Mel Bites the Bullet

Beautiful Saturday morning. My husband decided he'd take his first mate Brody and go fishing. The fog was just rising over the lake and the water was emerald green and smooth as silk. A few hours later, Ed comes in and I ask him if he caught anything. He says, "One catfish and a cottonmouth." Turns out, when he returned from fishing he noticed a big black stick, about the size of a man's wrist, lying under the farm truck. Brody approached and the stick moved. Ed went to pen up the dog and came back with my grandfather's pistol. The snake, about 4 ft long, would not come out from under the truck. Evidently, he was taking his shade seriously and was in no mood to slither back into the fiery Florida sun. Ed poked him with a real stick and the snake moved out and reared up, ready to strike. The snake was duly dispatched and the carcass tossed in the woods.

When my husband came home and told me this story, I had an epiphany. We would have to have some kind of weapon at the house. With the weather getting warmer and critters looking for shade, I did not want to go out to my car at 6 a.m. one morning and have a snake latch onto my ankle. I asked Ed if he still had his BB pistol; he said yes, he'd just need to get some air cartridges. "Do it," I replied. Though I resisted the idea of taking up arms when my grandfather insisted last summer, I'm ready to take the next step. Ed says the BB pistol won't kill a large critter with the first shot, but he'll teach me how to use it and I can fire away.

I guess living in the woods means making some concessions. It was either the BB pistol or buying a flare gun. A guy I used to work with told me he carried a flare gun in his car. It was perfectly legal, but if he ever used it, whoever was on the receiving end get a chest full of fire for his trouble. Even the cops considered it a deadly weapon. Using a flare gun would be theatrical and kind of cool, but we'll go with the pistol. As long as I see the snake before he sees me, the plan should work.

It's funny the way a corner of your life peels back now and then, just enough to give you a glimpse of the grand pattern underneath. Seeing evidence of an intentional design is both faith-building and humbling. All this time, you believed yourself to be stumbling around in the dark, making the best choices you could, hoping that the life you were living was a good one, something of purpose and substance. Then, you see someone has worked in the loose ends and made even your worse mistakes beautiful. Humbling. It's not about you at all.

Last Thursday, when I taught my third lesson for the practicum, the guy from the college approached me afterwards with positive feedback. That was gratifying. He said I was very "natural" in the classroom and it was rare to see that in a new teacher. Most students he evaluates are timid, lack authority, and are unsure of themselves. He didn't see that in my demonstration. He said my lesson was a pleasure to observe.

This morning, during a few quiet moments before the whole snake thing, I thought about the four and a half years I worked at Job Corps part time. I remembered how cruel those years had been -- the financial struggle, the battle with depression, the crippling loss of confidence. I was an administrative assistant in the Education Department, but mostly I spent my half-days testing students using a standardized battery. The kids, ages 16-24, were sometimes pleasant, but sometimes intentionally cruel; no doubt my own psychological condition played a huge role in the way I perceived their behavior. I remember being asked to substitute for teachers who never left a lesson plan in classrooms where I had no knowledge of the subject area. I sat behind the desk, smiled and tried to draw the least amount of attention to myself possible. One of the sharpest barbs from that time was that I was a person whose desire to be a teacher had been frustrated by circumstance. I wanted to make a contribution, but I was given no training, mentoring or encouragement from my colleagues at Job Corps. I felt, on good days, I tried to make a difference kid by kid just by being kind, by listening, and by being consistently someone they could depend on. On bad days, I slipped back into the pit that felt like failure.

Sometimes, I'm tempted to throw dirt over periods in my life like that. Burn my journals, cauterize my memories, sew my lips shut and never speak of them again. Then, I get a glimpse of the Big Picture and realize that all I've been through is a part of me -- and there's a reason for everything. If I hadn't gone through that trial by fire at Job Corps, and if I hadn't flown in the face of financial reason and signed up to be a substitute teacher in January, I wouldn't have been able to stand and bear witness in that classroom last week. I wouldn't have been able to stand at all. Everything's connected in a workshop bigger than my little life.

Now, I'll tell you something funny so you can reach the end of the paragraph with a smile. I've been reading Donna Tartt's second novel, The Little Friend, and in the book there's this story about a kid who is relentlessly teased by his older brother because of a science fair project gone disasterously wrong. Seems the kid found a butterfly chrysalis in the woods and brought it home, carefully tending it for weeks so it would hatch into a beautiful butterfly. He drenched it in warm lamplight. He kept it away from drafts. He fed it with utter attention. The day of the science fair, he was certain that he'd done everything right and the pod was ready to open. He tucked it into a small, square jewelry box, laid out on a square of cotton, and toted it to school. Then, came the moment of shame no kid should have to live through to tell about. He discovered that he didn't have a chrysalis at all, only a petrified cat turd.

When I have a choice between belief and reality, I hope I choose the chrysalis everytime.