Every once in awhile, I finish a book and can’t decide whether I really liked it or really didn’t like it. Sarah Ruhl’s “Lessons from my Teachers” was one such book.

The book is a memoir comprising a series of brief essays about her teachers, as the title suggests, from her earliest years through the current time, when as a 50 year old accomplished playwright, she looks back on her experiences.  I read Ruhl’s earlier book, “Smile” the story of her struggles with her appearance after a Bell’s Palsy left her with an asymmetric face.  I liked that book very much for its honesty and clear writing.

In contrast, this book seemed to veer back and forth from the maudlin to the incisive, from the sentimental to the clear thinking.  We see Ruhl in her many roles–student and teacher, a daughter in a loving family and a grieving daughter after her father’s death when she was 20.  Along the way, we learn of her ability to develop powerful, close relationships with her teachers and students which she attributes to the ability to listen carefully and caringly.

I valued the book because it led me to look back and contemplate the teachers who had made a difference in my life—Miss Kerwin in sixth grade and Miss Locker in seventh who first made me aware that I might be an excellent student; Miss Violet Zielke who taught me Latin in all four years at Oak Park-River Forest High School; Miss Dorothy Schlitt who went toe to toe with Mr. Hawk, the baseball coach at OPRFHS about freeing my time up from practice to work on my science project; Mr. Brummel who was a Harvard grad and Mr. Cady, my college advisor, who suggested I apply to Harvard.  In contrast, I failed to find any meaningful relationships with my college professors except for a graduate student who was my tutor in my major, Government, the soon to become chief of staff for Boston Mayor Kevin White and later my Congressman, Barney Frank.  Medical School at U of Michigan brought some meaningful relationships including Bob Green and George DeMuth, the Deans who enabled me to toss out our traditional public health curriculum and lead a new one which focused on current issues and which later resulted in a book that ran to two editions.  And on and on.

Perhaps the single most valuable nugget in Ruhl’s book was a quote from Walter Pater, the 19th C  British essayist and art critic who wrote:  “Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us—for that moment only.  Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.  Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us….is to sleep before evening.”  In other words, wake up and be present every moment of your life.  Finding those words and contemplating them was reason enough to read Ruhl’s book.