LITMIR.BIZ

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to motivate students. I have witnessed nights up until 4:00 a.m. grading papers, weekends spent preparing for the next week, and out-of-pocket small fortunes spent on supplies, gifts, decorations, and rewards.

      Good teachers get satisfaction from knowing they gave it their best. Their “hallelujah” payoff, however, is when a former student surfaces years later to say something like: “You were simply the best—thanks forever.”

      In his autobiography, world-class journalist David Brinkley tells of the profound disappointment he was to his mother from the day he was born. When he first showed her some of his fledgling attempts to write, she wadded them up and threw them in the trash and told him not to waste his time on “such foolishness.” But one day in English class, Mrs. Barrows Smith pronounced: “David, I think you ought to be a journalist.” Brinkley writes that at that moment “a world turned for me.”59

      Educator Horace Mann wrote: “If you attempt to teach without inspiring, you’re hammering a cold iron.”

      Is there a teacher living who significantly inspired and encouraged you or nudged you at a critical moment in your life in the right direction? It might mean the world to put that into words and pass it along to your Mrs. Smith. Someday it will be too late.

      March 4

      Physicians see their hospitalized patients for five to ten minutes a day. Nurses assume life-and-death responsibility for those same patients for eight or ten or twelve hours straight.

      Many times I have visited in the homes of parents whose child died. As I heard them relive that awful loss, they often singled out a competent and compassionate nurse as their only positive memory on the worst day of their lives:

      “I saw the nurse wipe a tear from her eye.”

      “The nurse mopped our child’s brow and held his hand until he took his last breath.”

      “The nurses taped messages above our child’s bed like, ‘I prefer to be called Cookie’ and ‘Yes, I would love a foot massage’ and ‘Please wind my music box.’”

      “The nurses stayed with us long after their shift was over.”

      “Except for the way the nurses took care of our emotional needs, I don’t know how we would have made it through.”

      “Six of those nurses took a day off without pay and drove all the way down here for the funeral.”

      One woman whose grandbaby was born premature and spent three months in the neonatal intensive care unit addressed this poem to the nurses of the unit and tacked it on their bulletin board: “To My Nurses. Tiny / Fragile / Born too soon / Surrounded by machines / Invaded by tubes / You—you saw underneath it all—Me! / And because you / Worked and hoped / Worked and cried / Worked and prayed / And worked / I am!”

      Good nurses do much more than tend to physical needs. They dispense tender, loving care to patients and their families. That alone sometimes keeps hope alive.

      March 5

      I grew up in a church that did not recognize Christmas and Easter as special religious days. Every Easter we heard a paragraph at the beginning of the sermon if not an entire sermon on “Why We Do Not Keep Easter.”

      As an adult, I have come to appreciate some of the pageantry and symbolism of Holy Week. My favorite day is the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter.

      Some early Christians believed that on “Holy Saturday” Jesus went throughout the hadean realm and announced to all souls residing there, beginning with Abel, the good news of what God was getting ready to do on Easter.

      My personal reason for appreciating Saturday is far less esoteric—I can identify more readily and more often with the disciples of Jesus on that day than I can on the Friday before or the Sunday after.

      On Friday the disciples were totally disillusioned and dejected, their leader having died a shameful death. I have known very few times of despair in my life. I am fortunate every year to have only a few situational depressions that last a couple of days at most. Some people I know live much of their lives in a deep, dark, Good-Friday funk of depression.

      On Sunday, by contrast, the disciples were euphoric, ecstatic—running and jumping and shouting for joy. I am grateful to have about a dozen of those as-good-as-it-gets resurrection days every year, days on which I yell “Yippee!” or croon a few bars of “What a Wonderful World.”

      But the other 350 days of my year are more like Saturday of Holy Week. I plod along, old griefs and losses still percolating on the back burner of my memory. But also in the mix is hope for one more mountaintop experience, one more new beginning, one more Easter morning. I believe that yearning will carry me all the way home.

      March 6

      During an ice storm, I found myself observing trees; more precisely, three neighborhood trees. My next door neighbor has a row of twelve-year-old Bradford pear trees on our property line. He had seven until a storm took one out. An ice storm split scores of limbs off the surviving six. Bradford pears have beautiful white flowers for ten days in the spring, but their limbs grow fast and at a steep angle and they are, consequently, brittle trees. After Bradford pear trees reach the age of twelve or so, a stiff wind or ice storm can snap big branches off or smack down the whole tree.

      Another neighbor has a magnificent willow tree. Every limb, covered with half an inch of ice, moved and swayed—danced with the winds—but lost not a limb.

      In my yard are five Thuja green giant trees, evergreens between eight and twelve feet tall. Covered with ice, the tops of all five bent over and kissed the ground. They looked more like chuppahs than trees. Now a week later and the ice melted, three are perfectly straight, one is almost straight, and the fifth—the oldest and tallest—leans a lot, like a stooped old man bending forward at a forty-five-degree angle.

      I can identify with the Bradford pear. Sometimes I am rigid. When I become aware of it, Theognis of Megara’s words may come to me: “Wisdom is supple, but folly keeps in a groove.” I can identify with the willow. I do not break easily. My life work has helped me put things in perspective and shrug off many things as “just” inconveniences that are incidental.

      The older I get the more I identify with old Thuja. We get partly bowed by winter storms, but not broken. And it takes us longer to straighten up.

      March 7

      John Wooden grew up in Hall, Centerton, and Martinsville, Indiana. He led his high school basketball team to the state championship game three years in a row. He made the all-state team each of those years. At Purdue he was a consensus All-American basketball player for three years and led Purdue to the National Championship in 1932.

      Wooden went on to become arguably the greatest college basketball coach of all time, leading UCLA to four perfect seasons and ten NCAA championships. What was the magic of the great leader? He credits the seven-point creed his father gave him when he graduated from grammar school for his deep, strong rooting:

      1. Be true to yourself.

      2. Make each day your masterpiece.

      3. Help others.

      4. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.

      5. Make friendship a fine art.

      6. Build a shelter against a rainy day.

      7. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.60

      Wooden gave his players—and offers us—wings. These are some of my favorite words of wisdom, collected from the greatest coach that I wing to you:

      “You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

      “Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

      “Consider the rights

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