August 4, 2025: “Mrs. Krikorkian,” First Day, “Courage”

I got a text from my daughter’s significant other this morning.  It contained a picture of my daughter standing against a white wall, backpack on her shoulders, smiling nervously, with the message “first day of school picture!”  Even though she’s about 24 years past Head Start, I could still see my five-year-old little girl in her face, and it broke my heart a little bit.

Sharon Olds is helped by a teacher . . . 

Mrs. Kirkorian

by: Sharon Olds

She saved me. When I arrived in 6th grade,
a known criminal, the new teacher
asked me to stay after school the first day, she said
I’ve heard about you. She was a tall woman,
with a deep crevice between her breasts,
and a large, calm nose. She said,
This is a special library pass.
As soon as you finish your hour’s work—
that hour’s work that took ten minutes
and then the devil glanced into the room
and found me empty, a house standing open—
you can go to the library. Every hour
I’d zip through the work in a dash and slip out of my
seat as if out of God’s side and sail
down to the library, solo through the empty
powerful halls, flash my pass
and stroll over to the dictionary
to look up the most interesting word
I knew, spank, dipping two fingers
into the jar of library paste to
suck that tart mucilage as I
came to the page with the cocker spaniel’s
silks curling up like the fine steam of the body.
After spank, and breast, I’d move on
to Abe Lincoln and Helen Keller,
safe in their goodness till the bell, thanks
to Mrs. Krikorian, amiable giantess
with the kind eyes. When she asked me to write
a play, and direct it, and it was a flop, and I
hid in the coat-closet, she brought me a candy-cane
as you lay a peppermint on the tongue, and the worm
will come up out of the bowel to get it.
And so I was emptied of Lucifer
and filled with school glue and eros and
Amelia Earhart, saved by Mrs. Krikorian.
And who had saved Mrs. Krikorian?
When the Turks came across Armenia, who
slid her into the belly of a quilt, who
locked her in a chest, who mailed her to America?
And that one, who saved her, and that one—
who saved her, to save the one
who saved Mrs. Krikorian, who was
standing there on the sill of 6th grade, a
wide-hipped angel, smokey hair
standing up weightless all around her head?
I end up owing my soul to so many,
to the Armenian nation, one more soul someone
jammed behind a stove, drove
deep into a crack in a wall,
shoved under a bed. I would wake
up, in the morning, under my bed—not
knowing how I had got there—and lie
in the dusk, the dustballs beside my face
round and ashen, shining slightly
with the eerie comfort of what is neither good nor evil.

I’ve been a college professor for going on 30 years now.  Doing the math, that means I have taught well over 3,000 students.  That’s a lot of young minds for me to warp and confuse.  I’m not sure I made a difference in any student’s life, but I did my damndest.  

I believe in public education.  In fact, I believe every person deserves to go to school for free, including colleges and universities.  Having educated citizens benefits any country, unless the politicians want to take advantage of their constituents’ ignorance and fear.  (I’m not referring to any specific country, I swear.)  Education saved me from being a plumber—a fate that would have made me completely miserable.

Today was my daughter’s first day of med school classes.  When I spoke to her last night on the phone, she was incredibly nervous.  I did my Fathers Knows Best best to reassure her and calm her down.  I’m not sure I succeeded all that much.

My daughter has wanted to be a doctor almost her whole life.  She’s never wavered, from middle school to undergraduate college.  Me?  I became an English major after four years of math and computer programming classes.  I worked close to 25 years in the healthcare industry. Then COVID came along, and I decided on a change of career:  library programming.  Long story short, my daughter is smarter than me in a lot of ways.  She is going to make the world a better place, one patient at a time.  

I try to make the world a better place one blog post and poem at a time.  It’s up to you, faithful disciple, to decide whether I make any difference at all.  (By the way, my daughter just texted me.  She’s exhausted but had a great day.)

Saint Marty wrote a first-day-of-school poem for tonight, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet:

Write a poem about a drug that doesn’t exist.  Give it an abstract name like “Violence” or something unique like that”Milk Money.”  What does this drug do?  Is it more lexi in al or something more like LSD?  Is it sold legally or illegally?  Can this drug save the world or ruin it?  Begin the poem, That August . . .

Courage

by: Martin Achatz

This August morning, my daughter texts

me a picture of herself, smiling, backpack

slung over her shoulders, hair wavy

as lake sand.  First day of medical school

her caption reads.  I stare at my phone

screen a long time, at that face I know

better than the scars on my knuckles.

I scroll through my camera roll, find

her first-day-of-kindergarten picture.

I toggle back and forth between the two

images, watch her grow and shrink,

become older and younger with swipes

of my thumb, as if I’m flipping through

a picture book, animating my daughter

from age five to age 24, time-lapsed

like a seed stretching into a marigold.

I remember I made her take a Flintstones

vitamin, watched her chew and swallow

its bitter chalk, the morning she toddled into

Mrs. Edwards’ classroom the first time.

Today, I wish I could give her a Courage

vitamin, something made out of natural 

ingredients like cactus thorn or octopus

ink, to straighten her spine, melt away

layers of insomnia.  I’d flavor it

with butterscotch, to remind her

of the cookies I always made for

first days, so she had something

sweet to look forward to when she

got home.  I’m scared she told me

last night from six hours away, and 

I fought the urge to pick out her outfit,

braid her hair, and read her a bedtime story,

the one about the caterpillar that eats

the whole damn book, because it

isn’t afraid to taste anything,

anything at all.

May 2: Heroes, My Students, Poem from "Kyrie"

Spent most of today doing end-of-semester grading.

This semester has been a tough one for my students.  Many endured financial problems--loss of employment, parents laid off, businesses closed.  Some dealt with other struggles--mental health, physical health, deaths of loved ones.  Like I said, it has been a hell of a couple months for these kids.

Some simply disappeared off my radar, despite my best efforts to reach out to them.  They just stopped communicating.  Others missed due dates or assignments completely.  I have found myself acting as both instructor and mentor and counselor, trying to guide them through the landmines of March and April.

This past Wednesday night, I had my last Zoom class meeting with my writing students.  As I've said, this group of individuals have been through a LOT.  At the end of the class, I said this to them:  "You know, everyone is talking about heroes in the middle of this pandemic.  Nurses and doctors and healthcare workers.  Let me tell you all this:  you're all heroes in my book.  You've all dealt with the craziness of this semester with grace, courage, and humor.  You all deserve medals for surviving."

Heroes come in many guises.  Some wear face shields in emergency rooms.  Others wear badges and face down gun-toting domestic terrorists who call themselves protesters.  And some take on extra jobs to help their parents pay their bills, and they still submit their papers, take their final exams, and show up for virtual classes.

Saint Marty prays for his students tonight.  For health and safety.  Rest and happiness.

poem from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

Snow heaped like a hat, square gray face,
the drift a shawl gathered at the neck--
a mailbox left unshoveled can be the sign,
a spirit crouching there beside the road--
I was at hand, I followed the doctor in:
Go ye therefore into the highways.
Renie had bee the warning, months before
the universal pestilence and woe.
We'd had a late frost, a ruined spring,
a single jay was fretting in the bush,
quick blue smudge in the laden spikes of lilac:
it was an angel singing--don't you see:
it might as well have been a bush on fire.

July 1: I'm So Happy, My Wife, Courage

The honeymoon was taking place in the bittersweet mysteries of Indian Summer in New England.  The lovers' apartment had one romantic wall which was all French doors.  They opened onto a balcony and the oily harbor beyond.

A green and orange dragger, black in the night, grumbled and drummed past their balcony, not thirty feet from their wedding bed.  It was going to sea with only its running lights on.  Its empty holds were resonant, made the song of the engines rich and loud.  The wharf began to sing the same song, and then the honeymooners' headboard sang, too.  And it continued to sing long after the dragger was gone.

"Thank you," said Valencia at last.  The headboard was singing a mosquito song.

"You're welcome."

"It was nice."

Then she began to cry.  

"What's the matter?"

"I'm so happy."

"Good."

"I never though anybody would marry me."

"Um," said Billy Pilgrim.

I find this little passage heartbreaking.  I have a lot of sympathy for Valencia, even if Vonnegut uses her as the butt of some of the humor in Slaughterhouse.  It's the whole socially acceptable habit of making obesity the cause of laughter.  I don't really buy into that idea.  I have too many loved ones and close family members who struggle with weight issues.  So I have a soft spot for Valencia and her struggles.

Over the last few weeks, since my wife's weight loss procedure, I have been astounded by her courage in taking this step.  Some think that bariatric surgery is the "easy" way to get skinny.  However, most people who actually reach this point have tried dozens of diets, been on a yo-yo of skinny and fat for years.  It's not about looking good.  It's about being healthy.  My wife wants to be around to see our daughter and son grow up.

I don't want to preach here.  No trying to judge.  If you have always been a thing person, you should give thanks that you have never had to struggle with food.  Obesity is not a matter of will power.  Obesity is an illness, as much as alcoholism or diabetes.  I have a friend who has struggled with weight her whole life.  Her skinny mother used to tell her, "All you have to do is put the fork down and push your chair away from the table."  It isn't that simple.

If you have friends or relatives who struggles with food, don't look at them as weak.  Don't look at their dinner plates and shake your head.  Don't count their calories or tell them they should go to Weight Watchers or Overeaters Anonymous.  You aren't saying anything they haven't thought of themselves.

Instead of doing all that, try something different.  Try empathy and understanding.  Your cruel words or looks or jokes aren't going to help matters.  However, your love will.  I believe a guy who lived over two thousand years ago said, "Do to others as you would have them do to you."  Try it out sometime.

Saint Marty is thankful today for his courageous, beautiful wife.