One True Thing from John Robinson: Passion and Memory

Many years ago, as a senior in college, I was about to undertake my student-teaching experience. I was told that I would be paired up with a high school English teacher near the college named John Robinson. Little did I know what that name would come to represent through the unfolding years of my life.

John and I in Room 106 in 2003 after a day of teaching

That year, John and I would sit together at the front of Room 106 in Hamilton-Wenham Regional High school. I laughed more than I've ever laughed in an English classroom. But I also learned things I'd never imagined before--that writers of the novels we ask students to read had led lives just as fraught with fear, hope, passion, vigor, depression, and joy as we do. That every short story, novel, poem, vignette we read with students houses the uncanny ability to both teach creativity and passion, and also to embolden the power of empathy and bolster the need for new perspectives. Whether John was teaching Ernest Hemingway or reading Girl with a Pearl Earring or exploring poetry, he showed me the ropes of teaching for passion and beauty. He showed me how to be myself in an English classroom, too, which all began with Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts.

These years later, I am deeply in love with literature and writing, and I still can barely make it through a Handy Deep Thought while laughing uncontrollably. I still love teaching--whether it's Public Speaking courses in adult education programs here in York, or public school middle and high school classes. John pointed to a path which held untold passion for writing and teaching, and he pushes open the door for me and showed me how to walk it with joy.

John's lifelong work as a teacher is coupled with his lifelong work as a writer, having published two novels, scores of short stories in literary journals like Ploughshares and The Sewanee Review and many others, and having seen reviews, essays, and journalism into print. Every day, John still makes the fundamental decision to sit down at his desk and pen new words, craft new stories and reveal new lives. Because true passions never wither; instead, they are perennial as tulips: drawing strength from cold winters to flower and flourish with even more resolve. John's passion as a teacher and writer is resolve itself, and I'm excited to share Mr. John Robinson's One True Thing here, today.

Passion and Memory
by John Robinson

Yesterday, on a cold and overcast late November day, I drove to a Mobil Mini-Mart in my hometown, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  I was stopping to purchase a couple of bottles of chocolate milk, a soothing drink I often enjoy late at night.  On my way into the store, I was thinking--brooding really--about the good news I had just received that morning from a esteemed editor of a prestigious literary journal.  I had been informed that my short story had been accepted for publication in the spring.  Yes, I thought, it was good to have yet another story coming out in print, but because most literary journals have small audiences, my joy was somewhat subdued by the prospect of knowing that no one in town will ever know when it is published.  After a lengthy time of being published in many forms and in many venues, I believed I was destined toward that special obscurity reserved only for those whose efforts will be perceived by posterity as being tragically marginal.  Though I knew my work would remain in print long after I'd shed this mortal coil, I would not be remembered, I thought self-pityingly as I entered the store.       

    

I approached the check-out clerk, and laid the bottles on the small counter between us.  Unfortunately, they didn't have "low-fat" chocolate milk, and so instead--because I had no choice--I doubled-down on two bottles of something called "double" chocolate milk.  He was a man around my age.  But below a tattered baseball cap a wizened face--the result of attrition or neglect or addiction-- aged his appearance beyond his years.  He took one bottle into his hand and double-scanned it before announcing the price to me.

            

As I reached into my pocket for the cash to pay him, he looked at me and said, "Hey, aren't you the writer who was in the paper a long time ago?"

            

Long time ago?  He remembered that?  And what an understatement!  It was more like a quarter of a century ago, 27 years to be exact.  I was amazed he remembered my face from the article written so long ago.  The town newspaper had done a feature when my first novel appeared.

            

"There was a picture of you with your dog, I think," he said.

            

"Yes," I said.  "You've got a great memory."  And then after a moment, just before I left the store with my plastic bottles of chocolate milk:  "I'm honored you recalled the article."

            

Somehow the piece about me had moved him enough to remember my face when I entered the store.   The one true thing about organizing your life around your passion--if you're lucky enough to have one--is that for the rest of your life you'll always be rewarded and reminded--in some of the most unanticipated moments and ways--of your commitment to your dream.  It does not matter how small the audience--or how large the financial reward.  It matters only in the existential sense that it mattered to you, and to the few--or many--you unexpectedly reached by trying to become who you were all along.  In my case, a writer.

Writing & Voice

Here's a three-minute video with some thoughts on writing with your authentic voice:

Celebrating My Mentor

Lynda Mullaly Hunt--the fabulous author of the upcoming novel One for the Murphys (Nancy Paulsen Books, May 2012)--included an essay I wrote about my mentor, Mr. John Robinson, on her blog Mentor Mondays. Check it out here.

Cereal

Currently: eating a bowl of Fruit N' Fibre, Tesco brand (the English version of generic, cheapest of cheap). Here, we can buy a 750g box of fruity, fiber-y goodness for £1.29, roughly the equivalent of two bucks. That's a heck of a lot of fibre (or fiber) and dried fruit per penny.

Cereal has always been an active part of my nightlife. Forget drinking pints. Forget chocolate cake. Forget dried grape leaves dampened with mist and elongated by bruschetta made from freshly picked and diced tomatoes after having been sprinkled with homegrown pressed garlic and a touch of oregano.

No. I'm talking about the milky goodness of cereal--its perfect balance of refreshing, cold taste-thrilling joy, along with all the stability of a full meal (or dessert) in a bowl.

And consider: a bowl is a wonderful symbol of life--its circular symmetry, its concave (or convex, depending on your perspective) presence, its willingness to hold steady in the face of all danger.

When I was in high school, I began eating a bowl of cereal every night. Now, thirteen years later, the habit continues (for which Jen deserves serious commendations for hearing my chomping, slurping, cereal-loving sounds emanate each night of our lives together).

Tonight, I sing the praises of cereal as one of those always-present, seldom-thanked-properly companions. I'm grateful. I'm content. I'm sitting on a couch that is half red flannel, half beige cloth (not joking: this is our couch where we rent) and I'm typing these words as, beside me, sits a bowl of Fruit N' Fibre. Half-eaten. And I'm struck by the joy of small things.

The joy of cereal.

This past week, a deal came through for a book at which I've been at work, entitled Keep Calm and Query On: Notes on Writing (and Living) with Hope. And I can't get a cover image of the original 1939 British poster as the book's cover out of my mind. And it's exciting, and I'm grateful. Very grateful. It's a neat book (well, at least, I think so!) with interviews from writers I deeply admire and am inspired by--people like John Robinson, Jane Smiley, Robert Pinsky, Daniel Handler, Lindsey Collen, George Saunders, and others.

But the thing is this: there's the cereal. Always the cereal, which leads to an important truth: being thankful for the fiber--content with the fiber, really--is what matters most. Everything else is fun and enjoyable as well, yes, but I want to live in that stable place where I can look down into a bowl of cereal, thank God for its milky wonder, and eat while closing my eyes as I slurp (far too loudly) another bite.