Tip of the Iceberg

The look on her face was acute revulsion mixed with awe and horror. It was as though I was the train wreck and she could not look away. I couldn’t have surprised her more if I had pulled out an uzi and started shooting up the classroom. Sarah and I had to meet later that day for a writing competition. I suggested that she text me when she was close to the site. Then I watched her face flower into disbelief. She turned bright red and took a few steps back. She just could not grasp that her eighth grade teacher could text, much less suggest it as a means of communication. We had a good laugh about it later after the tournament, but I could tell that it was still too much for her to fathom.

I wonder what she and her classmates would do if they knew more. I suppose they don’t spend much time thinking about what their writing teacher does when she is not standing in front of them, or where she may have spent her time before the days of her teaching career began. They probably think I dropped bodily from the atmosphere into their classroom, and at the end of each school day I just box myself up until the next lesson. I bet I could really rock their worlds with a few of my juicy secrets. Or even the mundane ones.

Would they believe, for instance, that my dad was a repo man and I used to help him make investigative calls? He even found a car with a dead body in it once. Could they imagine me at the top of the Eiffel Tower with an American tourist named John, or running hand in hand with said tourist from the train station to the Louvre just before closing time? Could they picture me singing in a Dublin pub, or hitchhiking in the back of a white van, or herding cows that lived on my cousin’s farm in Ireland? They would probably also have trouble grasping that one night I drove to Niagra Falls and back with some friends, solely to chew grape Bazooka bubble gum in sight of the torrential horseshoe-shaped waters.

As I age, I suppose my dreams seem much more humdrum than the adventures of my youth. But if a kid thinks that me texting is outlandish, perhaps she would be surprised by other simple things as well. Like the fact that I have taken up jogging. Can’t really claim to call it running. Not yet anyway. But what if they could see me sweating on that path through the woods near my home? THEY might be the ones in need of resuscitation. What if they caught a glimpse of me dancing in the rain with my daughter, or building sand fortresses with my sons? Or if they could see me struggling to write, to express myself, to publish, to go after my dreams? We probably have more in common than they realize when I put a blank paper in front of them and watch them clamor for a muse.

There are other secrets. Places in my heart that I am sure would shock even me. And dreams that are just coming to light. It’s been a wild year so far and a time of great insight and change in my life. And face it. If I am honest, it really hasn’t been all that long that I have known how to text. So perhaps Sarah is not that far off in her shock. But really, if she and her classmates only knew what was lying underneath the still waters of the woman who stands in front of them, I do think they would be amazed.

And as I struggle to unearth the dreams myself, to forge the new paths that keep me moving forward with vision and strength, I am pretty amazed myself!