Michael Hoover

Shakespeare and Orwell, Conrad and Chaucer have all been put to bed for a few months. The high school seniors that I teach may or may not remember the important ideas contained in these great masters’ works, but it is a time for celebration now. Graduation looms (and will be over by the time you read this) and it seems that the entire population of Falls Church is focused on the celebration of these 140-plus seniors’ graduation. That is how it should be.

I’ve imparted—or tried to impart—what I can of the verities of the great minds of literature, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I tell my students that I learn at least as much from them as they do from me, only in a different way. I suspect that they think this is teacher hokum, but it is so true. There is not one single day that goes by that my students do not give me new insights into the literature we study or the way that I teach it. I’ve compiled a list, as I always do this time of year, of what I did well and what I did not do so well as a teacher and it is humbling. You would think that after more than a third of a century of doing this that I would have it right by now. But, no, I still sometimes misjudge the charges seated in front of me, still make mistakes that I think I will never make again.

I love teaching so much that when it is going well I actually think to myself, quite secretly, that it is a travesty that the school board actually pays me for doing what I love to do. Yet, sometimes the education profession is so fraught with pressures that the tensions threaten to outweigh the joys that teaching brings. I absolutely hate it when that happens.

Last weekend the workload and pressures were so strong that there was only one place to turn for solace, the garden. Digging in the earth, sifting the loam, determining what conditions are right for which plants and flowers to flourish provide me a respite—a momentary stay against the world, as Robert Frost would say — from the enervating pressures.

Yet, the metaphors in me insist on making connections even when I’m not looking for them. We’ve had a lot of longed-for rain the past two weeks and the basic grasses have welcomed that nourishment; the prematurely yellowing lawns have jumped back to green with the abundance of rain, but not all of nature’s creations have been so grateful. The hearty and independent geraniums reject the excessive moisture and have literally shrunk in size. Their blooms are on hold until a drier, less attentive Mother Nature lets them thrive in the hot sun and dry soil. The begonias, while maybe not nature’s most attractive flower, know that their staying power will win in the end.

As I fuss over these flowers I think of my students and how extraordinarily different they each are from one another. There are the ones who seem to thrive without any rain at all and there are the ones who need to be soaked daily with attention and there are the ones who pull away and come back and pull away and come back. Over the years I have had students whose parents have contacted me almost weekly with their attentive and well-meaning concerns for their 18-year olds. Some of these children want to continue to be watered by this attention and some seem to want to play the geranium gambit and get away from this protection. I’ve had seniors whose parents, convinced of their children’s resilience, leave it all up to their kids to make way for themselves.

As I aerate the oleanders, already flush with their deep majenta hues in spite of being foreign to this soil, I think of my many transplanted students from other nations and cultures who struggle to put down roots that would make them feel a legitimate part of this society. Most of us have no real idea how hard this struggle is.

I notice a disturbance over the pond. On closer inspection I see a gossamer-thin spider’s web that has entrapped a really large cicada that is struggling mightily to escape. This is the largest cicada I have seen this spring, almost the size of a baby bird, yet the thin threads of the web hold against its frantic struggle. I spy the spider under a rock, watching its prey in its death struggle. The spider is literally an infinitesimal size of its catch. This life and death struggle is one small tableau in the larger life of the garden. As I watch this drama unfold, a sparrow, that shows up precisely at 8:15 each night, alights on the pond, furiously bathes, jumps and soars away.

Each of us, parents, guardians, teachers, and administrators have tended our children’s gardens as best we can to this point. Following last night’s graduation, these young ones will need to take to wing on their own. From what I’ve seen, they’re ready.