Hope for the 2nd Half: Sarah McCurdy Weinschenk

It is the beginning of another week and this challenging year continues to ask a lot of our hope reserves, which is why we seek to share with you stories that bolster you up and remind you of the power of hope and community. Today, Sarah McCurdy Weinschenk, SLOCA UMS Latin teacher shares with us her beautiful story of hope as she reflects on her mother’s life. (You may want to grab a box of tissues.)

A MOTHER’S LEGACY OF HOPE

Emily Dickinson wrote:  “Hope” is the thing with feathers—On June 23, 2020, as I was standing in my backyard, a plain titmouse, typically shy,  alit on a branch of our gnarled old Brazil tree, hopped jauntily out along the branch toward me and chirped a greeting.  I said hello, he chirped back, and we had an extensive “conversation” before he performed some acrobatics and flew away.  What else could that titmouse have been, but a feathered messenger of hope from my mother, Jessie Tomlin McCurdy, who had passed away early that morning, alone in her little room in Middletown, Pennsylvania, at the age of 98?  She had somehow managed to send that little harbinger of hope to me on the saddest day of my life.  Not only had I lost my beloved mother, but I had made the heartbreaking decision that it would be unsafe to travel to her funeral in the midst of a pandemic.  

When I was a child, my mother shared her love of birds with me and taught me how to identify them.  Many years later after I had grown up and moved out to California, my “bird report” became a regular feature in my weekly letters to my parents.  She delighted in reading my detailed descriptions of the variety of birds that I saw in our yard, on hikes, and on bike rides–from the adorable bushtits, to the melodious meadowlarks, to the majestic bald eagles.  But it was the tiny titmouse who was always our special favorite, and it was this little guy who reminded me that I owe my essentially positive, hopeful nature to my mother.

Jessie Tomlin was born in Burdette, Arkansas to Lucian Lyle Tomlin, an illiterate, hard-working farmer, and loving father and Pearl Franks Tomlin, an equally hard-working and loving mother.  After her father lost his farm in the Depression, it was her hopeful nature that allowed my mother, as she picked cotton alongside her sisters as tenant farmers,  to dream of being the first in her family to graduate high school and to realize that dream, even becoming valedictorian.  It was hope that inspired her to enlist in the army during World War II, achieve the rank of sergeant, and take advantage of the GI Bill to graduate from Pennsylvania College for Women (now Chatham University), while also marrying Rene McCurdy and expecting her first child. Hope carried her through raising eight children amidst the tumultuous 1960’s and ‘70’s, fixing up a dilapidated Victorian a la It’s a Wonderful Life, seeing us all grown up and pretty well settled, and ultimately seeing our father through living with Parkinson’s Disease.  After his death, she continued to inspire hope in her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Grounded in her faith, hers was not the kind of hope that vaguely wishes for a good outcome, but a deeper kind of hope described by Cynthia Bourgeault as “an abiding state of being.” 

On March 13, 2020, when I learned that schools were suddenly closed due to Covid-19, I little imagined that I would have to draw so deeply on the reservoir of hope that my mother had instilled in me.  Suddenly the bottom seemed to drop out from all areas of my life–our son’s senior year of college abruptly curtailed and his commencement canceled; our family confined to our little house, all three of us desperately trying to master remote learning/teaching while worrying about this mysterious virus; the usual comforts of eating out, movie-going, socializing,  and even going to church, all stripped away.  Most difficult of all, it seemed that my 30+ years of teaching experience were useless, as my vocation seemed to be reduced to posting blogs and speaking awkwardly into a computer camera– my jokes, my lessons, my love of Latin, my very personality all just drifting out into a void.  My hopeful nature was seriously challenged as I faced apathy and depression for the first time in my life.  What could restore my hope amid such uncertainty?  Well, as it turns out, it was the example of my mother, the SLOCA community, and Mother Nature herself.

As the pandemic grinded on, my family and I  realized that exercise and being out in nature would be key components to not losing hope.  I kept cycling on  O’Connor Way several times per week, and my son and I made a commitment to going to the beach every Wednesday morning.  When the familiar world around us seems to be falling to pieces, there is something so reassuring about contemplating the ocean which, paradoxically, is both ever-changing and constant, a reminder of nature’s implacable persistence in spite of human progress or folly.  The soaring pelicans and comical curlews know nothing of Zoom or Google Meet and remind us of their relative insignificance in the great scheme of things.

My first glimmer of hope amid the travails of remote teaching was a glimpse of a familiar, brilliantly red head of hair as I biked past the Talley Farms truck making a delivery on Lincoln Street.  Seeing Violet and Daniel Talley that day buoyed me up beyond all reason–they were the first real, live students I had seen since the quarantine had begun!  Suddenly I was reminded that it was the connection to the students themselves that made all of the efforts of teaching worthwhile.  Soon that sense of teaching into a void was mitigated by kind, understanding comments from students and encouraging emails from parents, cheering me on as my videos improved and I started to get the hang of teaching remotely.  As student work began to flood my Drive folder and max out my storage capacity, I realized that, miracle of miracles, my students were actually learning!  If they weren’t giving up hope, I certainly had no business doing so!   A Saturday invitation from a group of 7th graders to join them in a game of Jeopardy on Zoom renewed in me that all-important sense of play that is such an important part of learning at SLOCA. 

The support of my colleagues sustained me too, especially from Mrs. Bartel as she patiently helped me navigate all the new technology.  Most powerful of all, however, were the many kind words of condolence that came from my SLOCA colleagues when some learned of my mother’s death, and the welcome sight of Lisa Ann and Grant Dillon dropping off some goodies from Trader Joe’s at my front door to help us feel loved and nourished in our time of grief.

The fact that this summer’s Down Home Blog theme is “Hope for the 2nd Half” is in itself an expression of hope.  It assumes that we are half-way through this pandemic, which I certainly hope is the case.  Just the other day as the challenges and uncertainty of starting the new school year were starting to impinge on my summer sense of tranquility, I was walking around the neighborhood for the umpteenth time since the pandemic started, and I saw Calvin Trapp out in his front yard.  Once again, I was filled with hope as I enjoyed that familiar but much-missed boost that comes from interacting with a student.  His youthful optimism about the coming school year was infectious. 

So, I believe the first key to sustaining our hope for the next school year lies in turning to the examples of our elders, whether family members or historical figures; the second lies in remembering that all of our efforts are for our students and that we are not doing it alone but as part of a supportive community.  The third lies in giving ourselves over to nature to recharge our souls and maintain perspective.

I began this essay with a reflection on my mother’s death and life.  As I call on her  memory and example to offer encouragement for the new school year, how fitting to note that my mother’s wish for her epitaph was simply:  “HOPE.”

Thank you so much, Sarah for sharing with us this lovely and powerful story and reminding us how to nurture our hope.