Without intending, this sweet, eager, young child taught me a lesson in life and about myself.
ALS was the curriculum and I became the learner.
In my intellect, I knew real teaching was a magical interaction between teacher and learner. John Dewey, the father of American education, captured it
He told us, “Learning is not a spectator sport.”
You learn best through involvement in real problem solving. In spite of this, I was a prisoner of the teacher’s need to “always know and to be in charge.”
Like a blacksmith’s anvil, ALS reshaped my life. It forged me anew, stretching who and what I was. This young girl was doing the same thing. I was learning that there are times we are not the ones to solve things by ourselves.
I wracked my brain to come up with a resolution to her quandary. I failed to see a solution. With a gentle honesty, I asked her a question.
“Are you aware of my muscle disease?”
She fidgeted a smiled and whispered, “Yes.”
“Well hon, I can’t help you. My arms are too weak. I can’t raise them up that far.”
Relieved at my own truthfulness, I awaited a response. I anticipated her to make a new selection of a different animal, one that was more within her reach instead. However, she continued to look at me. Her mind was fixed. She wanted the iguana. Retreat was not an option she entertained.
In a flash, it came to me. “Hon, I can’t solve your problem alone. But, if we work as a team, I think we can solve it together.”
She looked puzzled.
“Well,” I continued, “your arms are too short, my arms are too weak. However, if we work together and help each other, we can do it.”
“Okay,” she waited for more.
“I will give you the length of my arms and you give me the strength of yours.”
I motioned to her to grasp my thin, limp arm hanging uselessly at my side. Recognizing the unorthodoxy of it all, she hesitated before taking my arm.
“Great,” I exclaimed and encouraged her to lift and to push it higher.
Stretching on her tippy toes and strained with the deadweight of my long arm. She inched my hand close to the top of the chalkboard, a good six feet high. Her fingers pressed into the flesh of my upper arm and I heard a moan as she made a last effort. Hitting the magnet, my fingers fumbled and managed to flip it to red. Spent, she let my arm go. It fell and thudded against my leg. Then she bounded off, content to do her job. With her back to me she shouted, “Thanks.” It was but a brief moment and it was over.
I stood there. The impact of what happened slowly sunk in. I realized I was no longer ‘able’ in a physical sense. I learned from ALS that I was no longer in charge of circumstance. The girl taught me that I alone was not always the solution.
ALS had branded limitations into me. Experience did the same with potential.
I realized also, we must be a team. A true team united by common goals and purpose. Strength should be measured in our collective strengths and not by our individual weakness.
It took me awhile to get Dewey’s words. Twenty-five years to be exact. Guess I am a slow learner. Better late than never.
I continued to teach in the classroom for another eight years. My muscle deterioration advanced. I experienced the pain of growing more aware of everything I could no longer do. At the same time, I rejoiced as I considered all I can do. I’ve learned: spirit and determination combined with teamwork are limitless.
Each day brings a new challenge. It also brings an opportunity to learn and grow. ALS, rather than a death sentence, has become the real master teacher. It teaches my family, friends and me.
There were some who chose superlatives to describe my teaching. I know the real Master Teacher.
The lesson in this was teamwork produces results beyond individual’s abilities separately. We must measure our ability not by our individual weaknesses but by the collective strength we have alongside others united for a common goal.
Two Visitors
I enjoy writing poetry, especially free verse. It allows me the freedom to conjure up images, emotions and scenes without the demands and limits of prose. A poem gives me the opportunity to take the reader on quantum leaps of thought as I tell my story. For me, it is a powerful medium to express my complicated feelings and ideas. It is a rich, fertile field to plant them. I wrote this a year after my diagnosis.
I have for so long, loved the ocean.
I often went to its shore.
It seemed to just beckon me
with its carpet of soft sand and cool, blue water.
I can recall so very well the scent of sweet,
salted air that greeted me each time I neared.
In my mind’s eye, I still see its pallets of pebbles:
a rainbow of hues cast along the water’s edge.
I remember those long and winding wind-tossed
lines of shells, seaweed and bone
twisted down the shoreline
In it I found a treasure chest of nature’s surprises;
there were mermaid’s purses, jingle shells, feathers, shiny crab backs and small,
colorfully polished glass chips.
mm, and I recall too,
the melodies murmured by the gentle surf.
Of all of these images however,
I remember most the peace.
I found there an abiding air of harmony.
I sensed contentment, a joy.
Serenity
Once while there, a violent storm blew in.
As I watched, the distant skies grew dark and ominous:
the blue blotted by blackness,
the light breeze was whipped to a wind.
The sweet, salted air turned acrid and accosted me.
It beat against my unprotected face. The pebbles stung as they pelted me,
raging out of control as if as angry as the wicked wind that flung them.
And the gentle, murmuring surf?
It wailed eerily, hurling itself up and onto the beach.
It mouthed a moan, dragging itself back,
scraping across the sand
and into the jaws of the next frothing wave.
My gentle ocean and its soothing shore
turned cruel and unkind:
unfit for me or any living thing.
A sanctuary destroyed, it had morphed
into a bellowing beast.
The sands seemed to shift under my feet.
Uneasy, I began to retreat,
reluctantly yielding my paradise.
At that moment, in the height of this fury,
out of the darkened heavens
dropped a solitary, soaring gull.
Spellbound,