Ghosts and Blessings
Related to the last post – I’m sitting at my desk with an open can of Coke in each hand, making sure that every one of the four on my desk are empty.
I go upstairs to throw out the cans and see the Holy Ghost newsletter on the table. Then I realize the annual R.E.M. holiday fan club package is also in the mail. This year there’s a DVD, so I grab it and the newsletter and head downstairs again. The DVD has two live performances from a concert in Germany, including a performance of “Turn You Inside-Out,” a song from Green, an album I first started listening to in high school. It feels appropriate.
I’m making my way through the newsletter, checking out the alumni news. One of my old classmates just had a baby. We’re all growing up, that’s for sure.
I start reading a column by Edward Glowienka, an alum from the class of 2000, who’s teaching philosophy at a Spiritan missionary in Tanzania. And I see him telling a story about the late Diane Garforth.
Damn.
I knew Mrs. Garforth had passed away from cancer this past May. I heard about it at the wedding of one of my old friends from the school paper. In retrospect, I think I was so stunned I didn’t feel anything. Tonight I got to the back of the newsletter and saw her picture and read the tribute penned by Mrs. Osborne, my sophomore year homeroom teacher and one of the nicest people that exist on this planet. And now I’m laughing and crying.
Ed’s story was about Mrs. Garforth rejecting a paper he had written, saying that he was capable of better work. And oh, that is so true to who she was. I had her for freshman lit, at a time when Holy Ghost rearranged the order of its periods every day. I can remember the bemused look when I walked into her room at the wrong time. More to the point, I remember how she ripped the first paper I wrote in high school to shreds. She had no patience for anything less than your best effort. But most of the time, you could be sure the high demands were because she cared and because she knew you were up to the task.
I do think that in a lot of ways I disappointed her. She didn’t seem too happy with my interest in journalism, or my fondness for science fiction. I think she saw something more serious and literary-minded in my future. And she definitely didn’t approve of my choice of colleges, something that I felt no small amount of bitterness about. But she was someone I always made sure to see when I visited the school, and she always cared to know how I was doing.
More than anything else, the thing that made Holy Ghost the school that it was is that Mrs. Garforth was far from alone there. So many of those teachers cared, damn it. You could feel it. I could, anyway. And that made such a difference. I wouldn’t be where I am now, I wouldn’t be in front of a classroom at al, if it weren’t for their inspiration. If it weren’t for her, and for so many like her.
So, thank you, Mrs. Garforth. Thank you.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.
Wednesday, December 7th 2005 at 5:50 am |
I can’t vouch for how it feels to go on to teach – I’m starting to feel a great deal of uncertainty about my ability to teach my dog not to jump up on me like I’m an unbreakable tree truck when, in fact, I’m a quite breakable human being – but I think we’ve all had one or two of those teachers. Actually, I count myself luck to have had several. In junior high and high school, I was just a ticking time bomb of potential disappointment. I swear to God, if there were such a thing as a time machine, I’d probably go back, visit myself at the age of 15…and get no closer than 100 yards to my younger self for fear that I’d wring my own neck for pointlessly, shamelessly blowing it – completely failing to take advantage of the opportunities before me. I let them all down, every last one of them, back then, sometimes despite trying not to. At that point in my life, I wasn’t worried about disappointing what was left of my family – that was practically a given. But even then I’d feel some serious remorse if I let down one of my favorite teachers. It’s been 15 years since I graduated high school, but these days I try to conduct myself in such a way now that they’d be happy with how I turned out, maybe even proud that I was one of their students.
Whether or not they are or would be…not for me to say. But where you’re concerned…I don’t think you have anything to worry about on that count. (Just my admittedly biased opinion there, mind you.)