Sunday, April 29, 2012

In the Shop


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.

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