A couple weeks ago, I was working on a scene in my new book where I contrasted Mr. Seidman, my tenth grade English teacher at Shaker Heights High, to my brother Stan, eleven years older than me. Both Stan and Mr. Seidman were in their mid-twenties, but where Mr. Seidman was kind, amused by our teenaged antics, full of life, and introduced us to Shakespeare, Stan had an inner darkness that would have been as off-putting to Mr. Seidman as it was to me.
To my great embarrassment, starting from sixth grade, the year after Dad died and Stan moved back home, he'd play the piano for me and my pre-teen friends—gazing into their eyes as he sang love songs, putting his arms around them, making them intensely uncomfortable. On weekends, he assaulted his dates in our basement and elsewhere, to the point where when I was fifteen, he landed in jail.
It was not an era when seeing a psychologist was readily accepted. Both my older sister and I told my mother that Stan needed help, but she didn't see it that way. Dad would not have let things get to the point they did with Stan, and certainly not in our house. Mostly, though, I kept my distance from him. In my teens, living with Mother and Stan, I was miserable, hopeless, and couldn't wait to escape. With my dad gone, I felt completely alone.
After working on the scene, I looked up Mr. Seidman, and discovered that he'd written a book about his family emigrating to Cleveland from Eastern Europe to escape the pogroms against Jews in the early 1900s, just as my family had. I ordered the book and asked the publisher how to get hold of him. Two days later, I heard from him!
It was thrilling to reconnect with my favorite high school teacher who, when I really needed it, had provided a model of how to be that I didn't have at home.
Now I see that all along the way, there were bright lights like Mr. Seidman, or my guidance counselor who worried about my grades, or my best friend Ellen at whose house I lounged about, that showed a way forward. A constellation of hope. It was not until writing this book that I truly understood that.
If you have a story you'd like to share about someone unexpected who helped you through a dark time, I'd love to hear.