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Description
Issue One: The Unknown
February 22st, 2004

I think the reason that I am so scared right now, is because, in a way, it's happened before. My first meeting with death came when I was seven, and my grandfather died of consecutive heart attacks. He was a lifelong smoker, but it was his heart that made the final strike. Heart disease runs in another branch of my family, and luckily missed my mother, but a great uncle who I suspect understood me even when I was an infant died before I even knew his name.

This week, my favorite teacher has been absent nearly every day. He had a heart attack over the weekend, more severely than the last two. It's done a lot of damage, and he himself said that he probably never will be back to the point he once was. Everyone I know is worried about him. Today he's back in the hospital, supposedly undergoing tests, but why would they have to test things if he's really ok?

It doesn't surprise me that he became my favorite so quickly. Really, he's the sort of teacher I always hoped I would get, but suspected that I never would. He's passionate about his subjects, writing and language and performance, and from the moment he began talking on the first day of class, I knew that I would remember him forever. Writing is about expressing emotion, he told us. It's about creating images in the readers' mind. You want to make them feel like they're there. He put his whole body into his words, to make us see what sort of gut-wrenching it can take.

It worked. I have seen him take kids who walked in swearing that they couldn't, wouldn't write, who now adore him and actually enjoy what they do. They enjoy it so much that they don't even have to be told to do it anymore. They'll seek him out to tell him what they found out, or bring him a poem they wrote over the weekend. You cannot teach someone to teach like that.

But now I'm scared. It's like ten years ago, only worse. When I was seven, I didn't know my grandfather very well. I had known my grandfather long-distance, during short international phone calls on holidays and birthdays. A summer or two before, he and my grandmother had come over to stay with us for a little while. All I remember is that he smoked, and wore tall socks with shorts. His legs were hairy, like my father's. We got a call in the early hours of the morning; it woke me up, and I thought it was something to do with my dad's consulting job. Something about the tone of voices coming from the room next door, and a feeling my gut made me get up, though. "Shen," my father said, trying to be calm, serious, and unalarming all at once. "Grandpa Ronnie died last night. He had a heart attack." It took a moment for the words to sink in, and then I bowed over my knees and cried. As the first wave of tears lessened, and I was pulled into bed with them, I asked how and why, and was told that he had died in the ambulance of a second or third heart attack. I was also told that he smoked.

Mr. Fantry doesn't smoke. In fact, he's in the best shape of his life. His own doctor has told him that he has a right to be pissed, and I think that he is, or that he would be if he had the energy to be. He managed to come in for a short while over the last few days, coming late and leaving early, but now he's back in the hospital...

I feel sick inside. My own heart is giving me sympathy pains, and I'm wishing beyond the stars that he gets better. "You're not supposed to do this," I told him the first day he came back, only half joking. "You're supposed to still BE here when I come back in ten years."

"Well, I hope so, kiddo," he told me with a sad, thoughtful smile. "Is it ten years when you come back?"

He doesn't realize how much he means to me. I have gone through so many stages in my life... when I learned to handwrite, I swore that I never would: it hurt my hand to write quite as much as I felt needed to be said. I spent years swearing that I would never write. Then I began writing stories on my own, on the computer, and slowly I began to like this writing thing. Within two years, I had decided that writing would be my career, but there was no one to help me. I struggled by on my own, posting on the web and getting the brief responses of strangers.

When Fantry heard me read my writing, he asked me how long I had been writing. Years, maybe three, I told him. It showed.

This year, my second in his class, he wrote on my paper:

"I'm sorry I didn't always have the time to give you the feedback you deserved. I must tell you- your writing is improving by leaps and bounds. I was good- not it is great- to what do you attribute the growth- I'd like to know. Has your approach evolved, or your willingness to take risks? What?"

You. I attribute my growth to you, for giving me the environment to take those risks in. For encouraging me and telling me when it was good. For being impressed with me, and telling me what I had been aware of, but had been too afraid and too meek to acknowledge: I can do it, and do it well. I needed to know that someone who had the authority to know thought this, and was willing to tell me so, and to help me improve. With that in my heart, I could write whatever I wanted. I could step out of the old molds and do all sorts of things. I could begin to look at the world with an eye to my words, because I now felt that I had a right to. I knew that whatever I wrote, I would always have a sympathetic ear, or someone to run ideas by, who would consider all of those finer aspects that only writers can know.

I don't want this to go away. I don't what my About The Author biography to include, "her first and favorite writing teacher died in her senior year of high school, coloring Richenda's later education and works..." I don't want to feel my eyes tear every time I walk into this room. I can't bear to think of a ten-year reunion without you. That was one of my fondest dreams: my triumphant return to show myself and my accomplishments off to you. How can you not be there?

When I was seven, I knew that I had lost something, although I didn't quite know what. Now I know who I may lose all too well, and I am terrified.

Description
Issue One: The Unknown
February 22st, 2004

I think the reason that I am so scared right now, is because, in a way, it's happened before. My first meeting with death came when I was seven, and my grandfather died of consecutive heart attacks. He was a lifelong smoker, but it was his heart that made the final strike. Heart disease runs in another branch of my family, and luckily missed my mother, but a great uncle who I suspect understood me even when I was an infant died before I even knew his name.

This week, my favorite teacher has been absent nearly every day. He had a heart attack over the weekend, more severely than the last two. It's done a lot of damage, and he himself said that he probably never will be back to the point he once was. Everyone I know is worried about him. Today he's back in the hospital, supposedly undergoing tests, but why would they have to test things if he's really ok?

It doesn't surprise me that he became my favorite so quickly. Really, he's the sort of teacher I always hoped I would get, but suspected that I never would. He's passionate about his subjects, writing and language and performance, and from the moment he began talking on the first day of class, I knew that I would remember him forever. Writing is about expressing emotion, he told us. It's about creating images in the readers' mind. You want to make them feel like they're there. He put his whole body into his words, to make us see what sort of gut-wrenching it can take.

It worked. I have seen him take kids who walked in swearing that they couldn't, wouldn't write, who now adore him and actually enjoy what they do. They enjoy it so much that they don't even have to be told to do it anymore. They'll seek him out to tell him what they found out, or bring him a poem they wrote over the weekend. You cannot teach someone to teach like that.

But now I'm scared. It's like ten years ago, only worse. When I was seven, I didn't know my grandfather very well. I had known my grandfather long-distance, during short international phone calls on holidays and birthdays. A summer or two before, he and my grandmother had come over to stay with us for a little while. All I remember is that he smoked, and wore tall socks with shorts. His legs were hairy, like my father's. We got a call in the early hours of the morning; it woke me up, and I thought it was something to do with my dad's consulting job. Something about the tone of voices coming from the room next door, and a feeling my gut made me get up, though. "Shen," my father said, trying to be calm, serious, and unalarming all at once. "Grandpa Ronnie died last night. He had a heart attack." It took a moment for the words to sink in, and then I bowed over my knees and cried. As the first wave of tears lessened, and I was pulled into bed with them, I asked how and why, and was told that he had died in the ambulance of a second or third heart attack. I was also told that he smoked.

Mr. Fantry doesn't smoke. In fact, he's in the best shape of his life. His own doctor has told him that he has a right to be pissed, and I think that he is, or that he would be if he had the energy to be. He managed to come in for a short while over the last few days, coming late and leaving early, but now he's back in the hospital...

I feel sick inside. My own heart is giving me sympathy pains, and I'm wishing beyond the stars that he gets better. "You're not supposed to do this," I told him the first day he came back, only half joking. "You're supposed to still BE here when I come back in ten years."

"Well, I hope so, kiddo," he told me with a sad, thoughtful smile. "Is it ten years when you come back?"

He doesn't realize how much he means to me. I have gone through so many stages in my life... when I learned to handwrite, I swore that I never would: it hurt my hand to write quite as much as I felt needed to be said. I spent years swearing that I would never write. Then I began writing stories on my own, on the computer, and slowly I began to like this writing thing. Within two years, I had decided that writing would be my career, but there was no one to help me. I struggled by on my own, posting on the web and getting the brief responses of strangers.

When Fantry heard me read my writing, he asked me how long I had been writing. Years, maybe three, I told him. It showed.

This year, my second in his class, he wrote on my paper:

"I'm sorry I didn't always have the time to give you the feedback you deserved. I must tell you- your writing is improving by leaps and bounds. I was good- not it is great- to what do you attribute the growth- I'd like to know. Has your approach evolved, or your willingness to take risks? What?"

You. I attribute my growth to you, for giving me the environment to take those risks in. For encouraging me and telling me when it was good. For being impressed with me, and telling me what I had been aware of, but had been too afraid and too meek to acknowledge: I can do it, and do it well. I needed to know that someone who had the authority to know thought this, and was willing to tell me so, and to help me improve. With that in my heart, I could write whatever I wanted. I could step out of the old molds and do all sorts of things. I could begin to look at the world with an eye to my words, because I now felt that I had a right to. I knew that whatever I wrote, I would always have a sympathetic ear, or someone to run ideas by, who would consider all of those finer aspects that only writers can know.

I don't want this to go away. I don't what my About The Author biography to include, "her first and favorite writing teacher died in her senior year of high school, coloring Richenda's later education and works..." I don't want to feel my eyes tear every time I walk into this room. I can't bear to think of a ten-year reunion without you. That was one of my fondest dreams: my triumphant return to show myself and my accomplishments off to you. How can you not be there?

When I was seven, I knew that I had lost something, although I didn't quite know what. Now I know who I may lose all too well, and I am terrified.