Stopping by the Woods

Many years ago, when I taught school at Kiley Junior High School, I had a certain boy for homeroom and also for 8th grade English whose name was Walter D. Before I knew anything spiritual, I sensed that Walter was a special being. He certainly was very dear to me and affected me deeply.

His mother died that year when Walter was thirteen.

I was going to leave Kiley in the middle of that year. (For more on this, please see the blog entry How My Teaching Was Different http://www.godwriting.org/godwriting/how-my-teaching-was-different-educa...

At that time, when I would see Walter, his beautiful clear innocent eyes, I would feel his remarkable sweetness and lostness, and my heart would pang, and I would say to myself: “How can I leave him. How can I leave him."

Walter also had a twin sister, Cheryl, whom I had for homeroom only. She got edgy, too, after her mother’s death.

Walter and Cheryl were both in my homeroom, though I never had Cheryl for English.

This story is really about Walter, but I do want to tell you an incident with Cheryl when she was in ninth grade.

I want you to know that I never squealed on my children. I always kept their confidences. If someone told me he had stolen a car for a joyride or whatever, I never said a word to anyone.

One day Cheryl, Walter’s twin sister, came up to me and said she was running away from home that weekend with a girlfriend. They were going to hitch a ride to New York. She said she was telling me because she didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye. I put my arm around her and told her I didn’t want her to go.

Hitching and New York City were bright red flags, of course. At my first opportunity, I went and told Mr. Spring, my principal. I had no qualms about ratting on Cheryl. It had even occurred to me that she had told me because she wanted to be stopped.

Mr. Spring did stop her, told her father as I remember. Cheryl was kind of sullen with me after that.

Even years later, when Cheryl was married and had a child, and we bumped into each other, Cheryl brought up that she was still hurt that I had told on her. But, you know, we were happy to see each other anyway.

I heard from time to time that Walter had gotten into real trouble in high school. In those days it was rebellious to have long hair and a beard, and I heard Walter had both. He was not only suspended, he was expelled. Drug-related. I kept hearing that Walter had become incorrigible. It broke my heart to think that this precious sweet boy was not appreciated, and, worse, that he did not appreciate himself.

In intervening years, I learned TM.

One time I went to the TM center to have my meditation checked. I had the surprise of my life. There was a brand-new TM teacher, just back from Teacher Training in Europe who was going to check me. He was clean-shaven, dressed in a suit and tie, his hair cut short, and he was most respectable. To be a TM teacher, you have to be be drug-free and utterly respectable. You have guessed by now -- the TM teacher was none other than my heart's delight, Walter D!

And what a sweet reunion that was. I remember laughing through that whole checking. Later Walter told me it was the father of a friend of his who had taken a real interest in him and helped him turn his life around.

There’s still more to tell you.

Walter is no longer Walter. He is Wally now, and he is famous in the TM movement. Maharishi took a special interest in Wally, paid for his flying lessons, and Wally became Maharishi’s pilot and traveled all over the world with him. Who could make this up? Truth is not stranger than fiction. It is better. Never ever give up on life.

That indefinable specialness I saw in Walter when he was thirteen has been confirmed in Wally who is now a learned fifty-three year old. You've got to know that everyone loves Wally, and everyone looks up to him.

The other day I had the privilege of having lunch with Wally and a few other people from the old days. Now, here’s what I have been leading up to.

At the lunch, Wally talked about 8th grade English, how I used to make the kids memorize poems.

And then Wally, before my very eyes, word for word, recited Robert Frost’s Stopping By the Woods on a Snowy Evening:

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound's the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.