Dear former teachers,
I have to apologize for the fax. In order to write this
letter correctly, I feel that I should be writing in long hand, with beautiful elegant script, on thick vellum. Unfortunately, my organizational skills are only marginally better than they were in high school, my handwriting infinitely worse, and the supply of high quality paper on island is rather suspect. I cannot craft the sort of graceful letter that Ms. Lind deserves and must submit this clunky fax instead."Graceful" has never been a word associated with me, without a corresponding frosting of irony. I have the inadvertent destructive power of a drunken bear in a greenhouse. During adolescence, I was even worse. My voice ricocheted up and down octaves, my clothes didnt fit, and hair grew everywhere. I was an odd and mistimed collection of feet, elbows, hands, and knees
I first learned of grace from Miss Lind. To this day, I can see her entering my freshman classroom, breezing in through the door, accompanied by the winds of the Muses. I dont remember the papers and the books ever appearing to weigh her down, so much as they were props. She carried them with the insouciance of an actress, as if they needed to be carried for the role, and then left at the side of the stage. Noone held a Warriners quite the way she did. Every gesture had an economy of movement and a meaning that we could only aspire to, but never quite reach. I sat in her class and tried to dance with her, but instead lurched and stumbled all around the room. From my current vantage point, I can see that all of us were lurching around the room, but we were all reaching above ourselves. The mark of a great teacher, I have since learned, is not how far she can bring you, but how high she makes you reach.
During my freshman year, I wrote very poorly and had to reach very high indeed. Every one of my overweight compositions writhed and blathered about the page. Miss Lind spent many periods in her office, giving ear as I trudged and stumbled my way through an essay. My poor sentences missed cues, stepped on lines, whispered into the curtains or shouted into the balcony. She listened to each poor player strut and fret his hour upon my page, and then forced me to make them behave. With much grumbling, muttering, and more than a few firings, my sentences stepped through their paces and, at an odd moment or two, achieved grace.
I remember other things from my high school English career, and other books. However, I have forgotten more than I can remember and am embarrassed at the gaps left behind. One of the cruel realities of teaching, I believe, is that even the best of students remember very little of the content after a few years. Instead, they do something far more powerful. They absorb our attitudes and incorporate them into their beliefs. I remember none of the physics I learned from Doc Belote, but I still hold onto the fun he had. Mrs. Brodeurs biology has long since been recycled, but some of her systematic efficiency remains (without the la-la). Miss Lind remains the voice of my editor. Every essay, letter, or note attempts dance with her.
I am still the same man I was in high school. My girlfriend speaks seriously of the need to childproof her home and I find a way to spill something every day. However, when I sit down to read my own works, I see the director rise from the fifth row of the auditorium. She waits with folded arms, flaming hair, and a patient smile as the action attempts to unfold before her. She listens and repeats and listens and repeats until the ideas dance with an economy of movement and the even the laggards strain to achieve grace. And when they do, they owe it all to her.
Thank you very much.
Bob Barsanti