Hydro-Phobia

This summer, in an attempt to get some exercise while still not having to deal with the Texas heat, I’ve been going to water aerobics at the YMCA. It’s a good way to work on strength and flexibility without putting undue stress on my weak knees and ankles.   

Those who know me will tell you that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an athlete, despite my brief involvement in jogging for a few years back when I was in my late 20s and early 30s. I didn’t have any speed then, but I had a lot of endurance, so I ran in several 10K races, all with the specific goal of finishing without getting hurt. And I accomplished that at the blazing speed of 12 to 13 minutes per mile. In other words, only just slightly faster than a walking pace.

I also might mention here that I am not a swimmer, unless you count a weak dog paddle (that looks more like a drowning dog—lots of splashing around and very little forward movement). As a small child on a trip to a local creek to “swim” with my parents, I managed to step into a hole where the water went over my head until Daddy pulled me out. That experience made me fearful of water. Around the time I started first grade, my parents signed me up for swimming lessons, and I did learn to float on my back, as well as face down for as long as I could hold my breath. But when it actually came to swimming, I could never overcome my fear of the water for more than a few strokes. That doesn’t mean that I stayed in the shallow end of the pool during my adolescent years. No, I went all around the pool, everywhere I could go and still be within an arms length of the side of the pool.

As an adult, I had two scary experiences on water, each involving a canoe. I took a relaxing trip down a river with another teacher and some of our students that ended with one short section of rapids. The canoe I was in flipping over, trapping me underneath in water that was over my head until I managed to kick and push upward with my hands to get out from under the canoe and be pulled to safety. Not long after that, I was on a church retreat on Lake Travis. One of the guys from my Sunday School class asked me if I wanted to go for a ride in a canoe, and I foolishly said O.K. I thought we would be just paddling around the little inlet where I had seen canoers earlier. Uh-uh. That would have been too easy. As soon as we got in the canoe, he began rowing toward the middle of the lake.  Ski boats and skiers were passing us on both sides—simultaneously. We were bobbing up and down more than a fishing buoy in a hurricane.

Even with my history, I didn’t anticipate any problems with water aerobics because the part of the pool we use isn’t very deep, certainly not over my head. Also, the water aerobics sessions, at least in the mornings, tends to be geared toward the “Silver Sneakers” group (retirees), some of them recovering from or dealing with limitations associated with strokes and arthritis. I knew I was fairly strong and had only a couple of knee and ankle problems to deal with—and the water should help with those. I surely should be able to do what people 10 to 20 years older could do.

How difficult could water aerobics be? Famous last words.

I’ve been going two days a week, Mondays and Wednesdays. Each day has a different instructor, so the routines vary. To warm up, both instructors use techniques like jogging in place or doing jumping jacks in the water, simple enough for me. To build strength, they asked us to use Styrofoam barbells and foam “noodles” under the water—also simple.

Then they embellished the routines, linking several moves together to music. Sounds a lot like dancing, doesn’t it, and I have almost no sense of rhythm. (One of them incorporates the moves of the “Macarena,” popular a decade or so ago, and I couldn't do it then either.) Even the relatively simple rocking horse move (lunging forward on the right foot while the left foot comes off the bottom of the pool, simultaneously pushing water away from your body with both arms, then rocking back on the left foot as the right foot comes off the bottom of the pool and pulling both arms back toward your body) takes some getting used to. Just look at how many words it takes to describe the action. And then the instructor starts counting—up to 8, then backwards again to 1. We’re supposed to change position every time she calls a new number. I finally decided, if I can start with the class at 1 and end up with the class back at 1, the middle part isn’t all that important. I just keep moving, and sometimes I’m with the class (rarely) and sometimes I’m not (usually).

Another drill one of the instructors loves is when we hold our hands clasped above our heads and run across the pool in chest-deep water as fast as we can, until she stops us and tells us to run backwards. (Did I mention that she’s retired military?) Running in water is less dangerous for me than trying to run on land or even in a gym because I’m not as likely to trip myself and fall by dragging my right foot, the one with the nerve that doesn’t work right. The water offers resistance, which is good exercise, but stopping is more difficult. My momentum always takes me forward another two or three steps when she says to stop before I can initiate the reverse movement. That would be O.K. if I were in the pool by myself, but this is a class, remember? I do not want to be known as the one who ran over some senior citizen in the pool. And I’ve come close to doing just that.

The instructor of the Monday class likes to have us use one of the “noodles,” the ends held securely in each hand, for support in the water as we do some sideways underwater kicks. I don’t fully trust the “noodles” so I keep one foot on the bottom of the pool as I lean forward with the “noodle” and kick with the other foot.  About two weeks ago, as I kicked out with my right leg, the calf muscle cramped. All I had to do was put the right foot down and stand up. Sure, I know that now, but at that moment my instinct was to grab the cramping leg, which meant turning loose of the “noodle” with my right hand, causing me to toppled over backwards and splash everyone within a five-foot radius while I tried to regain my footing. The only thing that could have been more embarrassing would have been if the lifeguard had jumped in to help me, and he was leaning forward with his buoy when I finally managed to get both feet on the bottom of the pool again.

Both instructors like to have us do a cross-country skiing move in the pool, alternating between right leg and left arm forward, left leg and right arm back and left leg and right arm forward, right leg and left arm back. This one has great potential for disaster. First, I have to keep my arm and leg movements coordinated, an almost impossible task for somewhat who can lose her balance and fall while standing still. To complicate the exercise, one of the instructors likes to insert a “tuck” (pulling the knees up toward the body) while changing the foot and arm positions. Second, this is a move based on skiing, and I may be the world’s worst skier. No kidding. No title has been conferred--yet, but I think it probably is well deserved. I flunked ski school years ago in Breckinridge, Colo., on my one and only attempt at the sport after I took the ski instructor down in the snow several times (unintentionally, of course) and then knocked down my whole ski school class just like dominoes as we lined up to climb the bunny slope sideways. (I was at the bottom of the hill when the instructor told us to lean on the side of our skis to hold our position on the incline. I leaned a little too far, fell on the person next to me, who fell on the next person, and so on all the way to the top of the hill.) For my own safety, and that of everyone skiing on the mountain that day, the instructor advised me to go have some hot chocolate and watch the ice skaters on Maggie Pond.

I’ve wondered if I need to put a disclaimer somewhere on my swimsuit, especially on those days when the pool is really crowded: “Warning—Totally out of control waterphobe with bad balance, prone to sudden, unpredictable movements, frantic splashing, and sheer panic. Approach at your own risk.”

Despite the (unplanned) thrills I’ve experienced in water aerobics, I have enjoyed the classes, and I think they’ve been successful in some respects. My upper arms and shoulders seem more muscular, and I do have a greater range of motion in my legs. I’ve also gotten used to the smell of chlorine which seems to cling to me, no matter how much I shower, wash my hair, and launder my swimsuit and towels. It’s not an unpleasant smell, really—mixed with my pineapple-coconut bath gel and body lotion, it smells like summer. 

An Anniversary of Sorts

This past Sunday, July 15, was an anniversary for me. Not the kind that you receive gifts for, like a birthday or wedding anniversary, but an anniversary all the same, one that I expect I will continue to observe for the rest of my life. And like a lot of holidays on the calendar, it is closely paired with another date: Memorial Day/Veteran’s Day, Flag Day/the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving/Christmas, Christmas Eve/Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day, Christmas/Easter, Mardi Gras/Easter, Hanukkah/Passover, etc.   

For me, the paired dates are April 8 and July 15, both in 2012. April 8 was the date I was in a major car accident that could have taken my life. July 15 was the date I was finally released from my tour of North Texas hospitals, nursing homes, and rehabilitation centers. I guess I could add a third date to that list, October 29, 2012, the date I was released from outpatient rehabilitation, but that date didn’t have the impact (no pun intended) of the other two.

At the time of the accident I had very little experience with doctors and hospitals other than routine treatment for an occasional bout with allergies or a sinus infection. I had pneumonia several years earlier and had to miss work for seven days, but even that was really not a big deal. I just stayed home, took my medicine, and slept a lot. I had previously had three broken bones, a toe, and both pinkie fingers, and those were three separate injuries. Other than that, good health.

That night in April, in an instant, I had a broken right femur caused by sliding sideways into the gear shift, a broken left wrist caused by the exploding airbag, and a broken left ankle, cause unknown, just the force of the impact, I guess. Emergency medical technicians worked to stabilize my injuries before getting me out of the car, then took me across the intersection to a field where a waiting CareFlite helicopter took me to Harris Methodist Hospital in downtown Fort Worth. I was there for most of the month of April, including the first three days in intensive care.

Next, I went to Heritage Oaks Nursing Home/Rehab in north central Arlington where I spent a month trying to build up my strength. Most of the residents were elderly people who had had strokes, but there were a few residents who were about my age, although they, too, were recovering from strokes. I was the only one of the residents I met there who was healing from a car accident.

In early June of 2010, I moved to the HealthSouth Rehabilation Hospital in south central Arlington. By that time I was able to move myself from the bed to a wheelchair and then back to the bed. The therapists there were real slave drivers, in a nice sort of way. They really worked us, but again, most of the residents were older than I was and many were in much more serious condition. By that time I was a lot stronger, and I got even stronger propelling myself up and down the halls in the wheelchair. I still wasn’t able to put any weight on my left ankle because some of the bones were still being held together with a screw, so I couldn’t do any standing. My physical therapist could not understand why I wasn’t able to stand up on just one leg, but I told him, “It’s called a lack of coordination. I couldn’t stand up without using both legs before the accident.” I still can’t. So since he couldn’t get me to stand, he had me left weights to strengthen my arms.

At the end of the last week of June, I returned to Heritage Oaks for another stay. I needed to have surgery to remove the screw in my ankle, and HealthSouth doctors determined they could do no more until the surgery was done. This time at Heritage Oaks I was much more independent, although I was still in a wheelchair. I could get myself into and out of bed, go get whatever I needed from the nursing staff, maneuver myself into the bathroom, and take a shower by myself. I was there a little more than a week. I had the surgery on a Thursday afternoon, and the following Monday, I moved one last time.

This time I went to Arlington Rehabilitative Hospital in northwest Arlington. The nurses, doctors, and therapists there were very nice and quite competent. They specialized in working with stroke victims, and they did get me a lot of practical instruction on how to do things around the house: load the washer or the dishwasher, maneuver through a narrow bathroom door with a walker, go up and down steps and curbs. However, a lot of the skills they would ordinarily have taught me I had already learned at Heritage Oaks and HealthSouth.

Finally, on July 15, I was released from that hospital to go home. I certainly couldn’t do much on my own at first. My principal exercise was in walking from the back of the house to the front and back to my recliner several times a day. But I started outpatient rehab and began to do things with my friends from church again. In early August, I bought a Hyundai Santa Fe to replace the Saturn totaled in the accident and went back to school when school started.

So Sunday, as I thought about the ways my life has changed in the two years since I ended my hospitalization from the accident, I noted a lot of changes. I’m not fully recovered, and it looks like I may never regain all the abilities I had before the accident. The broken femur stretched the nerve that affects the ability to raise and lower the front part of my foot by flexing the ankle. The doctor thought that would eventually come back, but so far it hasn’t. I’ve figured out a way to compensate most of the time, but I still have to be careful that I don’t drop my toes, stumble, and fall. I have fallen once that way, and I’ve tripped and caught myself many times. So I’ve had to slow down. My left ankle still swells if I stand up too long or walk too far. And my left wrist is still weak and may eventually develop carpal tunnel problems.

While I usually walk with a cane, I’m notorious for putting it down somewhere and walking off without it. Once, in the spring, I was standing by the classroom door when the fire alarm rang, and I was halfway out of the building before I realized the cane was still in the classroom. Oh, well. I made it outside and back with no mishaps. Some of my friends see that as a sign that I may one day not need the cane, but others, those with less respect for their elders, say it’s just proof that I’m absent-minded.

I’m gearing up to start my third year of school after the accident. This may be my last year to teach in public school. I’ve been thinking I might retire and collect my teacher retirement, while teaching in one of the private schools or community colleges in the area. I might do some writing, or I could just be a substitute teacher in Arlington and Mansfield. That would save me a lot on gasoline if I could work closer to home and eliminate the daily 56-mile commute.

Looking back, I can see how far I’ve come in two years, and I’m still hoping to improve further. I’ve also become more sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities. In the fall of 2010 I went to the State Fair of Texas with the assistance of a motorized scooter I rented at the fair. And in that scooter, to most of the people at the fair I was every bit as invisible as Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility made him. I tried to buy my lunch at one of the indoor booths at the fair and was ignored until my sister DJ happened to pass by and asked, “You still don’t have your food?” She ordered for me, and I finally got my lunch. Fair-goers stepped in front of me and cut me off from the rest of my group all day, only noticing my presence if I was unable to stop in time and bumped into them. (No, I didn’t do it on purpose, but it was tempting.)

I’ve become vocal about the rights of the disabled, especially businesses that don’t have enough handicapped spaces or that pile merchandise in the aisles so that the aisles are too narrow to navigate with a walker or wheelchair. Maybe once I retire, I’ll get involved with some advocate groups.

So on this second anniversary, all in all, I think I’m doing pretty well. I’m still able to work, although really enjoying my summer vacation, and I’m starting to look ahead to life after high school—at last, 43 years after most of my classmates left their high school days behind.

A Legacy of Fathers

    Tomorrow is Father’s Day, and once again the stores are full of sport shirts, ties, cologne, and all sorts of sports equipment for the multitudes of fathers being honored on this once-a-year event.

I can recall going the ties, socks, and handkerchief route when I was a child, because those were the sort of things that were in my budget. As I got older (and had more financial resources), I moved on to fishing rods, athletic shoes, and clothes. On Daddy’s last Father’s Day, I took him several new shirts that I thought would be cool and comfortable for him for summer. Although they weren’t the kind he normally wore, he put one on and wore it that day.

Of course, none of us knew then that he was in his last month with us. We’d watched him getting weaker since his collapse before Christmas, but we’d thought originally that, once he got out of the hospital and the rehab center in Temple and back home in Lampasas, where he could have visits from friends and relatives daily, he’d improve. Early on, it seemed that might happen. We’d visit on weekends and take him out to have a Dr Pepper at Storm’s or a burger from Sonic, and he’d seem to enjoy it. Back then no matter how tired he was, he was never ready to be taken back to the nursing home.

That changed, however, later in the spring. We had driven over to San Saba where he had lived as a boy, and he enjoyed the scenery for a while, but as he got tired, he began to be restless and finally expressed a desire to be taken “home.” He’d never referred to the nursing home that way before. By Father’s Day I’d finally almost accepted that the nursing home would be his permanent residence, but that Sunday he seemed in good spirits and really enjoyed the day.

Thinking back to the gifts we gave him over the years, they weren’t much in comparison to what he’d given to us, not only his hard work to provide for the family as long as he was physically able, but his pride in each of his three kids, his excitement whenever we came for a visit, his sadness whenever it was time for us to leave. We never had to wonder if Daddy loved us. He showed his love every day when we were all at home, and by the time we were grown and ready to leave home, we didn’t question it.

That didn’t mean, however, that he wasn’t strict. He believed part of being a good father was in being a disciplinarian whenever we misbehaved. I know from family stories that I was responsible for more than my share of that misbehavior, including getting loose in church one Sunday during the invitation time at the end of the service when I wasn’t much more than a toddler. I ran down one of the aisles on the side of the church, and he stepped out in the aisle to chase me. To my 2-year-old self, that meant “play time with Daddy,” so I began to squeal as he gave chase. He finally caught me by doubling back. I kept looking behind me to see where he was and didn’t notice him coming around in front of me. He took me out and spanked me, and I never interrupted another service in that way again. 

Daddy had learned to be a father from his own father, my grandfather whom we called “Hampa.” Apparently, I couldn’t say Grampa when I first started talking, so what came out was Hampa, and it stuck. Hampa was a quiet, gentle man when I knew him, a man who had worked hard for his family and was a person of integrity. In his earlier years, he had worked as a blacksmith, a fact that did not seem to correspond to his short stature and small, wiry build. Later, when Daddy was a boy, the youngest of three in that family, he had done some sharecropping and the whole family—children, too—picked cotton. They worked hard, and none of the three children went to school for very long, but their memories of that time were good ones: trips to West Texas by covered wagon, fish fries and campouts on the Lampasas River, visits to see relatives on the Gulf Coast.

Because of an experience he had as a young man with his own father, Hampa had resolved to be a good father to his own children, even if they did have to work picking cotton or doing other farm chores. His own father, a man who had 10 children by his first wife and four more when she died and he married her sister, was not a nurturing sort of father. In fact, he was a hard man who was known for telling his children, the boys anyway, that he was not going to support them anymore, that it was time for them to make their own way in the world. This usually happened when they were teenagers, and because Hampa was one of the oldest, this happened to him. In fact, Hampa was working on his own when he received word that his mother was dying, so he went home to visit her on her deathbed. His father met him at the door and refused to let him in to see her.

In my 35 years as a teacher, I’ve seen a lot of students come through my classes who have no real relationship with their fathers, some of them who have never even met their father, and many others who have grown up without even a father figure in their lives. The numbers have seemed to increase in recent years. Unfortunately, statistics say that, by not having personally seen and experienced a father’s love, many of them will also be absentee fathers, producing a new generation of children who grow up essentially without a father’s influence. That certainly was not the case with us.

Besides Daddy’s influence, we also had Hampa and our mother’s foster father, Grandman. Both of them spent time with us and had an influence on our lives. My brother loves to tell about one time that he spent the night with Hampa. They had planned to have cornflakes the next morning for breakfast, but when they checked the refrigerator, all he had was buttermilk, so they are their cornflakes that morning with buttermilk.

Grandman used to tell us some of the wildest tall tales imaginable, and we kids believed every word he said. Grandman was also a hunter, and he loved hunting squirrels. In his youth, squirrels had been a part of the family food supply, and he continued to enjoy eating squirrel all his life. In fact, one of the memories my sister has of visits with Granny and Grandman was looking into their freezer and seeing those little aluminum-foil-wrapped, four-legged bodies.

When my brother married and had three children of his own, I saw him become the same sort of strong, dependable father Daddy had been as Daddy adjusted to a new role as grandfather, or Papaw, as Corey, Graham, and Casey called him. By that time, Hampa and Grandman were no longer with us, but Daddy did the sort of things with his grandchildren that his father and father-in-law had done. Daddy took Corey and Graham fishing and went to watch their T-ball games when they were small, and sat on a tiny chair or on the floor drinking pretend “coffee” as Casey “cooked” in her little kitchen.

Now Corey, Graham, and Casey are grown, and Graham is married and has two little girls. Daddy would have loved spoiling those two little girls, but since he’s not here, my brother has moved into the role of grandfather, or Pops, as Ava Grace and Edy Rose call him, and he treats them like princesses. Graham, their father, having learned from the example of his father and grandfather, spends time with his girls, loving them, providing for them, training them, and disciplining them when necessary.  

We have a legacy of strong fathers in the family, but thinking about them always makes me think of something Jesus said in one of his sermons. As good as human fathers can be, they aren’t perfect, but most fathers do want what is best for their children, even though they may not know how to provide it. As Jesus said, “What kind of father, if his child asked for something to eat, would give him a rock?” (That’s the Ann Hale version, paraphrased.) “So if flawed human fathers try to take care of their children, how much more would our Heavenly Father do for his children?”

The legacy is this: the experience we have of the strong fathers mentioned above, and of other loving fathers among our uncles, cousins, and friends, shows us in a small way just how great God’s love for us is.

May you all have a happy Father’s Day, surrounded by the love and memories of strong, loving fathers among your family members and friends.

Teaching as Hazardous Duty

Last Friday we ended the first semester, as usual, with exams and grading. This year we stretched the exam days from three to four, with the seventh period on Tuesday, first and sixth on Wednesday with shortened class periods in between for second, third, fourth, and fifth periods, second and fifth on Thursday and third and fourth on Friday with students released at 11:30 a.m. both Thursday and Friday. Thursday and Friday afternoons were spent with students making up work or time (classes missed because of too many absences) and teachers trying to finish grading and to get all grades entered into the computer grade book.

Friday afternoon the silence was suddenly pierced by the sound of a student screaming at someone down the hall. The sound came from the direction of the library where the students were making up time. From what I could understand of his sometimes incoherent screams, he believed that he had somehow been wronged by the teacher monitors in the library and, to paraphrase one of the characters in the movie Network, he was mad as could be and not going to take it anymore. For a moment I considered going to the aid of the teacher at whom the student was yelling when it occurred to me that the situation might already be resolved by the time I got down there, and what exactly was I going to do anyway? Hit the student with my cane if he stopped yelling and resorted to physical force? So I stayed in my seat and moments later heard reinforcements arrive in the form of several assistant principals and some other teachers.

The boy sounded angry enough to have caused physical harm when he was yelling, but when the other adults arrived, he calmed down quickly, even when he was escorted off campus. While I personally have never been directly threatened with physical harm, I know teachers who have been, and I’ve dealt with plenty of angry students. In fact, there are a lot of students whose primary emotion seems to be anger. They may have yelled at me, called me a name, or even in one instance, thrown their textbooks, but most have retained enough control not to do anything that could be perceived as assault.

I did have one student last year, while I was still using the walker to get around, who quietly made an adjustment on my walker while I was helping another student. He shortened one leg of the walker by about eight inches and sat there watching to see if I would fall. Fortunately, I reached for the walker without relying on it to hold me, so when it tipped over backwards, it didn’t take me with it. It was only a few days before semester exams, and he was removed from my classroom for the second semester.

Since my accident in 2010, which left me with some difficulties in walking, I have learned to beware of the accidental injuries that could come at school. The hallways are crowded and can be dangerous when students are dashing down them to avoid being tardy. In the halls I generally try to stay close to the walls, just in case. The biggest danger I encounter every day is being run into by someone who isn’t looking where he’s going. One day last week as I came into the building from the parking lot, the same boy ran into me not once but twice. Actually, he didn’t hit me but the little cart I use to transport my things from the car to my room. He cut around behind me and tripped over the cart, then regained his footing, took a couple of steps, and bumped into it again.

That I’ve never had to deal directly with the possibility of physical force is not to say that I haven’t been in some situations where I thought I might get hurt. I tried to break up a fight between two boys one morning as one of them had grabbed the other and was dragging him towards the glass doors of the trophy cases outside the gym. His intent was apparently to ram the other boy’s head into the glass. When he didn’t stop when I told him to, my recourse was to grab the boy he was pulling and try to release him. After a few moments of tug-of-war with the boy in the middle between his assailant and me, the attacker gave a tremendously powerful jerk that nearly pulled me off my feet, but I had slowed him down enough for several coaches and an assistant principal to get there and break up the fight.

I was nearby when a similar fight between girls broke out a couple of years ago. The aggressor began hitting and scratching wildly, while the other girl bent over in a defensive movement that shielded her face and eyes while she wrapped her arms around the other girl’s waist. The first girl continued pounding wildly on the back of the other girl without being able to do any real damage. Another teacher and I pulled them apart and took them to the office.

The first time I ever tried to break up a fight between two girls, I had just made myself a big cup of hot tea. I was on my way to the office when I rounded a corner and saw the two fighting. I stepped between them, thinking that would break up the fighting. It didn’t. They continued to fight over and around me, jerking me from one side of the hall to the other, once even spinning me around in a circle. When help arrived to rescue me, there was no tea left in my cup but a wet trail of Earl Grey recording the path of the fight on the carpet.

My first several years of teaching were without incident. Sure, there were times when students misbehaved and got into trouble, but the first fight I witnessed and tried to break up occurred after a football game in Lampasas between two men who were not students. I had been at the game to take pictures and still had the school camera with me when I saw the two men, who appeared to have been drinking, insulting one another. Summoning up as much of an authoritative attitude as I could, I stepped up to them and asked them to break it up and move along. Since they didn’t seem to be much younger than I, they weren’t too impressed with my “teacher voice.” Still, I kept them apart until a couple of male teachers and a police officer arrived. Later, one of the male teachers who came to my rescue told me that he didn’t know if my standing up to those two guys was the bravest thing he had ever seen or the most stupid. Maybe a little of both.

But it was when I was teaching at Westlake High School in Austin that I had the most serious scare in all of my 35 years as a teacher. I had, as one of my students in a freshman English class, a young man who had just enrolled in school, coming to us from being an inpatient at a mental hospital. He had authority issues and was subject to violent outbursts. I knew from talking with him that he was obsessed with Charles Manson and the book Helter Skelter. But when one of the counselors called me in to tell me that he had written a note to another student telling his plans to kill me and another teacher at school the following Friday, I was shocked. The counselor showed me the note, which was illustrated with drawings of what he planned to do to me and to his Algebra I teacher. According to his drawings, he planned to stab me with what looked like a Bowie knife and shoot the Algebra I teacher in the head.

I was understandably upset, and most of my friends advised me to call in sick that day.  However, the counselor insisted that he didn’t believe the boy would go through with it, so I showed up at school that day with more than a little trepidation. The day was a student dress-up day where kids come to school in costume according to a pep rally theme. Shortly before the middle of the morning, I caught a glimpse of the boy from a distance. He was dressed as Rambo. Obviously, nothing happened, and the Rambo outfit seems oddly humorous now. The counselor was right. But keep in mind that that was before Columbine and the rest of the school shootings. A threat like that would have to be taken seriously now.

And while there does seem to be more of a climate of violence, especially among students, these days, especially where gangs have gained a foothold, the possibility of violent behavior in schools has probably always existed. I can remember hearing my grandmother, who had been a teacher in Fort Stockton in West Texas shortly after the turn of the 20^th century, tell about a problem she had with one of the older boys in her class. She had punished him for something he had done (I don’t remember either his offense or his punishment). The next thing she knew, his mother had strapped on her six-gun and was supposedly coming to the school to “straighten that teacher out.”

Someone must have talked her out of it, though, because the woman never appeared either at the school or at the boarding house where Granny lived. At the end of that school year, Granny decided that life on the frontier was a little too rough for her, so she visited with an old friend from college who introduced her to her brother-in-law. That would be my grandfather, whom we called Grandman, the subject of my first blog post. She married him and taught for many years in the Friendship School, a two-room schoolhouse southwest of the Adamsville Community.

So while I have had a few close encounters with student violence, the majority of my dealings with students have been, if not always cordial, then at least manageable. Frequently, the ones who have caused problems in school for me have come back years later to apologize for their behavior as students. And many of my students over the years who have been great as students have stayed in touch and come to regard me as a friend. As I realize that my teaching career is winding down to a close in the not-too-distant future, I’m happy to say that, overall, the students have been the best part of my job, and the source of most of the “hazardous duty” experiences of my career have come from adults—parents, administrators, and even one school board president. 

Unrealistic Expectations

Two weeks ago, while I was trying to impart some final words of wisdom about Macbeth to senior students who had been ingesting and imbibing a steady stream of sugar in all its many forms throughout the day, I looked forward to the final bell, thinking my Christmas break would go like this: 16 blissful days in which I would quickly and economically finish my Christmas shopping, watch as many Christmas movies on Lifetime and the Hallmark channel as I could find, catch up on the latest happenings in Salem, home to the characters in Days of Our Lives, a soap opera (or daytime drama, to be politically correct) I have followed sporadically since I was in high school, read a stack of books I’ve been wanting time to read, and spend six days in Arkansas with family, observing an extended Christmas this year because of work schedules and obligations of various family members.

I had not counted on attending the funeral of a friend from church a few days before Christmas or the rain and cold temperatures that would keep me inside several days of the break dealing with a headache and aching bones. Nor had I counted on how hard Christmas shopping would be for me, dealing with crowds, lines, and big stores with lots of square footage to cover.

Now, with the return to school imminent on Monday, I look back at the previous two weeks and realize that I did accomplish much of what I set out to do. The Christmas presents were bought, wrapped, and given. I saw a lot of TV movies about the true spirit of Christmas and learned that not much had happened in Salem since Thanksgiving. The days in Arkansas were filled with visiting with family and friends and enjoying the always plentiful, delicious foods and treats of the season, leaving me with a few extra pounds to target for one of my New Year’s resolutions. And though so far, I’ve only read three books of the stack I set aside, I still have the rest of today and Saturday and Sunday, so maybe I can get through another one or two.

Were my expectations for the Christmas break too ambitious or unrealistic? Probably, especially in the size of the bag of books I took to Arkansas and back. But, at the same time, I believe setting goals is important. A friend of mine from my college days at UT-Arlington, Rollin DeLap, who was director of the UTA Baptist Student Union three of my four years there, used to say this: “He who shoots at nothing hits it every time.” In other words, without a goal, we fail to accomplish much. Proverbs 29:18 says it this way: “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Now, some commentators limit the word “vision” to some sort of prophetic revelation from God, but considering Solomon’s wisdom throughout the book of Proverbs, I believe the verse can be applied to individuals are well as to societies or countries. Vision, that dream for something better, a goal to attain, is what propels us forward, both individually and as a group. When President Kennedy set the goal for the US to land men on the moon by the end of the 1960s, few thought it was a realistic goal. The American space program, quickly cobbled together after the Russian launch of Sputnik, had more failures than successes initially. At the time, it seemed that the Russians would dominate space, that the American effort was a case of “too little too late.” Yet in July of 1969, the world watched as Neil Armstrong took that “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

I’ve read some authors who encourage readers to set “achievable goals” to avoid becoming discouraged and giving up on goals like weight loss or financial stability. But I think a lot of people set goals that require little or no effort, goals that are certainly achievable but, in reality, accomplish little. I think Rollin’s advice about aiming high, knowing that you may not hit the mark you set but that you’ll do more with a goal than without, is sound.

As I look into the New Year, there are some new goals I plan to set, many of them seeming beyond my capability and past performances, but all the same, I want to take a shot at them and just see what happens and what I can accomplish by this time next year.

After all, at this time last year I only had the desire to write a blog, and now I have not only done so but have received some encouraging words from people who have read the entries. And if every goal I set is not met, what of it? At least I’ve had the experience of trying. Thomas Edison did not regard his more than 2,000 attempts to find something to serve as the filament for his light bulb as failures. He said he just found more than 2,000 materials that would not work. In the words of the poet Robert Browning, “… a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,/Or what’s a heaven for?”

So as I look forward to the year 2012, I plan to try to stretch myself, to reach for things possibly beyond my grasp, to attempt things beyond my capabilities, to achieve what I can, and to learn from what the world calls “failures.”         

Home for Christmas

When I was in college, I remember looking forward to going home for Christmas. In that almost four-weeks break between the end of the fall semester and the start of the spring semester, I could rest up, sleep late, read all I wanted to, and spend time with the friends and family I had known most of my life.

Later, after I moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area and began living with my sister, we started doing Christmas here, first in one of the two apartments we lived in and later at our house. Our parents would come up and stay as we used to do with them. My brother’s family started coming from Arkansas for a few days before Christmas when we lived in the two bedroom apartment over on the east side of Fort Worth—nine of us in a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment. We were crowded, but we were family, and it was fun for the short time we were together.

When we bought the house, we had more room for everyone to sleep, and more room to spread out for the gift exchanges. After Daddy died in 2002, home for Christmas began to mean the trip to Conway, AR, to spend the holiday with my brother’s family, including my sister-in-law’s extended family. Mom was with us in the Christmas of 2002, and then she went on to join Daddy in 2003, so that was the first Christmas we had without our parents. I had read a book then about that final going home for Christmas, spending it in heaven with the One Whose birthday we celebrate, as well as with relatives and friends who moved on before us. What a great homecoming awaits us then! 

This week, a good friend from my Sunday school class, Jerry Kilgore, went home for Christmas. She had been in the hospital since suffering a massive heart attack a month earlier, and although there had been no change in her condition during that time, her friends and family were praying for divine intervention, that she would be restored to good health. She was only 52, just a few weeks older than my sister, and nine years younger than I am. 

In fact, not knowing that Jerry had already moved on into the mansion that was prepared for her, I prayed that very prayer for divine intervention in her health yesterday morning in Sunday school, as well as for her family and the exhaustion they were feeling after spending much of the last month at the hospital where there was little encouraging news. God did intervene, but not in the way we imagined. He healed her completely by leaving her damaged, imperfect body down here on earth for a perfect one in heaven. “When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ (from Isaiah 25: 8) ‘Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ (from Hosea 13: 14, recorded in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 15: 54-55 NIV). 

Or in the words of John Donne, one of my favorite poets from the 17th century:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. 
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, 
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die. 

I’ve modernized the spelling, but Donne’s words still carry comfort today. For the Believer, physical death isn’t an end. It’s like falling asleep and waking up in a place more wonderful than we can imagine, like walking through a doorway separating time and eternity where we are surrounded by our family and friends, never to be separated again.

And while Jerry was a great friend, and all her friends at church, at work, and in all other phases of her life are sad that our time with her is over in this life, we know that she will be there in the Life to come, waiting for us with all who have gone on before us, and there we will all be together forever. For now, we’ll enjoy Christmas with our friends and family here, missing Jerry but knowing she is really home for Christmas this year, home for a celebration that we can’t even imagine until we join her there.

A True Man

Yesterday, Dec. 16, would have been my father’s 97^th birthday. He was born Dec. 16, 1914, in a house in Wood County near Quitman. He was the youngest child of Joseph Thomas and Beulah Moore Hail. They named their third child Truman Preston, baby brother to big sister Saba Irene and brother Vernon Ray.

The family moved around a lot in his early years, from Wood County in East Texas down to the Beaumont-Port Arthur area on the Gulf Coast, and back to Central Texas where they lived at various times in San Saba, Lampasas, and Kempner. My grandfather had worked as a blacksmith, but the family mainly worked as sharecroppers, and even the children were expected to work. When it was time to pick cotton, the children, too, pulled those heavy bags up and down the rows.

In many ways, life was pretty primitive for them. When Daddy was just a little boy, the family went out to Scurry County to visit relatives, traveling by covered wagon and camping out in fields along the way. When a tremendous thunderstorm came up, they took refuge in a church until the storm ended.

Because of the family’s frequent moves and the fact that the children were needed to work, none of the children spent a lot of time in school. But because he was the youngest, Truman’s schooling ended after the second grade. He would start second grade in one school, then the family would move and he’d be out of school for a while, so when he reenrolled, he’d be put back in second grade. Finally, after this happened several years, his parents decided that his time for schooling was over.

His lack of education was something that he would regret for the rest of his life, although he did try to learn as much as he could on his own.  He figured out some way to do basic math. He’d learned addition and subtraction in school, then memorized multiplication tables and learned some basic division on his own. Years later as an air conditioning and heating contractor in the booming housing market around Fort Hood in the 1960s, he developed his own forms of algebra and geometry to be able to figure the size and amount of air conditioning duct work necessary for the size and configuration of the house and the air conditioning unit and amount of air to be moved. I watched him do it and still don’t understand how, just from his measurements and his careful consideration of what looked to me like random pencil marks on a scrap of paper, he could come up with the exact amount needed for the job.

His one chance to see the world came in the 1940s when he joined the army in World War II. After some time in England, he took part of the invasion of North Africa, spending some time in Tunisia where he picked almonds from the trees. Later he went to Italy to take part in the liberation of Rome. He was in Paris when the end of the war came. From his time in Italy he told stories of swimming in the clear water of the Mediterranean and of seeing the Italian countryside including the Roman ruins.  When my sister DJ was in college and I was a young reporter for the newspaper in Copperas Cove, we were all visiting in Arlington one weekend when the Pompeii Exhibit came to Dallas. DJ and I planned to go, but we couldn’t persuade Mom and Dad to go with us. It was a cold winter day, and we were going to have to stand outside in the cold in line for a while to get into the exhibit, so they decided to stay at DJ’s apartment while she and I went to Dallas. When we returned home later that day, Daddy proceeded to describe in detail everything we had seen.  Finally, I asked him how he could possibly know what was in the exhibit, and he said he had already seen it. “Where?” I asked. His answer—Pompeii.

Probably because of his own history, he wanted his children to do well in school and to go on to college. Consequently, all three of us earned college degrees, and he was so proud of that. Like any proud father, he was quick to boast about his kids’ accomplishments. That continued on to his grandchildren, too.

Daddy loved joking with people, and he could also tell some entertaining stories.  He enjoyed talked to people and would strike up a conversation with just about anyone. We made several trips to North Carolina in the 1960s and ‘70s to visit friends there, and every time he stopped for gas, he would get back in the car knowing a portion of the life story of the attendant who waited on him or another traveler he had run into while we were there. Once, on the last family trip to the East Coast he was able to make, we spent a weekend in Washington, D.C. He wasn’t able to walk for any length of time then, and we were planning to go to the FBI Building for the tour. Mom had always been a fan of detective stories, and she was excited about seeing the demonstration where the FBI agents fired a machine gun like those of the 1930s gangster days. Daddy couldn’t hold up for all that walking and standing in line, so we dropped him off at the Old Post Office, which was by then a collection of souvenir and specialty shops.  He would sit there and people watch while we went to the FBI exhibit. However, the crowds were bigger than usual, and we were gone much longer than I had anticipated. We all thought he was going to be upset that we had been gone so long. Instead, he greeted us with descriptions of all the people he had met and the stories he had heard that day. He was apparently thoroughly entertained by the complete strangers whose lives intersected with his for a few minutes that day.

Daddy was a country boy at heart. He wasn’t comfortable in heavy traffic and large crowds unless there was someone else who would drive so that he could just watch the scenery. He really didn’t care much for big cities, although he did take us to Dallas occasionally when we were young, and he took me to the zoo in San Antonio before I was a year old. Still, the first time I mentioned Washington or Philadelphia or especially New York, he didn’t have much to say about the proposed trip. In the early 1980s I took a trip to all three of those cities, and Daddy and Mom came with me.  He liked Washington, as he had been there in 1976 for the Bicentennial while I was in grad school in North Carolina. He liked Philadelphia, too, because there was so much to see. Because he had missed out on high school, his knowledge of American history was spotty, but he soaked up information on trips to museums, and Philadelphia had many sites he did know about, including the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall, so he enjoyed Philadelphia.

But he was more than a little anxious about going to New York City. I finally got him to agree to go if we didn’t drive all the way into the city, so we drove from Philadelphia to Trenton, N.J. where we took the commuter train into Penn Station. When we walked out onto the street with the tall buildings and traffic and hundreds of people on the sidewalks, I think he was ready to turn around right then and go back. As we crossed the street, a large man who was leaning against the building suddenly turned to face us and blocked our way. From the way he was dressed, he could have been a gang member or street thug.  At that point, even I was thinking, We’re about to be mugged. But he grinned, pointed his finger at Daddy, who, as usually, was wearing his summer straw Stetson and his big Texas belt buckle, and said, “Let me guess. Texas, right? I have some friends in Houston, and I was at Fort Hood when I was in the army.” That was all it took. Daddy had made another friend, and he stood there on the corner of a busy New York street chatting about home while busy New Yorkers bustled past the tourists stopping to talk. That was the start to what was an exceptional day, and by the end of the day, Daddy had met a fair share of New Yorkers, a security guard at the Statue of Liberty, some people on the subway, and even a couple in line at the Empire State Building who lived on the next street over from my home in Austin.

Daddy enjoyed hunting and fishing, and our menus when I was young were sometimes supplemented with venison steaks cooked like chicken friend steak or with catfish he’d caught on a fishing trip. He had a favorite fishing hole over near San Saba, and he used to there with his brother, my Uncle Ray.  Uncle Ray’s grandson Danny tells about a time when as a young man he went to that fishing hole for an afternoon of fishing. He took some time getting set up, then tossed his line out a few times only to hear a gruff voice say, “Hey, boy, you’re scaring off the fish.” It was Daddy and Uncle Ray, who had been watching him since he arrived.

For all of his strength and outdoorsmanship and his intense physical labor all his life as a cotton picker, farmer, street department worker, railroad track maintenance worker, school bus driver, mechanic, electrician, and air conditioning contractor, Daddy was also a family man, and he loved his children and grandchildren. When Casey, the youngest grandchild, wanted Papaw to play with her in her Little Tykes kitchen, he would go sit in a little chair and let her fix him numerous cups of “coffee” and plates of pretend food. He also enjoyed going to Little League games of the two grandsons, Corey and Graham. But he didn’t have to go anywhere or do anything special if family were involved. He was just as content sitting there watching TV with one of us. Being together was more important than what we might be doing.  He always looked forward to our visits and hated to think about us leaving. When he was in the hospital and nursing home in his last months, he still looked forward to having company as often as possible. He loved his family and friends, and almost anyone could be his friend if that person were willing to sit and talk “a spell.”

Next July will mark the 10^th anniversary of Daddy’s death, and yet in many ways it seems as though he is still with us. Our memories are especially strong this time of year, but he’s here in other ways, too, as in the values he taught us and in the relationships I see between my brother and his children and grandchildren. One of Daddy’s long-time friends, Marvin Moore of Devine, died shortly before he did. Those two grown men, when I was a child, were always up to mischief when they were together. And if there was water around, one—or maybe both—of them would eventually be going in, usually fully clothed. Both were Christians, so I’m sure the last ten years have been pretty lively in heaven. And if there’s water there, that “crystal sea” mentioned in some of the old hymns, I suspect that they’ve met up with some of the other fishermen there, from apostles to other family members, for some time out on the water, where most likely, laughter fills the air and someone is going to get wet.