Thanks For the Memories

I am going to take you on a trip back in time.  Back to when students wore bell-bottom jeans and said words like Groovy and Far Out.  I am going to take you back to when I was in high school.  Maybe it will help you understand why I am enjoying my work so much.

Growing up in the San Francisco bay area, my father had us move to many different homes.  He was an difficult and abusive man who managed to lose his job often because he wasn't able to get along with his co-workers.  I grew up assuming that all fathers were like him and the only good dads were on TV.  When I was in the fourth grade we moved from a pleasant suburb in Santa Clara which later became the Silicon Valley.  I remember it more as a farm town that was taken over by subdivisions and strip malls.  We moved to Oakland in the mid 60s when there was much racial strife in the schools.  Black people were angry with white people and white people were angry with the black.  I had never even seen a black person until I moved to Oakland.

My parents decided to have me continue in schools run by our church and there I stayed until tenth grade.  In the meantime we moved several more times, my parents divorced and my home consisted of my brother, mother and myself.  Mom was not able to pay for my school any longer and so I had to find a school.  The high school near where we lived was already a very dangerous place to be, at least that is what people told us.  In the middle of Oakland, though, sandwiched inside three very different neighborhoods, was Oakland High.  I had to meet with the vice principal before starting as I had no history in public schools.  I think they just wanted to see if I was a trouble maker or not and I was mostly just terrified.  Officially I wasn't even supposed to go to Oakland High since it wasn't in my neighborhood but we were able to use the address of my oldest brother's in laws who lived near the school.

My first visit to the school made my heart stop.  I had never been in such a big school or a building that looked, in my eyes, so rundown.  Students were jostling everywhere and I wanted to run.  Still, I wanted to go to college and a high school diploma was the only way I could do it.  I met with the Vice Principal who was a very nice fellow.  He said that he hoped he wouldn't see me again as he only dealt with troublemakers, or words to that effect.  He said there was no majority in his school.  It was a third white, a third black and a third Chinese.  I started the next day.

One of my first classes was geometry.  In my last school, a private Lutheran high school, we had small classes and teachers who spent time talking to each student.  This teacher was the opposite.  He was a lazy man who sat in the back and had one of the best students write the proofs on the board.  I had never had geometry before and had no idea what a proof even was.  The fellow who was writing was named Geoff.  He was Chinese American and had a wonderful smile that never left his face.  I knew I wanted to get to know him.

Over time, I made friends with him and other friends of his as well, including Nora and Peter.  We used to all go out to San Francisco together to eat in Chinatown and ride the cable cars, things I had never done before.  Geoff's and Nora's parents were amazing people.  Where my dad was angry, they were warm and generous and thoughtful.  It was my friendship with those three and a few others who were my saviors in school.   I never would have survived without them.

Why am I writing this today?  Jump forward about 40 years and this is what happened.  After I left high school, I was able to stay friends for a few more years with all of them but then I got married and lost touch with everyone.  Decades later, we got the internet and Facebook and Skype.  In the last two years I have been able to add all three of these old friends to my Facebook and I thought, how nice.  I can see where their lives have gone and maybe we can talk for a minute or two some time.

Today, Geoff posted on Facebook that he wanted to have someone help him check his Skype account.  I had a few minutes free so, just for fun, I sent him my Skype address.  Within minutes we were talking, me on my Android phone and him on his computer.  It was 8 at night in California, Wednesday and 10 in the morning the next day here.  We talked as if it had only been yesterday when we last spoke.  He said he has been following my blog and I have been enjoying his posts.  The conversation left me feeling wonderful for the rest of the day.

Since high school, one has worked for NASA to send people to outer space, another has worked to save the environment and the other has worked to save people's souls.  They found their calling and now I have finally found mine.

Never give up on a friend or a dream.

Drinking Beer with a Jingjock

The American dream is to own a home, have a car, a family, buy all the things you can imagine and travel.  When I came here, I was only left with travel.  I started in Bangkok in Nee's two-story town house and then went north to Chiang Mai.  There we had a two-bedroom apartment overlooking a busy street, close to most anything you could want.  From there we went up and down Thailand as I looked for a job, never really knowing what I wanted.

I had done the same thing in the US for so long, I couldn't remember what I wanted to do when I grew up.  The work paid well, never worked me terribly hard, gave me good benefits and a vacation.  Yet, there was something that wasn't satisfying to me.  The easy way isn't always the best way.

Then a year ago, an agency wanted me to work in Fang, a small town north of Chiang Mai.  I had been there once and wasn't particularly excited.  Still, I needed a job and I found the school to be welcoming and comfortable.  I spent a year learning how to teach, to work with students who barely understood me and often ignored me.  I learned how to gain their attention without getting angry.  I found ways to get them excited about English and, over time, found they were beginning to like my class.  English is a required subject in Thailand and, like me with my past required subjects, is met with much resistance.

Through all that, I still didn't feel I had a home beyond my office and classroom.  I wanted a place I could sit on a front porch, listen to children play and catch the weird sound of the jingjock.  That happens to be a lizard here than makes a sound just like its name.  I thought it was some sort of odd car alarm the first time I heard it.

Tonight, I am sitting on my front porch, drinking a beer, sweating from pulling weeds in my garden.  We found a house a short distance from my school with most of the amenities I could get from a western home.  The walls are solid, the bathroom has hot water, the kitchen is inside and I get space.  I haven't done any real gardening for over a decade and today was like a tiptoe through the tulips.  I was so happy even though I hadn't really prepared.  I bought a Thai version of a hoe down on main street and rode home with it on my bike.  I didn't start until early afternoon because I had a tutoring class to give and then had to eat lunch.  The best time would have been soon after getting up so I will try to do that tomorrow, assuming my muscles aren't too sore.

Before

During

I am re-reading Bill Bryson's book, "I'm A Stranger Here," a series of articles he wrote about returning to live in America after living in England for many years.  I read it wondering if I will find myself in a similar situation whenever I happen to return to the US.  For now, though, I want to see if I can grow tomatoes and maybe make my own salsa.  Home is where you make it, not where you are.