Life Must Go On. No Matter What.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...
 

[This was originally written and posted on October 11, 2006.]

Tomorrow is a significant anniversary for me. I've dropped hints here and there to various ones of you that my life has been deeply affected by certain experiences. This is one of them. It's so much a part of me now that trying to pull it out in logical bits really wasn't easy, but I've done my best. It's long, and it's not a happy story. I won't think any less of you if you decide not to finish, or to skip it entirely. I've changed the names to protect people's privacy.

It was on tomorrow's date in 1995 - Thursday, October 12 - that one of the students in the high school where I worked as library media specialist was supposed to come back to school with his mother. The day before, I had been in the conference room next to the principal's office taking down a television set after a meeting. I saw Mr. Smith and the student (I'll call him Pete) go into Mr. Smith's office. Pete's bus driver had brought him back to the school after a parent stopped the school bus complaining that Pete was making obscene gestures at her, or, as we say, "shooting her the bird."

I wasn't trying to eavesdrop, but I heard a fair amount of Mr. Smith's side of the conversation: Mr. Smith: Pete, what were you thinking? You knew you were on probation. You knew you could get into a lot of trouble! Pete: [mumbled response] Mr. Smith: Okay, Pete. Come back in here tomorrow morning with your mother, and let's see what we can work out. Okay? Pete: [mumbled response] Mr. Smith and Pete left the office, and I thought nothing more about it.

The following morning, I went to work with a headache. Things were often quiet in the media center after the initial buzz before the start of the school day. Sometimes during first period, I'd go up to the front of the building to the teacher workroom in the office area to get a soft drink to wash down my headache medicine. But that day, I had some Mello Yello left in my little fridge from the previous day. Otherwise, I would've headed up to the school office right about 8:15.

While I was up in my own little office washing down my ibuprofen, I heard Mr. Smith's voice come over the intercom in a tone I'd never heard before: "Teachers, keep all students in the classroom. DO NOT LET STUDENTS LEAVE THE CLASSROOM FOR ANY REASON." There was more, but I didn't really hear the rest. I'm afraid that between the headache and the fact that I was upstairs in my office with the door closed, I missed the last part. I later learned that it was "Lock your doors and stay in the classroom!"

Now, I had two students in the media center at that particular time. Because in the school's emergency management plan, the male teachers were asked to report to the office, I took the two students and went next door to the auditorium where Coach H's students were listening to a guest speaker, Mrs. Fast. I asked Coach H if he was going to the office (he hadn't looked at the plan, apparently) and told him I'd stay with his students. Mrs. Fast and I did our best to keep the students seated and calm, but there were strange noises coming from the intercom, which hadn't been turned off after Mr. Smith's urgent announcement.

There was something about someone having been shot. Each time the students asked me what was going on, I had to say (honestly) that I didn't know. Eventually, one of the coaches came around and told me that a teacher had been shot, that another teacher (Mrs. Simpson) had had a fatal heart attack, and that Pete had been shot dead. Refusing to believe that people had been killed in my school until I heard it from Mr. Smith, I wasn't about to pass on this information to the students.

But they were getting pretty restless. We could see from the window in the door of the auditorium that law enforcement and other emergency vehicles were gathering in front of the school. After a while, the decision was made to send the students home, and someone was sent door-to-door letting the teachers know, but apparently they forgot about us in the auditorium. At last someone came around and we were out of there, trying to find out what was going on.

I found some other teachers wandering around at the back of the gym. I told them that I'd heard Mrs. Simpson and Pete were dead. Another teacher told me that Mr. Smith had confirmed it to her. With that info, I was forced to accept that this nightmare was real. By this time, most of the students had taken a bus, been picked up by concerned parents who were getting frantic phone calls or hearing things over the police scanner, or set off on foot, as so many of our students walked to school.

Teachers were asked to stay on campus for a discussion session before going home. Those were agonizing moments, waiting for that meeting. They said we'd be meeting in my library media center, so I headed in that direction. As I was walking, I heard the sound of an approaching helicopter. My first thought was that it was the media - vultures swooping in to take advantage of the chaos that had broken loose in our little corner of the world. I was incredibly angry. My first impulse on reaching the library was to start sweeping books off the shelves - you can't know what a great desire I had to do that! - but my rational side reminded me that if I did it, there'd be no one but me to pick them up and reorganize them. So I resisted the temptation.  At some point I went into the library office and called my (now ex-)husband to tell him that I was all right. (Later I learned that someone had called a colleague's husband and told him that a teacher had been killed, but didn't tell him who. He was frantic, but he was lucky - it wasn't his wife.)

Eventually the rest of the faculty joined me in the library. It was a totally surreal experience, because in addition to this situation that only happens somewhere else to other people, it was our Homecoming Spirit Week, when students and any faculty who cared to participate dressed for the daily theme; Thursday had been designated "Tacky Day." The students enjoyed seeing teachers lighten up a bit, and it was fun, so I participated when I could find something appropriate to wear - and Tacky Day was easy. When this day and its reverberations were over, I threw away the clothes I had worn that day. I never could bring myself to put them on again. And while I eventually participated in Spirit Week in later years, I could never again bring myself to dress up for Tacky Day.

In the meeting, our principal Mr. Smith did his best to explain what had happened. Pete shot a teacher in the face, and that teacher was still alive. Mrs. Simpson opened the door to the teacher workroom, stepped in, saying, "He's got a gun. I've been shot." Then she collapsed and died. (At the time, we were told she'd had a heart attack. Later we learned that Pete had shot her as well. The entry wound hadn't been found at first because it was under her arm and the bullet apparently cauterized the wound - so there was no blood.)  Then Pete shot and killed himself.  Also in the meeting, we were asked not to talk with the press. School would be closed the following day, but teachers were asked to come for counseling sessions and to offer support to any students who wanted or needed it.

On Friday, we met first at the school. Everyone waited for others and walked in in groups of three or more, because no one was quite ready to go walking through those halls alone. Then we were bused to the community center, where we met with the entire school district - only three schools. I felt rather lost, because Mrs. Simpson was one of the people I usually sat with, and went to lunch with, on days when we didn't have students. And though I was so terribly sad, I couldn't cry. My headache from the previous morning had never gone away, my heart was breaking, and I couldn't cry.

I remember a little about that day of meetings and debriefings, nothing of the weekend, and not much clearly for a long time after the shooting. But here's one thing I remember very well: On Monday after the shooting on Thursday, the students came back. We all agreed that it was best to get them back to a "normal" routine as much as possible, as soon as possible. My library was being used as a counseling center. I just sort of ran errands and did anything I could to help. At lunchtime, I went to the cafeteria. I saw that we had a choice of puddings for dessert... chocolate, and what I thought was vanilla. I was in a very vanilla mood, so I took the yellowish pudding. After eating the rest of my meal, I took a bite of the pudding. It wasn't vanilla; it was banana.

And that's when the dam burst. I started to cry, after all this trauma, over being given banana pudding which I had thought was vanilla. And I couldn't stop. I left the cafeteria and went into my little office and I must've cried for more than an hour. That was the only time for months, maybe even years after the shooting, that I was able to have a normal cry. On the wall in my bedroom I still have a souvenir of those days after the shooting. It's a framed greeting card from a guidance counselor by the name of DT (I remember because he has the same name as the Wendy's guy) who used my library as his center of operations. And he sent this card to say "Thank you" to ME! He may never know just how much it meant to me, how much it still means to me.

Those days were so hard. I got to a point where I didn't want to go to any conferences or any other extracurricular activities, because every time I mentioned where I was from, people wanted to talk about the shooting, and I just couldn't deal with it. But I learned something from all this. I learned, whether it's the right lesson or not, that we can do everything right, the best we can, and one day we still won't come home, for whatever reason. A plane could fall out of the sky, a bomb could go off... there are a gazillion things that could happen. And so, because anything can happen to anybody at any time, it's useless to sit locked into a little room somewhere waiting for it to happen - if we do that, we might as well be dead already. We MUST NOT allow ourselves to be controlled by fear. We have to LIVE our lives while we have the chance.

So much has happened since that day in 1995. For as long as I could, I took roses to Mrs. Simpson's grave on the anniversary of her death. For a while, I was clinically depressed. but I've recovered; I got a divorce and later remarried, and now I live a great distance away from where it all happened. Our district superintendent retired at the end of that year. Mr. Smith, the principal, moved into the superintendent's position, then died in 1997 of a massive heart attack. His successor died of a massive stroke, after less than a year in the position. A series of deaths of our students (five died in automobile accidents or due to injuries sustained in such accidents) and faculty (an exemplary teacher died of cancer) followed.

Since then, there have also been numerous school shooting incidents in the USA, three of them in the last couple of weeks. It makes me incredibly sad that apparently we've still learned nothing. Deranged people still have easy access to guns. We still send our young men and women off to kill other mothers' children and to come home whole if they're lucky, in body bags if they're not. We still have a long way to go.

Ghost Stories

Ghost sitting next to a little girl in costume, Vaux-le-Vicomte

When I was in college, I lived in a dorm with a kitchen and a bathroom in the basement. From my first day there, I heard all sorts of ghost stories, but I never put much stock in what people told me. No such thing as ghosts, right?

My junior year, I used to spend a lot of time with my friend J. She and I sometimes shared cans of soup or batches of popcorn, but this one particular day, we decided to whip up a Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza from a kit. We took everything we needed all the way down the hall to the opposite end of the dorm, then down two flights of stairs to the basement. As usual, I left my door open. I had nothing worth stealing, and it made it easier for me.

Once we got there and started looking at the things we needed to do, I realized I'd forgotten my can opener. I went back up to my room to get it... and found the door to my room not only shut, but locked. Now it would be easy enough to say that the door had simply closed because of a draft and locked when it shut... but no. These doors had deadbolts that could only be locked with a key... or from inside, by hand. There were transom windows over the doors which made it fairly easy to play pranks on our friends... but mine had been painted shut and was still very stuck.

I spent quite some time searching for our "Resident Assistant" who had the right to borrow the passkey from the housemother. But she wasn't around anywhere. Then I tried to find the housemother, who was gone for the day. After much impatient waiting, she came back and I asked her to let me into my room. She chided me for losing my key. I assured her that if she opened my door, I'd show her exactly where my key was... I always kept it in the drawer in my desk. She was pretty surprised to see that my key was exactly where I'd promised it would be.

Now I didn't have a roommate to pull jokes on me... and the passkey had been safely in the purse of the housemother, in her possession, all day. But my door was locked... either with a key... or from the inside. I never found a solution to how my door was locked that day...

But there were three nights in a row, when, at precisely 3 a.m., I was awakened by a very ceremonious knock on my door. And each time, I went to the door and opened it to find no one there. I checked the vacant rooms and listened at doors for telltale giggles, but never found any explanation for that either. After the third night, I spent the night in my friend J's room. At 8 a.m., I heard a knock at the door and saw her get up and go to the door and listened to her speaking at length with someone. Of course, later, when I asked her who'd stopped by, she told me she hadn't been up.

A friend of mine, C., my best buddy since we were 7 years old, rented a house from DT, a mutual friend of ours. It was old. She told me about awakening one night when someone grabbed her around her waist. She was terrified, but came up with her elbow flying back to inflict maximum damage. There was no one there.

 This was the same house where I went to stay with her for a couple of weeks. On a Sunday afternoon, I was waiting for my boyfriend. I fell asleep in the middle of the floor waiting for him. It was hot, and so I had the screen latched and the wooden door was left open. I awoke to a gentle, loving tug on my shoulder. Groggily I wondered how my boyfriend had managed to get inside... but once again, as you can imagine, there was no one there.

 Another time, when my friend had her boyfriend over, I slept on the screened-in balcony in a hammock. Sometime in the middle of the night, I "awoke" to know that one of them had come out for air, or to go the toilet, or something, and was standing there watching me sleep. I felt safe and secure and didn't worry at all. I was sure it was my friend C. Again, in the morning, they both denied having left the room.

 Also in this house, I brought my little garden of potted plants. I placed them all around the porch facing the south and watered them faithfully. One day, while C. was in the kitchen doing dishes, she heard a horrible cacophany of breaking glass. Her first thought was for my precious plants. She went dashing out to see the damage the wind had done... but everything was fine. Not a leaf out of place. When I came home, we searched the sidewalk and the street, we searched the vacant first floor of the house... and we found not the first bit of broken glass, anywhere.

 Funny how all her experiences were aggressive or hostile, and all mine were sort of curious and/or friendly. All of that can be explained away if someone really wants to, I'm sure. But it still gives me chills to think about it.

 Even worse, though, was when my friend J. got married and moved into an old house in our hometown. Apparently the owner/architect (by the time she rented it, deceased) had been terribly proud of this house built to withstand hurricanes. And it had been remodeled before she rented it, also from DT. Before her baby was born, she and her husband spent a great deal of time preparing the nursery. She had no A/C in the house, but she said that when she went into the nursery, it was like ice, though the temperature outside was a hot and humid 95° F (35°C). Their dog slept every night just outside on the porch under the bedroom window. One night, her husband woke to strange sounds and saw a strange face looking in at him through that window... right where the dog slept. Of course when he stepped out to investigate, the dog was there, sleeping soundly.

 But the worst was after the baby came. They had an 11x14 photo of him hanging in the hall. One day they came home from church to find the photo on the floor... which one could understand... things do fall, sometimes. But not only was the frame splintered and the glass shattered; the photo itself was ripped apart into hundreds of tiny pieces. They moved out, immediately.

 Explain it away... but you'll never persuade me that it was all "nothing." Happy Halloween!

November 05, 2006 - Gone, But Not Forgotten Nov 5, '06 6:49 AM for everyone Yesterday was my dad's birthday. Had he managed to get through life without emphysema or asthma, maybe he would've been 89 yesterday. But he never wanted to be dependent on others. He wanted to take care of himself as much as he could. And that he did... to the extent that it was possible. Even with the limitations placed on him by his illness (including being on oxygen), he still got up and got dressed every day, even if only in pajamas. He came to the table for his meals rather than asking my mother to bring them to him in bed, or even in the recliner. In 1996, he was tentatively and preliminarily diagnosed with lung cancer. He wasn't expected to live more than three months, and many people were not betting on three weeks. But he refused the possibility of chemotherapy and radiation; indeed, he refused the biopsy. He filed a "do not resuscitate" order with his doctors and was sent home to die. Hospice came in and provided as much as possible to make him comfortable... and he proceeded to surpass everyone's expectations by living four more years. A few months after hospice told him he'd lived too long and they could no longer treat him, he became ill with double pneumonia, and he died on March 21, 2000. My father was born in 1917. He grew up hard on a farm and was a child when the Great Depression came along. When Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941, my dad was there. He served in the US Army Air Corps through the end of the war, and he and my mother were married in June 1946. He was a hard-working man whose education came first from high school (back then they only had 11 years of public schooling), and then the School of Life took over. He had been a machinist in the military, and he continued to work at that in civilian life. His days were spent at the machine shop, and his evenings and weekends from March to November were spent working in the garden. We never had a lot in the way of material things, but we always had something to eat, even if it might not have been just what we wanted. We never had to go to bed hungry. My father was also very economical. He never threw anything away if there was a ghost of a chance it could be used for something else down the line. When the environmental movement came along chanting, "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle", they didn't have to work hard at all to enlist the cooperation of my siblings and me. It was already a way of life for us. Above you can see bits and pieces of odds and ends that my dad collected over the years... and you'd be surprised at how often all those little things came in handy when making a repair or building something! And one of the things he built, long ago (I can't remember when it wasn't there) was the packhouse. I wrote about it some time ago, but I mention it again because it's where the vegetables he and my mother grew (with some assistance from us kids) were stored in the freezer for the winter. It was also a place for keeping lots of other things... but I've already written about that. Sometimes I think about how lost most people would be if they had to be even half as self-sufficient as my dad was. Myself included. This is just to say that I have a great deal of admiration for the man who gave me life. He's gone now, but he'll never be forgotten.

Happy birthday, Mama (December 2006)

One of Mama's discoveries at the beach last week.

Childhood toys

As a child growing up the youngest of a family of five kids, I didn't have a lot of toys. The oldest one I can remember was a bedraggled stuffed dog named Fluffy. He was white with black ears. Even in my earliest memories, his name no longer suited him, because he fit perfectly under my arm and I carried him around with me everywhere - all the fluff was long gone from constant doses of hugging and snuggling. I can vaguely remember when he still had one brown plastic eye. And then there were Marcie and Ellen (pictured above - I've had her for more than 45 years now). My baby dolls didn't come in a box that said, "Drinks, Wets, Walks, Talks!" - but they could do anything I wanted them to, thanks to my imagination. Of course, in those days, all good little girls grew up to be nurses, teachers, secretaries, or mommies - or a combination of a couple of those titles - or maybe all of those rolled into one. I played house in an area drawn in the dirt with a stick. Or on those wonderful occasions when I could find string, I made walls by tying the string to nearby bushes, sticks pounded into the ground, nails that were working their way loose from the packhouse, or lawn mower handles. Marcie and Ellen were my children, and they sat quietly and obediently while I made spaghetti from the little "flowers" from the pine tree, or their favorite - chocolate mud pies. On weekends, sometimes my cousin (and best friend) would come home with me from church, and of course I shared my dolls with her. One particular Sunday, she had the nerve to spank MY doll. I can't remember why... just that I chased her all over the yard. Don't remember whether I caught her, and if I did, what I did next. I remember only that I was tremendously upset that she had punished my child. My brothers had different toys, of course - no dolls for them! Bro #2 had a toy rifle. In fact I think we all had cap guns and water pistols, and we often played cowboys-and-Indians or cops-and-robbers. There were lots of places to hide, lots of trees and bushes and outbuildings. Once I remember Bro #2 chasing me around the house with his rifle. Round and round we ran... and as I was making my way around the back of the house for the second or third time, with Bro #2 in hot pursuit, someone yelled that our aunt had arrived. I stopped dead in my tracks and turned around to go back, and when I did, Bro #2 slammed into my face with that toy rifle. My left eyebrow still has the scar. In those days, life was so different. We didn't have much in the way of material things, but, oh, the things we could imagine! These days, I have my computer to "play" with. It gives me freecell, spider solitaire, and lots of other ways to waste time. I generally choose the computer over television - here we have five channels; no cable or satellite reception. And my computer links me to the world - including 360. What kinds of toys did you play with as a child?

School Days

Littlefield High School, Lumberton, NC