I’d been hearing about it all week. Coaching. Who can deny it’s a key component to leadership? When I was a high school assistant principal back in 2007 – 2008, there was a married couple, Rob and Sheila, who had been co-directors of the original Manhattan Lab School. I’m sure they were paid a king’s ransom to come in and “coach” Marc, the principal. He made a name for himself in the first four years of that school’s existence, and I was happy to be hired as his assistant.

In that role, I met with Sheila once every couple of weeks. To be honest, I don’t remember much about our visits, except that they happened in the overly-ornate library, where we sat in heavy wooden chairs that felt like they’d been there for decades, surrounded by gorgeous WPA murals from the 1930’s. The other details that I remember about that library are that it had virtually no books in it and that it served as a “rubber room” site for teachers who had been suspended from their classrooms. They sat reading newspapers, chatting and napping at the same back table every day. One of them was fond of watching videos of classical music concerts on a portable video cart.

I do recall that I enjoyed Sheila as a person; she was kind of a tough-but-sweet, Jewish mother type. Ruth Gordon comes to mind. I don’t know how many of the “best practices” mentioned by my supervisor in several workshops during which I’ve assisted her over these past few days Sheila really used. She had a homespun way of giving advice. I don’t remember a lot of active listening or reflective questions coming from her, which is not to say they didn’t.

I did have the good fortune to work closely with Michele Tissiere of Educators for Social Responsibility during my year and a half as Austin High School’s School Improvement Facilitator. She was an expert coach, and I enjoyed teasing her about her fluency in cognitive coaching. For example, I’d interrupt her when she would tell me she “had a wondering.” “No you don’t, Michele,” I’d say, “you wonder about something.”

Then she would screw up her face and give me a little punch on the arm, call me “goofy” and tell me I reminded her of her little brother before returning to the topic at hand. We developed an excellent working relationship and accomplished a great deal, and I’ll always be grateful to Michele for all I learned from her.

Since then, however, I haven’t received much coaching, although I work with many excellent ones. I should say I hadn’t received any until yesterday, during lunch, when I happened to sit next to Melonie Hammons, a colleague who is now moving into becoming a Professional Service Provider helping troubled schools. We sat having lunch at the Westin Hotel, and we began discussing my aspirations. I confessed to not being inspired by the prospect of becoming a school principal. When she asked me what it was that did inspire me, I answered that it was writing. After asking me what sort of writing I did, she asked another question.

“What short story are you writing now?” she asked. I think she knew what my answer would be.

“Well, I’m not writing one now,” I replied.

“When do you plan on starting?” she asked. “What will it take to get you started?”

I thought it was a brilliant question, and maybe the best example of a “coaching” question I’d heard at the conference so far.

Before turning our attention to our meals, Melonie asked me one final question, knowing, I think, in her coach’s wisdom, that it would resonate with me, as it does now.

“Do you think maybe now is as good a time as any to get started?”

What a relief it was yesterday to enjoy a kind of return to normalcy. I don’t know whether I’m out of the woods yet in terms of the health issue I’m dealing with, but just to be able to function for a full work day, to be able to interact with my colleagues, was something I’d been unable to do for over a week.

Actually, it’s not accurate to call it a “full” work day, as it ended early with yet another doctor visit. In true Matrix fashion, the ENT doc extracted the horrifically long “spacers” that had been in my nasal passages for a week. I got through it, and here’s hoping the appointment was the end of a chapter.

There are still a few more steps, though, until I reach what I would call “normalcy,” however. Or “full” normalcy, I guess. (Who am I kidding? I will never be normal.) One thing I’ve been missing this week is exercise. I miss my morning bike ride. Yeah, I know: as “exercise” it’s pretty low-key, pretty old-mannish, like the gray-haired guys in gray sweat suits who “speed walk” around our subdivision. I do miss the early-morning air. Mostly, though, I miss my private time with my bad donut-shop coffee and my journal. I like my morning routine. It is unique, creative and moderately productive. It makes me feel good about myself. If I continue to improve, I’ll return to it on Monday.

Don’t get me wrong. I know very well that compared to some of the surgeries you hear about, what I went through with my sinus issue last week was minor, to put it mildly. I consider myself lucky for my relative good health and now, more than ever, I wish to maintain it.

I couldn’t let this date, July 21, 2011 go by without recalling the picture you see here. It was taken nine years ago on this date, when Jeanette Reyes and I gathered with friends and family to celebrate our vows at the Picnic House, in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Technically/legally, we’d already been married for nearly seven months, having done so before the Justice of the Peace at the Bronx Courthouse on Jeanette’s birthday, January 25, 2002. We think of the July date as our “real” anniversary, because that was when we were able to have the party, to really enjoy the moment, with dancing, toasts, catered Latin food, coconut cake from one of our favorite local restaurants, and more dancing.

A lot of pictures were taken that day – especially by my brother-in-law, who is the family shutter-bug. The one here is my favorite. It may not be the most perfect, from a composition standpoint, and we have pictures in which we both look better.

But I just love what it captures. The two of us are sharing a dance, a private moment, as if we’re wondering together what the future will hold. We had no idea, of course. We didn’t know we’d have our first son just less than ten months later, and our second two years after that. We had no clue we’d pick up and move nearly two thousand miles away to Austin, Texas in another four.

Life has been a series of welcome surprises – one big adventure – since that day, pictured here, back in 2002.

Happy anniversary, Jenny. I wonder where we’ll be in another nine years, on July 21, 2020.

To be continued….

I wonder if anyone else would remember the eerie music that came wafting over the breeze for a few summer nights, years ago, in the Hartford Woods. It’s difficult, through the haze of memory, to ascertain what actually happened back then. From my adult perspective I am tempted to explain it away, much as I’m sure my parents must have done, when I surely came complaining of being frightened and unable to sleep. It was probably just some teenagers camping out in the woods, playing their radio by the fireside.

As a child of nine or ten, however, I was terrified by the mysterious night music. The woods at night were like a dark sea, the treetops moving, communicating in the breeze, nocturnal animals communing and commuting like fish under the water’s surface. The chirping of the crickets was a constant undercurrent on summer nights, providing a familiar lullaby. The curious music was an interruption of the night’s usual soothing song. In my horror film-addled mind I heard the singing of a wood nymph. I pictured a white gown blowing in the night’s breezes. She may very well have been beautiful, but her intention was pure evil. She existed to collect up the souls of children, like me, who dared to stray too far from their mothers’ gaze.

In the light of day, when my fear of the woods subsided, giving way to my boyhood explorer’s heart, I blazed the trails with abandon, at times looking for evidence to verify the other side of the story – smoldering embers and used condoms that would support the camping teenagers theory. But I found neither.

A subdivision was built in the Hartford Woods years after we moved away, and it changed the landscape somewhat. However for those children now living on Hartford Lane, where I grew up, the back woods still make up a large part of their world, I’m sure. I wonder if any of them have heard the Wood Nymph singing her songs, their strains cutting through the darkness, carried by the breeze of a muggy summer night.