A Small Victory

I still wonder how anyone gets through their adolescence. I had heard statistics as a young man about the suicide rate among us, and also knew about all the dangers out there that would eventually claim many in my circle of friendships and family (death, jail, drugs, disappearance, etc.)

My problem was quite different: I simply did not know when to quit.

In school, my focus was all on getting into university, no matter what it cost me.

And that meant only science.

I was a science major, studying calculus, chemistry, physics and avoiding biology as much as I could (my mother worked as a nurse and that was enough to put me off being a doctor or doing anything related to the human body). I had to study hard and make sure that my grades were enough to get me into a good school and the right job.

Need I say that I absolutely hated every moment of it?

Here I am, writing about the events in the most difficult moment of my life with a smile on my face. But in that moment, I felt totally at sea.

I refused to listen to the guidance counselor who recommended avoiding the sciences and instead focusing on business.

I refused to listen to the very kind – and some not so kind – teachers who could see that I was having a very difficult time with the work no matter how many hours I spent reviewing figures and numbers until I had nightmares about quadratic equations and chemical formulas.

I refused to listen to my own family who wondered why I spent so much time focused on homework on a lopsided table in our basement. I was a good student and had never made it to the honour roll. My mother could not understand it and my brother wanted me to reconsider my whole academic career.

No, I could not listen to anyone in my stubborn and futile plan to get into the right school and leave with the right degree. I had my path set.

Or, so I thought.

My mother’s close friend at work, always referred to by me as Ms. L_________, recently remarried to a very wealthy businessman. When I did attend the wedding, I thought that it was a very strange pairing of loves, but he turned out to be a man that I could talk to when I had the time to speak to him. This was very rare. We still managed to see a lot of Ms. L_________, but he was often quite silent, deferring to his wife’s opinions and thoughts about life and how to live it. At least they were happy in each other’s company for this to never be a source of tension.

So, how did this relationship impact on my life?

One day, I was back in that basement with the harsh fluorescent lights we used beating down on me as I looked through another set of equations I had to study and use. To be honest, I am not sure why the man was there. Maybe they were visiting that day; maybe they had planned it. And maybe he came along when I needed to get my head cleared.

“What are you studying?”

He did surprise me, even though I heard the steps coming down the stairs facing me (I thought that it was my mother checking up on me).

“Oh, hi. Um, this is just some…”

Again, I do not remember the specific problems that I faced (probably calculus or physics). What I do recall is what he said next.

“Do you like it?”

Now, remember what I said earlier: I was determined to make science my life. I had that set as a goal since I was a child and found that I loved looking at the natural world and finding out what it was all about. I may have been delusional about my chances, but I was still in the race. And no adult had ever posed such a question to me before; what did he even want me to say?

I just laughed for a moment, and then I realized that he wanted an answer:

“No, not really. But I want a job when I graduate and…”

And at that point, he cut me off and said the thing that really did change my life, although I did not know it at the time.

“Don’t do that. Study what you love because you will be doing it for the rest of your life.”

And the penultimate line:

“If you are kind to life, life will be kind to you.”

I know that we spoke for a little bit longer after that, and that I still had homework to do, but that was what stayed in my head and thoughts for the rest of my life.

I would also like to say that I made an immediate change in my life and switched to a major that I loved (English Literature) right away, and that everything went well with my academic life. But the honest truth was it was many years, many disappointments, several long headaches and bad grades, wasted tuition and many missed opportunities before I finally learned the lesson he tried to teach me.

Maybe it was not having a real father figure in my life (a brother who moved out and too many uncles who tried too hard do not count); maybe it was the sense of myself as the only man in the house to take care of things; maybe it was the fact that I was truly alone and needed any lifeline I could get that made me finally listen. I am forever grateful that I had the opportunity to be in that man’s orbit as a young kid who had so much more to learn. And that education did not come out of a textbook.

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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