When You Give Back Your Keys

As a school principal, I have had many opportunities over the summer months to be present when a teacher or staff member, who has either opted to retire from our profession or who has found an opportunity to forge a new career path within or beyond our profession, has come to the building to give back his/her keys—the keys to a classroom, a filing cabinet, a desk, or an office. I dutifully and quietly take the keys as he/she offers them up in this typical way: one-by-one with an explanation about the wrist-twist of this one or the funny-bend of that one.  I know, all too well, that despite what marvelous adventures may exist on the other side of this moment, this symbolic event—this relinquishing of the keys—is pretty heavy and bittersweet for most people.

Someone once told me that you have “to go” in order “to grow.” And if you think about that in terms of every major milestone or somewhat sideways moment of your life, it turns out to be pretty true. So, I always try to impart that wisdom to others while reminding myself, the person who is in need of a new employee and who is trying to keep several different sets of keys straight, of this adage: “Every new beginning comes from some beginning’s end.”

Despite however cute and philosophical either of those little sayings are, “going and growing” and “beginning and ending” fail to provide the depth of inspiration necessary in the really hard moments with the really tangible “leaving stuff” … like giving back your keys.

Remember when you got the keys? When someone trusted you enough to let you into the secret universe? When you had instant and total access to the thousands of possibilities and the inordinate amounts of differences you were going to make each day, just by showing up and unlocking a new door? When you didn’t know exactly what would go into the multiple-drawer file cabinet or the extra-large closet, but you figured that you’d find something, right? (And you certainly did, now didn’t you?!) In fact, you found so many things to fill-up the space—every little nook-and-cranny—that you’ve wondered, most recently, if you’d ever achieve “empty” again, much less be able to give back the keys!

At the outset of this journey, those keys could have unlocked anything, and the mere fact that it was your anything was everything! Come on, you even brought your family and friends to see it, didn’t you? Perfect pride.  Over the years, it stayed somewhere between organized castle and organized chaos. First of all, as far as schools go, things are sometimes messy, and they sometimes stink like the week-old lunches in kids’ backpacks, which are forever littering a classroom floor; like the family of mice eating through the popcorn supplies and nesting in the playground equipment at the back corner of your extra-large closet.

That pile of ancient poster boards taking up three shelves of storage space is really quite ridiculous, isn’t it? Especially in the new age of PowerPoints and Prezis, Evernotes and Instagrams, but it always seemed shameful to discard them—I mean some are really good student samples! What about that penmanship unit you’ve had on file since your first year of teaching? Well, I still say that kids should spend more time learning penmanship! You know, we ought’a go back to teaching it, but—alas—they just want to print, type, or text everything, don’t they?  Never mind, it isn’t even on the state assessment!

And then there are the pictures and heartfelt hand-crafted notes that are hanging layered and askew from every available surface in sight—your desk, your bulletin board, and right smack over the inspirational quote on the laminated poster that you purchased years ago at the local teacher supply store: “School’s COOL!  Kids ROCK!”

You try to skip over the photographs. They’re too vivid, and they speak a thousand words from a thousand smiles over a thousand days; with every precious face there is a precious memory. Oh yes! THAT kid right there—the one in the middle of the picture with his face painted in acrylic blue from art class and sticking out his pierced tongue. That dear child reminds you of yet another sacred spot in your professional abyss— “The Drawer of Collected Contraband.” You walk to it, open it up, and find (right away) his slingshot fashioned from the tiny tree limbs of the newly planted Redbuds in the school’s Memorial Garden. You chuckle, because you’re pretty sure he got suspended for that little act of defiance; nonetheless, the slingshot is still a fine, fine piece of work… just like the kid!

Standing there, in your historical quagmire and within the organizational system that you—and only you—can totally appreciate and understand, you recall all of the times that you bellowed out this statement just before the bell rang and/or your colleagues were coming in for a meeting: “This place is a mess!”

Now, the mess seems pretty blessed.

I remember the day I left my classroom for the last time. I stood at the door and took one of those long, lingering looks back over my shoulder, like the ones at the end of a movie, or at the finale of a long-running sitcom, and I was absolutely awestruck by the nakedness of the walls and the emptiness that I had finally achieved—an emptiness that I was starting to feel in my gut too despite what my future held.

As I stood there retracing every wall with my eyes, I remembered a quirky little girl in my 3rd period class one year, who said to me in a very flippant tone, “You know, sometimes I think your room is cute; and other times, I just think it’s kind of cluttered.”

Wow, what would she say now?  Because really, there were no words; just echoes of love and laughter within the empty walls.  With a lump of sadness forming in my throat, and jingling keys dangling in the door, I turned to walk out of my room, when I heard the intercom system come on. It was my principal. He told me that he was leaving the building for lunch, and if I needed to leave campus before he returned, I could just put my keys in his mailbox. I was relieved in a way. Once upon a time, he had hired a baby teacher who was leaving as a school leader, and I was just relieved that I wouldn’t have to endure that sad goodbye with him on top of everything else.

Since he was otherwise engaged, I took the long way through the building to his office. I walked by every classroom and down every hallway. I don’t know why. I just wanted to make sure every part of the building was imprinted on my mind’s eye. As I would pass each space, I would whisper the name of each teacher (and the ones who had been there before, if I knew them too). I finally arrived in the office and, sure enough, my principal was gone. I habitually checked my mailbox one last time. Nothing there. I walked to his mailbox and looked in it. I started to put my keys inside, but it just seemed weird. In fact, how would he know they were my keys for sure?

So I walked out and sat down at the reception desk. I decided to dig through the secretary’s desk drawer like everyone else who constantly violated her personal workspace and office supplies while sitting at the front desk. I finally found some Post-It notes and a pen. I labeled each key with one-sized stickies and wrapped the whole lot of them in a large piece of 3Ms finest office supply. Then, I thought about what to write on it. I quickly jotted, “Thanks for everything! Not good-bye, but see ya’ soon.”

That seemed right.

I walked to the front doors, keys still in my hand and NOT in my principal’s mailbox just yet. From the inside, I pushed the door open, stood back, and watched it slowly swing closed and latched. It was a tricky door, I had always known, so I knew it wouldn’t latch back too fast, even when I was on the other side of it… just in case I needed back in, you know, since I wouldn’t have my keys.

That lingering curiosity answered, I walked back into the building, around and through the faculty lounge, and then back into the main office where I had begun.  I was chasing my tail at this point. I stopped in front of my principal’s mailbox again and this time, with one swift unceremonious movement, I got rid of them. I crammed my Post-It notes full of keys into the box, and I hurriedly walked away… back by my mailbox (still, nothing there)… out of the office… to the front doors.

I stood there in the foyer, stupidly, alongside our life-sized Cougar mascot named Katie. [Bye, Katie.] I reached out and put my hand on her muzzle as if to steal a tiny bit of her power to take with me. Then, finally, I left. I guess the trick door eventually latched behind me. We’re always supposed to wait and to check it for closure, but I don’t work here anymore. And frankly, I was already speed-walking to the car and starting to cry.

That’s how I gave back my keys; let me tell you, I remember it each-and-every-time a teacher or staff member relinquishes keys to me. No matter what the circumstance, no one ever tells you that the keys are one of the hardest parts of leaving any job or any home for that matter. They are symbolic of the entrance-and-the-exit, the-go-and-the-grow, the-beginning-and-the-end.

See, when you give back your keys, you lose immediate access to so many important and familiar things. When you give back your keys, you leave what’s known for what’s unknown. It’s life, no doubt, but it’s also totally surreal.

Written by Holly (Swanson) Nevels

Principal, Whittier Middle School

Originally Posted: July 2010 

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Trader's Market

My life changed forever on April 21, 1993. Many people know that my dad died that day—in the morning. I was at my sorority house at OU, taking a shower, and preparing for my last day of observing an English class at Whittier Middle School. [The world is full of wicked little ironies, considering I'm currently the principal at Whittier.] After I received the horrible news that my dad had passed, my best friend Holly leapt from her top bunk bed, threw on her clothes and her taped-together eyeglasses (spare pair), and she drove me, in awkward silence, to Oklahoma City.

At home, our cul-de-sac was still blocked by emergency vehicles when we arrived. Holly rolled down her window, and we were waved in. [A time I can recall NOT wanting to be a “VIP.”] She pulled her white Pontiac Sunbird to the curb in front of my house, and I was ushered inside so quickly, that I don’t even know what happened to Holly.

The next thing I knew, I was taken to the laundry room, where my mom and my sister were huddled together, still crying. We hugged in that little room just off the kitchen, where they were stolen away waiting for me. My dad was in the living room. Still there. Still. And there. On the floor. [My dad was a dead man in a living room.]

The paramedics and the firemen, upon arrival, had pulled him from his recliner and had attempted CPR on him before my mother, in her inevitable shock and confusion, finally located a copy of his Living Will and asked them, at his last wishes, to stop.

In the meantime, someone, who meant well I’m sure, had taken his blanket — his off-white one with the-little-red-tulips-and-green-leaf design, the one that he always laid across his lap when he got chilled — and had placed it over him, covering his head and face too.

I left the utility room stating my intentions to see my dad. My sister clung to me and followed along. My mother followed us too. She really couldn't handle it, but she was the mother. She had to go.

The three of us [held together] moved, and friends and family members jumped-up and cleared a path from the laundry room to the living room for us. I asked someone to let us look away long enough for the "body bag" fashioned blanket to be removed from his face. Someone obliged. And my sister and I, my mom standing and crying behind us, collapsed on the floor, beside Dad; beside ourselves.

I looked at my dad hard, with the strongest will I could muster. I don’t know why I did that, but to this day, I can still see his quiet face in my mind. I wished he was just sleeping. Open your eyes! Open your eyes, Dad! Sometimes, I close my eyes and wish it still, hard.

When I was young, I used to watch football with my dad. In fact, we watched many games together throughout my life. He was an athlete and a diehard Sooner fan, and he taught me everything I needed to know about the game - -first down, off-side, holding, safety. Sometimes he taught me about football on the way home from my ballet class on Saturday mornings, while we picked up lunch at What-A-Burger, and just before kick-off on ABC. Sometimes he taught me about football on our way back to OKC from Norman after he took me to a home game. In fact, football is probably the sport I learned first and have always known best, because my dad — the boy from Atlanta, Georgia, who played in some of the first little league baseball games, and who grew-up to have two insufferably feminine daughters — made sure his girls knew about all of the really important stuff; Football was one of those lesser but still very necessary life lessons.

When I was 10-years-old, my best friend Jennifer and I bought Joe Montana posters at our elementary school Book Fair. I couldn’t wait to take mine home to show my dad. He thought it was cool, I guess. He thought the schoolgirl crush I had on #16 was a little over-the-top, I'm sure, and he wasn't a huge Montana fan himself (after all, Montana went to Notre Dame). But the knowledge I had of Montana’s win-loss record with the 49ers, his completion stats, his favorite receivers (Dwight Clark), etc., were impressive to Dad. And remember, these were the years WELL before Google and ESPN.com.

My parents gave me permission to hang the full-sized, full-color Joe Montana poster on my bedroom wall, where he, dropping back for a long pass, quickly became the anchor -- the centerpiece -- of my "poster wall collage," a staple of decor in every pre-teen’s room.

It was the first of many artifacts that proved crushes I had on professional athletes and celebrities through my teen and young-adult years. It proved I loved football like I loved my dad. Completely and forever.

There on the floor, on the morning of April 21, 1993, my sister and I sat crouching over Dad. We heaved full breaths of sadness, also full of memories, injustice, and love. I don’t know how long we sat there; I don't know how we breathed. Time finally decided to stand still. [Wicked time.]

At someone’s urging, we eventually relented and brokenly told Dad we loved him; we grabbed his hands (they weren’t cold and creepy); we hugged him tight (even though he couldn’t feel it or hug us back). Then, the funeral home arrived and took my dad away… forever. My mom, my sister, and I cowered back into the laundry room while that part happened. It wasn’t necessary for us to see him leave. It wasn’t natural.

Natural was the four of us at the dinner table with Walter Cronkite or Dan Rather as background noise, drinking milk that had become room temperature, and waiting for the steaks to cook on the grill.

Natural was a summer vacation at the beach.

Natural was Wednesday night buffet at The Greens.

Natural was, believe it or not, living with Cancer for years. Natural was the following mindset: “Dad’s going to make it.”

Natural was the notion that shark cartilage and alternative treatments would cure him, no matter how ridiculous that might seem.

And Natural, before and during Cancer, was Dad sitting or napping in his recliner, sick or "un-sick," watching TV.

It makes sense that sometime that morning my dad must have turned on the TV in the living room. In fact, he was probably watching it while he ate breakfast with my sister. (He wasn’t feeling well.) And he was probably still watching it when she went back upstairs to finish getting dressed for school and to blow-dry her hair. [The sound of the blow-dryer drowned out the sounds of emergency sirens whizzing through our neighborhood and blazing up to our front door minutes later.]

I walked into the living room, intrigued by the TV, or maybe hoping to get lost in it for a little while. It was still on; just as he had left it. In the midst of all the chaos of dying and powering-down of life, the TV was still powered-up, but silent. The morning show personalities’ mouths were moving and heads were bobbing, but there were no words. [There are no words.]

Joe Montana was on TV. Maybe that's what captured my attention. I reached over and found the remote, thinking about how my dad had probably used that remote just a little while ago… just a little while before he left in the car with those people from the funeral home.

I turned up the sound while balancing lightly on the arm of the sofa. I couldn’t make immediate sense out of the talking heads even when I increased the volume, but thankfully, one of those helpful little captions popped up on the screen -- right under Joe Montana’s obviously older but still ruggedly handsome face. The caption read quite simply: MONTANA – TRADED TO THE CHIEFS.

Everything we know, or have ever known, can change in a moment’s time -- in a hearbeat, or with the blink of an eye -- whether we’re looking, listening, paying close attention, or not. Life is sad, funny, dark, and light that way…, and, moreover, life is chock full of wicked little ironies -- many, many wicked little ironies. [I don’t like April 21. I don’t like it at all.]

Holly Can Do Anything for a MINUTE... My New Mantra!

Well, actually that is my personal trainer's mantra. Stephanie seems to think we can do anything for a minute, including running on the treadmill at Mach-80; defeating the dreaded stepmill at Level 8; holding a wall-stand or plank; and/or doing jumping jacks with the medicine ball thrusted over our heads. Needless to say, I'm working on mastering all of those feats at the gym this winter..., but I like the basic premise of the Minute Mantra.

Still, there is NO MINUTE looooonnnger than the one where I am holding a plank or wall-stand for 60 seconds. And then, she says something like, "Push! You're halfway there!" HALFWAY????? Surely she must be lying!!!! Ha! I seriously feel like I'm giving birth in that painful course of time (for lack of a better comparison)--focus..., breathe..., push..., and aaaargh!

Yet as a general rule, a minute happens so fast and passes so quickly without much pageantry! And, as I've recently realized, a minute is so very often taken for granted: one tiny speck of sand in the hourglass of our lives. Remember when we were younger and learned to count it? "One Mississippi, two Mississippi..." Done correctly, and a million different amazing hiding spots could be found during a childish game. The older we got, the more we ignored little increments of time with somewhat reckless and wild abandon. It's funny that many of my pre-teen students even sum-up 60 seconds haphazardly with phrases like, "in a quick minute," or, "in a hot minute." Hot? Maybe. But quick? They obviously haven't met Stephanie! And whether they realize it in their youths or not, just in the time it takes to talk about the length of a minute, one-third of some pretty precious time has passed.

This morning, as I was running Mach-80 on the last minute of the treadmill (following a tough circuit training last night, no less), I was thinking of all the things I can do--without even really registering my movements--for a minute; it is pretty amazing how we loop and/or lope through life in a million 60-second intervals................

I can hold my breath for a minute.

I can swish flouride or mouthwash for a minute.

I can usually hold my tongue... for at least a minute.

I can even listen intently for a minute or more.

I can most often hold back tears for a good minute before excusing myself from a room.

I can warm-up coffee in a minute... along with countless other things in the microwave.

I can walk from one end of my school building to the other in about a minute (which begs the question about why students have 5 minute passing periods to tarry here, there, and everywhere).

I can type at least 40-45 words in a minute (not to mention fire-off a pretty lengthy e-mail).

I can wash my hands for a minute--slightly longer than it takes to sing "Happy Birthday" in my head, which bodes well during Swine Flu season!

I can feed my cats in a minute or under--so routine.

I can probably even get dressed in a minute. (Heck, The Minute Men were ready for battle in that small amount of time... although, if memory serves, they slept in their uniforms!)

I can log-on to the Internet and get to any of my favorite websites or to my e-mail in a minute.

I can probably do 4-5 Google searches in a minute. I can vicariously visit a million places on the Information Superhighway... in just a minute or under!

I can go from a moderate driving speed on city streets to an accelerated speed on the HWY in a minute or less.

I can be at the mall... or at the grocery store... or at the cleaners... in a minute!

I could probably walk to the mailbox and check it twice in a minute!

Alas, I could be here... and then be gone... in a minute. Think about that in terms of leaving the room, leaving the building, leaving the earth. Unbelievable.

I'm sure I could go on-and-on, and perhaps you've thought of other miniscule milestones or magnificent mountains you climb each day in a simple 60-seconds-worth of time. Point being, I am challenged for the remainder of this year and into the next to relish the minutes and moments. When someone says to me in the midst of my harried day, "Do you have just a minute?" I want to smile and say, "You know what? I sure do... and then some!"

Life happens in a minute. As my mom used to say, "Blink and you'll miss it, my dear." So, with my eyes and my heart wide open, I herald you, Mr. Minute. I can do ANYTHING for a MINUTE. Now, if I could just quit doing NOTHING for hours at a time!!!!

Holly's in Charge of an Elephant...

Last night, I had a dream that I was in charge of an elephant. I'm not sure what it all means. Of course, I've looked it up in an online dream dictionary. All-in-all, dreams about elephants tend to be pretty positive... if you believe those interpretations in online dream dictionaries. However, I must say that the dream itself was a bit unsettling.

There I was standing outside a high school football stadium. It was not one I had ever seen before, and it felt very "small town." I will say that the school colors must have been blue and white, because the press box and bleachers were all painted true blue. I was standing in the parking lot getting ready to leave, when this older couple walked up to me with an elephant.

The man handed me the reigns and wished me luck. It was obvious that I was in charge of the elephant. Apparently, I had to get the elephant home. There was a large 18-wheeler in the lot too. I wondered why the elephant couldn't ride home in there, but apparently, it couldn't. So, I took the reigns, like I knew what I was doing. The old man smiled. He pointed to these jugs of bright blue water and reminded me to, "be sure he drinks a lot of elephant water before you start walking him." Then, he added, "And remember, don't get that on your hands. It will burn your fingernails."

I was trying to imagine how I was going to do this all by myself? Should I pour the water into something? Can I let go of the reigns to prepare the water? How will I steer this pacoderm out onto the city streets? How will we negotiate traffic? Should I ride him or guide him? Where exactly does the elephant live?

I woke up. My arm was asleep. My nearly elephant-sized cat was lying on it. I guess I'll never know the answers to my questions. I still wonder if I problem-solved the situation. Did the elephant (and I) get to our destination? Or am I still in charge of an elephant... somewhere out there in dream world, a.k.a. my sub-conscious mind?