We hiked to Rainbow Falls at Jones Gap State Park today.
What a beautiful day.
“Beauty will save the world,” wrote Dostoyevsky.
On a day like today, I believe this.
Beauty was all around us.
Robin Gardener Barton took these pictures of me writing below the falls.
She captured who I am.
Trevor the writer.
Patron saint of pen and paper.
Lover of words.
Teller of stories.
Neveyah is one of my students.
As a teacher, I know I am a guardian for my students from the time they walk through our school doors til they walk out.
As a writer, I try to be a guardian for stories.
I am a guardian of their hearts, souls, minds and strengths.
I am their guardian angel.
Today, however, four of my students were my guardian angels.
Look at the gifts they gave me.
Life is a symphony of plastic sharks, construction paper bats, homemade Amongus books and green apples, I guess.
Life is good, I know.
from Trevor’s Encyclopedia of Guardian Angels
He looked up from the book in his lap as the Greyhound bus squeaked to a stop at the Greenville terminal.
The old woman next to him fell asleep on the trip up from Charleston, and leaned her head on his shoulder.
Her face was wrinkled like the bark on an ancient magnolia tree, and colored the beautiful brown of it’s trunk and branches.
She breathed in, the air made a soft, whistling sound through her nose, and she breathed out.
That made a gentle, flapping sound through her lips.
“Life is a symphony,” he chuckled to himself, “Of whistles and kazoos.”
“Ma’am,” he whispered.
She didn’t move.
She kept right on whistling and kazooing.
“Ma’am,” he said a little louder.
This time he reached out and touched her weathered hand.
She opened her deep brown eyes and smiled a tired smile at him.
“Thanks for a lettin’ me use yo shoulda as my pilla,” she said with a gravelly voice. “First time I woked up beside a man in a long time. Hope my snorin’ didn’t bother you none,” she giggled.
“No ma’am,” he said with a giggle of his own.
“It was music to my ears.”
His knees and back snapped and popped as he stood slowly and smoothed the wrinkles in his pants and shirt.
“My goodness,” said the old woman, “You make music, too.”
He placed his hand on her bony shoulder.
“We could start a band called The Human Element,” he said. “People would come from all over the country to hear us whistle, flap, snap and pop. You think?”
“Yep, they’d pay a bundle of money to hear that.”
He pulled on his jacket and waved to her.
“Goodbye, my friend,” he said. “Thanks for the song.”
She waved back.
“Thank you,” she said. “And do me a favor. Lean on down here and let me tell you somethin’.”
He leaned down.
He was surprised.
She kissed him on his forehead with a light, tender kiss.
“That’s the kiss of a guardian angel,” she whispered. “Look closely and listen carefully to life, and do not be afraid.”
If you know me, then you know I love to write.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved words.
Yesterday, I took my youngest son to the DMV to get his driver’s license.
Things were a bit shaky at first.
We walked in the door.
There was a line.
I expect this at the DMV, so no problem there.
But…
the person in front of us was just a’cussing and a’fussing about having to…
stand in line.
I spent the whole time I was in line trying to calm this person who was upset about being in line.
The rest of the time was smooth sailing, or smooth Division of Motor Vehicling, as it were.
All of the workers were friendly and helpful.
We filled out the paper work (which is no small task for me, a notoriously slow paper-filler-outer).
Zeke had his driver’s license in no time!
We walked out the door.
There was no line.
There was, however, an old man.
He wasn’t a’cussing and a’fussing.
He was a’huffing and a’puffing.
He was dressed like an old man.
He wore a grey sweater over grey slacks, tattered black shoes, and an ancient Boulder hat.
He was climbing one step at a time.
With a cane.
He had two steps to go.
“Sir, you need a hand?” I asked. “You can take my arm, and I’ll help you up.”
“No,” he answered. “No thank you. I’m gonna make it. I’m gonna make it just fine.”
All day today, I’ve asked myself, “T, is this gonna be a cussin and a fussin while I’m standin in line kind of day, or an I’m gonna make it, I’m gonna make it just fine kind of day?”
The smile on that old man’s face helped me make it just fine.
I have two books in front of me.
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway and Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe.
Hemingway is known for his plain and simple language.
“He had no mysticism about turtles,” he writes in his novel (that was first published in Life Magazine, btw), “although he had gone in turtle boats for many years. He was sorry for them all, even the great trunk backs that were as long as the skiff and weighed a ton. Most people are heartless about turtles because turtle’s heart will beat for hours after he has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too and my feet and hands are like theirs.”
I have such a heart too.
And my feet and hands are like theirs.
Especially after a day of teaching and writing.
Wolfe is known for his elegant and mysterious prose.
I am Team Hemingway.
The plainer and simpler the better for me.
But I cheer for Wolfe.
Maybe it’s because I’m a mystic at heart.
Maybe it’s because we both graduated from UNC Chapel Hill.
Maybe it’s because the singer/song writer Don Williams referenced him on the song “Good Ole Boys Like Me,” a song I heard again and again in my childhood as I laid me down to sleep.
Thomas Wolfe was whispering in my ear today.
“Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door.”
This he writes at the beginning of his novel.
This he spoke to me today.
I found the great forgotten language in the plainest and simplest places today.
In the writing of these words.
In the reds and yellows of fall maple leaves.
In the smiles of my students.
Heaven.
