One of the nice things about being a substitute teacher is
that every day is just a little bit different—different classroom, different
subject, different students. I
substitute at a technical school. It is a program for high school students who
are learning a trade. There is building repair, health services, digital media,
etc., etc. and I enjoy it.
Recently though, I had a day that brought tears to my eyes. No, the
students weren’t a problem. They can be a challenge sometimes, but it wasn’t
them. On this particular day, I was
assigned to a metal fabrication class and the experience just hit too close to
home. I have subbed for the class before—no
sweat. The teacher usually assigns some book work; we stay in a regular
classroom and the most challenging thing I do is keep students on task and
quiet. But on that day, perhaps because
the teacher was going to be in the building and had an experienced assistant,
he decided to allow the students to work in the shop. They were cleaning mostly, but also welding
and grinding with a few working on a class project.
I was a little nervous at first. The thing about substitute
teaching is that you are often navigating the unknown—the dynamics of
personalities and the teacher’s own classroom procedure all are unchartered
waters. Now all the ships were pulling
anchor and moving around. Still, life is an adventure and I was onboard.
Once in the shop however, something happened, something I
didn’t expect at all and I started riding waves of emotion. “In the shop” even
the sound of the phrase stirred something in my gut. “Your dad is in the shop,”
how many times had I heard that. And then
there were the same sounds—the banging of the hammer, the grinding of metal and the
smell of it—the oil, gas and flame, the same as when the door to the shop swung
open, oh so long ago.
Wandering through the shop, counting bodies and making sure
they were all occupied, I noticed the machinery, the brake, the shear, the
press. I knew them all by name. I picked
up a piece of soapstone they use to mark the steel. I felt its smoothness. My dad always had a piece or two in his
pocket. The shop smelled like his clothes, like my dad, my grandpa, my husband too, three generations in the shop. 
What a place to have my heart fill and spill over surrounded by the sound
of grinding metal, the sparkling fireworks of welders (and students). Suddenly, it all came
back rolling over me—childhood and my dad young again. The business I knew so
little about that housed and fed me for all those years. I had never realized what a really big
part of my life it was, something that I hardly realized was a part of my life at all--my roots
black and sooty, hot, loud and heavy.
And I remember the dark faces of the men and how hard they worked and the shop bell
that sent them to the locker room and home. And now I will never forget,
ever. As far removed as it seems, it is still a part of me, of where I come from and who I am.
