Aiming High

      For one whole week I was the substitute teacher for a fifth grade class here in San Diego. Actually, there was no real class in attendance. They had flown to Virginia to study colonial America. Only three students were left behind, and somebody was needed to work with them.

      The school was a “classical academy,” modeled after the strictures of the British prep school and the artes liberales of the Ancients. This translated into a pretty heady curriculum. Since we weren't out touring Williamsburg, we were told to read Jonathan Edwards. Picture the scene yourself: three ten year-olds who had just missed the Rapture, expected to discuss “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” With a substitute teacher who forgot to bring pipe-cleaners and string for the mnemonic device they were supposed to create: a dangling black spider.

      Our venture into Puritan poetry was much better. We read Anne Bradstreet's poem “Upon the Burning of Our House.” I went over it slowly, unraveling the hard syntax and clarifying words like “bereft” and “succourless.” Then I gave the suggested assignment: Draw a picture or write a poem about something you once lost.

      One girl did a quick scrawl of her dog; the other drew herself saying goodbye to a friend. But the one boy, Austin, wanted to write a poem. Without flinching, he told me he would write about “this boy I knew when I was seven who got killed by a truck.” Like his announcement of this heavy subject, his poem was spare in detail, sober but not sappy, and heroic. He tried to imitate 17^th century diction: “The truck did speed” and “In the ground he lies,” and his work embraced Bradstreet's worldview: “I will see him again/In the heavenly mansion on high.”

      Austin was smaller and younger than the others, with a sweet face and a sweeter soul, the kind of boy who engages adults earnestly and feeds on their affirmation without guile. As touching as his poem, was his eagerness to read it aloud to the other teachers. He typed it up that night (with a few format improvements I'd suggested) and brought it in the next day. He said he'd like to try writing some more poems.

      He was a poet all week. He never lost his earnestness, his soul never shrank, but his work did suffer from a certain hurried commercialism. Each day at lunch he called me over to announce that he was going to write another poem. Right then and there. On his napkin. Did I have a pen? And, um, what should he write about? He only had about five minutes.

      The readiest advice I had (which was given to me in college, when I wrote a pathetic story about a carnival worker) was this: “Write about what you know about.” Austin looked stymied, so I suggested baseball. He had a poem scribbled out before recess. It included the Padres' latest score and the line “Cameron Maybin robs a home run.” There was some fair imagery--“the crack of the bat/There's nothing better than that” and “He throws the ball like a gun.” But the effort was more indicative of a future sports announcer than a great poet. But here was a worthy idea: Customized Verse. Why not? After all, every young artist needs a patron. Shakespeare had his queen, Bach had his dukes. Austin had me, for the week at least.

      With versifying well in hand, Austin turned to a bigger challenge: entire recesses spent shooting a basketball over and over and over from the three-point line. I suggested he move closer to the basket, since he was only making one out of every million shots. But this was overstepping my authority. The point wasn't to make it. The point was to fire away. The idea was to work and hope and hope and work and finally exult in that one elusive moment of pure poetry.

      I have Austin's poem in front of me now—not the one about loss (his parents treasure that) but the one about triumph (he typed it off the napkin). In the boy's uneven meter, as Mrs. Bradstreet would say, “There's wealth enough, I need no more.” One perusal of this crumpled page has the power to compose me. It gives the unfolding day balance and form, as surely as any greater artist's preface or prelude to beautiful things.

The Big Big Room

     I have a friend who grew up in war-torn Guatemala. She told me that, as a child, she thought she could stop all wars if she could just get everybody in one room and talk to them. "But I had a problem," she said. "I couldn't find a big enough room." So I wrote this little story for her.
     I hope my friend will forgive me for a touch of adult skepticism. I wish that the scene were really possible. But human effort has proved a failure. The diagnosis is too serious. Happily, there is a long-term cure, and the littlest of children can come unto it.
    But here's a small tribute to one child's dream. I picture a fiercely earnest little girl with a wild mop of curly hair and very keen, dark eyes: my visionary friend in miniature. We'll call her Esperanza.


If I could find a big, big room, I'd have everybody come.

If the room was big enough, everybody in the world could come.

When they came, I'd tell them what I want to tell them.

If only I could find a big, big room.

If I could get the whole world into one big room, I'd say, "You're all here now, so listen!" (I'd have to stand on a tall, tall chair.)

I'd look at all of them and say, "You need to stop fighting so much."

The whole world would be surprised, to hear me say that.

"You should share, instead of being greedy," is the next thing I'd say.

If only I could find a big enough room!

With everybody in one room, I could tell them, "You shouldn't hurt anybody, just because they're smaller than you."

They'd have to hear this, too: "Don't go around stealing things! Stealing is just plain bad."

Everybody in that big, big room would be thinking.

 "Don't call people ugly names," I'd say. "Why would you want to be so mean?"

The whole world would hear, because they were in one big room together.

"When you tell lies, it just hurts everybody--even you."

Everybody would have to agree, if they were all there.

I'd need to say this, too: "Stop cheating. Who wants to live in a world of cheaters?"

And everyone would say, "Not me!"

With the whole world together, I'd see the different faces and remember to say, "Don't hate people just because they're different. Do you want people hating you?"

Everyone would start looking around at everyone else. They'd shake their heads.

If someone in the corner of that big, big room hollered, "I'm going to do what I want to do, and that's that!" I'd holler back, "Don't be selfish!"

Then the people would whisper to each other--one big whisper in that big, big room.

Somebody in the middle would raise a hand and ask, "How are we going to do all that?"

Then that big, big room would get very, very quiet. And I would have to think very, very hard.

"I think," I'd say, "we ought to do what we ought to do. We ought to love."

That's what I would say.

But I have a big problem.

Where am I going to find a big enough room?

Picture-Taking

     When I was thirteen, I had a strange bout of anxiety. I realized—and it hit me suddenly, like a sharp rock under a bare foot—that I didn't know how to use a camera. A terrible “What If” darkened my world, and I had to take a long walk to work it out. I left the house and headed down our rural blacktop road. What if someone asked me to take their picture, and I was...discovered? What if I was the only person who didn't...didn't...know? I was alone and inadequate in a potentially pitiless world. None of the neighbors driving into town for groceries that day could have guessed that the lone girl walking on the edge of the ditch was undergoing a terrible crisis.

       I now have many friends who were former teenagers and have learned that I wasn't unique in being tortured by something so benign. Who knows what roads my peers were walking that same day? As far as I can tell, most of us made it home. I've even caught us laughing at our old deficiencies. Some we have conquered, some we haven't, but the old disdain for ourselves has been replaced by compassion for the children we once were.

        I don't have much to do with cameras now. People are using their phones, and I can't see into them without my reading glasses. My daughter and her friends sometimes ask me to take their picture, and they twitter (in the old sense) and arrange themselves, and I say “one-two-three!” and then have to ask “Which button do I push?” Then it's “Just touch the screen.” Nothing could be easier, which is why it's so hard for me.

        But in 1979, when I turned seventeen, I got pretty good at taking pictures. I went to Norway as an exchange student, and my parents bought me a camera. I took some really lovely photographs of seagulls drifting over the north Atlantic. Possibly no Norwegian ever took photos of those same scavengers, but I came from an Illinois farm and had never seen a gull or an ocean, which just goes to show that you never know where a road might take you.