Kayla’s white hair was pulled into a long white ponytail, as
usual. I’d guess she’s in her sixties, younger than most of the residents, and
I see her from time to time at Poetry Club. More often, we just talk in the
restaurant or the lobby. (Or she does.) She has earnest, steel blue eyes and
dresses more casually, than many of the residents. I can imagine her among my
friend set, though I don’t know her well: I know she has cancer and an upbeat
attitude; somewhere I heard that she once spent a year studying Dante’s Inferno. She is grateful for life and
for beauty, a gratitude that she names every time I see her.
I wish I could remember everything she said last week, but
this was a 20-minute monologue (poetic, philosophical, and full of gratitude,
as I would expect.) I wasn’t taking notes. (I don’t usually take notes when I’m
just talking with people. Do you?)
After her talk, I went to a quiet space and wrote down as
much as I could remember:
“I want to thank you for last week’s poetry reading. You
have a gift. You are able to guide us and redirect us, gently and gracefully,
when we need it. When it’s going well, as when life is going well, the
conversation is a stream: the water is smooth and we can rest in its depth; we
can see our reflections on the surface. Sometimes, as with a river, there is
agitation. The wind may come up. Or the darkness. And the water ripples or
waves. Like in the dark times of our lives.
I’m going through one of those dark times with my cancer
now, but if I can stay in this darkness I’ll come out with grace and gratitude.
You know about that: you carry yourself that way. You and I are grateful that
someone has saved our lives, and we live in grace. That’s the spirit in you and
the spirit in poetry. As you know, I was an equestrian. Poetic lines are like
when you and the horse are together in spirit as you go over a jump. It becomes
not about what’s outside, but the grace moves deep in you.
And you have that in you. You are a graceful teacher. That’s
a gift that you have, and I want you to know that.”
This week, I didn’t see Kayla, and I talked as I always do
with Mariah*, who was sitting in her wheelchair facing the white church across
the street. She loves that church. When she was younger, she was nun, but she
left the sisterhood, married a priest, and they had two kids. Mariah looks out
from expressive, large blue eyes that seem rounder than most people’s eyes. Her
Alzheimer’s is advancing, and she tells me sometimes about the teams who come
to her in the night, intending to kill her. Sometimes, she tells me or someone
else that she and I are heading to the train station, going to Minnesota. These
stories reinforce the times she tells me she’s ready to die, the times she
tells me she feels trapped in this assisted living home. Don’t get the wrong
idea and pity her, though. She’s tough. She can give as well as she can take.
And she has a strong faith in God that sustains her in these tough times. I
asked her once what she thought death was like. “It’s just more life,” she
said. She’s not scared. She loves life, though she doesn’t love her current
circumstances.
When I came up behind her yesterday, unaware that I was
interrupting her meditation, she welcomed me, and she said, “I said a prayer
today, and you came. You are the answer to my prayer. You are an angel….I think
you are a woman of stature. You are rich and famous. I know because people want
to sit by you.”
Isn’t that lovely? I hope it’s not because they pity me—I
don’t think it is—but since my tumors, people tell me lovely things they think
about me. Actually, I guess they did this before, but now I am slow enough to
listen.
On the bus on my way to the assisted living center, a
student who graduated from high school in 1995, had noticed me and come to the
front of the bus to say hi. I’ve seen her a couple of other times since she
graduated, and it’s always good to see her. She was a strong student, smart
with a sturdy character, and though I don’t remember many details, I love
remembering her spirit. Yesterday, she said to me, “You are still my favorite
teacher ever.”
The comment means so much to me. I won’t be a high school
teacher again, and I did my best when I was one. Sometimes I was the right
teacher for a student and sometimes I wasn’t. I think often about the students
I didn’t serve in the way I wanted to. It’s good to be reminded that sometimes
I did serve students well. It’s good to hear the affection I felt mirrored back
to me.
Now my official role is more often student than teacher, and
some of my teachers tell me that they learn from me (as I learned from my
students). I took a writing course from an excellent teacher, Theo Nestor, this
year. At the end of the class, she told me that she had learned from me about
teaching students with disabilities.
Earlier this year, she also told me that she appreciated the
way that I ask for what I need: like power points and comments emailed to me so
that I can enlarge the print on my screen. She said that she was learning to
ask for what she needs. Hearing this meant a lot to me because I feel like
every time I ask for an accommodation for my disabilities, I’m highlighting
those disabilities again. I don’t mind people noticing my disabilities so much,
but I’m sensitive to the fact that some people think I’m asking for more than I
should, and I don’t want to be a bother, but I do want to be included and to
learn. I also want to share what I have learned and what I live.
I may have left the teaching profession, but the identity
still beats in my body: I am still a teacher. That just means I love to share
some of the beauty that I’ve learned in this world. It means I want to empower
people to make their own lives better. It means I love to listen to people’s
stories and to share mine. It means I love to love, and I love to be loved.
*Residents’ names have been changed.
