Danny at Thirty

As I washed my hands in the staff restroom of the large, suburban high school where I work as one of six assistant principals, I fixed on my graying mustache, and a memory came to me in a flash.  I was probably about eleven or twelve, and my mother asked if she could draw me.  My mother was an artist, so the request was not an unusual one; she seemed always to be sketching one of us -- my younger brother, our father, or myself.

She liked to do quick pencil sketches.  Her lines were rapid and many, which gave the pictures a kind of unique immediacy.  Of course, my language to describe her work back then was not quite so florid.  I probably thought her drawings were "cool" or "nice."

One night, as we sat in the living room of our dark-blue shingled split level, my mother sipping, I imagine, her ubiquitous gin and tonic, she came up with a new, peculiar idea.

"I'm going to draw you as I would imagine you'll look at age thirty," she proclaimed.

"Thirty?"  It seemed so distant to me.  That would make the year 1993.  Images of flying cars and robot butlers filled my head.

She had me sit in my father's big, mustard-colored easy chair, and she got to work.

"Get your giggles out," she commented, as I customarily got attacks of nervous laughter, set off by the way her eyes darted from my face to the paper, where her fingers became shockingly nimble, revealing a part of her life that fascinated me:  her artist's training.

I realize now that these modeling sessions were a primitive form of meditation for me, as it was necessary to level my breathing, and steady my gaze on a certain point.  Normally, I'd reach a kind of "no-mind" state, akin to being asleep with my eyes open.  On this occasion, however, I imagined what thirty would be like; would I be married?  To Debbie Francis, maybe?  She was my current fascination back then, with sandy blond hair and dimples that made me want to entertain her just to see them appear.  Did we have kids?  Were we rich?  Were we happy?

Ten minutes or so later, she stopped looking up from the paper, continuing to scribble.  "You can move," she said, her eyes still down.

When I started to make my way over to her, she held the sketchbook against her chest, hiding the picture.

"Oh no.  You'll need to wait till I'm done.  Go watch some T.V."

One of my mother's earliest sketches, "Daddy"
from her high school art class

I bounded down the short flight of stairs to the playroom, where my brother was watching something sports-related.  I'll place this memory on a Saturday afternoon, so let's say "Bowling for Dollars," or "ABC's Wide World of Sports."

"Okay," she called a few minutes later.  "Come on up here."

When I returned to her, she had on the self-critical scowl she always wore after completing a new piece of work.

"Well, here it is."

I took the sketchpad from her.  She'd titled it "Danny at 30."  It was my face, but she'd moved my hairline back a bit, given me some laugh lines at the temple-edges of my eyes, and a dark mustache.  I realized some years later that the picture looked a lot like a studio photo of my dad when he was around that age.

"Thirty," I repeated.

"What do you think?" she asked.

I didn't really know what to say, being as her reason for wanting to draw a picture of the Future Me was a mystery.

"It's nice."

She giggled at my response.

I wonder now, twenty-five years past the age she was trying to envision, and forty-five
years after the memory of her creation of "Danny at Thirty," if her motive had anything to do with the fact that a fierce bout with pancreatic cancer would prevent her from ever seeing me at that age.  She died in 1988, a few weeks shy of my 25th birthday, long before I started growing the mustache I now wear as a matter of course.

I wonder, too, making my way down the school hallway back to my office, where that picture is today.

One Chapter Ends, Another Begins

I spent most of the day on Friday packing, sorting through the professional detritus of my career -- books and articles, keepsakes and photographs that have some connection to my working or family/personal life.  Occasionally a colleague stopped by to chat and wish me well.

There was the usual bittersweetness of a Last Day -- the "bitter" manifesting itself as an emotional tug in the gut and throat, suggesting that under the right conditions I could shed a tear for Education Service Center Region 13 and the people there I'll be leaving behind.

And it has been a good run, I must say.  As I stated in the now perfunctory "all-staff" farewell email, my co-workers have been nothing but kind and helpful during my 21 months there.  The place has a great reputation for customer service, due to the people they hire.  I'm proud to have been one of them and grateful for all that I learned.  Now it's time to put the learning to good use in a school.  And who knows?  Maybe I'll work at Region 13 again one day . . .

The Importance of Stories in Education

"Keep Telling the Story" -- Hanno Fuchs

There's an interesting confluence happening in my life right now, with this notion of "storytelling" smack in the middle of it. Obviously, this blog shows a renewed interest on my part in telling stories, as do my daily "morning pages." The blog often concerns itself with stories that want to fill in the blanks -- the missing or fading pieces of my family's past. And my morning pages are usually an exercise in capturing any worthwhile stories from the day before, among anything else that crosses my mind.

The idea of "confluence" comes in because I'm seeing and hearing the word "story" more and more in the professional circles in which I work. As a kind of backlash to the "data-driven" push of the last ten years or so in public education, more and more people are calling on that other kind of data -- the anecdotal or qualitative variety.

It came up first in the book Influencer that is central to the work I'm currently doing. The book posits that stories, when told well, allow those whom you are trying to influence to take a leap of faith. Good stories let you imagine a different reality and thus make you more likely to take steps toward change.

I can buy that. It certainly seems to be true of the kind of professional development I have always responded to as a learner. I like it when people teach me through stories. It feels personal. Intimate.

It feels real.

The most fortuitous of all these coincidences is the fact that tomorrow morning I will be sharing the stories my six subjects tell in my video That Safe Space. It will be an easy connection for the people who come and who have been attending this conference for the last few days. I'm hoping that those who come will enjoy the film; I'm confident that they will. My only concern is that because it's the final slot before the farewell lunch, many participants will have already left for their flights home.

But that will be their loss. At this point, my attitude is "Let go, let God." It will be what it will be. Those who stay and choose to make their way into my presentation will hear some touching, important stories. My hope is that they will be inspired by the stories that they hear, and that they'll be inspired to go back home and create, and gather their own stories.

In my father's words, I'm hoping they will keep telling the story. It's in this way that we will change education for the better.