Teacher, Teacher
5/25/22
Dad is sitting opposite me at the dining table. We are tucked away in this cozy, bright beach condo my parents have rented for the month here where we live in Perdido Key. Long-ways opposite of each other we sit, covid-style as endcaps on this table. Easily 6 feet between us.
My children are in school. My husband is at work. Time alone with my parents by the gentle Gulf of Mexico is a bit dreamy in this soft, hazy winter light and I am paying attention to every sound and second. I know life is precious more than ever before.
We’ve been chatting casually about my direction. Dad, relaxed, hands me his copy of the new Parker J. Palmer book, having marked a section for me: “Does My Life Have Meaning?”
I wonder. Does he notice, as I do, the way his gentle detachment to outcomes rests well on him today? His shoulders are relaxed, eyes twinkling, hands perched open-palmed in his lap as if anything is possible next. He holds the day lightly and happily. Would I just indulge him a bit and read this section, Dad asks. Maybe it will help me in my work.
I am, of course, interested and ready to go sit on the balcony, listening to waves while soaking in some inspiration.
But Dad interrupts himself and wants to shift to a quick story with my permission. I’m flexible. Sill recovering from a terrible cold, I am masked and we’ve just finished tomato soup and chicken salad sandwiches.
In this strange time and space, I feel I could extend in any direction, for any reason.
All around me, life and breath fails. What will I do with my breath while still here?
I have time for whatever Dad wants. It's a joy. I take nothing for granted. My father tells a good story.
In this his 85th year, he shares, a creature he had repeatedly hoped to see his whole life, an Oven Bird, had shot like a rocket through the trees into his picture window at home and died.
Holding the bird in his hand, Dad realized it was the one he had longed to see in-person forever. This feathered one was likely the same oven bird he had heard in the trees a couple of days earlier saying "Teacher, teeeeacher," sparking his excitement.
Dad had also been thinking recently about that bird and the Robert Frost poem - a poem which had first invited curiosity about the featherling years back and had so many times since. Yet, bird watcher that he is, he had never seen an oven bird. This had been on his mind. So hearing its call had primed the pump.
"What to make of a diminished thing?", "The Oven Bird" asks famously at one point and Dad had been well aware of this while holding the bird… his hands now embracing a striped, lifeless body. What incredible irony.
All these years and here was his bird just when he thought he would never see one. What to make of a diminished thing? And now, there is the inevitable questioning about this crazy scene: Is it funny? Dad has a great sense of humor; no doubt there's a painful chuckle. Or is this cruel, somehow?
This bird’s call - “teacher, teacher” - is associated with a “diminished thing” in Frost’s poem because the birds’ presence marks mid-summer. A pause in between seasons. Just before the fall. According to Frost, this is a time not nearly as grand as the youth and show of Spring. And not yet at the point where life gloriously flames and releases.
As Dad is sharing, I immediately see connections, though I wish I didn’t, in part.
I see it. The bird is the Spirit of this moment in Dad’s life. Like a messenger the bird embodies the ripeness of Dad’s curiosity and life-season, and I sense that same bird was driven by forces more pure than our questions can imagine.
Instead of a hidden cruel hand or a twisted sense of favor for Dad's wish, this bird counts his death as life. He is driven to fly, and also die, in the hands of one who will embody his little call - "Teacher."
Yes, I believe this. Dad’s desire to see the bird only makes it more interesting. But there is more to the story. I know this is true only because the power of it won’t let me go: A transfer occurred. A transaction. Teacher, Teacher. Your time is ripe, your life has immense value.
Is life at 85, quiet and reflective, as *"one to ten" compared to 35, buzzing about in strong muscles, hearty laughter and song with career and home in full bright swing? (*A phrase from the poem).
I am woven into this lightning bolt of meaning, too, and cannot escape my part. Does my life have true meaning? That was the context of our original exchange before the story. My Dad wants me to connect with Parker Palmer's message to bring my best self to those I serve. He doesn’t see his connection to the interjecting little bird yet that I can tell. Or he doesn’t give it away. Regardless, it seems the Spirit of Life, Bird, Teacher and Student enjoyed our flexibility today to incarnate our simple moment.
Taking this mysterious cue, I am wondering about the answers to my questions. What value can be added to my life? Will I be diminished in my pursuit of more? I start a DMin (Doctorate of Ministry) this year. Each time I voice-to-text it, my smartphone tries to change the abbreviation to "demon" or “diminished.”
I doubt there is any meaning there. But being prompted to tease out any sinister nature of pursuing an advanced degree is not beyond my thinking. Institutions harbor Empire's ways. How will I walk it out? How will my teachers do the same? It is a looming shift in my life regardless of my mood about it on any given day. Half of women don't complete the degree. They find their hands are needed in sink basins and on steering wheels. In teacher conferences and bill pay apps.
Yet at 51 I am asking, am I yet alive? Shall I fly? I am one of many birds eyeing the sky. What is a life well-lived to be, for me? Grounded for two years by catastrophic change, am I to dream and act on it?
Or will I crash against the glass, showing my girls not to overdo it. To be at peace with small things.
I look up at my Dad, the kindest man I have ever known. My best teacher. His biggest fault: not realizing his own goodness and thus ill-preparing me for the ruthlessness of humanity.
The connections to what Dad is sharing and what I am seeing is happening so fast. How do you stumble into such a poignant moment after soup and sandwiches?
I don’t want to cry for Falls yet to come for Dad. But in the weight and beauty of it all, I can. I do weep while writing this.
So this is my birdsong. The writer's task. I'm calling it out, taking my place and opening my mouth.
Teacher, we have some years left. Teacher, teacher, life has been so beautiful. Let’s enjoy right where we are… like mid-summer in the mountains which is my favorite time and space in all of creation. Ripe with intensity and fireflies. Crickets singing all evening long. Way better than Spring if you ask me.
Soon enough, the leaves will begin to turn upward, pointing subtly skyward in a beloved silvery shimmer amidst the buzz of an achingly ripe moment before The Fall.
*Originally written in 1/22. I'm pleased to report that the program I am in is incredible.
Read Frost’s poem here:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44269/the-oven-bird