Small Comforts

                For many high school students, receiving a yearbook at the end of the year is worth enduring forty plus weeks of instruction and misery. At Lakenheath High School in England, where I attended as a freshman and sophomore, we received our annuals near the end of March instead of the last week of the school year. Instead of two days, we had two months to fill them with memories and messages, phone numbers and false promises.

                After the initial thrill of signing books died down, very few students carried them to school any more. Upon hitting this lull, I decided that I wanted to see how many of my teachers’ John Hancocks I could collect in addition to those of my friends’. There was one, though, that I wanted above the others: my English teacher Mr. Albert. I respected him, even admired him, so I wanted to see what nuggets of wisdom he might leave.

                However, there was one problem: Mr. Albert was not known for signing yearbooks. In fact, in most cases, if he deemed you worthy of his time, he simply wrote his name on a random page, as if he were simply filling out a hall pass.

                Mr. Albert was an older man with slicked back whitish-gray hair and severe, dark-rimmed glasses which bugged out his dark eyes to an almost insect-esque degree. In his prime he must have been quite tall and athletic. Now, his shoulders stooped a little, but that was about all that made him old. He attacked literature with a gusto rarely seen. His classroom at the end of the hall, directly above the main office at Lakenheath High lulled you into a home-like security. He packed the desks in tightly, but the ambiance of the rest of the room suggested more of a homey atmosphere: a throw rug under his desk at the front of the room, an old wooden rocker in the corner with a crocheted throw draped over its back. Framed portraits and works of art carefully line the walls, along with a few larger tapestries depicting ancient literary scenes from Greek and Shakespearean tragedies. The aroma of yellow-paged books clung permanently to the four walls—a comfortable mustiness that endured the custodian’s best efforts with air fresheners. The high windows across the back of the room let in enough natural light to make most days cheerful without the glowing phosphorescence overhead. It was probably my favorite room in the school.

                One day after school I stopped by his classroom and asked him for his autograph. Without skipping a beat, he put down the essay he had just finished grading, took the book from my hand, and flourished his pen. From the sound of it, he scrawled more than just his name across the page. The fact that he composed a whole line in the back of my book intrigued me, and I couldn’t wait to read his pearls of wisdom.

                When he was finished signing, he handed it back to me and immediately grabbed the next essay in the stack in front of him and resumed marking. I figured it would be impolite to read what he had just written in front of him, so I stowed the book in my backpack, thanked him, and went on my way to see if I could find my friends who had abandoned me. When I reached my locker, I whipped the yearbook back out and found where Mr. A left his message: “Make sure you buy a house with a fireplace.”

                I was baffled. What the heck was that supposed to mean?

                Knowing he was keen on symbolism, I shuffled through the files in my brain and all the pieces of English and American lit we had discussed and analyzed. Monkey’s paw? Check. Raven? Check. Pig’s head? Check. Red Death? Check. Fireplace? Nothing. No check. I couldn’t figure it out. And it bothered me. There was always a hidden meaning, right?

                Maybe. This mystery drove me crazy for several days. None of them had a clue either. But why I was so obsessed with finding out what he meant? Wasn’t he just a crazy old man? Why did I value his opinion so much? After several days obsessing, I realized that over the past year, whether he knew it or not, I found a mentor in Mr. Albert, someone who would help shape who I eventually became. And I didn’t want to let him down.

                To be honest, I thought he was pretty pompous at the beginning of the year, looking down his buggy bifocals at us. Then I learned how bifocals worked. He called me out in front of the class one day for not preparing for my oral reading presentation—an excerpt from a Dave Barry book I grabbed from the library that morning. I thought I could wing it, but he instantly branded me a charlatan because I mispronounced the word senility (seh-nih-lə-tē). He told me he knew I could do better. I grumbled, but I knew he was right.

                Another time I wrote a poem about a girlfriend dying. It was complete garbage, but the girls in the class who sat around me (Joanna, Becky, Jen, and a few others) were so touched, they thought it was real. I made myself cry to add to the charade, asking for a hall pass to go wash my face. Mr. Albert let me go, but I think he knew I was full of crap; I think he let me leave class because the girls wouldn’t leave me and my “grieving” alone and caused a disturbance.

                Despite all these seemingly negative interactions, he also helped me to understand poetry. We explicated some poem about a dog, and for the first time, I realized that I actually really liked poetry, and so I began to write. He encouraged my writing. Some of the poetry was worthless, but I also produced pieces like “Subway” under his tutelage, which was later published in a British student literary magazine. He showed me that I had a talent when I wrote a campy slasher story called “Bob of the Backwoods” for a Halloween assignment. He always pushed me harder than I thought possible. He very bluntly told me what made the story engaging while simultaneously showing me where it was crap.

                I remember him calling me on the carpet again when I attempted to write an opinionated analysis about a point I personally did not believe regarding the nature of man when we read Lord of the Flies. He simply said, “Your heart’s not in this and neither is your head. Try again.” I don’t remember what grade I got, but I think it was a C-, definitely subpar for me. He allowed me to rewrite it, though. He showed me how revision made me a better writer and thinker.

                I don’t remember a lot of our class discussions, but I know that I came to class engaged every day. Whether reading Julius Caesar or “The Necklace,” I felt my brain constantly filling, sometimes past the saturation point. He fueled my desire to learn and to always look for more. That is why his cryptic yearbook message perplexed me. I knew there was something I was overlooking, so I finally got up the guts to ask him.

                “What did you mean? I asked before class the next day.

                Mr. Albert looked up from his desk, his bright black eyes magnified by his glasses. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure to what you are referring.” He never ended his sentences with prepositions, even when he talked.

                I pulled my yearbook from my backpack, flipped to the page where he had scrawled in his long, fluid cursive earlier in the week, and I handed it to him.

                He hummed. Nodded his head in affirmation. “That’s some good advice, young man."

                “But what does it mean?” I implored, expecting a life-altering, earth-shattering insight into life.

(Taken from https://static.tumblr.com/279a8fb8356faab0227654021d93cb11/lftnwhz/tUin9103m/)

                “Simply that,” he said. “There’s nothing like a good fireplace and enjoying the smaller comforts of life.”

                “Okay, uh, thanks,” I said, taking my seat, still a little unsure why he would pen that into my yearbook. And I stayed in the dark about the meaning until much, much later in life.

                I corresponded with him fairly frequently, starting with a letter of recommendation for my Eagle Scout award. We wrote letters while I was at Ricks College, where I learned of his failing health. I even got a couple of cards from him when I was proselytizing in Spain for two years.

                One winter night, eight or nine years after receiving Mr. Albert’s words of wisdom, my wife and I unburied our high school yearbooks from one of the many cardboard boxes crammed into in our basement apartment. We had only been married a few months, and somehow stories of high school came up, and we decided that pictures were needed to go with people and events. As we flipped through the pages from LHS 1991-92, Mr. Albert’s message written in blue pen came back to me. I looked around at the crowded living space, felt the hot air blow out of the heating duct. I didn’t have a fireplace, but I began to understand the meaning of small comforts. Sometimes there doesn’t need to be any more meaning.