The Right Place at the Right Time

My dad died recently, so I've been thinking a lot about love and loss, and especially about my parents.  When my dad was alive, we used to tease him, saying, "THAT'S going into the skit at your funeral!"

I did not attend the memorial service, but if I had, this is what I might have said.

My father was a demanding man, driven to perfection (and generally coming pretty close).  He was hard on himself, and he could be hard on us as well.  He was the first of his generation to be born in the US, and he believed that brains and hard work would guarantee success.  We were born with the brains, and he created incentives to ensure the hard work.  I remember earning stickers for staying dry at night (which perhaps was not as early a memory as I might like to think) and quarters for good grades, an incentive program for his children that mirrored the ones he created for Fortune 500 companies.

I stayed in school for a long time, eventually earning a Ph.D.  As I neared the end of my graduate program, I bogged down, and Dad sent me an inspirational graphic.  He drew a thermometer of the sort that fund-raising campaigns favor, with Ph.D. as the final goal.  Along the way were marked progress points like “Entered Kindergarten” “Moved to Chagrin for seventh grade,” and “accepted to college.”  The thermometer was filled very nearly to the top, a reminder that I had nearly reached my goal. 

I graduated a few months later, and my parents came to my graduation.  A couple of years later, doing some career development exercises, Dad wrote that he considered my earning that Ph.D. as one of the top ten achievements of his life.  He was proud of what I had accomplished, and he also took pride in setting an expectation for success, creating the conditions necessary for achievement, and supporting me psychologically, emotionally, and financially every step of the way.

The last time I talked to my dad, we talked about my son Jefferson’s upcoming graduation from his nurse anesthesia program.  He sighed.  “Boy, I wish I could be there,” and we both knew that he wouldn’t.

My children were lucky to live only an hour from their grandparents throughout their school years, and Grandma Janie and Grandpa Tak attended every concert, school play, and graduation--just as they had attended all of mine.  But Dad was too frail to make this trip. He died a week after that conversation.

Today is Jefferson’s graduation.  He’s graduating from the #1 nurse anesthesia program in the country. It’s been a long slog:  six years and his second master’s degree in nursing.  Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to offer the same kind of support to him that my dad offered to me.  Today, his success is his own, but I share in the joy it brings.

Team Jefferson, with scrub caps in VCU black and gold

Addie is not too sure about this.

Horribly out-of-focus pic of Jeff's newest scrub cap.  

When my first child was born, Dad said to me, “If I am lucky, I will live to see this child graduate from high school.”  Patrick is 35 now, and my parents attended his graduations from high school, undergraduate school, and his Ph.D. program. He would have enjoyed Jefferson’s graduation, and I know he would not have wanted me to miss it.

Close encounters of the school kind

After our day in Agra, we had one day in Delhi before coming back to Kochi.  Our first stop was the Deepalaya School.

These school/service visits are included in almost every SAS trip.  In China we went to a school for children whose parents are in prison.  In Burma, we went to a school for blind children and another for girls who have no better educational opportunities.  In India, it was underprivileged children whose parents have come to Delhi seeking work. 

(It’s not clear to me why these children don’t go to public school, which is free.  The government provides uniforms and school supplies when necessary.  Perhaps it’s the transient status of the parents. Our guide told us they come from families who do not have a history of education.)

I feel like a curmudgeon for not liking these trips.  I have heard people describe them as the highlight of their visit.  To me, they seem more like zoos for children.  We make a donation to the school and it purchases a little performance from the children.  They seem good natured and obedient, but not particularly interested in the parade of Western faces coming through their school.  It doesn't look like they have any say in the matter.

My discomfort here is a variation of my general discomfort at being a tourist.  For this trip, I grabbed a skinny book from the "take one, leave one" shelf in the library.  It was Jamaica Kinkaid's A Small Place, a memoir of Antigua.  The basic message: tourists are horrid people who think they own us for the time we are here, but they have no idea how much we hate them. (So that's the translation when the waiters, or tour guides, or vendors speak to each other?  Thanks, we were wondering.)  We make this kind of deal with the adults--this is how you make your living here--but it seems unfair to enlist children, trading on their big eyes to shake loose a few bucks.

I felt most comfortable in the blind school, where the gawking occurred unobserved by the children.  We watched them stream out of morning worship, sort their shoes out of the piles of shoes at the door, and zip off to the next thing.  They know their way around the school and you'd better not be in their path!

At this school, we were invited into a kindergarten class, where the children were coloring worksheets.  The worksheets said they were an exam, and each question had a point value.  The front asked them to identify examples of air, land, and sea transport and to identify creatures of the sea (including a garden snail).  On the back, they were to match the parent and offspring of dog, cat, chicken, and owl.  As far as I could tell, however, they were simply coloring.  They couldn’t read, they hadn’t written their names on their papers, and they weren’t labeling any of the pictures.

The coloring was painstaking work.  Each child was carefully pulling one crayon at a time out from their box, then putting it back when done.  Most of them slid a cover onto the box and put the whole box into their schoolbags each time.  There was no squirming, no talking, no distractions.  These children were here to work!

They were carefully copying each other’s work.  At several tables, there was a clear “alpha” child, and one or more children copying the alpha’s color choices.  That self-censorship seemed very sad to me.  What kind of pressure is exerted to make a four or five year old unwilling to risk using the wrong color crayon?  The motto of the school is "Enabling self reliance" --they have a long way to go!

The children sang for us, and then we sang “Itsy bitsy spider” for them.  The teacher declined to translate.  They are, in theory, taught in English, although the children I spoke to did not respond to anything I said, beyond confirming their names which I read off their papers.  The kids gamely imitated our hand motions, but I don’t think they understood the words.  We also sang “If you’re happy and you know it” with the same results.

Evidence of aliens among us

In another room, one of our students made balloon animals for the children.  One balloon artist, 30 children.  Jessica was racing to try to make one for each child, and was working from right to left.  The children on the have-not side were straining to see and clearly envious.  The children on the have side seemed perplexed.  I wondered what would happen when the 30 became haves in a school of 470 have-nots. 

George came to the school with us, and one of our students found a Curious George book in a pile of children’s books.  I wondered how that would play over the dinnertime bowl of rice. 

A monkey from a book came to our school today.  And he was wearing a t-shirt that said “F*** swag.  I’m gangnam style.”   

Education is learning the ways of the world.  Sometimes, the world doesn't make a whole lot of sense.