I was standing near the bus stop in the morning shade under a tree. I saw someone approaching with a white box. “She has donuts,” I thought. “A donut sounds so good.”
She sat on the bench, as I continued to stand under the tree. She opened the box, and curious, I looked over to see if they were, indeed, donuts — though I was careful not to stare. I was behind her, so she never saw me looking anyway.
But that’s when she turned to me and asked, “Would you like a donut?” With no way to know my curiosity, she was simply generous and neighborly. I smiled big.
“That’s so nice! How about half of one?”
“Which one would you like?”
“Ooh, how about this one!”
I savored it.
I introduced myself, and she told me her name too. She also shared that she works for the city. She told me a bit about her family as well. I know that none of our conversation solved gun violence, or climate disaster, or what’s happening in Ukraine. This person in city government didn’t suddenly solve what happens so regularly in Washington.
But this neighborliness matters too. It brightened my day. It led to connection. It bolstered us socially and physically — friendship and sugar in the warm weather.
A black and white photo of Bob Youngblood, my AP English teacher from my senior year of high school. He’s looking to the left and smiling.
During my very last week of high school, every morning began with a creative conspiracy. It was implemented by giggling, teenage masterminds. Collectively, we struggled to stifle our laugher as we waited for our teacher to enter the room. Each stunt stranger than the last, we pranked Mr. Youngblood five days in a row. Our very last days of public education were filled with practical jokes.
And what sort of pranks do teenage masterminds create? Fire alarms, smoke bombs, or egg smeared chalkboards? Not these teenagers. We were way too nerdy for that.
Mr. Youngblood entered the room to find us all wearing. . . Ayn Rand masks.
Ayn Rand masks! A classmate had actually taken the time to find an Ayn Rand image, blow it up, print twenty-five some odd copies, and glue them to sticks so we could hold them to our faces and greet Mr. Youngblood as he walked through the door. Once he did, there we were, dressed to the nines in our Objectivism best. He loved it.
I could say that Mr. Youngblood introduced us to Ayn Rand, but it was, in fact, the other way around. Before we ever met him in the classroom, he assigned The Fountainhead as summer reading. We entered our senior year ready to discuss that large work, and we were introduced to one of our best teachers.
In his English class, we learned how to analyze classic works of literature. We learned how to hone our unique voices as we wrote with greater nuance. We had spirited discussions, and we challenged each other. And we laughed. Every day, we laughed.
This last aspect of our experience has been on my mind lately. Within it, I recognize that a larger lesson was present all along. It was never sketched out as a lesson plan, but Mr. Youngblood embodied it in the classroom. It was both simple and profound: He delighted in us as students. He thoroughly enjoyed us as people.
Sure, we occasionally annoyed him. But most often, he greeted us with a dry wit we also enjoyed. That wit accompanied our intentional learning and created spontaneous moments of playfulness. He believed in our voices. He delighted in us, and we knew it.
Bob Youngblood died almost seven years ago. I have been reflecting on this kind of legacy, and pondering the gift of our educators who are certainly stressed during this odd pandemic era we’re living. Teachers impart great knowledge, but they are also in a position to teach a larger lesson of delight. When teachers delight in their students, their students come to know their own worth. From that awareness, they go on to learn in self-directed ways.
Since our Ayn Rand mask wearing days, my classmates and I have more than doubled in age. This astonishes me. Even more, I am amazed to consider who we have become. We have charted career pathways, formed families, and created meaning. Bob Youngblood would delight in all of this too, I am sure.
Robert Frost once wrote that poetry “begins with delight and ends in wisdom.” [1]
Good teachers spark delight and illumine human worth. From these gifts, a lifetime of learning continues.
The word ‘language’ in a dictionary.Public domain.
In the English language, we have one primary word for love. Just… Love. There are certainly synonyms and words that expand upon it, but we typically use one word while other languages are a bit more expansive.
I’ve decided that it would be wonderful if these kinds of experiences and feelings of love had names:
— There’s a wonderful feeling of discovering that you are known in your specificity and loved in your limitations, and that without saying anything, people anticipate and accommodate what you need, including barriers that might be challenging for you.
I’ve experienced that. That’s love. I wish it had its own name.
— There’s a wonderful feeling of discovering that people think about things and frame things in particular ways because they’ve internalized stories you have told, and when they reveal this to you, there’s a beautiful surprise of recognizing that they have internalized pieces of you, just as you have internalized pieces of them.
I’ve experienced that. That’s love. I wish it had its own name.
— There’s a wonderful feeling of discovering you have commonality with a person, that simply being in their presence returns you to a part of yourself, a piece you didn’t even know was missing.
I’ve experienced that. That’s love. I wish it had its own name.
–There’s a wonderful feeling of discovering that people now see you — really see you in some of your more challenging moments — not in an exposed way but in an expansive and affirming way, demonstrating a recognition that you have struggled and prevailed, and showing you a surprising amount of compassion, awe, and respect.
I’ve experienced that. That’s love. I wish it had its own name.
“I’ve had so many rainbows in my clouds. I had a lot of clouds. But I have had so many rainbows. And one of the things I do when I go stand up on the stage, when I stand up to translate, when I go to teach my classes, when I go to direct a movie, I bring everyone who has ever been kind to me with me — Black, White, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American, Gay, Straight — everybody. I say, ‘Come with me. I’m going on the stage. Come with me. I need you now.’”
I was driving around my town. With a smile on my face, some words just spontaneously tumbled out of me. “I know you,” I said, and then I smiled some more.
I spoke this to Ann Arbor, the place I’ve called home for the last ten years. My car windows were down, and I took an enormous, intentional breath of air. Then I put my arm out of the window to feel the breeze. I felt very alive.
The reality of spring called those words forth from me. “I know you.”
I continued to enjoy the warm air, but the visual scene was most responsible for bringing those words into being. In Michigan, we have entered an aesthetically gorgeous time of year. The six month period from April to October brings continual changes in scenery.
Each week shifts as a variety of flowering trees and plants emerge, soon accompanied by the newborn leaves of trees which grow in gradual ways. After these leaves progressively paint our town bright green, they rustle in the wind for a few months and finally give us a swansong, bursting into a variety of colors as they shed their photosynthesis process and reveal the red, orange, and yellow colors hiding underneath it.
For this half of the year, every week is gorgeous, and every week is gorgeous differently.
I’ve experienced this many times in Ann Arbor, and I’ve lived here long enough to know the order of this unfolding process of change. That’s why the words tumbled out of my mouth that day in my car.
“I know you.”
I know how one set of flowers and blooming trees emerge and seem to reign for mini-era of time, only to be replaced by another set of flowers and blooming trees. It’s a beautiful procession.
I know that the daffodils,
soon give way to the bradford pears,
which soon give way to the tulips,
which soon give way to the tulip magnolias,
which soon give way to the day lilies.
This process continues to unfold.
In the midst of so much collective distress and disruption, I’m glad to observe this procession right now. It gave me an impromptu burst of joy when I spontaneously said, “I know you,” to Ann Arbor on that day.
Sometimes, we need to feel at home in the predictable changes, especially when so much is changing unpredictably.
Smuggling Grace 