pt at large

Chile Farms Wednesday January 23, 2008

10 am, Wednesday, January 23.  I survey my temporary fiefdom at Susaan and Ricardo’s farm in Nogales, Chile. The epi-center of “Chile Farms” is a wood frame little castle located on a hillock overlooking their orange groves, alfalfa tracts, and fields full of ready for the picking cantaloupes and corn.

Ensconced in a comfy chair on the corner of the veranda that surrounds their farmhouse,

I’m surrounded by an agrarian kingdom Birds twitter, roosters crow, dogs bark, a tractor chugs through the orange groves, and a pool filter gurgles in the back yard.

Panning to the east on my left, I see the tip of the stable, the frame of the new barn which will hold orange produce, and the steep foothills of the Cordillieras de los Andes, dotted with avocado fields and wild espina trees. Beyond them lies the forbidding mountain range that is the spine of South America.

Straight ahead, just over the screen of my laptop, are one corner of Chile Farms’ orange groves and sprawling fields of a neighbor’s neatly rowed green pepper plants with a wedge of shoulder high corn tucked between them. A peek of one of Ricardo’s horse corrals and a patch their vegetable and herb garden lay at the bottom of the hillock.

To my right, the azure pool with its terra cotta tiled deck, and a small patch of lawn bordered with wild flowers. And just over the scrub espina trees on a hillside there are the tops of eucalyptus trees that surround Ricardo’s practice rodeo arena. The backdrop from there is the foothills of the Coastal Range. The Pacific Ocean lies 15 miles to the east beyond.

Time here is measured in growing seasons not by calendars embedded in Blackberrys. I can get used to this.

Boys to men

In the back of your mind, you wonder what’s going to become of them. How will they fit in, what paths will they take, and what part of their experience of you having been their fourth grade teacher will they bring along for the ride. You take as an article of faith you’re having an impact on their lives. That’s why you go to work every day.
Once you get your game going, you realize the more you put into the job, the more reward you get from it. Navigating your students through the concreteness of long division, giving them a framework to grapple with moral ambiguities in themes of books you choose for them to read, and helping them cope with arguments on the playground or fallings out between friends, you’re laying the groundwork for the Jeffersonian ideal.  Informed citizens and human beings who can imagine walking in someone else’s shoes.

1989 - Jimmy looks over my shoulder. Ronald's dad (in yellow) with Ronald to his right, at a before school "breakfast" to show off student's Autobiography Project.

So when I got an email from Jimmy McCarthy’s mom that he was recently named assistant coach for the Northeastern University’s Men’s Basketball team  and had gotten engaged to a young teacher in a nearby town, that was good news. It got even better when she added that he’d love to have me come to one of his team’s home games.
(http://www.gonu.com/mbasketball/mccarthy.shtml)

On January 9, 2008, there I was, watching Coach McCarthy, pencil tucked behind his ear, taking notes and encouraging the young squad, when a young man with short dreds and an enormous smile sidled his way down the row, sat in the seat beside me and wrapped me up in a bear hug.

Ronald Carroll, Jimmy’s pal from my class of 1989, was in the house. Jimmy had called him that afternoon and there he was, a five foot nine bundle of energy. Jimmy and Ronald were genuine people persons as ten year olds. They’re young men now and they still know how to light up a room.

Jimmy has spent the last five years coaching at Williams College and Yale University. This is his first year at Northeastern University. Ronald works with at risk youth in the Roxbury site of The Boys Club of Boston. Married for three years, he and his wife are expecting a daughter in June. Ronald recalled conversations - small acts of trust, faith, and encouragement - between us during his fourth grade year with me. When a young man looks you straight in the eye and says, “You are one of the reasons I’ve turned out to be the man I’ve become today”- that’s a moment you treasure, savor and allow to roam free range in your memory for a long time.

The brief reunion with Jimmy and Ronald after the game revealed the zeal they have for their jobs. I sense their faith that they, too, feel they’re having an impact on young people’s lives. It wouldn’t hurt if twenty of thirty years from now one of their former charges shows up out of the blue to give them a big hug - and tell them how much they mattered.