Mary's Babies

Growing up the son of a couple of teachers is both a blessing and a curse. Let's deal with the curse part first.

Doing things correctly and the best you can does not come easily to a young kid. It's even harder for a teen. Thankfully those years are behind me and doing the right thing is probably a real if not rare attribute for an adult. At least so I'm told.

The blessing part, aside from being the child of two wonderful people, is that you learn something about the inner workings of someone dedicated to the education of generation after generation of young people. Mary Collins had a hand in the nurturing and bringing about good beginnings for kids from 1930 until her retirement in 1983. Fifty-three years, almost as old as I am now, she taught and loved almost every minute of it!

August was a special month for my teacher parents. The first two weeks or so we usually got in the last of the camping vacations. Dad was an outdoorsman and loved fishing and camping. I do, too. Monika, my wife, not so much, so we don't do it unless you count working passed sundown in the gardens.

After that it was school supply buying time. Al Collins had this uncanny knack for sniffing out a bargain. Many of you might remember Surplus City, or many of the store-front-off-the-truck kind of places that sold bent boxes of Cheerios for half price or less. That's where we got almost everything except clothes and Mom's Maxwell House coffee - didn't dare substitute that, unless you had a death wish. And when we did take our smelly mimeographed supply lists to the store, there was always extra things purchased. One for one, mom and dad bought extra pencils, papers, notebooks, paste and crayons.

Mom would say the extra was for, "her babies." Those were the little kids who came to school barely breathing. Later in the year she would adopt one or two of the kids, the little boy in torn pants that were too big for him, that hadn't been washed in months and the smell of urine probably meant his underwear was in the same shape. He would have dried streaks coming from his mouth, roused from whatever bed he had and rushed out to school without even a chance to splash water on his face, leaving a pitiful or even frightening situation to come to school. Calloused against juvenile ridicule by the nightmares that began with the trip home at 3 and often did not stop until the next morning. These were her babies, "Ma' poor babies need somebody to care." Mrs. Collins would say, holding back the heartache.

We didn't mind giving up some of her attention or even the small budget for back-to-school. By the time we were old enough to understand we were running through the aisles to find those special things this year's unknown babies will need to do their best in Mrs. Collins' 4th grade class. Our things could wait. We knew we would get them and so much more. We were the lucky ones, and we wanted them, Mary's other babies, to feel lucky, too.

Just When You Think You Don’t Matter

The call happens now and then: “it’s so hard to be an adult.” This coming from someone I will always see as twelve years old. But she’s not. She’s 27 and has lived on her own since her second year in college – with some help, of course.

Now another series of disappointments and more job related consternation. In some respects I love these conversations. It is good to know that such important decisions are still brought home. Aside from being the youngest in the family, she is also the smartest, and a career in the medical field seemed the right choice. But she has to really want to do it and the call last night indicated that was no longer the case. So it goes.

I just want her to do something that she enjoys, and if at all possible something that matters. Usually sometime in these conversations I realize, even if I don’t say it out loud, that the career I have chosen really doesn’t matter much. Strip away all the hype and my second career - a writer - is only to entertain. My time is spent creating a diversion that may or may not be used by listeners or readers to take their minds off the troubles of their day.

Today I got another call. It was from a very nice lady named Jackie. She had just heard the song “Vincent,” by Don McLean on 1590 WAKR. Jackie was in tears and just called to thank me for playing the song. There is a line in the song, “…the world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.” Jackie’s son committed suicide late last year and she is still in deep pain. For that instant, she said, the radio and that song brought her closer to her son.

It was a difficult call to take. By the time we were about to hang up we were both in tears. Suicide is not a foreign concept in the Collins family. It only happened once, and that was many years ago. It was my brother who was too complicated, too conflicted and yes too beautiful for this world.

Jackie’s call reinforced something we often forget: there are people who listen and there are people who hear. For the listeners we are quite trivial, but every now and then there are those who hear something that makes a difference, possibly a real difference in their lives.