I was savoring a cup of Tanzanian Peaberry coffee by the koi pond early this non-walking morning. Images of a chance meeting the other day, a serendipitous meeting, with a past student I’ll call Bob in Lowes kept dancing across my mind. I was struggling to recover, retain, and savor every word of our brief conversation. To say it was an unexpected jolt would be an understatement.
I had run in to pick up some insecticide I had ordered online to protect my amaryillis. As I was piling the two bags in the cart, I heard a “Dr. Schmier” coming from off to the side. I turned. It was Bob. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of decades. I had thought of him now and then over the years. wondering what had become of him after he dropped out of school. Maybe it was because he had been afflicted with the same ADHD as my son, Robby; maybe it was because I often sadly bemoaned that he became a “one that got away.” At least, so I thought. How wrong I just discovered I was. “….I’m still around because you refused to focus on the obnoxious pain in the ass I was because of my severe ADHD,” he said. “You got past the defenses I had thrown up….You wouldn’t let me belittle myself as I always did. Instead….you tried to help me find hope in myself and because, if I can say it, you loved me when no one else, including me, did.…I know you thought you had failed when I dropped out…..this is my surprise chance to tell you that you didn’t….You finally did it….I alway felt I let you down, but I recently admitted that I had been really letting myself down….All these years I’ve been ignoring you, but something wouldn’t let me stop hearing you.…’It’s never too late to start dreaming and always too early to stop dreaming’ and ‘Become master of your own story’ drummed in my ears over and over and over again….I stopped being angry….Now, I’m finally listening….got myself on meds….I’m breaking the circle of sabotaging myself.…I’m believing….I’m loving myself, finally….I’m going back to school.…Thank you”
I smiled as my eyes teared up. All I said as I came around the counter with outstretched arms was, “Come here.” I gave him a big hug as I whispered in his ear, “No, thank you!” And, I rushed off to tell Susie, who was waiting in the car, of this “you don’t ask” moment.
There was a freshness of Spring in the air. We’re between cleansing storms. The pelting rains have started washing away the gilting pollen—at least until the next pollen storm. It was dawn, as always a hope-full dawn, a chance to begin again dawn. Silently watching the eastern skies gray, accompanied by the songs of the waterfall and the chorus of birds, is a declaration of certainty that the “this too shall pass” story never ends, that things do change. Feeling the hopefulness of the dawn, then, is a nonverbal de-hectic action, a calm savoring, a cherishing of awareness and attentiveness, a silent reflection. It’s a non-reactive stillness, a spacious looking around, an energizing pause, an offering of a way to live a nourishing life. It is as if each appearing leaf, each melodic koi, each fern fond, each pine needle, each person is an illuminating and revealing verse of Scripture. There is majesty all around and you begin to notice it, sound by sound, sight by sight, feel by feel, smell by smell that almost creates a Rumi-esque temptation to genuflect, kneel, and kiss the ground in gratitude. That makes the koi pond, for me, as it did the classroom, a holy place where I can celebrate and experience what I value most deeply, and take it out into both the academic world and the world at large. The dawn, as every dawn, is a love letter filled with beautiful images. In it, as the day awakens with its depth, profundity, and beauty, I am slowly enveloped with a dawning sense of wonder, of possibility, of opportunity, and of responsibility to live dynamically as a human being, as a human becoming, and as a human belonging.