Jim Burke: The English Teacher's Companion

Senior Moments: Celebrating Arrivals

Seventeen years ago our son Whitman, our senior son, arrived. He came early. Perhaps he knew he had to: a month before, his grandfather Melvin (Susan's father) had lost his year-long fight to cancer; a week later, his grandfather Jerry (my father) would lose his own year-long battle to a different cancer. 

We named him Aidan at first, for the one who helps others; then we named him Whitman; then we thought of our great fathers, wonderful men who represented the best of their generations, and named him: Whitman Robert Aidan Dykman Burke. 

It's a lot of name, but we felt called to honor so many at that time. 

They would be so proud, those two fathers, those two grandfathers who never saw or got to meet him. But the news of him, the knowledge that he was coming kept them company during that long year before their departure, when we would drive to our hometown of Sacramento, return to the childhood homes, to parents, to the end of one era and the arrival of the next.

So it seems that since the day of his arrival he has been a blessing to those who know him. As for all those names: He doesn't think they are strange, they are all he's ever known. When, however, we went to fetch him from camp a few years ago, we asked all over for Whitman, and no one knew anyone by that name. Finally, I saw him and said to the counselor, "There...that's him over there!" a little peeved no doubt that they hadn't come to know and appreciate our son.

To which the counselor said, "That kid? Oh that's Bob! Everyone knows Bob!" When we asked him about telling everyone his name was Bob, he grinned and said it seemed like such a strange and fun name, so he decided to just tell everyone that was his name that week.

Well, that's our Whitman...

Senior Moments: In the Garden

Today, I would see, at different times, Ann out in the garden, sitting under the apple tree, or on the deck of the playhouse, later on over on the swing seat under the rose arbor. 

It was as beautiful a day as San Francisco gets here in September, that point of the year that really marks the beginning of our summer. 

The playhouse is where she played as a young girl in the Eden of her childhood here in the same garden eighty years ago. The roses on the arbor were planted by her father, who was famous throughout the neighborhood for his roses. Sitting in the garden, on such a day, who could not feel grateful for all your life has given you the chance to see and do.

Looking up at the house, she might have glanced her granddaughter Nora playing dolls with her friend Audrey, both girls the same age Ann was when she did the same so long ago in the playhouse.

Senior students, our Whitman included, rarely understand that they live in the garden of their youth, wherein so much is provided, things they take so for granted that they can not even fathom life without them. 

Outside the garden, there lies a world all these students and my own son must learn to make their way through, to arrive at the other side, where they can, as Ann did today, sit in the garden, at peace, looking at the children of their children at play under a sky the same color as those of their own childhood so many years ago yet which the memory calls up with an ease and clarity that never ceases to amaze me.

Senior Moments: The Application Process

High school seniors across the nation (and in all my classes...and at home) are beginning the process of applying to college. 

Many of our friends whose parents are aging, especially those in declining health, are beginning the process of applying to assisted living facilities.

Some of our friends are doing both: helping their sons or daughters apply to college and applying to places like Aegis Living on behalf their parents (or, in the case of all our friends, their mothers).

One of these processes marks a beginning, a taking off; the other indicates the beginning of an ending that for many is not in sight but is nonetheless glimpsed as if "through a glass, darkly." For some, they have achieved a Zen-like absence owing to their condition that keeps them in an immediate present we all sometimes wish we could feel in the midst of our busy lives.

Of course, one is not just applying to get in but to get help paying for it or otherwise providing against certain problems. Thus there are additional applications---to banks, lawyers, the government, employers---to cover all the expenses until our seniors graduate from their school or this life.

What follows is yet another application process, one our beloved seniors must handle on their own, an application they must complete themselves prior to that next phase.

And after that? For some of us, yet more applications: for jobs, programs, or help of some sort. For others, a deeper, more demanding application of the self to their own life which they must return and devote themselves to with the same commitment they gave for so long to their high school seniors or parents.

Senior Moments: Obstacles

Sunday I went for a long bike ride out along the California coast. While taking a break, I saw these stones, one kept apart by a police barracade, and on the other side of that, waves, and past that, dense fog through which the sun did not shine.

As my seniors at school (and at home) prepare to launch out on the quest for college or whatever is next for them, I am reminded of all they must go through, climb over, sneak around, or simply endure to get where they want to be. 

Standing there on those cliffs, looking out at the ocean and its waves, I saw the surfers riding them with obvious joy. What are obstacles to some are opportunities to them. They seemed to be saying, as they cut along the wave, Come on in! Ride the wave that would otherwise ruin you.

Whitman wanted to start surfing lessons last week but found he was the only one who signed up so they canceled the class for now. I was disappointed, of course, but watching those surfers on Sunday, I thought about Whit and those waves that keep coming at him, and how he just rides them one after another with a calm, quiet courage that comes from overcoming what would take another into its wet embrace.

What are these obstacles made of but water and air, fog and sand? 

 

Senior Moments: Know Thyself

In the summer of 1985 I sat here at Delphi, where people like Alexader the Great would come to consult the oracle. What is to come? they would ask. Will we be victorious? he would ask.

Or, in Oedipus the King, which we have been discussing in my senior class lately, you find Creon asking why their country is plagued with troubles and how they can overcome these problems.

For all the standards in all the states, there is no such standard for "knowing thyself." In a few months, when we read Hamlet, Polonius will tell his son that he must "above all: to thine own self be true." 

One must, of course, know thyself before one can be true to it. Yet can we reasonbably expect 18-year-olds to know themselves? To have the courage it takes to be true to those selves? Hardly. And how do we know or come to create that self? By testing it against the world through which we move and finding someone who can guide us on that journey.

The other day my senior son Whit was working with a coach who was trying to find his limits, then talking to him about how to push those limits further and further out from where they are now, in the process creating the strength and stamina he will need for his next self.

A couple years ago, I had a young man in one of my senior classes, one without any compass other than his evident intelligence and obvious goodness. To say he lost himself during that year would imply he knew himself, and he did not. And he understood that. Realized he needed to first find, then forge, that next self.

So he set out to hike the Pacific Coast Trail by himself. That was 2200 miles ago. This week he is slated, after overcoming all manner of obstacles along the way, to complete his journey, becoming the youngest person ever to hike the entire trail solo. He realized he needed to become his own teacher, his own guide.

Back in July of 1985, as I sat all day atop the mountain there at Delphi, I wondered what the oracles would tell me about the years to come. I was not yet a teacher. I was not yet a husband or a father. I was not yet an author. I was a Peace Corps volunteer traveling on my summer break.

When I came down from that mountain, and returned to Tunisia, where a telegram was waiting for me, telling me to go to Paris to meet Susan, who would travel from Japan the following week. We had known each other since high school. But in 1979 I was just a kid, not unlike my former student, who did not know himself.

And so I would go to Paris where I would meet up with Susan who, more than anyone, would help me come to know myself. Ah, but that is another story for another time....