The email arrived on a Tuesday.
Subject line:
I got the job.
I wanted you to know.
I have a folder of these.
Not a large folder.
The kind of folder that is large enough.
You got the job.
You finished the degree.
You started the company.
You got into the program.
You named something after what you learned in my class,
which is a sentence I did not know was possible
until you sent it.
I want to tell you what those emails did.
They arrived in the ordinary middle of things,
between the grading and the planning,
between one contract and the hope of another,
in the years when the institution
was busy deciding my value
by metrics that had nothing to do with you.
And they landed like proof.
Not proof I needed from you.
You do not owe me the evidence of your success.
But proof that arrived anyway,
the way some things arrive,
without being asked,
without being required,
just because you wanted me to know
and you remembered
and you took the time to write.
I took the time to answer every one.
The institution will not find those emails
in any report.
They will not appear
in any metric of teaching effectiveness.
They are not countable
in the way the institution counts things.
I am counting them.
I have been counting them for twenty-five years.
That is the only number
that has never felt insufficient.
Para los que volvieron a contarme. Los cuento entre mis mejores cosas.
For the ones who came back to tell me. I count them among my best things.
