My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann

(WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.)

I wish I could remember her name.

Tallish, thin, with pixie-cropped gray hair and sky-blue eyes framed by glasses, she taught the gifted program (as it was then called) at Northside Elementary when I was in sixth grade. Once a week, she escorted me and a classmate down the hall where we played for hours within our small cohort. Now, such programs are called enrichment. Then, it felt like magic, with Missus (I’ll call her) cast as the fairy godmother and I, the ash-girl turned princess beneath her tutelage. 

And even though I never saw nor spoke to her again, until I graduated high school, come June she’d send me presents.

*****

In Paolo Coelho’s The Alchemist, an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago longs to travel the world and, with his father’s blessing, begins a years-long journey to Egypt.  There, according to a gypsy woman’s interpretation of his recurring dream, treasure lies buried beneath the Pyramids, though its contents and value she cannot determine. This quest is Santiago’s Personal Legend, the thing he is destined to achieve. We are all born with such desires, the King of Salem explains early in the boy’s journey, yet most of us leave them undefined and unfilled.

Like millions of the novel’s international readers, I was captivated by the young protagonist’s outsized ambition, curiosity, and fearlessness. Although decades removed from his coming-of-age conflict, I recalled my own struggles toward adulthood and found that many of his challenges still resonated. 

They certainly resonated with my seniors, when I began teaching the book in 2011. Regardless of  whether they were natural or indifferent students, whether they were excited about or wary of graduating high school and entering the real world, most recognized that life offered no guarantees of happiness or success. Worse, “life” favored some more than others, and that, distracted by poor choices, poor habits, or poor friendships, they may have hobbled themselves. 

So how do you make a plan for your future when the odds seem stacked against you? 

Studying Santiago’s journey helped them evaluate and plan their own.

As he pursues his Legend, he befriends strangers and falls in love. He learns alchemy and the language of the world. He is also  lied to, robbed, kidnapped, threatened with death, abandoned, and beaten. He debates quitting his dream, returning home, remaining a shepherd. Contenting himself with the things he knows, the life he trusts. At least he tried, no one can begrudge him that.

No one, that is, except Santiago himself.

*****

Missus’ first gift arrived as seventh grade ended, a yellow-clasp envelope stuffed with assignments sixth-grade me had completed, along with a short note in which she wished me well and explained she’d be sending these missives every so often. Memory summons their mimeographed tang, their smudged purple faces,  and yet I can’t recall their exact contents nor what I did with them. I would read them and smile, remembering, and then I would forget about them, about her, until the next one arrived, not every year, but every so often, the last one coming as I prepared to graduate high school and major in journalism at Penn State. In that envelope, she’d enclosed a survey I’d taken upon entering the program, stating my interests and strengths. I want to go to college, I said. I want to be a writer.

How lovely to be reminded of where I’d been. 

How encouraging to be reminded of what I could become.

That was her gift, you see. Not the objects themselves, but the opportunity to reflect on my progress. To consider whether I’d become lost or was on the right path, and to adjust accordingly. 

What an incredibly simple, yet powerful tool. By senior year, I’d begun to understand Missus’ intent.

A few years and adjustments later, I became an English teacher rather than a journalist, and I struggled with a particularly difficult and disengaged student body. How do you encourage young people to strive toward a future they can’t even imagine, let alone articulate? I recalled the example Missus had set, and I  asked my September 7th-graders to imagine themselves in June. 

Write the letter your future selves would want to read, I said. 

June, I delivered their letters then asked them to write to their senior year selves. When I began teaching seniors, I asked them to do the same, promising to send their June letters five years after graduation. Few believed I would hold on to them for that long. Fewer still believed I would mail them. 

Until letters started arriving as promised. Until siblings and friends received theirs, and each new class started asking in September, When are we writing our letters? 

Someone’s going to read your letter, someone’s going to read your life.

What story do you want them to tell?

As Coehlo asserts in his Introduction, “The secret of life…is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” So why do so many of us stay put when life has knocked us down, as if we’re waiting to be rescued? According to the king of Salem, we give up because we’ve fallen for “the world’s greatest lie…that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.”

In other words, we wrongly believe that if something is meant to be, it will be, with little to no effort on our parts, and we interpret obstacles as “proof” that the “something” we desire isn’t possible. Ask any successful person in any endeavor how they achieved their goals and they will all tell some version of the same story: 

Setting a goal is merely the first step. Destiny isn’t magic, and believing it will do the hard work for you is the fool’s path to certain failure. 

You also can’t do it alone. 

You need teachers.

And no, I don’t mean the ones in classrooms, though they can be.

The king calls them omens. People and events whose examples–good and bad–teach us how to achieve our goals, how to avoid distractions. We learn from them as we observe and interact, as we try and fail and try again. They are like stars, illuminating what we may not otherwise see. Encouraging us not only to STAND UP when we are knocked down, but to envision where we can be if we do.

Like The Alchemist, and like those letters. 

Before I retired from teaching last June, I introduced the letter unit to my last senior class. I reminded them of Santiago and what they discovered by evaluating his failures and successes. I encouraged them to review their goal cards they’d made in September and posted around our classroom. Then, I showed  them an empty manilla envelope marked like its predecessors. CLASS OF 2022, TO BE MAILED JUNE 2027.

A hush settled.

Some students frowned.

Others leaned in. 

Ohmygawd, someone said. We’ll be so old.

They laughed, because there’s one in every class, just as there’s always one who wants me to guarantee their letter will reach them.  

What do you do with them, they asked when I revealed the envelope marked RETURNED. Because while most of the letters arrive safely, some of them come back to me, their faces marred by yellow stickers. Undeliverable, they say. Or, no forwarding address. 

I bet you throw them away, someone else said. I would.

No, I said. I never throw away returned letters.  I try to locate their writers. Social media helps, so do my students. I’ve had former students email with their new addresses, others pop in with updates on themselves or a classmate. Once, I found someone after eleven years. 

But what if you can’t find them? What if they’re, you know… dead? 

What they really meant was, Us. What they really meant was, I.

Few ever laugh at those questions. 

Because sometimes, yes, the writer has died. Sometimes predictably, sometimes unexpectedly. Always, however, far too young. When that happens, I strive to be respectful. I reach out to the family or to someone close and ask, Is this letter something you want? What do you need me to do? Then I do it.

How many of you have ever received a letter in the mail, I asked as I distributed blank envelopes. A real letter, written by someone dear? When Missus sent me my letters over 40 years ago, people corresponded all the time.

No one raised their hand.

While some of them had been drafting their letters for months, some of them had no idea what to write. Fewer still knew how to address an envelope properly. I gave them guidelines but told them, Write whatever you want. This is your letter, not mine. I don’t read them. 

But someone will. Someone’s going to read your letter, someone’s going to read your life.

What story do you want them to tell?

*****

When I cleaned out my classroom, I brought their envelope home and placed it with five others, four marked with the year of their mailing, one marked RETURNED. A few weeks ago, I emptied one of the envelopes’ contents onto my home office desk.  

Class of 2018, it reads. To be mailed June 2023. 

As I’ve done hundreds of times before, I resecure the back of each letter and double-check the postage. I read each name and coax their faces into view, and I send a wish for them into the universe.  Serenity. Courage. Wisdom. 

I hope the universe delivers.

I haven’t thought about them in years, but as I deposit them into the mail slot of my local post office I remember where they sat third period. I recall their humor, their foibles, their strength. How they challenged me each and every day to be my best, to be what they needed. To be what they deserved.

I know I tried. I know I didn’t always get it right.  I know their examples still encourage me to stand and try again, even though I’m no longer in the classroom.

Have you ever written a five year letter to yourself, one of my honors students stopped writing to ask me. If not, you should.

They were my teachers then. They are my teachers still.

And always, they make me smile.

*****

So does Santiago find his treasure? Does he achieve his Personal Legend?

You should know me by now. You should know I’m going to tell you, Read the book.

I will tell you this, however. 

Santiago’s story is about more than travelling and treasure. There’s a reason Coelho called it The Alchemist.

In the book’s Epilogue, Santiago has returned to where his story began, at an abandoned church somewhere in Andalusia. He recalls the people he’s met, the tribulations he’s endured. He shouts at the sky, If you knew I’d end up back here, couldn’t you have spared me from suffering?

No, a voice answers, and Santiago smiles.

I’d like to think Missus is smiling, too.

*****

I usually post the first Saturday of each month.

Next up, August 5: Original flash fiction inspired by May’s recent StoryADay Challenge

Thanks for reading 🙂