Pupae, Not Pupils

Two weeks ago, in the East High parking lot, my friend Nancy stood in hunchbacked vigil over a magnificent caterpillar who was slowly making his way to greener pastures.  Because I just can't help myself, I exited my car and joined her.  Looking across the cracked pavement--broken up by weedy, dusty islands--I wondered where, exactly, those greener pastures were that he was seeking.  Embedded deep inside the tread of a Firestone tire seemed to be his likeliest destination.

And so, we did the only thing two middle-aged softies could do.  Nancy handed over her Tupperware container and I wrangled the fellow inside it, with the intention of bringing him to a lush Eden, where he would find respite, good eats and a sturdy stick on which he might have a chance to become something else.

That he curled up and died a few days later--despite the lush, green habitat that my daughter Allison created for him--does not diminish my belief that he wrapped up his short life on better terms than he'd found himself in when Nancy first discovered him.

In a weird way, this little story represents everything that people who work in schools experience on a regular basis.  Day after day, droves of denim-clad pupae wend their way to our doors, some possessing greater potential than others.  And, despite the odds and the exhaustion and the cynical, private knowledge that some will curl up in a corner long before reaching their full potential, we do our darnedest to create a fresh habitat in which they might have a chance to become something more.

What amazes me, 25 years after becoming a teacher, is that, for the most part, everyone still continues to show up each day.  Even those kids with all the odds stacked up against them manage to get up and slog across the cracked earth each morning, knowing that something better--even if it's only the suggestion of something better--awaits them at 1000 S. 70th Street.   

That caterpillar, complete with its scary horn and camouflage markings intended to make him both unappealing and  invisible, already was beautiful to me.  And it wasn't his potential that appealed to me, even though I knew that,  if given a chance, he would explode into an even more awesome being--a white-lined sphinx moth. 

Really, it was the fact that he showed up, despite all the odds.  That's what made me love him.