When a Senior in HIGH SCHOOL

 

When a Senior in High School

By Teak Kilmer

 

 When a senior in high school, I wrote a term paper – stayed up all night, read four books on the Battle of Gettysburg and wrote the paper ─ in one fell swoop, or as I like to say, one swell foop. That afternoon I turned that paper in to my English teacher, Ms. what’s her name (Oh, God, what is her name?) who honored me with four A+’s on that paper.  I was stunned, just as I had been when she choose me to read the leads in both the plays we read that year: “Cyrano DeBergerac” and “Abe Lincoln in Illinois” – still to this day two of my great heroes, they – both for their deeds and for their impeccable eloquence, their love of words and truth and justice and all virtue”.   Never before had a teacher had faith in me; all the others were indifferent or humiliating or punitive, seeing only my dysfunction that stemmed from my errant genes and family horrors, but did not notice my talent nor especially my crying out for love which my actions truly were.

 

So again I had been recognized (and praised even) by this teacher/savior come lately, but I was dying so on the inside, terrified, forlorn …  wallowing in desperate effort just to keep ahead of self destruction – for relief. For some reason, she did not point out that I might have a career in writing, which I certainly did, but it didn’t dawn on me; I was so reeling in my efforts to get through each day. 

 

My greatest challenge was the insistent ever possessing of memory that was my nightmare predicting that when I would die, I would float off naked, cold and alone for eternity into empty, infinite space, kept me here.  I am 63 now – 46 years later and am no longer living in that nightmare … and I am writing again.

 

I have many to thank for this, certainly myself and my determination to get better, but primarily my angelic wife I must thank for her resurrection of (and yet so far surpassing) that teacher who saw the light in me even as I railed against that light; And I thank deeply the few friends who stuck with me and also saw the light of God that I, to most, had kept so well hidden in my agitation, in my rage.