The Coat Closet Dilemma

When I walked into my new second grade classroom following yet another military transfer of my family, Benjamin “Benny” Ostrello was the first person who greeted me. He was a chubby kid with a bright, happy smile, a good sense of humor and a welcoming spirit, probably all the direct result of the fact that even in second grade, the kids that were in and the kids that were out were already firmly established. And Benny was not cool enough to be in. So, he became my new best friend on that first day because, well, friends are hard to find when you are not “in” with the right crowd.

He was a source of constant hilarity to me. And he was he was a source of constant consternation to our teacher, Miss Nyman. In even just a few weeks, I could see that it took a lot to get to her because she was literally one of the kindest, most patient souls I had ever encountered in a school. She wore acetate dresses with big belts and bold patterns, and a cloud of perfume always arose from around her when you got close. Even if she wasn’t hugging you, you felt embraced by her presence. She felt like coming home.

Her nemesis, Benny, was always trying to be friends with everybody during instruction, and because I knew this and I valued his friendship, I tried to give him every opportunity to practice his social skills. One day, Miss Nyman snapped. She turned to Benny and, with a stern voice she rarely used, sent him to the infamous coat closet in the back of the room and told him he had to stand there because he was keeping the other kids from learning.

I was mortified. That coat closet was a dark, dark room in the back of the classroom, and if you were sent there, you carried the weight of shame and dishonor. You were the kid who was keeping other people from learning, and that was a huge crime those days in any public-school classroom.  It was literally only one step away from a swat with a paddle in the principal’s office.

The problem was, Benny didn’t initiate the distraction- I did.

After he marched himself into “the abyss,” I remember sitting at my desk working on the assignment and literally wrestling with whatever moral conscience a second grader might have.

Should I confess the distraction was my fault?

I hated the thought that a confession might send me to the coat closet and saddle me with the reputation as a disrupter of learning. But I hated more that my new friend Benny might be standing there in my place - Benny, who had not professed innocence, but simply took the heat because that’s what he always did.

There was only one thing to do.

I felt like I was marching up to a guillotine when I went to Miss Nyman‘s desk. The other kids were working quietly. She looked up at me, her perfume drifting up in the slight breeze the movement created, and asked me if I needed help. I think I started to cry, and then I whispered to her that I didn’t need any help. I just needed to let her know that Benji was not the one who was causing trouble. It was me who should be in the coat closet.

And then I waited in the silence for the punishment I knew would come.

Miss Nyman pushed her chair back loudly and stood up. She put her arm around me and faced me toward the class announcing she needed everybody to listen. She went on to explain that I had told her that I was the one who had caused trouble in class and not Benny, and I had confessed because I didn’t want him to get in trouble for something I had done.

I don’t know what I expected her to do after that, but I most certainly did not expect the next sentence. “Class, this is what honesty looks like, and I can’t tell you how much I value the fact that Vicky came forward and told the truth.”  She did not send me to the coat closet - she brought Benny out and welcomed him back to class.

I don’t remember the students’ reaction. But I think when Benny was let out of the coat closet and freed from his imprisonment, he was probably grateful. I don’t even remember how I felt in that moment.  But I will tell you this: I have never forgotten that day. I left her classroom knowing that no matter what the consequences might be, it was better in all circumstances to just tell the truth.

It is a lesson I have carried with me for 65 years,

and for that, I have Benny and Miss Nyman to thank.

“To Do” and “Done”

I have a complex relationship between routine and spontaneity. I am a full-fledged daughter of a concrete/sequential, ever-practical German immigrant mother and a military father who wrote poetry, listened to classical music, and willingly jumped into any new creative project, much to my mother‘s constant consternation. 

As a result of living a childhood floating between these polar opposite world views, I now live my life in the tension between two distinct lists. The first is a “to-do” list, which I make every morning, with little boxes in the margin that I can check off at day’s end and feel a sense of accomplishment. The boxes mostly remain unchecked. The second is a “done” list. At the end of the day, I write down all of the things that I actually did, and I put nice little boxes in the margin, and then I check them all off with a deep sense of satisfaction.

When you put the two lists side-by-side, they bear no resemblance to one another, which begs the question:

Why even bother?

But I do bother - every day. There is something so clean and perfect about a “to do” list that has not a single thing checked off of it, and there is something very satisfying about a completed “done” list that says things like: 

• went for a walk around the lake and blazed trails

• thought about life’s big questions

• organized a random, messy drawer and found some “lost things”

• took a video of a young squirrel learning to walk on flimsy branches

• watched the dog have deep thoughts while staring at the river

I don’t have a driving passion like some people do that sends them out the door in the morning. But if I look at my done list, these are the passions I’m starting to notice. 

• I love to think.

• I love words.

• and I love the way that the Earth speaks when I walk on it. 

I sometimes wonder: Is this enough? Shouldn’t I be saving the world somewhere? Shouldn’t I be eating locusts and wearing a horsehair shirt, yelling warnings on street corners?  And, more importantly, shouldn’t I be checking off that list of important things “to do” every day? 

Not surprisingly, the first thing on my “to do” list today was to clean the kitchen. But I made the mistake of looking at Google maps on my way to walk the dog and saw that there was a lake nearby that I had never seen before. I got to the place of decision on Main Street and turned left instead of right, taking “the road less traveled by,” and it truly did make all the difference.

When I returned home, the dishes still awaited placement in an empty dishwasher, but my head was filled with the images of my unplanned adventure. A lily pad filled lake embraced the entire field of my vision. The wind danced through the trees and along the shore as hopeful fishermen cast their lines into the rippled lake. A field of yellow flower tips competed with the rusted lines of a fence.

Now it is the end of the day. The house is still a mess. But I have put “writing down random thoughts” on my “done” list for today.

And for today, that will have to be enough.

Into the deep

The Nooksack River, once nearly overflowing its banks and carrying uprooted logs like sticks in its Spring current, has settled down. Our retriever Zuni, a desert transplant, initially approached this river with much trepidation. She started out by just dipping her toes into the water and then she went paw deep and now she will go all the way up until the water touches her belly. Along the way, she learned to “fetch” as we threw small sticks into the water near her.

In these summer days, all the sticks and debris deposited in high water have been turned into fetch toys and ended up downstream somewhere.  Because the river bank is empty, we bought a bright, floating fetch toy to encourage her splashing in the shallows.  But today at a new spot in the river, I accidentally threw the fetch toy too far . She ran out to the edge of her comfort zone, began to take the next step, and then realized it was a drop off.

What to do?

We watched as she contemplated her next step. Should she simply watch her bright orange fetch toy slowly float down the river or rescue it from an uncertain future?  She inched forward. She inched back.  She wiggled. She stretched her neck out. And then suddenly she made the decision to just dive on in.  We marveled as she grabbed the fetch toy, confidently paddled through the deeper water

toward shore,  and dropped it at our feet.  I expected her to be hesitant, but she danced back out into the water craving a repeat experience.  As I watched her dive into the unknown again, I realized she  had learned a valuable lesson:

What she wanted was far more valuable than her fear. It was worth the risk.

And it got me thinking. Isn’t that what we do as human beings as well? I don’t know about you, but for most of my life, I have been wandering around in the shallows of my life - pulling back whenever my feet would leave the comfort of that secure shore. I can’t tell you how many metaphorical fetch toys I have let pass down the river and stood paralyzed by my own fear of trying to extend my boundaries.

Zuni was able to leave the safety of the shore and take a risk only because the desires of her heart were stronger than her fear. And that begs the question for me, and possibly for you as well, what is the true desire for which I would be willing to risk everything?

Honestly, a crowd of  loud voices drowns out the call of the river within me. Some linger from childhood.  Some try to steal the remembrance of my heart’s call.  And some, planted as tiny seeds along the way, have now grown to a tangle of branches through which it is hard to even find a pathway to the shore.

But I did know the way once. When I was young.

I could feel the call in my bones with a force so powerful I thought it would consume me. The tiniest moments of beauty would cause me to weep inconsolably, and I ached to crawl into the very landscape and be cradled by it. A symphony would play, and I would get swallowed up in the sound, my raw skin caressed and soothed by the notes.

Over the years, those voices had convinced me that being in the current is meant for braver souls.  But perhaps it is time to trap those voices in a jar like angry bees, and let them buzz incomprehensibly around me as I move forward anyway.

Perhaps it is it is time to leave the safety of the shallows and surrender to the call of the current that carries the desires of my heart.

And perhaps it is time to embrace the words of Flannery O’Connor that the artist prays by creating , and simply spend what is left of my days in ceaseless prayer.

Then, and only then, will I never be content to remain on shore again.