"I guess sometimes the past just catches up with you, whether you want it to or not."

It appears as though I've lived through another July 4th. My whole family survived it, to the best of my knowledge. Its funny, the emotional tightrope we walk with family. We know that with a single missed step, there's a long fall with a sudden stop. So, we dance the dance and play the game. All four of us knew the emotion that yesterday carried, but other than my dad and I, for a few brief moments, nobody talked about it. Nobody mentioned the event that we were commemorating. Its like that every year. My mother just sniped at me in tiny ways. My dad and I were unusually docile. We had already discussed the day's significance over the phone that morning. It was strange when he asked me, "Did you know that Scott died nine years ago today?" He knew the answer, but he had to ask the question. My wife fell asleep in front of the television.

At some point, when I felt like I was going to have to throttle my mother senseless, I decided to drive the short distance home. I went on the computer and my wife fell asleep in front of the television. We actually went out to the local fireworks show. We've started doing that again the last few years, trying to put some normalcy back into the holiday. We brought folding chairs and the camera rig (we invested in a nice digital camera the year before last... tripod, all the bells and whistles - its how I took the swing picture on the top right corner of the site) and my wife enjoyed the show while I took pictures. Somehow watching the show through a viewfinder cuts off the memories and makes it okay.

"These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized." - "Red", Shawshank Redemption

I finally made it up to my office to start cleaning out the detritus of 8 years in the same place and a 14 year career. I've been dreading it for almost a month now. I put it off as long as I could, but since I only have until Monday or Tuesday at the latest to end my employment somewhat gracefully, I had to get started sooner or later.

Have I mentioned that not only have I worked there for the past eight years, I also went to high school there for four years? When I arrived for my first day as an employee, back around July 9th or 10th, 1999, it was a homecoming. It was strange using a key and opening the door of the band room where I had spent so much time. I graduated from high school in 1988 and learned and perfected my trade elsewhere before returning home. The first time I walked those halls as an eighth grader on a visit, I made a promise to myself. It was a solemn vow, spoken for only me. I spoke the words out loud. "I am going to make a difference in this place. I am going to make sure that I am always remembered here." When I graduated, I figured that my high school exploits would have to carry the legacy, but then I returned to teach. I had dreams of staying for the rest of my career. I was, after all, only the second band director in the school's history. The first one stayed for 29 years. When I arrived, I had a minimum of 22 years until my retirement.

"I don't like it here, I'm tired of being afraid all the time. I've decided not to stay." - Brooks, Shawshank Redemption

I guess that for better or for worse, my legacy will have to stand as it is. If I am remembered for the good I have done, or as a "goat" remains to be seen. That is not up to me. If we could all write our own biographies, we would all be shining heroes who always saved the day. Unfortunately, those who follow must view my legacy through the filters of their own perceptions, for good or ill.

Every summer I spend time cleaning up after a year of activities. After all, more than a hundred students pass through the doors of that room every single day of the school year. Some of them arrive as early as 7 a.m. and some of them leave right before I do, sometimes as late as midnight if there's been an event of some kind. Its hard to keep it clean when the room's always full of people. I'm not going to blame the custodial staff for letting things accumulate. I will take the blame for that. Every summer its a difficult task to straighten up and put away thousands of pieces of sheet music, dozens of instruments, and file all of the previous year's paperwork. Three of the summers I've been there have seen construction and renovations in the room, so those were even more difficult. I have trouble cleaning up after myself, the typical male dilemma. I always seem to start out determined and after two hours or so, that felt like about eight hours of hard labor, I usually am exhausted and ready to call it a day. Either that or my productivity shrinks to almost nothing and I labor in quiet futility for the rest of the day.

“The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?” – Henry David Thoreau

Today was different. Though I've dreaded it for weeks, once I started, it came easily and went quickly. During the second summer of construction, which I think was 2004 (the first was 2001 and the third was 2005), I had brought in a bunch of plastic storage crates from moving and filled them with all of my miscellaneous items that had to be removed for the construction and renovations. I couldn't unpack them right away due to the ongoing construction that lasted over a year, so there they sat. Today, I went through ten of those crates, which is most of them. I cleaned out an entire storage room to the bare floor and walls. I filled up five large industrial trash cans and refilled two of the crates with my personal belongings, another with essential items for my successor, and another with cassette tapes and CD's that stay in the room. I still have a few more storage rooms to clean, along with my office and a computer lab and classroom, but none of them are filled with the sheer volume of material that this room contained. I intentionally selected the most physically difficult room first (my actual office will be the most emotionally difficult). It only took five hours to finish, including sweeping. It only felt like 2 or 3 hours. Sometimes I actually think I can do this.

"Whether you think you can or think you can't, you are right."
- Henry Ford

I have a few more days to work before I have to make it official. By Sunday night, I plan to be totally moved out. Last week, we rented a 10' x 15' storage unit to hold my belongings, and to serve as a waystation for household items when we clean out the garage, or if it becomes necessary to move out the house for financial reasons. The unit now contains a total inventory of 2 large plastic storage crates, a piccolo trumpet, a bass guitar with no strings (my axe... from my days in a rock band - we actually opened for Hootie and the Blowfish in the early 90's), and a briefcase filled with any letter of commendation or positive feedback I have ever received during my 14 year career. The few items look completely alone in that space. It gave me a feeling of sadness to leave them there and drive away.

Thus begins my great experiment of leaving behind what has been my career and identity for the past 14 years. I actually took the concrete step of removing some of my belongings from the premises. I threw out 14 years worth of collected articles, notes and wisdom for my profession that I would no longer need. I saved a lot of photographs and other things that carried special memories for me. They are baby steps, but at least they are steps.


“All life is an experiment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson


The most curious thing to me was how entangled my personal and professional lives had become. My wife spent a number of years working at the school as well, as an administrative assistant (she had been that and a substitute teacher at my previous two schools), but she had to walk away from it during the 2005-2006 school year for stress-related health reasons. Its difficult enough to work in the same location as your spouse, especially when you work up to 70 hours a week much of the year, and then come home to that person and make it all work. We did that for many years, but when the parents began to be hyper-critical of my work (we figured out today that it began in 2004, when the band performed at Carnegie Hall and I was first nominated to be Teacher of the Year), it took a terrible toll on her health, both mentally and physically. She had to step away and begin to live her own life. She had to leave my shadow to find herself.

So much of my time and my life has been spent in that room and office over the past 8 years that many objects from my personal life had wandered their way there. There are many mundane items, such as the razor on the bookshelf behind my desk, but the items that struck me were all tied up in personal tragedies.

Today I came across several items from a former student of mine that died in 2005. Jason was a trumpet player at my previous school who graduated the year after I left there to take this job. He was a wonderful, inquisitive, talented person who could brighten a room with his smile and his kindness and drive away a rock with his endless questions about why things were the way they were. He was a sponge who wanted to know everything. He was killed in a car accident late at night. A van was driving the wrong way down the interstate and he had a head-on collision, which he survived. All of his friends quickly exited the car, but Jason was left unconscious and trapped in the vehicle. As some of his friends were trying to remove him from the car, they became aware of headlights approaching rapidly and ran from the oncoming semi-truck that smashed into the car, killing Jason. There were many reminders of Jason among my personal belongings. You see, I have this strange synchronicity with names. Most of the people who have been closest to me in my lifetime have names starting with the letter "J" or at least a letter close in the alphabet. It has always held true, from my closest cousin Jimmy and my childhood best friend John down an incredibly long list of people (I know an amazing number of people named Jessica and sometimes people don't know which one I'm talking about). My wife and I were both very close to Jason. We have been reminded of the pain of his loss on numerous occasions since his death and we strive to keep memories of him alive.

Another former student of mine died in 2005. Today, I came across a picture of Cory while sorting through a box. It was not with other pictures. Cory was a loner. The band program was the only group of people he ever found who accepted him for who he was. His father wanted him to play football, since he was into coaching, but Cory was a bookworm who played the clarinet. The greatest moment of his short life was performing at Carnegie Hall in 2004, just months before he graduated. After high school, Cory didn't find the rest of the world as accepting and welcoming as the band room. He took his own life with his father's pistol in the fall of 2005. His death was a wake-up call to me. I was determined to never let another student like Cory fall through the cracks of the system. Cory's death was the catalytic event that caused me to save several lives over the past two years. It made some people unhappy when I stepped into the lives of several troubled students and actually escalated my problems with my job. The parents of these students are eternally grateful for what I did, but the parents of other students resented that I spent the extra time counseling and finding help for these students. Their need was simply greater, so my investment of time was greater as well. Cory's death changed my life and saved the lives of others he never even knew.

The other two items I encountered today were a copy of my grandmother's obituary and a bulletin from my aunt's memorial service. It was just strange how these artifacts of personal tragedy ended up in boxes in a dusty storage room at a public high school. It made me feel sad and, to some extent, robbed of grieving time for all of them. My personal and professional lives were so blurred together that when I was still caught up in the daily grind of my career, it just seemed natural, but now they seemed like alien relics of a lost civilization.

So, as my title quote from The Green Mile says, my past caught up with me today. It was easier than I thought it would be. I'm still afraid and unsure, but I have to move ahead. There is something better waiting there. To paraphrase a line from the Maelstrom ride in the Norway area of Disney's Epcot, I am not the first to pass this way, nor shall I be the last.

"I'd like to think the best of me
Is still hiding
Up my sleeve.

They love to tell you
Stay inside the lines
But something's better
On the other side."

- John Mayer, No Such Thing