The closure surgery this spring went well. Like the
name suggests, this procedure finished the surgical process that began over a
year ago with her liver transplant. As is sometimes the case in infants, particularly
in a live donation, Annaka’s doctors needed to keep the muscles of her
abdominal walls partially open. Now that over a year had passed, she was ready
to move forward.
This particular surgery was not as lengthy as her
transplant, but I did find enough time during those hours to read most of Ray
Bradbury’s novel, Fahrenheit 451. I was teaching it for the first time
to my seniors the following week, so it made sense to brush up on the classic. (And
by “brush up” I mean actually read it for the first time. Don’t tell anyone,
but I’m not as literate as a few people think.)
To summarize, Bradbury envisioned an America without
books; a dystopic sterile-state where firemen are summoned not to put out fires
but to start them using contraband literature as fuel. Bradbury, very much
influenced by the infamous Nazi book burnings from decades prior, wrote his
classic as a warning; not in an attempt to predict the future but, as he is
says, “to prevent it.”
Did he succeed?
Partially, I supposed, or else the book itself—along
with a class designed to discuss such literature—would not exist. Some of the
ideas strung out through the novel, however, such as vulgar materialism, drug
addiction, and a culture more involved with its television “families” than real
ones, seem too close for comfort. Perhaps the most damning plot point in the
book, in fact, is the discovery late in the novel that the firemen themselves have
nearly become obsolete, as the vast majority of the citizens simply forgo their
privilege of reading and thinking critically on their own. They have, in a sense,
chosen product over process. They seek the quick end result offered to them by
sedatives and non-stop entertainment in the place of thoughtful conversation
and delayed gratification.
Are we there, yet? Are we close?
I graduated college exactly twenty years ago this
spring, and have been teaching school ever since. Schools, ideally, are places
where reading, critical thinking, and thoughtful conversations all unite. One
thing I’ve noticed over the year, however, is that public education, because it
is financed by a fickle state, can often be a game of trends.
As students going through the system, we do experience
these trends but don’t really comprehend them, because in some ways our school
days pass by as passengers on a boat.
As students, we hop onto boats that are already in
mid-stream. We sail along with the current for nine months, then we take a
break, skip onto another boat guided by another pilot for nine months, gently
down the stream, until our time in academia ends.
Teachers, though, navigate with about the same boat
throughout their careers. We move down the river, notice stuff on shore, and pay
more attention to the weather than passengers riding along. We look out for
rocks and other obstacles and for folks leaping off cliffs.
I’ve seen some leapers over the
years. Most survive. Many of them climb back up and jump again.
And I think, perhaps, this is one reason why I like spending
part of my day as a writing teacher.
Writing is not trendy.
Yes, there are trends in writing instruction, but
the craft itself is not up for debate. If you want to be a good writer, you
write. You read, you reflect, and then you write some more.
Writing is where reading, critical
thinking and thoughtful conversation all stream into one. Writing is process,
not product. Products are trendy, and products fade. After two decades of
teaching school, I’ve seen some fading.
One of the best processes, and most difficult, is
the process of helping children grow up.
Annaka recovered quickly, thank God, and just a few
weeks after her surgery the two of us were outside enjoying a spring evening. We
bounced a basketball back and…mostly back. An almost full moon began its toddle
through the sky.
“Catch the moon.” She said, walking back into the
garage where we hide the butterfly nets. I took down a red net and handed it to
her. She stretched it into the air.
“Do you want to be on my shoulders?”
“Mmm hmm.”
I put her on my shoulders. She wiggled without
caution and then stretched up again.
“Did you catch it?”
“No.”
“Do you want to try again tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
We put the net back up on the wall and walked back
inside the house.
Three springs have now passed since we found out Annaka,
before she even had a name, would be born with challenges. She will spend her
whole life stretching, scratch-papering, rough-drafting her way through the
process we call life.
We all will, however.
We all do, writing life stories with our moon shots
and our scars.
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