Cause and Effect

I drugged my husband because he ran into the Golden Gate Bridge. I didn’t mean to, and he didn’t mean to, and the two events were separated by 26 years, but they are nonetheless related.

We were in his 1971 Chrysler Newport Custom, a huge white boat of a car that would probably be illegal in San Francisco these days. It was a bright, beautiful Starsky-and-Hutch day. People kept telling us the weather was unusually sunny and cheerful, which we in our premarital bliss, attributed to our very presence there.

As we crossed the bridge, we were both looking to the right at the bay, marveling at water so blue, so clear, so unlike the Mississippi. I was transported; swept up, up and away as I always am when I see the ocean. Its foreverness, its depth and power, make me speechless, filled with a C.S. Lewis’ longing. As my friend Belinda once said of a sunset, “It’s so beautiful, it hurts.”

I turned to look at Pat, to share in the wonder of the moment. His eyes were on the bay; I turned back to admire some more, only to feel the car drift to the right, hit the guardrails, hear the cruel sound of metal on metal as the bridge nudged us back to the lane, back to reality.

And though we weren’t hurt, and the gash in the paint was minor, I’ve never gotten over it. Over the years, instead of conquering this irrational fear, I’ve practiced it, fossilized it.

Whenever Pat takes a hand off the wheel, or his eyes off the road, I’m certain we’re headed straight for a lamp post. If he points out a landmark, I refuse to look, because if he’s not looking, then of course I have to - or we’ll crash. If he gets too close to the car in front, I brace myself against the dashboard, apply my imaginary brake. All these reactions are maddening to him, as they are to me when I have a nervous passenger. But I can’t help it.

I try to be a normal passenger, to appear relaxed, to forget that I’m riding in a weapon of mass destruction, but after visualizing running into parked cars, I resort to leaning my seat back so I can’t see over the dash, if not outright climbing into the back seat and lying down. Ignorance isn’t exactly bliss, but it definitely helps.

As does Valium, a few of which I have leftover from my daughter’s adolescent seizure disorder. I’ve taken a half of one here and there when we’ve gone on road trips. (I sound like those people who say, “I never watch Oprah, but the other day I was….” Because who wants people to think you watch afternoon TV, or take Valium?)

I really don’t hardly ever watch Oprah – I mean, take Valium. That’s why I forgot about the 2 and a half pills that I’d put in the Tylenol bottle that somehow navigated from my purse back to the medicine cabinet, sans Tylenol, unbeknownst to me.

Pat had woken up with a headache. He grabbed the Tylenol bottle, took 1 and a half pills, drank his coffee, and sat down to his cereal. A little while later, he told me, “I feel weird. Dizzy.”

“Maybe it’s sinus.”

“I don’t think so. I had a headache. Took some Tylenol.” He was staring into space; a common pastime I happen to enjoy, but which is not in my task-oriented husband’s schedule.

“I can get that blood pressure tester,” I offer.

Before I had a chance, he said, “What were those yellow pills in that Tylenol bottle? I took one and a half. Maybe it wasn’t…”

Oops. It slowly dawned on me. The Valium. (That I rarely take, mind you.) “I think you took some of Joanna’s old Valium. I’m sorry. I put it in there a long time ago. I don’t know how it ended up there.”

He was so relaxed all he said was, “Huh?”

In a cheap attempt to defend myself, I tried, “Who takes a half a Tylenol? Didn’t you notice?”

He took .7 mg of Valium and was so wiped out, he lay down on the couch and slept until lunchtime.

I told my coworkers what I’d done, thinking they’d enjoy a laugh. Instead, they screeched, “You what!!? Don’t you know better than to mislabel prescriptions! Never, ever do that!!!!” Nina, a nurse turned ESL teacher, who is so organized she carries a little container of salt in her purse, along with all other necessities, was merciless.

“They’re only .5 mg. My daughter took 3 a day at age 12. How bad could it be?” I weakly tried to defend myself again. When he didn’t answer the phone, I began to worry, so I Googled, “How much valium does it take to overdose?” – a question that will take you to some mighty strange places.

At lunch I told Nina, “I looked it up on the internet and it’s almost impossible to overdose on Valium.” Another coworker had just relayed the story to my boss, who, too, felt compelled to reiterate the folly of my ways. So far, no one had laughed.

______________________

That was only the first in a week of mishaps designed, if such things are designed, to showcase my somewhat (of course, I have to qualify) disorganized life.

My anesthesiologist friend called, “This surgery’s taking so long. I won’t be home for hours. Could you please go to the house and let Bassie out?”

“Of course. Where are the keys?”

“You have a set, remember? From when Natalie took care of Bassie.”

Keys. We have lots of keys. A drawerful of unidentified keys. “I’ll look,” I said. But I wasn't optimistic.

At home, Joanna helped me look. “That’s her key chain – the Disney one – I remember.” She remembers everything visual.

Fine, but why aren’t the keys on there?

I filled my pocket with stray keys, went to her house, and unbelievably found the right ones.

____________________________

The next day it started pouring rain just before my afternoon class. I had no umbrella. I had no raincoat. Spying a green raincoat on the coat rack that I reasoned was probably mine, I asked Becky if she thought it belonged to somebody else. (Nina had left; she would have known whose it was.)

“It’s pouring. Go ahead and take it. I’m sure it’s yours.”

It was a bit snug, but I was glad to have it, though I got drenched anyway walking to class. After class it was still pouring down, so instead of going back to the office, I sloshed my way to the car.

Later that night, about 8:00, it hit me. I don’t know for sure that the raincoat was mine. When I needed it, somehow I was sure, but now I’m filled with doubt. It was kind of small. It couldn’t be Nina’s; she’s so tall.

What if I had run off with someone’s coat? What if it’s Clare’s, who was innocently teaching her class in the warmth and dryness of her classroom, secure that she was smart enough, organized enough to bring a raincoat? Only she went to the office, found it gone, and was forced to get drenched going to her car.

Joanna, who remembers everything visual, said, “No, that’s not any of our coats. I’ve never seen it.”

Great. The woman who mislabled dangerous prescription drugs has now run off with someone else’s raincoat.

The next morning, I carried it in timidly. Nina’s there. Everyone’s always there before me. (Except Becky, who had said, “Go ahead, take it.”)

“Does anyone know whose coat this is? Because I took it yesterday, and now I’m afraid it was Clare’s, but I thought it was mine. It was raining so hard….”

Nina said, “It’s not mine. And it’s been hanging up there for months.” Definite. She would know.

I was so happy. It had to be mine, if it had been there for months! Clare wouldn’t leave something hanging around for months. She’s organized. Probably has a salt shaker in her purse.
__________________________

There is a pile of mending under my sewing machine. It’s been there for at least 5 years. I know that because I remember seeing the same pile in our last house. All of it belongs to Pat. If I have something that needs mending, I dispatch it straight away to Goodwill. I hate sewing.

There was a blue moon, so I decided to try and be a good wife and bless my husband by doing some mending. (I stole that joke from Ronnie Stevens.) “Give me the three things you want fixed the most.”

I sewed a button on some work pants, hemmed some nice Dockers that I’d bought him at least three years ago, and sewed the crotch of some raggedy blue jeans. “They’re great to work in.” I had decided not to argue.

A couple of nights later, he asked, “Did you sew this button on?” After one day’s wear, it was hanging on by one thread. The next night I called him to see why he was so late for the church chili dinner. “I had to go home and change. You know those jeans you sewed for me?"

Yes, I remembered those obscene ones with the crotch out.

"Well, it all came undone.”

"A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest Gaines

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.” William Styron, American novelist .

I wish I could say I’m a deliberate literate. That I’ve read all the books that educated people say are necessary to be considered educated. But I can’t.

Most of the books I’ve read over the past year have been second-hand. Books in brown paper bags otherwise headed to Goodwill. Books I’ve sought out because their authors were quoted by authors I like. Books loaned to me by friends. Picked up at garage sales.

Someday maybe I’ll be more purposeful. But for now, as with much that happens in my life, I just somehow “end up” reading some incredible books. And for this I’m thankful.
_______________________

I set the book down. Deliberately. But unconsciously. I say it was deliberate because I could have kept reading. I had the time. I say unconsciously because I didn’t really recognize what was happening that made me stop reading.

A day or two later, I saw the book where I’d last left it, untouched and reproachful. I realized I’d stopped so near the end for a reason. I didn’t want Jefferson to die.

He was going to. From page one you know that. But, so near the end, with nothing left but the execution, I didn’t want to lose him. By postponing reading, I kept him alive a little longer. Like his teacher, his godmother, and the deputy in the jail, I’d come to love this man. What happened to him mattered to me.

I finished "A Lesson Before Dying" by Ernest Gaines yesterday. And though Jefferson did indeed die, he isn’t dead.

He joins the other literary characters who have shown me the world, worlds that I would otherwise never know. They’ve shown me the hearts of people, the heart of God. I owe so much to them all – to Jean Valjean and the priest, to Epinene, Fantine, Samwise Gamgee, Aslan, Atticus, to Gollum, Anna Karenina, Tess…….

I must be going through menopause because as I was writing this the other night I couldn’t keep writing because remembering these people made me cry. Then I felt guilty because I’ve forgotten so many names and that seemed so treacherous, so shameful. Nor could I remember authors’ names, titles, or even what I’ve read this year, and I went to bed frustrated with my slap-dash approach to life. Looking back on the previous paragraph, I see how sappy it sounds, but I’m leaving it that way. My fellow bookworms will understand.

But back to Jefferson. I don’t want to tell his story here. If you’ve read it, you know already. If not, you should read it fresh, as I did. And be amazed. And pierced. Rebuked. Resurrected.

Every night the local Memphis news shows mug-shots of young, hardened black men accused of committing crimes. I look at these faces on television or the newspaper, and I don’t really see a person. I see someone to despise, to fear, to lock away.

Because I tutor children fathered by men like these, children who have captured my heart, there is a part of me that doesn’t want to feel that way. Because as a Christian I know that every life has value, I don’t want to think that way, live that way.

I know five boys whose mother is on crack; the fathers are dead, the older brothers in jail. For now, the light is still in their eyes. They joke, they laugh, they give hugs, they beam when praised. There’s hope. Because of them I want to see those mug shots differently.

Because of Jefferson I can.

Creative Nonfiction Workshop

“All right, I’ll tell you. The reason is…, okay, I’ll make a confession - an intimate detail, if you will.” Lee Gutkind, the workshop instructor, gestured towards the phrase on the whiteboard.

My eyes are on him, as are those of the other 30 or so people gathered in the small university lecture hall. I don’t breathe, I don’t blink. What “intimate detail” could have anything to do with me, with this moment?

“You see,” he scans the audience, ruling the moment as he would prove to rule the day. Then his eyes are back to mine only long enough to say, “I thought you were a guy.”

I blink. I gulp. Nothing has prepared me for this. I’ve never been mistaken for a boy. Not even in the fourth grade when I, along with every other boy and girl, cut our hair to look like Davey Jones of the Monkeys.

Nor in the seventh grade when I insisted on wearing a bowl cut just like the girl on the Butterick pattern. My mother begged me not to “smash my bangs down like that”, and was always coming at me with her hair pick. “You need height; your face is too round.” In truth, instead of looking like the female half of The Captain and Tenille, I looked like Moe from the Three Stooges.

But if anyone thought I was a boy, I never knew about it.

That same year, with that horrible hair I’d convinced myself was stylish, our P.E. class was paired with the 8th grade boys for square-dancing. Gary, a cool 8th grader, was paired with me. He looked me over, turned to his friend, and sneered, “Oh, I got a pretty one.”

At 12 years old, thick-waisted with toothpick legs, and bangs that wouldn’t stay flat because my hair was so thick and wavy, I took the boy’s scorn, managing not to cry, enduring the do-si-dos and alleman lefts until class was over, school out, and I could run home, throw myself on the bed and cry “until you can’t cry anymore, honey”. My mother understood the times.

Except for that hour-long hell, some mishaps with hair dye that made me look like Elvis one time and an eggplant another, and a few weeks of postpartum frumpiness, I’ve enjoyed looking pretty good all my life. “I thought you were a man,” stumped me.

Thirty-eight years after that gym class, I don’t take it. I strike back. “I paid $45 for this hairstyle just yesterday, and you thought I was a guy!” I laugh, the class laughs. I assume people are looking at me, assigning a femininity rating, as puzzled as I at his statement.

We have all come here to hear his statements. We’ve traveled from Alabama, Arkansas, even New Orleans and Florida to Oxford, MS to hear his statements. He, who has published books, has credentials, can be Googled and not come up wanting, has passed muster.

We, with pen and notebook in hand will hang on every word, watch every gesture, wonder, “How many ex-wives are there? Does he blow dry his hair? What’s with the earring? He couldn’t have ever been fat.” (One of his books is titled, "Forever Fat".) We are waiting, and he will deliver because we all want to be, but he is, a Writer.

Arriving early, scanning the room, I had asked a gray-haired, bearded man if I could sit next to him, gambling that he’d be interesting.

“Can I bring you another muffin?” I point to his empty wrapper, but this confuses him. He starts to hand me the wrapper, puts it back down, recovers, “Oh, yes. I believe I will.”

Dressed in a well-worn t-shirt, shorts, leather shoes and socks, it’s not hard to see him as the wanderer he had been. A Korean vet, a half-hearted student at UCLA and Berkeley, some wives, teaching jobs in Korea and Japan, he even joined a commune in New Hampshire. “It failed.”

“I’ve been working on my memoir for 40 years. At first I was going to call it, “The End of Tenderness”, but I’ve changed the title to, “Grotesque”, he would say later over lunch, to which we read him the riot act as they say.

The workshop instructor is a symphony conductor; all is balanced. He scribbles, questions, jokes, makes things flow. “It’s all about scene and story, scene and story.” He’s a live model of what’s he’s teaching us about creative non-fiction.

He keeps the class in check, no Bogarting allowed. A crusty codger, a cross between Colonel Sanders and Mark Twain, a retired Mississippi lawyer no doubt, tries to stir things up with, “Whoever’s really even met a true atheist?” The instructor handles him firmly without rancor. This is his show, after all, and he knows we’re here to learn to write.

If he had just said, “had thought you were a guy”, I would have understood. Terry, spelled with a “y” is a boy’s name, I had reminded my parents from the time I could read.

“It was your name,” he said. “We always have more women than men. I was recounting,” he said in defense of why he looked away just as I began my introduction.

Ultimately, everyone had a turn to speak. The pretty young woman from Alabama who had confided to me, “It’s my first workshop, too. I didn’t know what to wear. I brought two outfits just in case,” wants to write about her mother who had lived in a convent for 15 years.

Some people have completed books. One has a business card that says, “Freelance Writer”, and others have their own websites. A striking woman with a can-do attitude and hairstyle to match announces, “I’ve written a memoir on getting control of your finances that will blow Dave Ramsey out of the water.” I bet she will. There are college students with years of text before them, a retired teacher researching a book on a local “character”, and a woman who tells all with the title of her memoir, “Groaning up Baptist”.

Rapt listeners and notetakers all, we’re each making an investment, exchanging time and money in the hope that the man before us will give us something. Because whether we should call ourselves “writers” or not, that is what we want to do. We have stories to tell. Or time to kill. Or maybe we just like the look and feel of putting words on paper.

Our story may be dramatic or common. Our ability to tell it may range from poor to great. Some people, like Flannery O’Conner, write because they write well. Most, it seems, don’t write well, but do it anyway, like those people you try to avoid who never stop talking, saying,

“Well, I got up this morning, and when I touched the floor with my bare foot I realized it was a bit cold, so I put on some nice warm socks and then thought, ‘What will I have for breakfast?’ and I couldn’t decide between a boiled egg or scrambled – Joe likes scrambled – but I like mine boiled you know – just short of 9 minutes – no more.” They drag out their speech, claiming the conversational territory, leaving no breach for escape.

Perhaps after years of workshops, the instructor was on his guard for these boring types. It’s his job to deliver, both to the workshop connoisseurs and those, like me, who thought long and hard about spending the $175. Maybe that’s why he stopped looking at me seconds into my introduction, and started scanning the audience, making sure no one was zoning out.

Why I blurted out, Why aren’t you looking at me?! Am I already boring? I still don’t know. Nervous? Yes. Wanting to stand out? Possibly. What I do know is that my outburst speaks to what all would-be writers want – really, what everyone wants. “Hey! Over here. Listen to me. Don’t look away.”

And, of course, the point of the workshop was, and will always be, “Here’s how to keep them from looking away.” Thanks, Lee. It was worth it.

Arm in Arm

There’s always someone waiting at the busy intersection, wanting something. An old woman selling onions for pennies, a bored-looking young girl with a hand-printed sign, hand upturned, putting in her time. An old man patiently begs pocket-change, knowing in time he’ll have enough to buy a bottle of something to keep him warm.

On this day as the American made her way to the market, an old woman stood there. She wasn’t selling or begging, just asking for help across the railroad tracks. The strong, young girl locked arms with the unsteady, world-worn woman. As they stepped over the tracks, the younger woman slipped. The old woman tightened her grip, held her ground, and kept them both from falling.

The strangers, arm in arm, laughed at the irony. Then each went her own way, leaving the young missionary thinking about her work there and the lesson she’d just been shown. Stateside, she shared the story with church members who had come to hear from the young college graduate who lives among the poor in Eastern Europe.

I knew after hearing this story that I wanted to write about it, but, like snowflakes that fall lightly, it took time for my thoughts to accumulate, to gather into something worth saying. It seems like much of my writing is like that. I’m slow, I guess.

Her story made me think about the nature of helping - of service, sacrifice, volunteering, giving. Does anyone ever give and not receive? Does the person who forsakes personal comfort or pleasure in order to meet another’s needs ever go away with less? A person may think he’s there to serve, not wanting or expecting any payback, but something else is at work here.

Jesus shamelessly advertised extravagant rewards for serving Him:

And He said to them, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times as much at this time and in the age to come, eternal life” (NASB). Luke 18:29.

And, giving a cup of water to a little child is the same as giving it to Him. Or visiting a prisoner, a sick person, feeding or clothing someone. It’s astounding when it really sinks in. Not that He identifies with the needy, but that He so wants to enlist the troops that He offers the highest reward. “You’ve done it for Me.”

My former pastor, Ronnie Stevens, said, “God didn’t give us the gospel so that we would understand life. He gave us life, so that we could understand the gospel.” Ever since he said that, I’ve looked more intently at things in nature. When you look, you see.

That “something else” at work when we give to others can be seen in the way of the bees and the nectar. Of armies of little fish who clean sharks’ teeth, the yucca moth who alone pollinates the yucca plant, even the bacteria that is needed for digestive health. My daughter’s public school science book promotes the idea of random forces, but then calls the environment an ecosystem. System is right. A beautiful, inter-dependent system that shows us in strokes broad and tiny that Someone with a plan designed things to work together.

Rewards, though seemingly built-in, vary according to motivation. If I do a good thing so people will praise me, they will. That’s the reward. After a time, the clapping dies down, but then I can always pat myself on the back. Not a great reward, but sufficient to keep many people serving.

Sometimes service is part of a contract we make with ourselves – our own formula for living in balance. I’ve done something hard that took a lot out of me. I’m tired. I deserve to dish up a big bowl of ice cream and watch CSI. Don’t ask for more. The service becomes a “Get Out of Jail” pass. Again, it’s reward, but it’s not what Jesus meant.

I’m guilty of both the above in my service. But I don’t think they’re the only motivations. There are better motivations which in my better moments I live by, like Eric Liddell’s, “I feel His pleasure.” For now, the reason I serve is that when I don’t, when my life is all about my family and my stuff, I feel this gnawing discontent. Something is off, unsettled, missing. To use my pastor Cole Huffman’s metaphor again, I’m evaporating on the shore.

But when I enter the torrent, (Cole's metaphor) the gospel life of giving water to thirsty people, I am rewarded. Far, far beyond the effort. Far beyond any expectation or deserving. It makes me glad. It makes me happy. I feel alive.

It seems to be part of the system, part of the design, that people are blessed when they help others. Good on His promise, God rewards those who enter into His work. But sometimes He turns the tables and gives an old woman a moment of usefulness, of strength, the spine-straightening feeling of having helped someone else.

Tribute to My Father on His 80th Birthday

When I was little, the big blue eagle on my father’s strong forearm was a thing of beauty. In time, I would sense that he wasn’t all that proud of it, but sitting in his lap, touching it, I knew nothing of sailors’ rites of passage; only that this was a part of him, and I loved it.

My sister and I also loved to hear his Scar Stories. He has two.

Chopping wood with his father. With an ax. "What’s an ax?" (We’re city girls.) Foot slipped. Ankle cut “near in two”. His mother held him tight while the doctor sewed it back without anesthesia. The scar on his arm is from glass from a window that was struck by lightning while he sat in his desk, a little boy in elementary school.

These three things were emblems of adventure, courage and manhood. Since my father was the only male in the entire extended family, these things formed my earliest thoughts of the differences between boys and girls.

His father died when my father was just 12, having spent the last few months in the chicken coop out back before dying in a TB sanitarium in North Carolina.

High school didn’t hold his interest as much as some ne’er –do- wells that were taking him “down the primrose path.” His mother, raising him and his sister alone, saw the danger. Took action. Signed for him to join the Navy at 17, which he preferred to being drafted into the Army.

He was on Saipan, stood on the site where the 5000 Japanese jumped to their deaths rather than be captured. He got his tattoo. “Why an eagle?” I asked him just the other day. “I looked around for the cheapest thing. It was just $5.00.”

After four years in service he went to Kansas City to Radio School. While there, he was a short-order cook in a greasy spoon, once making a meal for Harry Truman. To this day his default meal when my mother doesn’t cook is a fried egg sandwich.

Job prospects for radio engineers became dim as televisions rolled off the assembly line, so he and a friend joined a traveling sales team who sold magazine subscriptions door to door.

In Missoula, Montana, their boss ran off, taking everything they owned. Indignant, they marched, or I should say, hitchhiked to the home office of Stars and Stripes in Washington State, demanding restitution.

“We don’t have anything to do with independent contractors,” the office said. He wired for bus fare and went home. Unfortunately, this wasn’t to be the only time he trusted an unscrupulous business man.

He and my mother began their life on a wing and a prayer. Well, maybe just a wing. They eloped. She was 19; he was 22. “Why did you do that?” “I don’t know. It’s just what people were doing in those days. Nobody had any money. You just found a preacher and got married.”

He bought “Good Night, Irene” for $100. No windows. No brakes. Soon it wouldn’t even make a right turn. He still laughs ‘til he cries as he relates trying to turn off busy Union Avenue. He’d have to turn a little; put the car in reverse, back up, turn a little more, taking about seven such maneuvers to complete the turn, cars honking, people cursing.

I was born after eight years of trying, he always says tenderly and proudly. My sister two years after that. He worked as a traveling salesman, a manufacturer’s rep for auto parts. No doubt he missed a lot, as did we, by this arrangement, but this was the job that he could get. These were the days when people stayed with a company for years; when personal fulfillment took second place to providing for family.

Perhaps it’s his nature, perhaps it’s the years alone on the road, but he’s content to be alone with his TV and books, though he wants my mother close by. Last week, while we were waiting for the outcome of my mother’s cancer surgery, I asked him about their courtship.

“I married your mother because she was so gregarious and fun. I didn’t have an outgoing personality.” That statement is the only time I’ve ever heard him say anything approaching self-analysis.

He’s among a dwindling number of men unaffected by the self-help movement, by feminism, by the post WWII me-generations. He grew up in a time when what it meant to be a man was clear and simple. I’m sure he never questioned it, never thought to question it. He just was.

My daughter complained that a certain young man didn’t even know how to change the oil in his car. “It’s just not very manly.”

“Well, what is a man, anyway?” I ask her, relishing a possible teachable moment. I’d just read John Piper’s, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and was ready. “It has nothing to do with changing the oil.”

“I don’t know,” she actually said.

“I know you don’t know because nobody knows anymore, but I know, and so I’ll tell you.”

A man takes responsibility for the things and people around him. There is a sense of duty, to see that things are taken care of, made better. He does the hard things, the dangerous things, the dull things, without complaint. Because as husband, father, son, son-in-law, brother, or citizen, this is what’s needed.

“So, no, it’s not unmanly if he can’t change the oil. It’s unmanly to ignore it.”

In my teens, I went to work at Young Life camp in Colorado for a month. My father insisted I take his brand-new Delta 88, choosing the older car for himself. I can say about my father that in my entire life, whenever I’ve had a need, asked for anything, he has never once said, “No, I can’t. I’m too busy.”

They say we learn, for good or bad, what God is like from our earthly father. If so, the best thing I’ve learned from my father is,

When I call, the answer is always, without hesitation, “Sure, hon, I’ll be glad to.”

I Need Some Happy

"I Need Some Happy"

Like most people, my days at work follow predictable grooves. Teaching ESL is the best job I’ve ever had, but, though they keep me laughing with mistakes like, “I put the turkey in my pocket”, most aren’t yet able to communicate much of substance.

I dictate, “What does your mother do?” They write, “My mother is homemaker.” I say, “What does your father do?” “He is businessman.” I tell them to put them together with “and” and a comma.

A Korean girl writes, “My mother is waitress, and my father stays home.”

“You need an “a”, remember? She’s just one waitress; it’s a count noun.” This girl can talk up a storm, so I ask, “Your father stays at home?”

“Yes, well, he’s sick.”

I respond with concern, and pry further. My husband says I make people uncomfortable with all my questions. I call his reticence a guy thing and keep on, though I know he’s often right about that. I just can’t seem to help myself. Nosy? I like to call it “interested”.

“No, it’s not disease. He has mental problem. He was in the war, and saw terrible things. His best friend saved his life. But now he’s so old, like only 60, but from all that he’s so old. It’s so sad.”

What war?

Vietnam.

He’s a Vietnam Vet. Just like American Vietnam Vets. I had no idea.
Only in their country there’s no support, no common knowledge about post-traumatic stress syndrome, why they can’t hold jobs, trust people, talk about it, why they drink “to make the pain go away.”

I move on to the next student, check for the comma, look for the “a”, sobered by her story, by my ethnocentrism. I’m humbled that she told me. It takes so much effort in a second language. And I’m no one, really. Just her teacher. But I feel privileged.

It’s not the first time a student had to leave the room for a few minutes. Last year, there was another student, in his first weeks here, homesick, struggling, the lone Vietnamese student in our program. He could read and write well, but it was almost impossible to understand him orally, but he tried and tried, answering every question.

“What do you need?” I asked round-robin. Others said, “I need some apples." "I need some milk. " "I need some money.”

He said, “I need some…happy.” No four sadder words have I ever heard. He teared up, I teared up – the universal language. He left quickly.

The other students, if they understood, didn’t have the language to pry. I resumed the exercise. He soon returned, took his seat, ready to go again.

I’m amazed at these students, their bravery in their vulnerability. Trying to communicate in a second language things of the heart.

Later, the beautiful daughter of the Vietnam Vet saw me, her eyes brightened, and she gave me a hug – a very unusual thing for a Korean to initiate with a teacher. I said, “I’m sorry I made you cry.”

“No, no. It’s okay. I’m proud of him.”

Across the divides of race, age, religion and language, we communicate. It’s a beautiful thing.

Paul Potts singing Opera