Author: Lanny Ball

A few days ago, my phone rang.  It was my father. “Lanny,” he began, “the University of Arizona called me today.” Suddenly my mind raced back in time.  My only brother Sean had attended and graduated from the University of Arizona.  As a brilliant musician, Sean had received a full-ride scholarship for double-bass.  Tragically, on a rainy night shortly following his graduation, Sean was taken from us in a terrible car accident.  Predictably, my family was devastated.  But during our time of grief, we, my parents and I, were able to generate an idea, an idea to keep Sean’s memory alive.  What if we were to create a scholarship in his name?

Following a conversation with a close friend from college about how to go about this, I phoned the university to speak with them about the idea.  We discussed the difference between a one-time award and an endowment, which would live on indefinitely, thereby meeting my family’s ultimate goal.  Although feeling terrible grief for the loss of my brother, we set to work raising money.  My  father created 56 pieces of art and had some of the images transferred to greeting cards and t-shirts.  We held a benefit where I and some of Portland’s top musicians performed.  Friends and family pitched in to help, both logistically and financially.  In the end, we raised over $20,000 that we were able to donate to the university.  Over the next several years, mostly thanks to the perseverance of my parents, the Sean K. Ball Memorial Scholarship for Bass was awarded to several young musicians.

But over time and through some of our country’s financial hardships, the scholarship seemed to fade.  A few years ago, we heard that there was no longer enough money in the endowment to offer an award to any up-and-coming bass student.  And with my mom’s passing three years ago, my father and I have not been able to find the energy or interest to pursue the topic any longer.

But a few days ago, my father called.  “I heard today that there has been an award made this year,” he said.

“Sean’s scholarship?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes!” he answered. He read me the name of the recipient.  “Sean’s scholarship has been awarded this year!  I don’t know how much the award is, but his scholarship is going to be helping a young bass player this school year.”  

Amidst the current difficult times, I think my dad and I both felt good that day.

Sliding the button to the right, I answered the incoming call.  “Hello?” I chirped, making sure to include a friendly lilt to my greeting.

“Lanny?” came the voice. “Did you write today?”  It was my Gram calling.  In October of this strange and terrible year, my grandmother, Helen Abner Callaway, will turn 100 years old.  Yes, that means she was born in 1920. “The year of Women’s Suffrage,” she likes to remind me, so proud of the monumental step that this legislation represents for women’s rights in this country.

The oldest of five girls, my Gram was raised by farmers near St. Paul, Arkansas.  Sometimes I shake my  head in amazement when she tells me stories of her growing up, such as the one about following her mother to fetch water from a well located several hundred yards from the house, watching as her mother carried a large bucket in one hand while a baby rested on her opposite hip.  I have to marvel sometimes at the change my grandmother has witnessed across the last century.  During her childhood, the family did not even own a phone.  Nowadays I talk to her on a small computer I carry around in my pocket.

Grammy still lives alone in her home in eastern Oregon, the small and humble home where she raised three girls of her own, alongside my grandpa. My mother and her two younger sisters would all go on to become teachers, although the youngest would eventually leave the profession to pursue a successful career in law.  Gram always seemed to believe strongly in two things: Get an education, and be a good person.  If nothing else, she will have always imparted those two values upon me, and I shall never forget them. Gram has much to be proud of.

Recently, Grammy told me of a new milestone in her life: “I didn’t go to the grocery store with [my friend] Mary today,” she said.  “I’m having more trouble moving around these days, and plus I don’t think it’s wise for me to be out and about with this virus.”  She is probably right about that.

Over the last couple of years, Gram has taken an interest in my Slice of Life blogging, often calling me and asking if I wrote on Tuesday.  Last Tuesday the question came again.  “Yes, Gram, I wrote today,” I responded.

I bet she will call today.

One by one, the faces of my colleagues appeared on the computer screen.  While it felt so good to see each of them, I knew our reason for this Reopening Committee meeting carried true gravitas: How to spend the five days of professional development time given to us before our students arrive back in the building at the end of this month?  Several solid ideas were offered by various committee members: Time to unpack and design learning environments (many of us were forced to relocate our classrooms to accommodate decreasing student traffic); professional training on Zoom and flipped classroom approaches (in case we transition to a hybrid model); socioemotional break-out sessions; one colleague suggested a large group discussion to allow teachers to verbalize anxieties.

While these were all sound ideas, I could feel myself shifting in my seat, unable to shake the anxiety gripping my inside. The feeling was tight, uncomfortable. “But I shouldn’t I be feeling good?” I wondered to myself. “Connecticut’s numbers are very low.  Everything will be fine… right?”

Perhaps it’s the uncertainty of how viral breakouts crop up.  But if we all wear masks, it will be fine, right?  Perhaps it’s the uncertainty of how I will teach reading intervention and support the teachers in my building under these conditions. But I’ll figure that out, right? Perhaps it’s the fact my own children will be returning to school.  But they’ll be safe, right?

I have come to realize this is a situation well beyond my control; and despite personal feelings I will need to return to work, follow protocols, and do my best.  I know I am not alone in this realization, as thousands of my teaching colleagues find themselves in the same position.

But somehow. . . I’m not feeling ready. Yet.

We are currently living through times unprecedented in so many ways.  This being the case, politics is a frequent topic of discussion in our home.  I am nearly certain this is not unusual. Growing up, I remember the word “Watergate” permeating many a discussion in my own childhood home.  Now, nearly 50 years later, I find myself the father of three young daughters, daughters who want to know things, who want to understand the outrage their parents are feeling.  Even my four-year-old wants to understand.  And this can be challenging to explicate at times.

But other times, not so much.

Take, for example, the current administration’s policy of seizing immigrant families seeking asylum and locking them in cages at the southern border.  This particular policy, just in terms of pure cruelty, has not been terribly difficult for my youngest daughter to grasp as reason for outrage (note:  my wife and I do not discuss the fact that many children have been permanently separated from their parents- that detail is left out).  When discussions of politics bubble up, this is an accessible entry point for my youngest.

A few nights ago at the dinner table, current events and politics once again surfaced as our topic of discussion.  My oldest daughters asked, as they normally do, numerous questions, which prompted my youngest daughter to ask why kids and families are  ending up detained in cages at the southern border.  “Well,” I began, “a lot of those families are trying to get away from bad people in their home countries.  They come here because they want to find a better life.”

“That’s like Babar,” interrupted my youngest.  For a moment, we all sat, silently processing her statement.  What was the connection? I wondered. She continued, “Babar was trying to get away from a hunter who got his mom.  Remember?”

A beat.

“Oh my goodness, you’re right, honey.” I suddenly caught onto the connection she was making to Jean de Brunhoff’s book, The Story of Babar: The Little Elephant.  “It’s like Babar! Babar fled from the hunter to a city where he found someone who was kind to him.”

I never cease to be amazed at the way children can connect, the way stories help them make sense of their world. Kissing the top of my daughter’s head, I affirmed her, “Great connection, sweetheart.” But inside, I felt so saddened by the context of her connection.

“Oh no!  He lost his jacket!” Even with the rather noisy window air conditioner busily breathing cool air into the room, her words were clear, concise.  I shifted my gaze away from the illustrated pages of Beatrix Potter’s classic The Tale of Peter Rabbit to look upon the face of my four-year-old daughter.  Her eyes meet mine.  With her brows pulled downward, she pointed to Peter’s little blue jacket caught irretrievably in Mr. McGregor’s gooseberry net.  “Look!” she implored.

“Yes, honey,” I replied.  “I see it.”

Lying in bed later, I thought about that tiny moment of worry, the distress my little daughter exhibited for a character in a book.  A character, by the way, arguably undeserving of worry or distress.  After all, Peter does knowingly “disobey” the authority figure in the book, his mother.  And yet, my daughter expressed her fear for Peter’s fate anyway.

I recognized the emotion: Empathy.  And I thought about how reading is the way we build our capacity for this essential emotion. In my mind, Empathy might reside at the top of the emotional hierarchy. As author and scientist Maryanne Wolf writes and wonders in her book Reader Come Home (2018), “What will happen to young readers who never meet and begin to understand the thoughts and feelings of someone totally different?” She chronicles studies out of Stanford University that show a precipitous decline in empathy taking place over the last ten years or so in our country.  Wolf also describes a discussion between novelist Marilynne Robinson and then President Barack Obama during which Robinson expressed lamentation for what she perceived as a “political drift among many  people in the United States toward seeing those different than themselves as the ‘sinister other.'”

As I look around at what is happening in our country, I sometimes wonder what I can do to make a difference, especially as I watch the actions and repercussions of persons in power who exhibit no empathy for those different than them at all. But then I remember the young girl who was lying next to me earlier in the evening, her eyes glued to the pages of a book I was holding. And I remember I can make a difference for her.