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She answered the door in sweats, the hoodie sporting the name of a well-known selective Chicago high school. Before I could speak, she said: “I’m a swimmer. I swim all the time. I don’t want to write about swimming but that’s who I am.” As a writing coach who has a large clientele of clients writing personal statements I am used to this sort of despair and blinkered thinking. Yes, swimming was fine, her rank as a swimmer would be a good thing to include on her application but it was not exactly a great story starter. Good stories need conflict and swimming is a one-person, silent sport, the conflict barely exists and when it does it’s usually something like man versus nature (girl versus nature) with a need for strong currents, crashing waves, possibly a shark, not a high school student stroking in a chlorinated pool, little at stake besides a personal best.

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Years ago, living in a Buddhist monastery that practiced Rinzai Zen as a semi-committed sort of Buddhist-artist-in-residence I had a moment of what could only be described as pure happiness. I was walking down the hill to the temple about to enter the zendo for our evening practice, the sun was setting, my companion was silent, and my shoulders were finally unhunched. This happiness struck me as ridiculous as I was sore, exhausted, and freaked out. They gonged you awake at 4:30 am, we had to eat things like rice with chopsticks and perform a food ballet with bowls, one bowl for each food, bowls washed at the table and rewrapped, all done at warp speed, wrapped in a linen square and the wooden clapper told you to scurry away even if you had barely eaten. We sat for a full day, a break every hour for walking meditation, sat late, sat with moonlight slashing the polished floor of the zendo into rectangles. I had polished that floor.

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I am no stranger to grief. But for those who believe in democracy, rule of law, compassion, and the truth, knowing that this many people in our country don’t, is daunting. I understand better why our schools are failing, our roads are pot-holed, why we are sliding backwards into the post-war fifties mentality of pull up the ladder, not in my neighborhood, women should behave, Black people and immigrants should shut up or leave. My mission remains to teach, to love, to show compassion and empathy and hope. Since we just moved, I am putting away various papers and found the book the students from a very wealthy and White school made for me after I covered a maternity leave. They said I had shown them how to be kind without condescension, how to laugh at and accept mistakes, how to ask yourself the hard questions about something you are reading or writing.

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