Chapter 60
The Kingston Voices Project celebrated its fifth anniversary with a gathering in the community hall that had been its home now properly leased, renovated with a grant that Nia had helped him apply for, with proper bookshelves and a good sound system for the showcases.
Over five years: one hundred and twelve students through the programme across six cohorts. Four teachers in addition to Marcus, all of them trained by him, all of them exceptional. Four showcases. One published anthology of student work Claudette had edited it with the same precision she brought to everything. Three students who had gone on to study English at university, two who had published creative work in literary journals, one Janelle, who had read the poem about her neighbourhood at the first public showcase who was completing a Master's in creative writing.
Mrs. Baptiste had come to the anniversary. Dr. Forsythe from the Ministry of Education had come. George from the writing group, now in his eighties, sat in the front row and said nothing during the event and everything after it.
'This is what you came home to do,' George said.
'Among other things,' Marcus said.
'Among other things,' George agreed. 'But this is the clearest one. This is the line drawn most directly between who you are and what you were for.'
Marcus thought about that.
He was thirty-five years old. He had been teaching for thirteen years. He had a head of department role, a non-profit organization, a book in print, two children who were growing into themselves with confidence, and a wife he loved more clearly now than he had on the day he proposed.
He had arrived somewhere real. Not the end never the end, that was not how he understood life but a place of genuine fullness, a life that was, in all its complexity, exactly what he had been building toward.
He wrote in his journal: 'Five years. One hundred and twelve students. Many of them will go further than I can see. That is the point. Plant the tree, water the soil, trust the roots. You don't have to watch every branch to know the tree is growing.