Al, the Light We Sometimes See

It’s August of 2002, and I walk into the gleaming hallway of my new school.  It’s new to me, since it has just reopened after a year of renovation. It used to be a middle school, but now it will be an elementary school.  My principal has also moved from our old school to this new one. Bob is a reserved man, whose mantra is “low key,” so I take note when I see him grinning and gushing in the hallway outside the main office.  

“Everything looks great,” I say as we survey the scene.  “You must be so relieved.”

“You have no idea,” he replies.  The school we’d come from was old.  I had loved my thirteen years there, because the people were amazing, but the building itself suffered from years of neglect, deferred maintenance, overcrowding, and an overwhelmed custodial staff.  “Wait till you see the whole place,” Bob says.   “It’s spotless.  The crew here is incredible.  We have the best head custodian I’ve ever worked with.”

As I said, Bob was reserved.  He didn’t issue superlatives freely.  If he used “incredible,” “spotless,” and “best” in one brief conversation, it carried weight.

Over the next days, weeks, and months, I came to understand what Bob had learned over that frantic pre-opening summer.  Our head custodian, Al, was a force, a marvel, actually.  “Custodian” doesn’t really do justice to the way that Al cared for our school.  “Caretaker” is better.  “Steward” might come closer. But perhaps “captain” captures the spirit.  The principal may have been in charge of most of the humans, but Al ran his building.  

He fixed.  He cleaned.  He shoveled.  He swept.  He refilled.  He lugged.  He directed.  He mopped.  He inspected.  He hauled.  He stowed.  He supervised. He shined.  

That was the job part.  He also joked and listened and teased and shared and advised and consoled.

Al’s retiring in a week, and it’s going to be a rough goodbye.  

For 22 years, most of my Mondays in the fall began with a rehash of Sunday’s football games.  Al and I rooted for different teams.  Sometimes we razzed, sometimes we congratulated, sometimes we sympathized, sometimes we commiserated, and sometimes  (if either one of our teams beat the mutually-despised Cowboys), we celebrated.  

Mondays, among other things, will be different this January.

Images and voices, more than stories, flash through my mind, today.  

I see Al hanging a bulletin board in my classroom. 

I hear Al letting me know that the building will be open on Saturday “for you slow pokes.”  I rarely had my classroom ready for opening day.  

I hear Al scolding me for having too many boxes on top of my cabinets.  “I told you, you can’t block those vents. You’re gonna get me in trouble with the fire marshall.”   

I remember me asking Al to unlock the door to the outside storage closet so we could take out the wooden structures.  His reply, before I’d even finished asking:  “I already opened it for you. I told you I would.”    

I see Al showing me how to use his soundboard and lighting in the auditorium.  “This part is great.  Look, look, you can set up two patterns and then switch between the two, by just sliding this one down and that one up.”

I see Al taking me up into the catwalks, teaching me how to change the gels on the spotlights.  “Watch your head…and don’t EVER let kids go up here.”  

I see Al shaking his head after the seventh snow in one January.  “We can’t have another one. My guys are exhausted.”

I watched a movie this weekend called All the Light We Cannot See.  The story took place during the darkness of wartime and referred to the love and the hope that can sustain people even in seemingly hopeless times.  It struck me, though, that there are other ways to think about the most important lights, the ones we cannot see.  

When things work well in a school, or in a family, it’s usually because people behind the scenes have created light that we barely notice.  We notice when things go wrong or need to be fixed, and we’re grateful for the heat or the cooling or the plumbing or the light, but most days in our school, the building hums quietly, an unnoticed backdrop behind the people’s drama.  We don’t notice that kind of invisible light…thanks to Al.   

One last image runs through my head:  Me standing next to Al in the cafeteria between lunch shifts, asking,  “Are you  going to miss this job when you’re retired?”

Al laughing, “The job?  Hell no. I’m gonna love being retired.”  [pause, then serious]  “But I’ll miss the people.”

I have a suspicion he’ll miss his building, too.

One thing I know for certain, the people, and the old building he’s brightened, will miss Al.