Living Laterally

This week I found joy in reading my students' writing. They had written incredible, poignant, scholarly works on some of the biggest problems facing the world today. They discussed the causes of these issues and they investigated solutions. They showed optimism and they were unwavering in their individual calls to action.

I couldn't have been more impressed.

At least, that is until today. Today they handed in their collections of original poems, each bound and stapled together in a small chapbook for me to read over spring break.

And I was more impressed.

While their World Congress papers were scholarly, brimming with footnotes and evidence of their research, their poems reflected the unspoken stories and songs, joys and pains, of their hearts.

Their World Congress topics had been assigned, but their poetry topics had been discovered deep within the shadowy depths of their own inner selves.


We need to think like that, don't we? We need to be flexible and jump laterally between disciplines, reminding ourselves that there are so many things to love in life and that we have the ability to be eternally curious about what we're capable of doing, creating, and becoming.

One of my earliest mentors was my best friend's grandfather. His name was Harry. I didn't see Harry very often, but whenever I did it felt as though he lit me up with an electricity the likes of which I'd never encountered. He was just so alive and so excited to ask me BIG questions and to engage in BIG adventures.

I recall one time we had dinner at his house. He had made a schematic drawing of a "Big Mac" and told us we were going to be assembling our own Big Macs for dinner. The only problem, he admitted, was that he wasn't sure he'd gotten the "Special Sauce" right, so he needed us to assemble it and see if we could taste test it to get the proportions right. So of we went to the kitchen with jars of mayonnaise, ketchup bottles, sauces, and tinctures, and spoons, and herbs. Ultimately, I think he knew that the sauce was just a variation of 1,000 Island Dressing, but we probably made a half dozen of our own "special sauces" that night. And most importantly, he drew us (young as we were) into his world of fascination with everything and anything...even a Tuesday night dinner in July.

I recently was reminded of Harry and the way he woke up something within me. I searched his name and saw that he'd died in 2016. The Obituary from The Vineyard Gazette (before moving to New Hampshire he'd made his home for 30 years on Martha's Vineyard) follows. It made me smile deeply to know that my memory of Harry aligned with reality. I'd been in elementary school when we made Big Macs in his kitchen, but sometimes the legends and memories of our childhoods--just like my students' poems--put words to truths that simply cannot be said.

...He loved to go to the dump (not the transfer station) and hold court, or to the library where he would take slips from all the exotic plants. (“It’s a win-win, they needed pruning anyway,” he would say.)

He brought his family to [Martha's Vineyard] in the 1960s and told his son and daughter over and over that this was a special place, that they should always remember it, that it wasn’t ordinary, that they were blessed to be here.

He wouldn’t talk about the typical Vineyard attributes that all the world knows about; instead he would talk about the midnight walks he took, insomnia providing him an unexpected gift, from his home on William street, down to the boat wharf, down to Beach Road, meeting those who also couldn’t sleep, returning with many more adventurous tales than his dreams would ever give.

He would talk of cold, foggy, Sunday afternoons at Lucy Vincent, gathering driftwood with his wife and kids, using it to create makeshift dwellings complete with chimneys and Sterno campfires, heating hot chocolate, and hoping there were other brave souls venturing out to the beach on those days, who would see the cozy shelters and wonder who the lucky ones were inside.

He talked of the teen gatherings at the Ryder house, laughter abounding, of waking his children up in the middle of the night to walk William street in the deafening silence of a good Christmas snow.

Starting in the Vineyard school system, then doing whatever possible to keep his family on the Island, he paid the price of being a visionary in all things. He was not always understood or easy to work with — but oh, how he loved the Vineyard.

He especially loved the Island people, the everyday, honest, straightforward open people, and the creative, outside-the-box people.

I hope, when I'm in my eighties that I, too, am seeking out people like this...the everyday, honest, straightforward open people, and the creative, outside-the-box people.

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