The Measure of Love

20.2 gigabytes, to be precise. That’s how much room on my Desktop my School Business folder took up. When the rainbow ball from hell started spinning every five minutes on my computer, I suspected I needed to free up some space. My helpful friend Veronica from Apple Support affirmed that and suggested it was time to delete, delete, delete. Rather than do it piecemeal, one document at a time, I saw that folder and thought “Bingo!”

 

Rather than open it and read through it all, I just dragged the whole thing to the trash. After all, I’m three years retired from the school and I don’t really need copies of my 4^th grade report cards in 2013 or the revised Holiday Play rehearsal schedule or a snarky note from my ex-boss. All that temporal flotsam and jetsam of the daily round that deserves to be sent off into the ether. Especially when I’m finished with the details of that 45-year enterprise.

 

So into the trash it went, a satisfying little crunch as I emptied the trash and poof! it’s gone. 

I wish I could report some euphoric release, some sense of the ever-hovering dark clouds blown away, some click of a door behind me that sent me off freely into a new adventure. But truth be told, none of that happened. For three clear reasons:

 

1) Had I read through or at least skimmed each document first, that would have been a proper farewell. It was too abstract to simply remove a folder I’d barely looked at the last three years.

 

2) Under my real desk is a big box of school paraphernalia awaiting that rainy day (week? Month?) for me to look through and either save a bit longer, pass on or recycle.

 

3) I actually moved the whole electronic folder to an external hard drive, so that kind of read- before-tossing time might still await me. If I so choose.

Meanwhile, my old computer is happily humming along again, released of the weight of those twenty-plus gigabytes. And inside those documents is the whole glory and catastrophe of the human comedy and tragedy lived in that little building on 300 Gaven Street. Most of it on the glory/comedy side, but nowhere can one give so much love and attention and commitment to a community without facing disappointment, betrayal and loss. I had more than my fair share, in exact proportion to how much I believed in and loved and dedicated myself to that place, those people and our collective mission. It was a sure recipe for some heartbreak and after a glorious 30 years or so, the last 15 were fraught with the pain of trying to defend the school’s character from a new admin that didn’t understand it and felt threatened by those who did. Inside those 20 gigabytes are the records of more beauty and memorable moments than the average human (whoever that is) can expect, but also the evidence of the swamps I trudged through that tried to pull me down into the muck. And sometimes succeeded. 

 

Most I have forgiven, but none of it is forgotten. In the strange way that wounds are connected to gifts, it ended up making me stronger and clearer and more sure about what I think matters, yet more dedicated to protecting and preserving and passing it all on. It took me a long time to understand this, but these words by David Whyte helped:

 

"…to realize that you have always had your life shattered and your heart broken and your faith tested by loving too much and too often and that all along, it was never too much and never too often, and that you were never, ever, fully broken. …” (From his poem Still Possible)

 

And that was the true full measure of my love for the school, far, far beyond 20 gigabytes. 

 

PS I got a call to sub there today, but had to turn it down because I’m meeting a student I taught in the early 1980’s who is now a school principal. Haven’t seen him for 40 years, but that’s how deep these connections run.