The Superpower

 October 19, 2020

Kelly Corrigan is a brilliant writer and thinker who is conducting thoughtful interviews on PBS. In one such interview, she mused that “Presence is the elusive superpower.” 

It is difficult to be fully present: not to look around the corner to a better time (fingers crossed), or to the past to alleged golden times gone by. In this 2020, with the status quo akin to mayhem, I understand the glimpses forward and back. Fingernails on the door jamb. Whiplash toward the memories.

It’s a crazy paradox to me: I’ve spent so much of my life haunted or enchanted by the past, or so hopeful of the future. Even in the midst of all this present, I savor another time.

Bear with me: in these times I get more time with my sweet son, as he is virtually learning at home a lot, and I am in and out between classes. I teach students so grateful they are in the world, as am I. I treasure every day I am not sick or swabbed for illness, even though I’m surrounded by students in and out of quarantine every day. People I love are safe, for now. And those who have suffered losses are even more precious to me now, in the wake of the struggle.

When you’ve made a mess of things (as I have, in my moments that might be more than moments), and you rise up from the refuse to refuge of new chances and friends and family and opportunities to start anew, even a pandemic and a democracy with tears in its fabric can’t break you.

I still have a rearview mirror that haunts me with its images that are sometimes larger than they appear. And I’ve a future that could sketch it all up. But I’m grateful for being present these days: grateful that even in the crazy 2020, there is a God so much greater than all of it all.

I don’t have the superpower of living completely in the present. But I have the cape. I should probably check the laundry, but it’s here...

And it’s mine. My choice to face the day.

I’ll take it.

Our Skin

March 18, 2020


It may sound trite, but tonight I’m hearing Atticus Finch’s observation that it is quite difficult to understand things from the point of view of another until we climb inside his (or her) skin and walk around in it. When I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time in 1989 and taught it first in 1996, I didn’t picture the scenario we are in now.


But it’s true. As truths tend to be.


What is happening now to us all is different and it is the same. We are each experiencing this new reality of isolation and dismantled normalcy and fear and we tend to see it from the confines of our own skin. Whether I am a teacher who has to reconfigure my strategy to deliver learning, or a health care worker who is on the front lines and exhausted and in peril, or an hourly worker who is losing livelihood each day without work, a CEO struggling to keep an empire afloat, a worker doing the job while at risk, a student who has to figure out a whole new way of learning, an athlete who has lost a season or a championship, an elderly person secluded and frightened: we all have a mountain to climb. And that is to say nothing of the sick. Oh, my…


I have observed in past days people seeking to help one another and ease these burdens (which restores with great joy my faith in humanity) and those somehow needing to prove that their burdens are the greatest to be borne (what?).


Whatever skin you’re in, the 2020 you rise to each day surely proves that the realities of your neighbors are unique and relevant and important: our skin is different and the same. It’s not a contest. Atticus was right: understanding is the thing. And it might just be the greatest lesson a pandemic can teach us. We shall see.


“Experience is a brutal teacher,” C.S. Lewis wisely noted, “but you learn. By God, you learn.”

A Viking Love Letter

February 19, 2020


Today a former student of mine posted a picture of some t-shirts from his high school debate career. He had stumbled onto them, and it has inspired a great deal of goodwill on the FB front. What it inspired in me is more than goodwill. It is a sea of memories of a time that I’ve never really wrapped my head around. I probably never will.


Coaching debate at Parkview from the late nineties to 2014 was—next to my biological children—the greatest gift of my life. I walk a fine line here: I quit after 18 years and some of my heroes and friends are still duking it out weekend after weekend. I didn’t split the atom or cure the cancer. I’m not in line for any hall of fame. And clichés aside: this is not about me. But for a slice of time, I got to cavort with some of the most splendid, talented, driven, brilliant kiddos around. We all came together at Parkview High School in rooms 301 and 237 (one with air conditioning and one without) and we created a team that was larger than any one of us. It was a wee bit magical, as I see it in my rearview mirror.


When I began teaching at Parkview, I was following two legends. Bob Bilyeu and Brett Miller were giants in speech and debate in the state and the nation, and I managed to weasel my way in on their coattails. The pressure I felt to continue a tradition of excellence was self-imposed and often backfired: my temper and my ego-driven need to prove myself sometimes hurt kids. I see those scenes in my mind’s eye and they pierce me still. I know that now and I knew it then as soon as it happened. But I wasn’t fully formed and my ambition was focused inward. That was the mistake.

I never dropped the ambition (I think my former students will agree), but as I grew up as a human being and as a coach, I began to see the damned forest AND the proverbial the trees. I saw people, not competitors. I saw pride in themselves, not in me. Not always. I’m still flawed Nance. I still hurt kids and kicked myself after. If you’re reading this and you’re among them (the likelihood is 100%, in all probability), I’m sorry. 


What happened, over time, and what I think happens to leaders in positions of success, is that I truly felt like I was along for the ride. We became symbiotic, those Vikings and me: I needed them, they needed me. And what that created was a special formula that I wish I could bottle. The unbottleable result, however, was weekend after weekend of kids who largely came from some variation of difficulty and who faced their counterparts throughout the state and the country without fear.  “When they hear you’re from Parkview,” I would tell them before the first tournament of the year, “they might pee a little.” The squad was proud of the reputation they carried with them. And the thing I hope they knew—and they know now, these years later as they triumph in their own adult lives—is what it meant to me to lead them off the bus and into the school where they would carry that confidence. I hope they carry it with them still.


So if you fine Vikings still have those “Undefeated” or “We bust ours so we can kick theirs” t-shirts, I hope you remember all the late nights and sketchy motels and bus rides and evidence-chasing and practices. And I hope you have some gilded memories of the moments for which you wouldn’t trade any of it. I sure do.

The Thread

The Thread


41 years ago tomorrow my mom died. There is always a thread of that loss that weaves its way through me. It isn’t the fabric of my life’s apparel. It was for a time. No more.

But January 20 remains a marker of survival: a mother who couldn’t, a family who could.

Today the strangest thing happened. My precious Halpert and I decided to make a swing by the cemetery and say “hideedo” to our people (I drove), and just as I turned in, one of my dearest friends texted to tell me her mom has just died. I stopped the car. And I began to survey the losses sustained by the people I love: in the last few years, two of my soulmates have lost their dads, one a mom, another friend a dad, and one friend has lost both parents, and now this. “We aren’t going to weddings any more,” Beth said, as we went on our (near) daily walk through her neighborhood after I stood over Mom’s grave and cried the tears that flow without provocation. It just happens.

As a child, I was the only one with a dead parent. I wasn’t proud of it. Don’t get me wrong. But it made me different. I knew that.

Now my friends are joining the club to which no one wants a membership. Their pain is different than mine: they knew these parents, and these parents raised them. Pain is pain. And it is acute and fades not slowly. We need each other when there is pain, and when there isn’t.

Loss is wretched. Anticipating it, experiencing it, regretting it, and mourning it are not for the faint of heart. Nor is this blog post, I suppose. To my people, though, who suffer loss (and that is us one and all), the congruent truth is just as Mr. Rogers described when horror strikes: “look for the helpers.”

I have been surrounded by the void-filling, giving helpers every day since January 20, 1979. That’s the anniversary: 41 years of life’s fabric woven by the helpers.

Many, many thanks to you all. In the vast hereafter, Grace Ann Rowe thanks you, too. Of that, I am sure.

Alex

Jan 5, 2020

It’s been a couple strange days. I haven’t felt terrific but I have this terrific dog who sticks like glue to her Nance.

I am watching the Golden Globes and hearing the adorable Olivia Colman remark, “I’m a bit boozy. I didn’t expect this.” And Michelle Williams just delivered an eloquent plea for us all to vote in 2020. And Brad Pitt asked us to be kind tomorrow when we have the chance, after saying hello to his folks, who live here in Springtown.

But my heart aches for the Holdens. Alex Holden is 25 and has been missing since New Year’s Eve. He debated for me at Parkview for four years in my latter years as a coach. My absolute favorite thing about Alex was that—no matter what trouble he was in, no matter what hooey I was throwing at him as his demanding coach—he would grin. And I would melt. He charmed me when I didn’t want him to. He just had a way.

His talent was evident as a debater and as a performer. And he always swept his hair aside in an aristocratic way that cracked me up. Our high school was a place rooted in equal opportunity and lacked an element of fancy. That is a good thing. Alex had a way of relating to everyone but still being elegant. That’s it. He brought elegance to that debate room.

His senior year we faced an issue in which Alex’s credibility was challenged. At one point, in an isolated moment, he thought I doubted him. My kids called me “Wedge” then. It was my nickname. He looked at me with tears in his eyes and asked, “Wedge, don’t you believe me?”

I did believe him. And the look on his face at that moment is all I see now when I think of him. He is missing. Something has happened to this dear soul. He has family and friends who are desperate to see him again. I am among them.

So on this strange Sunday evening, I keep waiting for a word that is good. With Halpert asleep on my feet and glued to me, I hope Alex is okay, and he knows that we would all give anything for him to walk through the door, brush his hair aside, and grin that charming, slightly bull-shitting grin we love.

It’s been a strange several days. I pray I can recount them some day as miraculous. Come home, Alex.

The Intersection

December 28, 2019

Yesterday several roads converged, as they are like to do. This intersection consisted of Brandy Harris, “Little Women,” and Don Imus. 

Let me explain.

In my glorious days at Parkview, I had the great fortune to meet, know, love, and also coach alongside Brandy Enver Harris. This young lady was a force of nature: she was brilliant, wise beyond her years, a performer beyond all measure of excellence, and dominated Humorous Interpretation. That means this gal could take a script and—in one body—become a host of hysterical, pee-in-your-pants characters. And here’s the thing: Brandy wasn’t even my student. She belonged to one of my best friends, who coached across town. But, man, did I love her. Later in her collegiate career I had one incredible year in which she assisted me and we coached together. Then she took over the program in which she had competed at Hillcrest and we duked it out, if that is what you call two dear friends leading the troops at competing schools with limited resources and hearts for kids. We had the best time. 

Brandy has since become a champion for kids in our community. She is a BIG DEAL. She texted me last Sunday when I was having a particularly bad day. We keep up with one another via the miracle of social media, but we hadn’t seen each other’s smiling faces in a couple years. She didn’t know how her text would pull me from the mire, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t. And we met yesterday for a marathon lunch during which my faith in humanity was restored and my admiration for all things this giant in the land of taking care of the kids who need it most was elevated to new heights.

Following this glistening lunch, I had a date planned with another unique beauty: my daughter and I went to see “Little Women.” I read this novel in 8th grade and reported on it at length for Mrs. Kretschmar at Pershing in 1988. I loved the Winona Ryder version 25+ years ago. And I found this new offering elegant and soul-churning. Of course, it takes little more than female empowerment and care and a dead sister and strong mother to send me into self-searching, warm-tears-down-the-cheek-deluge. It was beautiful. Gracie agreed.

But at the closing credits, I switched my phone alive to discover that Don Imus was dead. Let me explain: politics and controversy aside, this man could interview like no other. Until his 2018 retirement, I would wade through the irritants that might swirl about him to find insight and interest in the news of the day. When my babies were babies and I had to drag a little transistor radio along in the bleak darkness of morning, I would run to the sound of Imus. He was crusty and brilliant and incredibly benevolent, even when he screwed up. He made me think. A lot. His guests made me think. And he died yesterday, at 79. I found myself taken aback at my grief.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. This I know. Yesterday was particularly vacuum-free. But I basked in the glow of moments that converged to make it a day worth remembering. So, to my Brandy and to friends in your life who remind you what matters and that time and space are not factors in the true closeness of the friendship; to all the Little Women whose wonder may or may not become the stuff of the cinema; and even to legends we may never meet but who play a daily role for decades in our understanding the universe: thank you. 

I don’t love the holidays. But this day, smack in the middle of holiday time, turned my head and my heart. We all need days like that. 

I certainly did.

The Encore

October 26, 2019

When I was in second grade, I had a special part playing the xylophone in a musical performance for the whole school.

When I was in second grade, I was in a new school, a new house, with a new stepmom and a host of concerns in my little bowl-cut adorned head.

I told my very busy father (also in a new job as leader of the SMS athletic department) the wrong time for the assembly at which I would play the xylophone. He was planning to bring my Nanny and Auntie Grace to watch me. (He did stuff like that: showing up on the playground to say goodbye before leaving for a trip; always being the one to take me to see Dr. Palcheff, the magical pediatrician; attending a parent-teacher conference in the same year when I wrote him a note in my disheveled desk saying “I know it’s a mess, Dad, but life is hard” to assuage his judgment of my housekeeping faults, which haunt me still.)

This time, though, I really blew it.

When my little class returned cross-legged to our spot on the cafeteria/gym floor after our big performance and the third and fourth graders had taken the stage, I looked over to see my Pops guiding my beloved grandmother (in her grey leather coat that I can still smell) and her sister in their matching wigs down the stairs into the cafeteria/gym. They had missed it. It was my fault. I buried my bowl cut in my hands.

I don’t remember what happened next. I don’t think I cried. Maybe I did. I do know that I just wanted to vanish and that we returned to Mrs. White’s classroom, and we hadn't been seated for long when we were ushered back to our places in the cafeteria/gym and reprised our performance for an audience of three.

That little 8-year-old with the unibrow and the bad hair is still in the mix, as is the memory of the day that was saved. Sometimes, you just need one more shot with the xylophone; and someone who sees the need for the encore.