Newly vaccinated or hoping to be, we’re returning to workplaces, schools, and communities, joining the others who’ve been there all along, lugging our shared experiences and personal narratives. We hunger for companionship and our social skills are slightly rusty. We’ve lost our appetite for change, it’s been forced down our throats too much in the last year. We wipe the fog off our glasses and adjust as best we can. There are people who have always known how to adapt as a source of strength, like elegant swans with strong necks willing to glide in a new direction, unnoticed as we paddle furiously against the changing currents, so busy trying to bend others to our will. It’s time to take a second look at the swans.
I met Keith in the fall of 1996 on the opening day of the newly constructed Bentwood Elementary School, home of the Bentwood Bluejays, in Overland Park, Kansas. Wearing a red and black plaid shirt, easy smile, and wire-rimmed glasses, Keith looked more like a mandolin player in a bluegrass band than the lead janitor at the school. Our young family recently moved into the neighborhood just as the last drop of clean, white paint dried on the cinderblocks of the classroom walls. Aside from the principal, Keith emerged as the most important person at the school, managing the things that really mattered like deliveries of construction paper and monitoring the set-up of a new building security system. He would go on to outlast countless principals and become an anchor at the school. Keith didn’t just concern himself with the operations of the building, he took responsibility for the well-being of the people in this fledgling community. He extended a warm welcome to new families and staff, leaning into our stories, sussing out the laughable parts, or quietly offering solace if we felt irritated. (Even good change can be hard.) Keith grew his job description to include compassion. This was a new way of doing things.
I remember picking up one of my kids after he threw-up in the boy’s restroom, almost making it to the toilet in time, a sad little lump of a boy, sitting forlorn and still slightly queasy on the recovery couch in the nurse’s office. On his way back from mopping things up, Keith stuck his wavy, redhead through the doorway and said reassuringly,
“Hey buddy, it’s all taken care of, and it’s our little secret. Hope you feel better.” Keith knew a reputation could be shredded by stories about somebody losing their lunch, it would take ages for a new kid to get past that. So he fixed it, unceremoniously. My child felt valued. A parent never forgets these things.
Keith took a novel approach to his work. Children who left classrooms tidy and with the chairs neatly stacked on desks were rewarded with a detailed Calvin and Hobbes style cartoon on the whiteboard in the morning. Teachers didn’t have to remind anybody what was at stake. If kids were lax or lazy, peer pressure and the threat of missing a cartoon worked flawlessly,
“Hey, you over there, don’t leave this room without cleaning up!” Kids ordered each other around like bossy drill sergeants. Parents within earshot were shocked the same children who could not lift a sock at home were lifting chairs and trash pails with the rigor and rhythm of a crew on a Viking warship.
The 1990’s version of nascent social networking in elementary school looked like a smattering of clubs and intramural soccer. Kids didn’t have phones, they had faces and mouths, companionship with other children was integral to healthy social and emotional growth. Keith knew this and started an after-school chess club which became wildly popular with the fifth and sixth graders less inclined to kick a soccer ball. Kids who knew a little about the game were paired with those who knew a little more, as Keith guided the beginners. I’m pretty sure the club was not part of a janitor’s job description and likely extended his workday, but the wide smile on Keith’s face every Monday afternoon revealed his mastery, crafting the elements of his own job satisfaction alongside giving kids a truly meaningful experience.
I’m beginning to think about the ways I want to reconnect with others, in person, within my family and community, maybe even a workplace. I value and remember people like Keith who were extraordinarily good at fostering a compassionate community. He was a silent partner, deftly tinkering with the behind-the-scenes systems necessary to run a vibrant setting without fanfare. We could all do with less fanfare. And our communities need our help. People like Keith won our trust and reimagined his role by teaching us how to be responsible to others in ways we hadn’t thought of because we were too busy looking inward. Today, we have the chance to break away from the exclusion rituals we’d created before the pandemic and try a new way, a better way, with openness to change and a willingness to move in a new direction, which as I understand it, is an important element to survival. And after what we’ve all been through, survival doesn’t feel like nearly enough. Collectively, we should thrive.
Copyright (2021) Suzanne Bayer. All Rights Reserved