Good Kharma

An old AA story is of the man who didn’t believe in God at all. A friend wondered how he could be so sure. The man told his friend he had proof. His friend asked what was that. “Well I was hunting in Alaska right next to the Bering Sea and a wind came up and I didn’t realize I was on an ice shelf and the piece I was on broke off. And there I was on an ice floe floating out to sea. I couldn’t see the shore and I began praying to god to save me. I prayed and I prayed and he didn’t save me.”

His friend asked, “Well you’re here now. How did you survive?”

“Oh, some Eskimo came along.”

I got up this morning, showered and got ready because I was going to coffee and socialize with parents after I dropped my kid off. Escuela Bilingüe is a great school. The parents are wonderful people, professors, lawyers, engineers, and artists; they’re an interesting mix. The once a month Coffee Cart is always an enjoyable social occasion, we stand outside at a picnic table near the drop off and do a cocktail hour with coffee instead of drinks. We mix, we talk, we listen and I float from conversation to conversation. We talk about school, kids, jobs, work, politics, it’s one of my favorite social connections. This morning at  EBI, as we call it, the Coffee Cart was canceled.

At the gate to the school Irma said they tried to get Peet’s this morning, but Peet’s canceled and they had to cancel the Coffee Cart. There was one other parent, someone I didn’t really know. He said he’d wait and see if anyone shows up and would talk to Irma in the meantime. I walked past them at the gate and went to the picnic table. Even though they canceled it, someone’s bound to show up, the notice was in Parent Square online.

In the meantime I talked to Carolyn, while she unloaded kids with Luis at the dropoff. She is from Coachella, down in the desert Southeast of Palm Springs. She’s Spanish speaking as are most of the staff at EBI and I tell her I’m trying to learn Spanish. She’s a young woman, a teacher’s aid but she begins to relax. I learn her husband got a job here and she moved with him. She prefers the warmth of Coachella to the chill of winter in the Bay Area.

Then I go over and talk to Luis for a moment and find out Luis is actually José and I’ve had his name wrong for five years I said. He said we’ve known each other for 7 years, well maybe, but he’s a good guy and we laugh. He speaks Spanish with a wonderful Cuban accent and to my amazement I understand some of it.

The other parent comes back and I offer to share the coffee I’ve brought for myself. His daughter is in the third grade and we chat for a few minutes. I tell him I’m Irish and that they say if the Irish weren’t in AA they could have their meetings in a phone booth and that in AA even if only two people show up they go on with the meeting and before I finish my observation, he interrupts, “I went to a meeting last night in San Mateo.” “A meeting?” I ask, “An AA meeting?” “Yes,” he says. So I tell him “Next week is my 39^th AA birthday.”

Matt is two years sober. He’s dropping his daughter off, whom he is just getting to know and getting involved in her life. He left Kerry’s mother when she was pregnant and they don’t have much of a relationship but it looked like maybe things were changing with Kerry and her mother. But Kerry’s mother is getting on with her life and has a boyfriend and the boyfriend moved in and likes being a foster dad and Matt wasn’t nice about it when he saw him this morning. He doesn’t like him, even though he seems like a pretty good guy. This guy stays overnight with Kerry’s mother, gets up in the morning, serves Matt’s daughter cornflakes and puts her to bed at night.

Matt has been struggling, but he’s got it, he’s sober now, but this is hard. We talk about patience, and meetings. He has a sponsor, but it’s hard. I say, “You know I don’t much believe in god as some sort of chess master, but it’s hard not to feel like you and I a couple of pieces he just moved to where we need to be.”

Matt doesn’t slow down. He is hurting and he needs to talk. He’s a good guy and he knows he needs to be patient but when it looked like he might get a chance to be a husband and a father there wasn’t and Kerry's mother is moving on, it hurts.

I tried to be a good listener. Matt is a good guy. He’s staying sober and trying to lead a good life. But doing that in the beginning is hard, particularly for people like us who began drinking before we had grown up and getting sober hasn’t fixed everything yet. I tried to interject a few AA clichés. It will get better if you don’t drink. Working the steps helps. The shit doesn’t stop when we stop drinking. Patience. Things like that.

I could feel Matt was in pain and this was a crisis. It takes a few years for us alcoholics before life is no longer one crisis after another, before we learn how to live life on it’s own terms, the gifts of sobriety as they come. Everyone around us seems to get it, have the good things, doing well and we’re still struggling. I told him after 39 years I didn’t have a strong urge to drink anymore, but that was only good as I long as I worked the program.

As they remind us in AA, meeting Matt sure helped me, made me grateful, and reminded me that Sobriety is a great gift, a grace from god. It reminded me of my early years in AA and the struggles I had. It reminded me when Church Carmalt, my sponsor, said “work with newcomers."  Of course, I’m still growing and I still struggle a little, but I didn’t drink and over time it got better, and it’s still getting better.

I hope I did Matt some good. It sure helped me.

I had to laugh. Newcomers see god’s hand in everything that happens to them. I had that kind of higher power for awhile and it helped. I don’t believe that’s true anymore, but it’s hard to deny when something like this happens. I may not have been his Eskimo, but maybe I’m someone who listened along the way and shared a cup of coffee.

Another coincidence, this morning I meditated on listening, becoming a good listener. I may not believe in god exactly.  But kharma makes sense to me. I am grateful for good kharma when I see it.

Note:  A few days later I ran into Matt again.  We sat in his car and talked.  He's still in crisis.  Exploring ways to deal with that, he said he wouldn't smoke pot that day and hadn't for some hours.  I'm not sure if pot was his word, like everything else I'm dated but nonetheless he hadn't smoked pot for some hours.  It seems for the last two years Matt has been on what we call the Marijuana Maintenance Program.  In my experience that's not sobriety, better but not good enough.  The first rule of working the 12 Steps is to be sober.  In my experience, if I don't drink things get better.  I'm pretty sure if I do drink they're going to get worse.  And as I heard it in the beginning and believe, mind altering drugs and alcohol are the same thing, just a question of getting to Omaha by plane or train, you're still in Omaha.  I shared my opinion and my phone number with Matt, I haven't heard from him since.  

My meeting with Matt kept me sober, my Higher Power at work.

Disclaimer:  I’m certainly not a representative of Alcoholics Anonymous nor can I say I’m even a member but I know people. Saying that, this is a story. It could happen.

Teacher's Aid

One more time I asked myself what do I want to be when I grow up? At 67 it still resonated. I tell people, I’m no longer immature, I’m young at heart. The last time I asked that question, I became a Park Ranger. I wanted to do something that would be new and fun. And the answer came back, an elementary school teacher. I didn’t want a job, but a job like volunteer gig. On a school tour for Adam I asked the principal how I might do that. She was enthusiastic and told me first to go to the district and get cleared as a volunteer, get a badge and we’d go from there.

Lisa Kantor and I exchanged a couple of emails and we were getting ready to start. In her last email she asked what experience I had. I told her I was a kindergarten Sunday School teacher. I didn’t hear back from her. She didn’t respond to any of my emails or phone calls. She was unreachable. I think maybe Ms. Kantor didn’t want a Sunday School teacher at her school. By that time I had stopped qualifying my church attendance as being Unitarian.  Be honest, let people think what they want. I was in good company with Jimmy Carter. I think maybe I’d just been stereotyped as a “Christian Evangelical.” That didn’t feel good. Even Evangelicals have a right to be in our schools.

Not long after in February 2014 I was registering Adam for Transitional Kindergarten at Colorado Elementary School in Richmond and I asked to speak to the principal there. I met Linda Cohen, a legendary principal in Richmond Schools. We talked and she was quite eager to have me as a volunteer. “When can you start?” she asked. “Tomorrow,” I answered. And so I did, the very next day. Linda had me go to each class from 3^rd to 6^th grade and ask the teacher what they would like me to do. The first year I tutored math, babysat or just distracted disruptive kids, worked with a new immigrant from Mexico who did not want to learn English and worked one on one or in small groups.

I volunteered two days a week. At lunchtime I went to the teacher’s room. I met some teachers, I was part of Coronado Elementary School. After a few months, one morning I got up with that feeling, oh god, I don’t want to go school today. A moment later I realized, wow!, just like a real job. I was showing up.

The next year Adam started Transitional Kindergarten at Coronado and the first day I asked Linda what she wanted me to do. She was busy and said, “Well why don’t you just go to Transitional Kindergarten for now.” We’ll figure it out later.

I found a home. There was no later. For the next six years I was a volunteer teacher’s aid in Transitional Kindergarten. I worked with Licet Santos, the regular teacher’s aid and Pat Boyne, the teacher. We were a team. I did what I could to help, supporting the kids, encouraging them and enjoying them. Little people have always fascinated me, the amount they learn just to get started in life and the physical changes are astounding, learning to walk, to talk, and in TK to be part of a group and that squiggles and symbols can have meaning. It is their first formal step in learning to learn.

My TKers were learning more in that year than graduate students at Berkeley would learn in a year.  I was in awe at what we were part of. These kids were laying the very foundation of their education. They were learning life skills. Recess was just as important as the classroom. They were being domesticated, like wild horses they needed to be gentled. For some kids it was their first experience in the system. They couldn’t leave, it wasn’t voluntary and making a scene didn’t help.

One day I was telling my good friend Bob Weiss about what I was doing and he said, “You know these kids are going to remember you for the rest of their lives.” I hadn’t thought of it, but of course. What a responsibility, memories of Mr. Jack into the next century.

Licet, Pat and I worked together for six years. Licet was wonderful, local, very bright, she should have been a teacher herself, but after a marriage, two kids and a divorce, she needed to earn a living and it was our good fortune to have her as a teacher’s aid. Pat is a professional teacher and did the magic of curriculum, lesson planning, pacing and all the paperwork. I appreciated that I got to be a part of teaching children hands on, but I didn’t have to do the bureaucracy. My style is more Ranger than Teacher and with Pat and Licet, that worked.

In 2019 things began to come apart. Pat was getting toward the end of her career and had a hellacious commute. She had injuries and health problems. Licet was having a hard time too. There were sick days and substitutes and it wasn’t going very well and then we got a substitute who stayed, Miss Chavez. She was a graduate of Cal but had been a truck driver between LA and San Francisco. It was her first year as a substitute and we were fortunate to get her. She didn’t have the experience of Pat Boyne, but she had a lot of heart, wanted to do well, and loved the children. So it was good and then in March of 2020 Covid came.  We were doing distance learning. I tried to join in, but a teacher’s aid on Zoom is just one more complicating element and it didn’t work.

In September of 2020 I didn’t participate but when in person classes started again in the Fall of 2021 I came back. Miss Boyne was the TK teacher again but struggling with the administration over medical leave. She mostly didn’t show up. We had a series of substitutes and just no teacher at all. We did have Miss Pinkston, a wonderful teacher, She was the new Reading Resource person at the school and it wasn’t her job to take over TK.  She did what she could to help.    

I needed something more consistent. I talked to my friend Lourdes, a great 2^nd grade teacher there. She recommended I ask Terra Doby, the kindergarten teacher if she would like a volunteer. She did and we started working together.

What good fortune. Terra Doby is an amazing teacher. If Kindergarteners are a little wild, she is a Kindergarten Whisperer. Her oft repeated phrase is, “Ignore to learn.” And so the class seemed wild from the outside, slowly she began to work her magic on the kids and all but one became happy students, and even the most difficult child improved, got a little better. Instead of letting the difficult kids take over the class she was able to gently bring them in. She didn’t let them distract her and the class. They were ignoring to learn. It was a wonderful experience for me.

During the summer break, Adam and I went to lunch with Miss Doby. Afterwards Adam said, “I wish we had a teacher like Miss Doby in our school.” She is gentle, loves her job and is very good at it.

For their own reasons the administration decided Miss Doby was going to the 4^th grade the following year. She asked me if I was staying in Kindergarten or might want to come along with her. I tell my friends that after 7 years in Kindergarten I’ve been promoted to the fourth grade.

This year has been different, fourth graders are a lot different than Kinders, but they’re still wonderful kids. Working with Miss Doby has been a pleasure. It’s enjoyable just to watch how she teaches.  It's fascinating to watch a Kindergarten teacher who is very different in the 4th grade but just as good.  As her aid, I do what I can to make that easier, copying, cutting, sorting books, just doing a lot of the time consuming jobs that leave her with more time to teach. I also do assessments. I tutor a little and sometimes I walk around and just help. I’m older than when I started this and I found two days a week was taking it out of me. I cut back to one day a week and it made it much more enjoyable.

I love being around the kids, participating in their growth, helping where I can and being Miss Doby’s assistant, doing whatever I can to make her job easier and give her more time to teach. I am amazed and delighted how much the kids appreciate my being there, how they miss me when I’m not there and happy to see me when I return.