A friend recently asked me why I use a childhood picture for my profile here.

There’s a really good reason.   The “mini me” in that picture?   She’s my touchstone.  

Her impish beauty delights me.  Her little smile—the wonderment in her gaze--intrigues me.   And her innocence is a reminder to respect, protect and honor my “today” self, too.

Now, she’s not all sweetness and light, to be sure.   Her fears and unresolved issues blew up like landmines  in my life over the years.   Cost me jobs; relationships.  I’m still unearthing and trying to defuse them, gingerly, as I go.  It’s a delicate, dangerous and probably life long task.

But her dreams also became my realities—nearly all of them.   She wrote diaries full of fantasies that later came true.  She wanted to be a writer, to live in London, to meet Prince Charles and the Beatles and The Who—all the idols of her youth.    She wanted to be talented enough to stand toe to toe with the high and the mighty.  To be, in fact, someone they sought out, someone they asked to be with, someone they actually needed--not just a fawning fan.

She was determined to take Frost’s “less traveled” road.   To live in some exotic place and marry an artist of some kind—any kind, as long as he was just as wild as she would be.  And to have the courage free herself from him if, in his wildness, he should seek to tame, trap or otherwise harm her.   She vowed to be fierce enough to hoist her cub(s) upon her back and find a new “den.”  Build a new life, after.

It all happened.

And knowing this, when I moved to Hopi with that artist, and later, when I struck out on my own, both times falling back on my teaching credentials to care for that “cub,” writing down the dreams would become a little “assignment” I had all of my students try.   Though the entire year was always about finding the themes of our own lives via the literature we read, about once a week, they wrote a “note to self” full of impossible dreams.    

Most aimed low at first, just hoping for letters or autographs from their idols someday.   But miracles began to happen quickly.   One girl, who had discovered Marlon Brando’s work simply because they shared the same birthday--she’d seen his name in those celeb birthday lists all her life—decided to send him a birthday greeting.  He had become one of her idols.  In fact, she loved the movies and movie stars of his era far more than the current crop.  So I used my reporter skills to find the right address—I didn’t want a signed photograph, I wanted action.   And a month or two later, she received a handwritten letter from him.  And a card every year that I knew her, signed by him, after that.

My rez kids got a box full of lovely pictures and keepsakes from Prince Charles and Lady Di.  And letters from Michael Jordan, Bono,  Carlos Santana and my old friend Gene Simmons, who wrote to warn them off drugs and drink, after two student suicides had stunned us senseless.   Bono and Santana offered to visit Hopi when they played Phoenix or Tucson.  They were never able to make that work, but the offers were enough.  The kids were forever changed—they were important enough, they realized, for someone to want to travel all those desolate desert miles, to see them.

Gets better.   An entire class wound up being part of a wonderful, award-winning book about Thomas Jefferson.  They had fallen in love with a TV miniseries about him, and demanded to write the lead actor, Sam Neill, to tell him how much they’d enjoyed his portrayal of their favorite—and most vexing--founding father. 

I remember I was entering grades into my classroom computer when I noticed Neil’s agent’s name among those in my email inbox.  Neill had written us a very long email, thanking the kids and  answering nearly all of their questions.   He also said he’d sent their letters to the woman who’d written the screenplay.  And we heard from her, too, asking to include several of their letters, with a “shout out” to all the kids, in her book about the experience.  The book became quite a success story for all of us, and the kids who were quoted received signed copies to keep as reminders of the magic they'd made, forever.

The most stunning victory was won by a group of “at risk” students in a school deemed one of Tucson’s worst.   They may, in fact, be the only ones ever to shame Arizona into backing off of a bill that never should’ve been passed—and wasn’t, in part, because of what they did.  I cannot remember the politician’s name—he left politics soon after this episode.  But he introduced a bill that would have required doctors to somehow report pregnant teens under 16, whose babies might then be put up for adoption if the court so ordered.

We had a lot of babies raising babies—far too many.  But most of my ghetto/barrio/rez kids came from large, loving families which absorbed the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—and “oops” babies—fairly well.   Perhaps too well, I sometimes thought.  But…that was none of my business.

Our business was, the students wrote in their journals, to stop this thing.   So they decided to bombard the state lawmakers will calls and letters.  And as an English teacher, I knew this was a golden opportunity.   So we wrote a clear and concise calling script and “form” letter and distributed them to students, friends and relatives.   Before long, we began to receive some calls and letters, too.   Congratulatory letters from court judges, social service organizations and other politicians who knew what havoc this law would cause.   One judge took a morning off to visit and thank the children in person.

The law was “tabled.”  And then…disappeared.  I held up the newspaper page announcing same in class a few weeks later.  The kids whooped and hollered and danced.   They hadn’t had many victories in their short lives yet.  But this one was sweet.

But these same children, despite my best efforts, continued to get into harm’s way.   I began to fear weekends and holidays.  We lost them, then.   Some to promiscuous sex that would lead to things far more life-altering than “oops” babies.  Some to drugs and drink.  And death.

I remember a gangsta kid who came back to school after nearly dying from a gun shot wound.  I asked him what he’d learned from his experience.  And he told me the whole harrowing tale…from which I sadly gleaned the gist of his lesson:  he should’ve been quicker on the draw.

Not…the answer I was hoping for.

To help a little bit, I had them bring in pictures of loved ones, dead or alive—especially living cautionary tales whose faces would remind them what NOT to do.  We wrote them letters, too.   And then we put them all up on a bulletin board in back of the room, which was deemed our little personal “wailing wall.”  Whenever someone felt sad or on the brink of acting out in some way, they could excuse themselves from class for awhile, and sit by and write to their loved ones.  Worked like a charm.

But then I remembered another “game” that we could play that might get them to see themselves more clearly.   To love themselves more fiercely.   It’s a “game” I play every few years—we’re getting back to that OS picture now.   It never fails me.   If I have a huge, life-changing decision to make…this is how I seal the deal.   So I played it with them.

It’s simple really.  Just a guided visualization that takes you through a big park…to a playground…to a little child not playing with all the other children for some reason.  The child turns around and you see that he or she...is you, at around…five or six.  You spend some time with the child, writing down the dreams s/he reminds you of, and making a written vow to protect that child and fulfill those dreams.  And then you leave the child there, with one backward glance, to take a little "soul snapshot" you can conjure up as a reminder whenever you need it. 

As I knew they would, my kids blubbered like funeral guests, having seen their current selves reflected in the eyes of their baby selves.  Time and time again, they'd tell me stories about how they'd avoided doing something really stupid because “that little KID popped up in my mind, Miss, I swear to God!”

To help themselves remember that “game,” many put up pictures of themselves on the wall.  Others carried one in a purse or pocket.   I found two—one of me, and one of my father and me, which is also here on OS.  Another “touchstone.”  Shared with you.

So that’s the story behind that little face that you see when I write to you here.  Go find yourself a baby picture, if you’ve a mind to.

See what happens.   And write about it, maybe.

I’m always up for more miracles.