Swan Song XXXIII--The cry of the loon

For the first time in years--and probably the last time ever--I staged a little reading last night here at the college where I've taught for 35 years.  I read a couple of my own stories from a series I've been fooling around with now for a couple of years, and, at least from my point of view, it was a ball.  

The crowd included a few students, but more adults and folks from the community.  Maybe that was why I felt the way I did.  I had an odd sensation that the voice I was using to read those stories was something I might call the authentic me, not just a teaching voice, a voice I rolled out from some corner of my soul, but instead a voice I hadn't used for some time.  An old maxim about lit claims that when there's some discrepancy between what writers say and what they write, you'd best believe the tale because the story always holds the real voice--"believe the tale, not the teller."

I'm quite sure the great majority of students I've had over the years wouldn't fault their ex-teacher/prof for phoniness.  Sometimes I think I've been far too honest.  But somehow, last night, I felt as if there was a slightly different me talking, reading, and it felt very, very good.

All of which puts me in mind of an old teacher tale I heard while doing a story about a couple who lived in a pre-Revolutionary War farmhouse somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania.  Our conversation was interrupted, I remember, by a phone call, which the husband took and promptly left the room.  He was pastor, and, by the tone of his voice--it was difficult not the hear something of the conversation--I assumed it was a pastoral call because the whole time he was talking he seemed to be doing his best to put out a fire, to lay some horror to rest.

When he returned, he looked at his wife and said a single word--let's say it was Hazel.  

His wife rolled her eyes.

Silence ensued, which he then quickly filled in with the story.  It seems Hazel called because she was absolutely sure that, once again, the CIA or the FBI or some secret agents of some type were reading her mail and keeping her house under surveillance.  She was sure of it, she said, because some package she'd received was ripped, and she was tired of it but she didn't think she could really call in the law because they were all in cahoots as you well know and what on earth did they want of her anyway?--did they think she was a communist or a spy or some criminal or something when she wasn't anything like that nor had she ever been, as you well know, Pastor Williams, and isn't there something someone can do to stop this madness?--my goodness, we're living in America or what's become of this proud nation, and it's really something when you can't trust law enforcement or the government at all, if you know what I mean. . .

That kind of thing.

They both smiled.

"She's grown more and more loony ever since she retired," Pastor Williams' wife insisted.  "We hardly know what to do."

"Funny thing," the Pastor said, and then told a story that's haunted me ever since.  He said the whole parish remembered her for being a wonderful teacher, in town, for all of her life.  Students loved her, he said.  She'd never married and simply gave her life for her students.

Not long before, he told me, he'd decided that maybe he could do a little therapy by putting Hazel up in front of the whole Sunday school, by getting her back in the mission, the calling, the identity that had given her life real meaning, pre-retirement.

"So we did," he said, shaking his head.  

His wife was giggling.  "She was amazing--absolutely amazing."  Up in front of kids once more, she was steady, dramatic, precise, and pitch-perfect, as strong a classroom presence as she'd ever been. "If you would have heard our Hazel that Sunday morning," his wife told me, "you could have never guessed she was crazy as a loon."

I was on assignment for a book I was doing for the Back to God Hour, and, honestly, I don't remember much of their story.  I remember the ancient square farmhouse, Knickerbocker era, I think; I remember the couple, their faces; but their story is between the covers of that book and not anywhere discoverable between my ears.  It's pretty much gone.

The phone call, on the other hand, haunts me, and has ever since I visited out there, ever since I heard it, maybe because all of us teachers have multiple selves, some deft as a well-played hand of poker, some crazy as a loon.  

Who was I last night?

Who will I be this morning?  

God only knows.