Near the Top of the Stairs

Near the Top of the Stairs begins as a poem and ends as a biography. It is a journey of specific memories during the times and locations of a young boy looking back at 80 years of a life. The author looks back through the eyes of his youth and reveals the remembered events that have become his life as he nears the top of the stairs. His early childhood and parents begin the journey followed by an uneventful telling of high school followed by revelations in college that exposes his sexuality and his joy of dance and learning. He learns responsibility as an army officer in South Korea where he learns to teach, and he learns compassion as a high school science teacher where he finds his worth through the development of innovative teaching techniques. HIs shyness gives way to questioning authority that leads to the revelation that his ego often gets in the way of accepting who he has become and what is important in this becoming. Now near the top of the stairs the young boy looking up the stairs acknowledges the creativity associated with dance that freed him to explore and develop to become the young man of 80 near the top of the stairs. And life still inspires him and maybe you to dance.