Saints and Poets Revisited

I learned last night that Mrs. Williams, my 11th grade English teacher, passed away late last month. She was the one who, through that class, introduced me to several works of literature, including the Thornton Wilder play "Our Town".

I wrote about that play years ago, but in the play there’s a pivotal moment when Emily Gibbs, who has died and been given permission to revisit her 11th birthday, begs her mother to “look at me as though you really saw me!”  When her mother does not, Emily cannot bear it, and the stage manager notes that only the "saints and poets" seem to realize life while living it, and even then only sometimes.

In that class all those years ago, I remember Mrs. Williams asking whether Wilder had gotten that right -- whether most of us live out our lives with blinders and fail to realize life while living "every, every minute".

There have been moments in the years since, still far too rare, when I catch myself appreciating life as I'm living it. Usually it's in smaller moments with my kids that I begin to appreciate and want to hold onto, which then gives way to a kind of desperation as I sense anew how fleeting those moments are.

It's in those moments that I remember "Our Town," and it's in those moments I remember Mrs. Williams, because she's the one who led me there in the first place. To me, she was (and is) among the "saints and poets" who not only realized life while living it, but helped the rest of us to do the same.