds, perhaps thousands down the drain on websites and videos. The same person who used to think shows like "Two and a Half Men" didn't quite get foul enough.

So this is me, the guy who isn't being asked to hang out at bars during the week. The guy that my wife says the kids "love" at VBS. The guy running life groups and being asked to speak. Lately, I've shrugged off the pressure, but when I sit alone with the computer in front of me at night, that computer that would offer me anything within one click of a mouse, I get to fishing. Fishing my brain for that past self to resurface. Was that one tantrum I had with my wife earlier the start of something? Was my lack of patience with the kids going to continue? I literally have to close the laptop, and it's not that those thoughts and desires wont follow me to bed, but it's a point in my favor when I can resist.

And the next day, I greet the day, do some reading and head to church (this week, with a slight congestion!). I clap and smile and sigh at getting as close to winning as I can possibly do. The smiles of those around me tell me more about where I am than what I think. Jesus is proud, I see it in the smiles of my friends, and those kids. What else is there to do but accept those looks and smile back, right?

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Time-lined Confessional

Tomorrow marks the last day of this 2011 school year, my ninth year as a fourth grade teacher. It's been a special year. Not discounting the other ones, but they were in order:

2001: My first year, the one where I went into team meetings feeling like I had nothing to offer. The year a colleague was forcibly transferred during Christmas and by the end of the year, I ran myself into a verbal confrontation with another partner. This was the year of 9/11, when I walked past the hallways where kids were watching cartoons for indoor recess on a crisp, sunny day while the teachers were huddled in an empty room watching people fall from the sky.

2002: I took most of my third graders to fourth grade this year, moved hallways, found new partners and made bonds that have lasted me throughout my teaching career. All my point systems and discipline models worked. I felt accomplished. The fifth graders down the hall scared me. The boys had facial hair and the girls all wore tight pants and smiled suggestively. The entire wing smelled of bathroom, spoiled milk from the dumpster and recess sweat.

2003: My second year in fourth grade was a team-teaching year with two of my best friends. We raised test scores, took kids to Kings Island at the end of the year and I started to get this crazy idea of starting a soccer team. I started to recognize most of the kids in the building and they knew who I was. No more strange looks when i told a kid to line up. High fives in the cafeteria. We would joke in the teachers' lounge on how many kids were named after alcoholic drinks.

2004: This began the "golden era" at my old school. I started my soccer team with zero funds and plenty of passion. I drove those kids to practice, home and their games. We scuffed up the floors and wore our uniforms on game days. We would kick soccer balls on the roof during recess so I would make periodic walks up this thin air chute/ladder and wave at kids from the roof as school released. This is ironic in how I viewed the entire neighborhood and my role as a staff member. I started thinking of myself as a prima donna. I acted like the school needed me instead of the other way around.

2005: A tumultuous year for me. I had my largest class size to day, about 31-32 students. Most of them did not get along with anyone, much less me. I yelled a lot. I grew cocky with administration. Soccer was rocketing forward. In my personal life, my wife had been pregnant and miscarried twice that year. It was this summer that we began to foster care. Lisa came to live with us.

2006: I moved to the very last room on that back hallway, which was another indicator of how I felt within that school. My attitude only grew worse, more from burnout in running the soccer team everywhere, home, a lack of spiritual life and lots of other issues that were something then but nothing now. I think I was probably the most sarcastic I had ever been, and I began to draw battle lines.

2007: My last year. I dropped all soccer commitments that summer as Cruz was getting older and Milly had just been born. I needed to become more of a father but had no idea what that role was to be. I had a great group of kids. Two girls who fought constantly, a kid from Africa who made proved that our own American kids just didn't have much of an educational priority. I sat on my ass a lot that year. The heat of the building was both literal and figurative, and it burned a hole through the middle of me.

2008: My first year at Shady Lane. I was teaching with my wife, a new school, a new principal. It was a brand new start. I was given 20 something fifth graders who tested my patience and ran the batteries from all my timers because I was always giving them ultimatums and prisoning them with deadlines. I thought I was a horrible teacher and no one was going to tell me the truth because my wife worked there and telling me so would hurt their friendship with her. I grew paranoid, but by October I took on a 4/5 split class and enjoyed the fruits of probably the highest class I have ever taught.

2009: My most polite class. Loved these guys. I went on my Emmaus walk in the winter of this year and it has since propelled me into looking back and appreciating where I am, where I've been and where I am going. I wanted to bring those qualities out in my kids, and it just has given many of them a safe place to act like how they have been raised to act.

And cut to now. My old arrogance hasn't completely diminished. Being the only man in the building gives me the idea that if I just had more men with me, we'd have this school-thing down pat. I keep having to apologize for things I say, and I realize that I rarely tolerate apologies in my classroom--"You wouldn't need to say sorry if you were doing the right thing" I would say, or "Show me your apology in your actions." I haven't found the thin line between encouraging the adults around me and being discouraging with my own complaints. Same goes for my kids. I read some old letters today, and more than one noted that I would get angry, or that I would "get" those that don't do their work. I look through cumulative folders and see a drop in someone's grades and wonder if it was me. I have high expectations as my neighbors surely do, no more, no less. Surely I haven't been as sarcastic as Mrs. Such-n-such? Was it a wasted year for that kid? Did I reach them or push them away.

Tomorrow, I'll be playing games with my kids and enjoying their company. I'm giving hugs and being hugged. I might even tear up a little. Not because of missing them over the summer, but for the work that is yet to be done. I cry for their futures. And I cry for mine sometimes too.