Hutch

Hutch

When I was thirteen or so, my mother took me aside and pronounced that I should either be a minister or a teacher.  The immediate effect of this bulletin was to make my shivers wiggle!  These careers were the farthest possible choices from my adolescent imagination, not that I had given much (or really any) thought to a career at that point.  I had just barely become a teenager after all.  It’s not an appointment process I felt, it just happens, or so it seems.

Swept up in the typical flow of school, I found myself in the hallways of the local community high school, freshman year.  If anyone had taken notice of me, I hadn’t noticed.  I was just an immature kid, hoping to make it through the maze of hallways without drawing attention to myself.  Good luck with that! The game was everyone noticed everything; how you dressed, how you cut your hair, who you walked with, etc. 

Academically, math class proved to be especially challenging.  Algebra wanted something from me that I just didn’t seem to have.  What was all this about “x” anyhow?  To me it was all an unknown.  My teacher, Mr. Hutchison, was just a little hard to read at first. He was soft spoken, witty, clean cut, with a blazer and Buddy Holly glasses.  People who knew him referred to him as “Hutch” although never to his face.

He knew math was all slings and arrows to me, but he never embarrassed me in class by calling on me when he understood I was lost.  The day before tests, he invited me and others to a review session after school.  If you attended, there were likely problems practiced that would be on the exam the next day. I attended.

When I dropped out of marching band (the clarinet was my woodwind equivalent of algebra) he found a job for me holding the sideline down marker at home football games.  I was still involved.

During my senior year I quit the wrestling team in frustration, one month shy of the dreaded “participation letter.”   He took me aside and kindly asked the wisdom of my decision.  I couldn’t admit to him my embarrassment in not actually earning a letter, but he understood.  I was relieved.

Passing him in the hallway on any given day, he would give me a silent, non-judgmental nod of recognition.  I sometimes walked out of my way just to gain this affirmation.

Slowly as the days and years passed, he became “Hutch” to me.

As luck would have it, I have recently retired from a 35 year career as a teacher.  Imagine that! I tried along the way to be caring, understanding, and supportive, realizing that children need such consideration.  It’s the least that I could do, because in part it was done for me.

I guess you don’t always know a role model when you first see them.  Perhaps the cliché images of sports stars and movie idols put up road blocks. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that we don’t know who we will become, at least when we are young, and who might just be quietly guiding us along the way. 

Looking back now, it’s easier for me to see who was there for me and who had a hand in my making.  Looking back, I see those Buddy Holly glasses and sly smile.

The Prickly Edge

There is a tang of saline and
It runs in the gutters of my mouth
Reminding me that I am thirsty
And although fresh water is nearby
I do not drink,
Choosing rather the prickly edge of desire
Over momentary satisfaction 
Choosing to abstain
With its yearnings and keening
Because it fills a different void
Elementally separate and distinct

That no simple sip of water can quench.

Moving

    When I finally decided to close out the house that I’d lived in for more than twenty-five years and move to a distant state, I had to determine what to do with my accumulated earthly belongings.  The task was daunting.  It boiled down to a challenging list of choices: move the object, store it, sell it, give it away, or throw it out.

    Items to be stored ultimately would go into a 10’ by 15’ storage unit; a clean dry vault composed of a concrete floor, steel walls, and a roll-up door.  To make best use of this limited space, I packed many smaller objects into boxes purchased at Home Depot.   Dutifully I wrote on the box tops the generic nature of their contents: winter clothes, family photos, pots and pans, etc.    Ultimately it became a stacking task, like a game of Tetris, fitting boxes of several shapes into tightly fitting walls of artifacts.  A narrow isle gave limited access and offered a vague promise to return and retrieve.  

     As I taped box after box shut the finality of my move began to hit home.  Storing the boxes temporarily freed me from the burden of possessions.  I was trending back to the foot loose days of my youth, where everything I owned fit into the trunk of a ’62 Chevy, with room for a couple of dogs and a hitchhiker in the back seat.  But depressingly, I began to feel that I was losing these objects, as if the cardboard cartons somehow had the power to swallow them whole and render the contents sterile.  I was losing my visual and tactile connection to them, that up to now I had always taken for granted.   I could no longer slip-on my well-worn baseball glove, chop veggies with a favorite shape knife, or hold the smooth grey rock collected  from a favorite secret shore.    It was disorienting and disconcerting.

     Articles of some monetary value I sold at a moving sale, held two weekends before my departure.  I announced to each arriving visitor, “This is a moving sale, and I’d appreciate if you’d help me by moving some of these things down the driveway and into your vehicle.”  I was generous with the pricing and offered a story, when requested, for each item.   The event had a festive tone.  The shoppers were generous with their stories in return as they picked though the relics of my times.  Many customers came back a second day, tempted to buy more (I mean who could resist a half bag of cement or a remote controlled gorilla head?) and perhaps pick up on previous conversations.

     It felt good knowing that these objects would have a second life, bringing pleasure and utility as they were repurposed.  They too were being separated from me, gone but not sterilized, gone to bear new meaning.

Questions I Would Ask

To the two Cane Toads, hopping through the greenhouse
One dark and rainy Hawaiian night:
How long do you need to exist as an unwitting invader,
Until you belong?
Are you a team, hunting the recesses of your own
Private Serengeti?
Do you get high licking your lips?

To the Dragonfly caught in a web high above, then dried
And mummified that tumbled to the floor:
Did you know the beauty of the lacework of your wings?
What is a life like, being half aquatic and half aerial?
Were you done when the web snared you, were you done living?

To the Orb weaving spider, whose web I knocked down:
Do you know that I know what that web really meant to you,
And that I am sorry?
Did you see that your fly shuttle weavings catches the morning magic hour of light
Sometimes shimmering with strands bejeweled, sometimes glowing luminescent,
Billowing in the onshore breeze?
And that I don’t like flies as much as you?

And how is it with you today, if could we chat
Toad, dragonfly and spider?
How is it with you…

I Have Sun

   I have sun
It seeks me as the day begins
And clarifies the night within
   I have water
And there is a cool stream nearby
That runs although it now is dry
   I have food
That gives me pleasure, fire and form
And strength to weather every storm
   I have friends
Who kindly share and do inspire
Another kind of form and fire
   I have night
That offers up its dark retreat
And so for now I am complete.

Son on the Slope

I am your son on the slope
And I am here to learn
From you father Kea
Of your cold night winds
Of your strong heat held dark
And of your old ways rumbling and stretching towards
The night sky
Filled with stars burning with the ancient light
That offers little cheer but great hope.
I am your son on the slope
And gravity calls me to you
Mother sea calm and pacific
Reaching farther than I can imagine,
You measure out storm and cloud
And most wanted portions of the sun
Newborn in the darkness
Loving us all in that way,
Whale and woman
Marlin and man
Rounding the ever changing corner
Filling our hearts with one more day.