Ash Settles

As the ash from Iceland’s volcano floated through the atmosphere, some of the microscopic particles drifted down to earth and settled.  Settled, stayed for a while, came to a rest, stopped moving.  Exactly what more than a million travelers were forced to do last week.  Fortunately, Drew and I were not among them, even though we were traveling back from the U.S. to Russia one day after it erupted.

When our Delta flight left JFK for Moscow’s Sheremetovo airport, the pilot told us that our route would be altered, longer by 3 hours, so we could bypass the ash on a southerly route via Spain and Ukraine.  A three hour delay – another movie, perhaps, time to finish that book, or try again to fall asleep.  No inconvenience at all, compared to the 65 teachers, their families and 40% of the Anglo American School students who were days, even a week, delayed in returning from their spring vacations.

My story, (since this is my blog) is about where I settled during the Week of the Ash.  I re-entered an elementary school classroom at AAS and stayed for a week, taking over the duties of a 4^th grade teacher stranded in Paris.  As students like to put it, “Hey, are you. .  The Sub?”   Three years of retirement had blurred my memories of how it feels in your muscles, your joints, even your eyelids to be a teacher.  At the end of the first day, I was exhausted!  By mid-afternoon, I realized that I hadn’t been to the bathroom and had eaten my yogurt and cracker lunch while typing out a template for a research report.  This kind of dedicated, though rather obsessive, behavior characterizes most teachers I know.

 Interacting with sixteen 9 and 10-year-olds for a week reaffirmed an even more glaring Truth about teaching than the fact that it’s hard work.  It is a humbling responsibility.  Who doesn’t have a good teacher/bad teacher story that comes to mind immediately when asked for a memory of both?  My 8^th grade algebra classroom flashes to mind as my teacher is handing back an exam.  Passing by my desk, she tosses the paper to me with a bright, red D plastered across its top as she says, LOUDLY, “Twylla, I just don’t know what happened to you on this test.”  I wanted to race out the door, chasing my self-esteem down the stairs.  Contrast that with my 6^th grade teacher who greeted me every morning with a literal twinkle in her eye, kindly smile on her face and the words, “Twylla, I’m so glad to see you this morning!”  My self-esteem hurried to catch up with me every day as I climbed the stairs to my classroom.

A teacher’s influence is seen in the subtleties, the choices he makes hundreds of times during a day.  Choices to resist the sigh, eye roll, shake of the head, and words that deflate Self Confidence in a slow, often imperceptible leak.  Choices to embrace the smile, respectful tone, empathetic ear, and words that infuse the Spirit with inexhaustible energy. Choices that last a lifetime.

Staying put for a week as the ash swirled and clouded the lives of many, I experienced renewed clarity and gratitude.  Clarity of the incredibly influential role a teacher plays in individual lives and ultimately the world, as these individuals interact in the larger community.  And gratitude for Mrs. Hardman, Mrs. Shope and Dr. Anderson, whose choices to teach with dignity and respect, are still being felt in this individual life.   

Metro Bombings

The subject line on my husband’s email on March 29^th read, “Metro Bombings.”   This was the first news I’d heard of the deadly suicide bombings in the Moscow metro stations. Grateful for his safety, my thoughts turned to our friends, the students, staff, and parents of the Anglo American School of Moscow, where Drew is the director, and especially of the Russian staff whose extended families could have been involved.  I hastily opened the email and scanned to the bottom, “Everyone in our community is safe.”  I exhaled.  Typing in CNN, I read the grim details and watched a video of ambulances, stretchers, puddles of blood and people wandering, sitting, staring, in shock.

Park Kultury metro station, the site of the second explosion. . . I was there a couple of days before I left Moscow in December to return to Arkansas, just passing through, changing trains from the brown to red line, on my way to Sportivnaya stop, taking a friend to Novodevinchy convent.  One of thousands who enter and exit that station successfully every day.  But on the morning of the 29^th, some, tragically, did not.

When I rode the metro for the first time 6 years ago, I was petrified.  I gripped the black handrails as I eased onto the escalator step and looked below for the bottom, which was nowhere in sight, only a line of people, single file, ahead of me.   The brown line is the deepest, as far down into the earth as 126 meters, or about 414 feet. Claustrophobic, I wanted out!  My friend reassured me that I could to this.  “Keep talking,” I said.  Reaching the platform, I pressed on, opting not to do a U-turn and head back up the escalator. I squeezed inside the waiting car, grabbed an overhead strap and watched the doors slam shut. My mind swirled with worst case scenarios. . . an electrical failure trapping us in cars that wouldn’t open, an earthquake burying us with concrete from above, or a bomb blowing us in every direction.  

Interesting how my fears lessened over time, with familiarity, predictability and being in the company of other metro riders who look so calm, so comfortable they could fall asleep.  And some do, as the shaking of  the metro car on its rails, lull them into a quick nap. Others pull out books, magazines, crosswords and sukudos.  Eyes are glued to  phone screens; ears are plugged into ipods.  Most sit, looking straight ahead, with an inconspicuous glance left or right, playing a cat and mouse game of “no eye contact.” I now travel among them, from station to station, car to car, reassured by the faces of daily life…

A stoop-shouldered babushka in her black coat, black fur hat, carrying a recycled grocery bag

Three giggling teen-aged girls wearing Hanna Montana T-shirts

A graying, middle-aged man protecting his bouquet of red roses from the press of the crowd

A young couple gazing into the face of their sleeping baby

 We become a community for minutes only, a chance collection of people, inhabiting a common space.  The women bombers stepped into such a gathering of travelers and detonated their explosives, not knowing any of their victims.  As I hopelessly try to understand this senseless violence, I can’t help but wonder whether the bombers, even briefly, glanced at the person sitting or standing beside them.  Did they notice the face of the baby, the grandmother, the man by the door who might have reminded them of someone at home?

 For the sake of a hopeful world, I like to think that the humanity of one person connecting with the humanity in another, would spark something, at least a momentary hesitation or questioning. The results of their deadly actions, however, perpetuate the harsh reality that history has taught us. . . it’s easier to kill strangers, whom we hate unseen.