Author: Phyllis Swartz

If you’re losing hope in humans, try taking my parents on a road trip. Both in their nineties, they don’t travel often. So you’d have to find a good reason to entice them to pack their bags.

Last weekend held the best of reasons—the Benders were gathering. When my Grandpa Bender married my grandma, he wanted twelve children. He didn’t get his wish. My mother was one of only eleven. But he might have been satisfied to know the most recent tally of his family: 11 children, 55 grandchildren, 165 great-grandchildren, 274 great-great grandchildren, and 34 great-great-great grandchildren, for a total of 539 offspring.

Of all these people, my mother, at age 94, is the oldest living descendant. And last weekend, she was determined to fill her matriarchal role by showing up at the reunion.

So we packed pills and pillows and warm wraps and a cane and headed east, toward the mountains of Western Maryland.

Benders enjoy telling a good story and laughing and eating. Most of all, they take joy, deep joy, in people. They watch babies’ faces and chuckle over toddlers’ antics and applaud as teenagers try their wings. And to grow old among the Benders is to receive deference and honor. So I knew my parents were making their way toward kindness.

What I didn’t expect, though, was so much kindness along the way.

To keep blood flowing and joints limber, we stopped every hour. And at each rest break, kindness practically sprang forth.

People stopped their cars to let us cross parking lots, leapt to open doors, and waited patiently as we blocked their car doors in order to help our parents hoist themselves back into the van. Once at McDonalds, the restroom was crammed with high school girls talking over each other, scrolling on phones, and comparing shades of lipstick.

My mom stood in the doorway, taking it all in, wandering how she’d ever make it through the crowd.

One girl recapped her lipstick.

“Good morning, ma’am,” she said.

And the Red Sea seemed to part. Girls practically fell over each other as they stepped back to give my mom passage to the front of the line. A smile was on every face, including my mom’s.

“Tell me where you’re all going,” my mom said on her way out.

So they stood there talking, my mom with her wrinkles and these freshly made-up girls, who had paused their scrolling.

It was almost like we were already with the Benders.

I felt a panging last week, one I didn’t expect. Afterall, I’m glad to be retired. I’ve not missed high-stakes tests and staff meetings and 4:30 A.M. alarms. But the morning I read about the walking classroom, I wanted to teach again.

Why hadn’t I thought of this idea?

It’s not like I didn’t have the theory. In college, I read John Dewey, who said students learned by doing. In graduate school, I studied Howard Gardner, who said there were multiple ways to learn, one of them using the body. And at a conference on brain research, I saw proof that brains work better when bodies move.

So I tried.  

I broke study sessions into chunks with exercises breaks. And when I saw eyes glaze over, I invited the class to stand up, breathe deep, and shake it off.

This helped. The exercise instantly woke the sluggish. It got their circulation going, moving blood from legs, where it had pooled, up into brains, where it could do some good.

But the conceivers of the walking classroom take it further. Instead of alternating moving and learning, they bring the two together. It’s a simple pairing of an old-fashioned walk with modern technology.

Through buds in their ears, students listen to podcast lessons as they walk. The part of the brain that makes the body move also brings about learning. So on this listening walk, double the neurons are popping, and brains are flooding with feel-good chemicals.

Students don’t know all this, of course. They just think it’s a fun way to learn. And, on test days, they appreciate how these lessons stick.

I’ve long known that, for some students, movement is a must. But the walking classroom recognizes that it matters for all.

If only I could have one more day in the classroom . . . but without a 4:30 alarm.

It happened again last week. To each of us. At a store, someone asked me for help. And at a restaurant someone thought my husband Steve was a celebrity.

“Are you actually John Ritter?” a waiter asked. And he pulled up a photo on his phone to show us the likeness.

When we visited Boston one summer, people approached Steve three times asking if he was a Kennedy.

But mostly they want to know if he’s Robert Redford, the last time being this spring after a hike at the Clifton Gorge, right here in the middle of small-town Ohio.

I’ve never once been mistaken for a movie star. But I am in demand.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” people ask in Macy’s, “Could you tell me where to find a size seven for this shoe?”

At the library, they want me to point them toward the biographies. At Home Depot, they ask for brass pipe fittings. At the history museum, they can’t find the Civil War exhibit.

Maybe it’s because I’m a teacher. I was taught to walk tall and stand confidently, especially when I felt like shrinking back. Your lesson begins, my mentor told me, the moment your students set eyes on you. This first, immediate impression can shape your semester.

My students at the middle school and the prison and the gifted program all affirmed what my mentor said. Not in so many words. But it was clear. On the days I walked into class, closed up and collapsing into myself, they were glad to take up the space. And those were not good days.

But on my expansive days, when I was open and free, when I stretched out across the class, students gave me the room I needed to teach.

In this way, I learned to walk the classroom aisles.

And this apparently generalized to the aisles at Macy’s and the library and Home Depot and the history museum.

I must be losing this bearing, though. It’s not happening as often. And I’m becoming surprised when someone says, “Excuse me, ma’am.”

But I hope celebrity spotters keep finding Steve. Given my work-a-day, ordinary life, it’s entertaining to hear someone ask my husband if he’s Robert Redford.

Today I discovered how one of my younger siblings spent a long-ago afternoon. I just don’t know which one, though I have my guess.

And I don’t know what prompted the defacing of the picture book I found in some old things my mom was sorting. But I have my hunch about that, too.

Likely a new baby had come to our house. This happened often. And this is when my mother would gather us around and read Our Baby, a Ding Dong book by Dr. Frances R. Horwich.

Miss Frances, as children knew her, hosted Ding Dong School, the first preschool series of the air, a precursor to Sesame Street and Mister Roger’s Neighborhood. Miss Frances opened every episode by ringing a school bell, and she insisted that camera lenses be angled so that kids could see everything at what she called a Lilliputian eye level.

Not having a television, we didn’t know any of this.

We just knew that Miss Frances had written a book about Jack, whose house didn’t look much like ours, especially when a new baby came to stay. At Jack’s house, everything was evened up—cushions on the couch, stacks of folded diapers, towels hanging on holders, and blankets on beds. The grandma’s apron was starched and flouncy, the father wore a suit and tie, and the mother looked as if she had just come off a wellness retreat.

One day, after Mom read Our Baby to us, one of us must have crept away to a secluded corner with the book and a ballpoint pen. And at the end of what was likely a therapeutic hour, the house in the book looked more like our house. The pen left scrawls across happy faces and scribbles all through once-tidy rooms.

What intrigued me most, was that on every page in the book, a pair of eyeglasses perched on every face, even on the baby.

What did this mean? Though I took a semester-long class on interpreting children’s art, I don’t know. Maybe Jack’s family needed some flaws. Or maybe, with no television to watch and a fussy baby in the house, drawing eyeglasses was just a way to while away an afternoon.

“Guess what’s all the rage now,’ my husband said to me, looking up from his digital newspaper. “It’s got a new name, but it’s exactly what we did when we first got married.”

Cash stuffing, it seems, is all over TikTok, where young consumers are urging each other toward this low-tech, age-old hack on how to stick to a budget.

Back when we were newlyweds, we’d been shocked by the cost of living. Who knew that heating a small house could cost so much? And the bills kept coming—groceries, car insurance, appliance repair, and quarter after quarter of college tuition and books.

To make our money outlast the month, we labeled envelopes and stuffed them with the cash we budgeted for each category. The first Friday of each month, I’d pull bills from the Groceries: Week 1 envelope to take to Meijer, an expansive new store offering a plethora of foods, most of which never landed in my grocery cart.

One spring break, though, we found that cash stuffing carries risk.

We were packed for a road trip to visit my parents. Just as my husband turned the car key, I had a thought.

“Could you wait a minute?” I said to him. “I have one more thing to do.”

He turned off the ignition.

Back in the house, I lifted the tin box of newly-filled envelopes from the bottom filing cabinet drawer. This box held our living for the next month. And I was having an uneasy feeling. I cast my eyes around the room, and, on impulse, stuffed the box under the dirty laundry in the hamper.

Whoever broke into our house that weekend didn’t find it, but not for lack of trying. The thief emptied filing cabinet drawers and riffled through cupboards and rummaged in closets. But our cash was safe.

Cash stuffing might not have been fool proof, but it did curb our spending. With credit and debit cards, we could have lost track. We could have derailed our budget and accumulated debt.

And I hope this new, age-old hack going virtual on TikTok also helps today’s young consumers make their money outlast the month. 

More than a century ago, someone gave me a gift. Scarcely a day passes that I don’t give thanks to this unknown person, who understood how the sun moves through the sky and who used this knowledge to design our house.

Now that I’m retired and no longer turning off my alarm long before sunup, I see the rainbows that move across our white bedspread as the sun rises. They come from the beveled glass of an east window­. As it catches the light, it acts as a prism, splitting what was white into colors.

I’d be reluctant to leave the bedroom each morning, except that I don’t want to miss what’s happening downstairs. In the living room, transoms top the east windows. And the light that filters through their textured, colored panes, casts a rippling, rose glow over the room, a gentle welcome to the day.

All along its path across the sky, the sun shines in on us, through one window and then another. But it saves the best for evening. Having reached the west side of the house, the sinking sun sends its light through the amber and purple window panes on stairway landing. And the foyer below is sprinkled with sunset colors.

Our old creaky house is full of windows—forty of them, many stretching from near the floor almost up to the ten-foot ceilings. We feel their numbers on window-washing day. With few blank walls, it’s hard to arrange furniture and to make Zoom calls. These windows increase our heating bills and decrease our privacy.

But I wouldn’t trade them. The changing light elevates my energy and brings beauty and cadence to my day. And all because someone in 1872 thought to designed with the sun in mind.

I stood in the doorway of my dad’s study. He hadn’t heard me coming, not even with his high-cost, high-tech hearing aids.

On the table lay what appeared to be an ancient book. But on his computer screen, he was reading an ebook, in German.

When I cleared my throat, he looked up.

“Guess what I found on Hathitrust Library?” he said, pivoting his chair to reach for the old book.

“This was published in 1853,” he told me. “My grandfather’s mother gave it to him.”

The book contained a section on the beginnings of the Amish church, and my father was reading it to prepare for a talk at a history conference.

“But why are you reading electronically?” I asked.

Old books in digital form have perks, my dad explained to me. He showed me how he clicked on the full-screen toggle and how he could search for words. With the backlit screen and control of font size, he didn’t need to strain to see. And besides, it saved the wear of the old book.

But when he looked at the vellum-bound book in his hands, his eyes softened. His great-grandmother and his grandfather had held this book. They had turned these very pages, now yellowed and brittle. 

My nonagenarian father likes the lure and nostalgia of old books. But he isn’t tech-averse. He appreciates the efficiencies of new ways.

When I finish writing this post, I’ll head to his house for my daily check-in. He won’t hear me coming. So I’ll pause again in the doorway of his study to catch him in action. If he’s not reading a book on Hathitrust, he’ll likely be on some online database, using the new to search out the old.

I never told anyone what I did once a week in the fruit cellar. Not my parents, not my siblings, and, for sure, not my friends. Everyone already thought I was a strange kid. And there was no sense in offering up more evidence.

But I felt the call of history. So I surreptitiously made my way down the cellar steps to the backroom where Mason jars of peaches and applesauce and green beans lined the shelves. And there, I made my contribution to the annals of history by narrating my daily life.

My days seemed ordinary enough. But you never knew. Anne Frank didn’t know what was coming, either, when she wrote the first entry in her diary. And besides, my dad, who read and wrote history, had told me that diaries, even those of common folk, helped historians understand the times.

This is what I wanted to do—leave a trace of ordinary life in Flint, Michigan, during the 1960s.

Only I wanted to do it in a new way. Someday, I decided, someone would invent a machine, one that could scan sound waves that had once bounced off the walls.

So once a week, I sat on an upturned milkcrate and talked.

I told the wall about the kids who, hearing the jingle of bells on my brother’s ice cream push cart, surrounded it and stole ice cream. I explained that our family didn’t have a television, but that I loved to watch Henry Wrinkler play The Fonz on Happy Days while I babysat the six Jackson kids who lived above the Judd Road party store. I talked about the riots in Detroit and how folks in Flint were cleaning their guns, getting ready, just in case.

I described how much I wanted the new Skip-It toy that all the girls in my class brought to recess. And how sad it was my parents couldn’t afford one. And that maybe I could figure out how to make one of my own.

Of course, all these words are lost to history, which is probably good. I’m sure most of what I said was cringe-worthy.

Still, I’m glad I sat on that milkcrate and talked. The listening wall helped me organize my thoughts, consolidate my memory, move toward action, and ease my angst. All this help from the wall, and no one else was any the wiser.

We three sat in a row, silent and waiting.

We hadn’t known we’d see each other at this funeral. But we had each come, of our own accord, and found spots on the same row. Living across three states and in different worlds, we hadn’t seen each other for a long time. And we probably hadn’t sat in the same row since second grade.

Suddenly, we couldn’t help it. Just as we had back at Yoder School, we began to whisper.

But our talk was changed. It was no longer about what to play at recess or how many plants we had found in the woods to add to the class collection or that our parents had said yes—we could order chocolate milk, not white, for the afternoon snack.

Now we spoke of knee replacements and cataracts and nitroglycerin. But mostly our words were about our schoolmate Nathan, who was no longer sitting in our row and whose family was beginning to gather in the front rows, preparing to honor him.

In our little huddle, we paid our own pre-service tribute. The three of us had been placed with Nathan in the same school group, one that was expected to work a little harder and a little faster than the rest of the class. And Nathan pressed us forward.

He was so smart. In flashcard contests, he beat us, almost every time. But we remembered that he was also kind. How could he be so smart and so kind?

And for the next hour and a half, those twined themes kept reverberating in the scriptures and songs and words of people who loved Nathan, only in more grown-up verbiage.

It’s a strange thing to bury a first friend. We three sitting in our row were perhaps the only people there who carried memories of Nathan in primary school when the seeds of intelligence and kindness were sprouting in him.

Now, six decades later, his body had given out, and ours were wearing down. But our minds were still sharp enough to consider Nathan’s life. I don’t know what the other two were thinking during our friend’s funeral. But I was hoping that, when my time comes, the word kind will show up in a thought or two about me.

Once again, Nathan was pressing me forward.