Margaret's Bench -- January 2010 
 

 

When I was a kid, I thought I’d grow up to be a teacher.

In the first grade, I wanted to be a first grade teacher. In the second grade, I wanted to be a second grade teacher. In junior high (which is what we called the middle school years back then) I saw myself as a junior high teacher, and in high school I wanted to teach high school.
 

All this time, I actually was a writer. I offered up my own stories and poems for Show and Tell, and I tackled every writing assignment the teachers devised with confident joy. But I didn’t imagine growing up to be a professional writer. That thought never occurred to me … except for one brief moment.

I was about ten years old, so it must have been around 1961. My elementary school class was learning about calendars and years—about what a decade is, and a century, and a millennium. The year 2000—the turn of the next millennium—seemed very far away. Suddenly, I wondered if I might actually be alive when it came. What a rare and privileged circumstance, to be alive when the 1000’s turn into the 2000’s!

So I did the math, and figured out that in April 2000, if I were still alive, I would turn 49 years old.

Up to then, when imagining myself as a grownup, I had pictured someone either vaguely young, like in her 20’s, or else really, really old, like my great-grandmother Cave. Until that moment, I had never imagined myself as a middle-aged lady.

Forty-nine. Huh.

A picture of myself at 49 sprang unbidden to mind. I was sitting in a window seat. In some mysterious way, it was clear that my main job was not teaching, but writing. I was a writer! The vision, stunning and exciting, came and went. To my young self, it felt not quite believable. Being a grownup writer seemed too wonderful—too holy, even—to be true. So, until years later, I forgot all about that momentary glimpse of an alternative future, and went back to imagining that I would be a teacher someday.

Each year on January 6th, Christians celebrate the recognition of Jesus’ divine nature by the Magi (Wise Men) in the Feast of the Epiphany. This holy day marks the start of Epiphany season, which continues until Ash Wednesday, when we move into Lent.

My American Heritage dictionary defines the word epiphany as “a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something,” or “a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization.”

Though “reality” is all around us all the time, we humans don’t seem to be very good at keeping a clear view of its essence. Something in human psychology makes it hard for us to perceive what “reality” really is. Every once in a while, we get a glimpse. Such a glimpse will sometimes change the course of a life.

But even when the epiphany reveals something that seems just too good to be true, even when it’s not quite believed, and we turn away, maintaining our own constructions because they just seem more possible—even then, what’s real and true is still alive underneath. Alive, and at work.

More on this subject at a later time…

 

 

      --  Margaret