Teenage existence is comprised of a kaleidoscope of feelings.  My younger self always felt like a partially completed jigsaw puzzle, running haltingly around the campus of my prep school, with the pieces of myself flailing everywhere along the shrub-lined gates, and across the sharply pressed gravel paths on the quad. It was a true experience to be a young person at one of these fine institutions. I attempted to take in all things while rushing to and from class, with the repetitive tick of the checklist in my head of all that there was to accomplish in a short time.  I was always weighed down with the foreboding task of studying to accomplish my dreams and hoped that they were as palpable to me as the condensation that formed on my lips while walking in the sub-zero temperatures in the dead of winter in New Hampshire.

 

The sucking spiral of the day’s movements ultimately made it harder to put things into perspective. There was task after task, obligation, whether it be athletics where I went into overdrive, constantly pushing and striving. There was dorm life where I was learning to lead as a dorm proctor and tried to do my best in all that I could.

 

When I first entered my English class, my professor, Mr. Valhouli, looked like a meek man. I had seen him a couple of years prior and had observed how other students flocked to him. He was slightly stocky with an athletic build, bald with piercing eyes, and a warm smile. He would walk into the classroom and sit at the end of the table closest to the door with an unassuming command of himself and start out the class each day with an unfettered, real exuberance that took my breath away.

 

At first, I was a skeptic. I would sit observing, tentatively watching him enchanting the class with the texts. Then he would flip my world on its head by engaging the beauty and tragedy of the prose with the vibrance and pulsation of a vignette from his own life. Sometimes, even before the class began, he would have to recount how he was driving to work that morning and had to pull over by the side of the road to take in the dawn. And you could see that dawn in his eyes. The awe and exuberance of how the day had unfolded for him. And how we were now entertained in the moment, held captive with our teenage feelings of frustration, angst, and annoyance that could not stand up to the true beauty of life in the moment.

 

And he kept at it, though I realized several weeks in, that this man was a hopeless romantic in the true sense of the word. He lived his life and savored every moment of it.  He was so present and basked on each beauty, happiness, joy, anger, and sadness. He sat in the moment and experienced it willingly.  I remember one day our English class went to the school’s fine arts center and sat in the art gallery.  Mr. Valhouli  had us let go of the texts for the day and he asked us to sit in the gallery and dare to take in new perspective. Though I was generally measured, I remember feeling as though I had finally become a tiny boat untethered from the dock, that the sense of creative freedom that he imbued was enlivening my world of schedules, rigor, and study with a joy that I had not been able to feel for some time.

 

I became grateful for Mr. Valhouli. I watched him with intent and looked forward to my classes with him. There was such a deep resonance that he held for the literature which coupled with his inner zest and brought a deeper meaning to our daily reads and more so, to my life. Even though I had been moved, there were others of my classmates who remained impervious to our professor’s exuberance. Some balked at his tactics and were annoyed at his stories and allegories.

 

Early into the semester, Mr Valhouli decided to introduce a project into the fray. He let us know that we were to create a compilation of writing to reflect our thoughts and recollections during Senior year.  He said that it could be anything, just to make as many works as possible that were reflective of our growing selves.  It was a project that would take time over the year, but that we could work on steadily.

My current self would like to believe that Mr. Valhouli encouraged us to create those portfolios to pull us back into ourselves.  Senior year was a crazy time and each day that we left class, the reigns of obligation pulled us again wherever we were supposed to go, without asking us for consent.  Then we would come back into his class and the images would jump off of the page. We would read aloud a sentence to once again dissect the scene and he would lead us into an allegory on time- how something in the writing had related to a palpable experience- one that we could all relate to with a delectable subtlety, and he did it so easily that many of us soon became fans of his.  

 

But, for me, it was deeper than that. He was getting me to consider the breadth and the power of his substance. He was a man who I respected, and I soon timidly wanted to learn his craft. I admired his direct and unflinching hold on life minute by minute and how he turned us from voyeurs to participants. Over the course of months, I slowly made my decision to one day follow in his footsteps.

 

I believed in the gospel of Mr. Valhouli. I appreciated how he would look at others with a direct kindness and upheld the power of all nature, from the breeze to the overwhelming ferocity of the elements.

I appreciated his insight into the world and in time he became my mentor. I was happy in knowing that there were few professors whom I regarded as highly and felt pleased to be on this path unknown with his guidance.

 

But, as the Winter pressed on in New Hampshire, I and my classmates were to be pulled in many different directions once again with our obligations. Mr. Valhouli would occasionally press us about the progress of our portfolios, how we were coming along with them, and usually there were vacant smiles laced with fatigue for his response.  I watched over weeks how his eyes would slowly dull and his lips draw flat when he would ask about the progress of the portfolios until one day when he truly let us know his feeling.

 

It was on a February afternoon. The last class of the day. We read The Tempest, though I remember it being not as vigorous as I had imagined. As my classmates and I were closing up our books, Mr. Valhouli asked us about the progress on our portfolios. Once again, crickets in response.  I had looked down quickly when I heard a slap on the table. We all jumped to see Mr. Valhouli seething, yelling with conviction at all of us. “Wake Up!” He screamed. I don’t remember his exact words that day, but, I do know that he told us to start doing what we were supposed to be doing. Living. “What is it gonna take?!” He screamed. “What is it gonna take for you to wake up?!” I remember the anger and disappointment that I saw in his eyes. I dared not speak along with the rest of the class. Some of us hung our heads and gathered our books before exiting the classroom that day.  I just kept thinking how I had let him down and could not shake that feeling.

 

The next morning, I sat at the dining hall with my dorm mates, getting an early start on the day. There were rustlings throughout the hall that someone had gone missing, that there were police cars over on the river where the school hockey team had been practicing the night before.  We sat and speculated about what had happened and continued on with eating.

 

As I sat finishing up, one of my dorm mates came over somberly and started describing how Mr. Valhouli and another teacher had gone out the night before ice skating on the frozen river after the hockey practice.  She said that the other teacher had gone home and had left him skating there…

 

I stopped her mid-sentence and screamed. I refused to let her finish. I just kept screaming no. I believed if she couldn’t say it, then it couldn’t be made true. I remember this dizziness and confusion that surrounded me, my ears kept ringing and I kept starting to cry and stop like someone jumping a dead car battery. My throat burned and I kept rocking back and forth. Time kept slipping by, but every moment dragged for hours.  We all waited until we knew more.

 

We learned that Mr. Valhouli had likely fallen through the ice. They had found his car; they had seen the hole and were actively looking for him. It was already morning, and my heart was broken. I kept praying for his family. Through fits of physical pain. I don’t remember much about the next few days. I just remember crying in fits and starts. Sobbing in shock and grief that seared. My heart felt larger than it ever had, and it took up to aching in my chest.

 

I remember seeing the line of police cars drive quickly through town when they had finally found him farther down the frozen river days later. As more days passed, my heart hurt even more as the events of my professor’s death unfolded. The authorities stated that they could see not only where Mr. Valhouli entered the water, but how he had punched against the ice as he fought the current. He fought with everything that he had up until the last moment to live. To live.

 

Even now, as I am about to become as old as he was when he left us, I can’t imagine anything more nobel, passionate, courageous, and real. I now make it religion to sit in the sunset, to be swallowed up by the starry expanse and even tear up at the sigh of the trees in the woods or the waves soothing the sand into calm. I have been forever changed. Even in my heart, Mr. Valhouli slowly grew bigger and left a gigantic hole shaped in his image. But, bigger than that, he left this world having changed it for the better. Right now, I still endeavor to live in it, grateful and inspired, day by day.

 

In short, my beloved professor was pulled below to another dimension one day, where he fought the ultimate battle with a kilometer long, free flowing, icy beast… and won. Now his name will live on forever. His battle will resound in the ears of others, much like Beowulf and Ishmael. He was a true warrior, a hero, my captain.  There was something so resounding about the frequency of his spirit. How it deafened those with its fervor and message.  It profoundly changed my brain in its outlook and purpose.

 

Many months later, when the ice had liquefied back to the streams and the snow had all but evaporated, me and my classmates gathered for one of our English classes.  It was there that we held a final tribute to our professor.  Through tears, sobs, and sorrow, we read our works.  We read our poems, short stories, essays, journal entries that had captured the year.  I created mine from cut and torn black and blue construction paper to characterize how “punched out” I felt.  How black and blue we all were.  But in the end, we had all heard his words that fateful evening.  I constantly think about how life sends messages in whispers, normal tones, and shouts.  I still hear Mr. Valhouli’s voice in my head as a clarion call to reality to this day.

 

I ultimately did not become an English professor, though I still have a profound love for the texts. I do work with children in a different capacity and make it a point to remain. Remain in the moment, not to let something concerning that I see pass me by, to let them know that they need to wake up and value their lives. That each life, each experience on this Earth is an absolute gift to be fought for and savored. 

 

See, in my eyes, no one has ever lived quite like him. No one could ever be to my young self what he was.  And in my age now, I see that my teenage defined perspective tried to discount him at first but could not block the laser focused technicolor light that he was. In this day and age, there are so many news stories about teachers and scandal and those with misplaced intentions. But he was to me as a teacher should be- somewhat accessible, inspiring, relevant, and humble. A true master, life savant, and hero.

 

Thank you and with love… Always.