A Really Long Commute

This week I have been waking up at 5:15 every morning to be behind the wheel of my Honda Pilot by 6, so that I can be at Yale by 8 to get ready to teach my morning class at 9 a.m. I’m wiped out and my brain’s fuzzy, but it’s Thursday and this week is almost over.

I do love teaching, but I love it only if I can do it intensely for a short time, whether it’s writing workshops in Missouri or an investment analysis class at Yale. I have taught semester-long courses, and I end up throwing myself into them too, but I know I also don’t do much writing, or much of anything else for that matter, because I think students deserve a great experience in my class. It’s what I owe them as a teacher. So I teach, but only in short bursts, and then I return to my life.

What has kept me going, 81.5 miles from New York to New Haven in the morning, and 82 miles back to Manhattan in the late afternoon, besides hearing how well Sonia Sotomayor has handled the endangered, antsy white men of the Senate Judiciary Committee, besides my gulps of java, besides NPR, 1010 WINS, CBS News Radio, besides the occasional deer a few feet from the asphalt of the claustrophobic yet verdant Merritt Parkway, has been the speed of the car itself. That is, my going has kept me going.

I have pondered this phenomenon in my writing as well. I begin a story, and at a certain moment, which could be an early draft, the story itself begs to be told the right way, the story demands that I finish it, a certain movement has been created, by me, and it must be finished. Or else, what? I’m not really quite sure. Or else I don’t live up to what I expected of myself or the story, or else I don’t live up to what I wanted in my brain. Or else I created something, but only half-created it, so that it doesn’t have a life of its own. When something I started is not completed, the story, the task, and I are not fulfilled.

One lesson I have learned about myself is that I must be careful what I start. If I start the drive to New Haven, I will finish it. If I commit myself to teaching this class, then I must finish it. If I create characters in a novel and they reach a point where they are speaking to me on the page, but in garbled language and confusing situations, speaking yet not being heard clearly, then I must finish this story. I must rewrite it. I must make it so that these proto life-forms can reach their fruition. When these characters can be heard, somehow, in them, I will be heard too. ‘Heard’ does not mean what the characters are saying is ‘obvious.’ What ‘heard’ means is that the characters are true to themselves. The best characters for me say many things to different readers.

I perhaps say many different things to many different readers with this blog. I am not trying to be obscure; I am just trying to be real. Why we extol the personal experience of Alito as a judge, yet demand Sotomayor distance herself from her personal experience as a judge, why movies nowadays must always have good endings, why politicians never admit mistakes and change their policies publicly, and why news reporters believe pointing out glib contradictions is the epitome of free expression, and not the death of it, I don’t know. I don’t know these things; they don’t seem real to me. I am just driving to New Haven every day and watching the road. That’s real enough for me.

The Show-Me State

I am in Independence, Missouri, the home of Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the U.S. Indeed, I am staying at this wonderful place called the Inn at Ophelia’s, across the street from Clinton’s Soda Shop where Harry, as a young teenager, was a soda jerk. This is my second visit to Independence and the greater Kansas City metropolitan area to teach writing workshops, and I can’t get enough of the Midwest.

A different sensibility exists here, which reminds me of Ysleta, the colonia on the outskirts of El Paso where I grew up. It’s a genteel quality, without the naiveté of the small town. People open doors for each other. Seldom are voices raised. And there is a preoccupation with chatting about life and neighbors, the ordinary and everyday, which I believe strengthens that invisible social fabric that communicates ‘we belong together on these plains.’ Of course, here ‘la hora social’ is not in Spanish, as it is on my parents’ porch in Ysleta, but in a deadpan, measured, humorously ironic version of English.

My friends who have invited me to Missouri warn me the other side of this genteel friendliness is that people will talk behind your back. In New York, I counter, people say whether or not they like you to your face. I’m not sure which is better, but I do know both are façades. The forced smile goes away, and becomes easy, once you initiate a conversation and volunteer a bit about yourself to a stranger in Missouri. On the Upper Westside, or anywhere in New York, the hard outer shell might soften too, once you show people you don’t want anything, you will gladly help them, yet you’re not a dupe.

I also noticed that my slow-talking, which aggravates my wife in New York, is not slow at all in Missouri. Perhaps this is a function of growing up in a semi-rural corner of Texas, where you weigh your words carefully before saying anything. Too much talk reveals too much of who you are, and I prefer to keep some of my self to myself. Who I am is not revealed by blabbing. I prefer to listen, absorb the situation and the people, and understand them. That internal life reveals as much, or more, about who I am as whatever comes out of my mouth. Is that a small town mentality? A Western one? Or the shyness of being an outsider in the world?

The reason I came to Independence, Missouri was Ron Clemons. I met Mr. Clemons in 1978 when I was a teenager at the Blair Summer School for Journalism. It was a seminal trip for me, because it was the first time I lived away from home. Pearl Crouch, my journalism teacher at Ysleta High, had encouraged me to apply for a scholarship to Blair, and I won it from Gannett and The El Paso Times. I was terrified, but I also wanted to become a writer, maybe even a journalist.

At Blair, I met this funny and tough man, the assistant director at Blair, Mr. Clemons. I didn’t have him for a teacher, but I listened to his stories, the humor as well as the lessons about life. When I was accepted to Harvard College a year later, he sent me an inscribed hardback copy of Roget’s Thesaurus, which I still have on my shelf.

Thirty years later, I had dinner with Mr. Clemons again. Molly Clemons, his wife and a great educator herself, was also with us. Mr. Clemons was still telling stories.

One he told tonight was about a woman who wrote to him years after she had had Mr. Clemons as a journalism teacher in Independence, Missouri. He taught at Truman High for thirty-seven years and is a legend in high school journalism. Mr. Clemons recounted how one day he received this letter. The writer wrote about how Mr. Clemons had singled out and read an excellent lead she had written to the class. It was a small thing, Mr. Clemons said at the dinner table, the kind of thing you don’t think about as a teacher. He remembered the woman as a good writer who was exceptionally quiet.

It was the first time, the woman continued in the letter, someone had singled her out in school. It made all the difference in the world to her. Meanwhile at home, this woman had been abused. She escaped her troubles, earned a college education, and became a mother. As she wrote to Mr. Clemons, “I’m not one of your famous students. I’m just a mom and I have a job, but I’m happy. You may have forgotten me, but I have never forgotten you, Mr. Clemons.”

As Mr. Clemons retold this story tonight, he took off his glasses and wiped the tears from his eyes. “This letter got to me. It was such a small thing I did. . . .” he said, his voice trailing off, and turned away. What I thought over dinner was why don’t we have more high school journalism teachers like Ron Clemons.

Praise for Teachers Past and Present

We have just finished an exhausting process: deciding which school our fourteen-year-old would attend for high school. In New York City this is a crazy process, in part because of the incredible choices you have: specialized and selective public schools, and private schools with a variety of unique cultures. As we discussed and debated the different choices my son Aaron had, I was reminded of how important teachers have been in my life, and how the teachers at the Bank Street School for Children, Aaron and Isaac’s current K-8 school, are transforming them into the accomplished young men they are today.

In grade school, at South Loop School over thirty years ago, Mr. Preston Smith taught me I could be someone I had not yet envisioned myself. Mr. Smith was a math teacher who encouraged me to join the Number Sense club, when I was a fat kid who just wanted to be left alone. I won three gold medals in citywide competition (that’s more or less me in my short story, “The Snake”). This feat astonished me, and embarrassed me, for I really did not like the attention, and even got me into an argument with the principal, who sternly ‘encouraged’ me to donate the medals for the school’s trophy case. I said no. He said he’d call my parents. But nobody could ever convince me to give up my medals. I wasn’t just fat; I was stubborn.

Mrs. Dolores Vega taught me to be a proud Mexicano. Every Friday in her third-grade class, she would force all the kids to dance cumbias. ‘Force’ is not quite the right word; the girls would jump up and dance with Mrs. Vega, and some of the more suave boys would dance too, to show off their moves. She would not take no for an answer, and it made you feel good about yourself when you finally said yes to Mrs. Vega. I have never met a more consistently exuberant teacher who worked so hard for you to experience the true joy of who you were.

Mrs. Pearl Crouch and Mrs. Josie Gutierrez Kinard, at Ysleta High School, were my mentors in Publications. They taught me how to be a good writer of fierce editorials aimed at teachers and the school administration. How? By never accepting anything less than written arguments that were precise and provable. By showing me the meaning of integrity when they stood behind me, even when they came under pressure from the powers-that-be. By expanding my horizons: I first visited San Francisco and New York City with them to attend scholastic writing competitions. I did not know the fancy neighborhoods of El Paso, but I had seen “A Chorus Line” on Broadway and dined at Sardi’s.

At Bank Street, Aaron and Isaac have also experienced classroom after classroom with dedicated, insightful teachers. The School for Children is part of Bank Street College of Education, which is a school that trains teachers. But how do you capture the essence of a place where teaching about children, and children, and how they learn, their voices, their art, their music, are at the center of each day? Bank Street is a remarkable place. I see it reflected in Aaron and Isaac. They sit patiently to work on their homework; they discuss important subjects at the dinner table; they repeatedly ask why, and can offer plausible answers that delve deep into their own selves. Aaron and Isaac are not perfect, but I have little doubt that they will be good citizens in whatever community they decide to call their home.

Even I have learned from Bank Street. I do not think I was a good father when Aaron first attended school as a three-year-old. I was learning to be a parent on the fly; I was exhausted by my many responsibilities; I was too gruff, instead of being focused on understanding the world from my child’s point of view. My essay “The Father is in the Details” recounts my struggle to be a better parent. But I wanted to learn; I am excellent at adapting; I am a sponge. So I paid attention to how successive Bank Street teachers reached my children, how they handled questions, how they listened. Over time, I received as much of an education from Bank Street as my children did.

John Womack. Terry Karl. Maurice Natanson. Laurie Ryan. Karsten Harries. Juwanna Newman. And so many more I have not mentioned. To all those teachers who dedicate themselves to their important work every day, thank you.