Last Sunday, for the second consecutive year, Cathy and I attended our local high school’s spring musical. The production was excellent, but what struck me most, as it did last year, was how I got a little teary-eyed at the curtain call because I was thinking about what it must be like for parents to see their children coming to recognize their passions and their talents. The closest I can come to what these parents must be feeling is what it’s like for me when I see my former students step fully into their adult lives.

I’ve taught long enough to have former students who are approaching middle age. I’ve been witness to their career accomplishments, their health challenges, the families they adore. I’ve watched them accept and meet the trials life sends to all of us. I’ve celebrated their victories and I’ve mourned their losses. When they were my students, some were full of optimism and bravado; others were just beginning to find themselves. Sometimes they were involved with the petty skirmishes that creative writing programs can create. At other times, they came seeking my advice. Sometimes they shed tears, and I slid my box of tissues their way and let them cry, remembering how vulnerable I felt many years ago when I was a student. I’ve given them my encouragement, and, when necessary, I’ve spoken the straight truth to them. In short, I’ve tried to be there for them in a way I never had the chance to be for sons and daughters of my own.

Teaching has always been more for me than simply the transmission of knowledge. It’s also been a process by which I do my best to prepare students for the lives ahead of them. Creative writing courses can benefit even those who don’t go on to be published writers. A fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction workshop teaches the complexity of what it is to be human. When we write and read, we increase our ability to better understand the sources of people’s complicated behaviors. We become more empathetic, a skill that serves us well throughout our lives.

So, at the curtain call last Sunday, I thought of all the beautiful lives just waiting to be lived, and all the mistakes waiting to be made, and all the lessons waiting to be learned, and all the tears waiting to be cried, and all the victories waiting to be won. I thought of all the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, ministers, youth leaders, coaches, counselors, teachers who in some way shined a light that helped these young people step into what would become the rest of their lives.

When those young performers took their bows, I hope they knew how many people were filled with pride and how many people soaked in the applause.