First, the "Aha Experience"

As a teacher I struggled to define that moment in time that students understood the concept that a teacher was presenting to them, I called it the "Aha Experience". It is the moment of realization; a time of knowing that happens in an instant, a feeling of completeness and satisfaction that a concept is understood at a deeper level than mere reiteration. The Aha Experience of the student is internal. 

Linking the Aha Experience to the Yea Spot

The Yea Spot could easily be the vocalization or picture of that experience in creative writing made external so that the world can recognize the knowing. 

Meanings of the Yea Spot

... to me and my children

The Yea Spot has many meanings.  It is a spot that grew to mean something to me and my three, now adult children-- as represented in this poem that I wrote for my son.

The Yea Spot by marlene "Are we there yet?" It's only a fifty-minute ride. I measure trips in time, not in distance. Time has more meaning to my three children. My middle child can handle a half-hour ride then small bladder pressure causes a distressed, "Are we there yet?" The thirty-minute mark once held hope to relieve the tension and make the fifty-minute trip an enjoyable time with family  together in car, together in conversation and  sharing music with and attention for one another. But the thirty-minute mark, an old out-house, already had occupants. Spiders made their home and noone was  going to share that space with those creatures. "I can wait, mommy," they said. If they didn't manage their leaving-home-business they sometimes said it with tear-filled eyes. Two girls and one boy not comfortable in this prairie landscape to relieve their worries in a road-side ditch or in the porta-pottie mom brought along just in case. No cover for the introverted and shy.
	Forty-five minutes—there it was. A cement shrine that my son recognized as  a short time away from relief for himself and for his sisters. "Yea!" was often all they had the energy to say. Years later, adult son asks me to photograph the spot. The shrine of our earlier years,  we still call it the "Yea Spot", is now the stimulus that takes us back  to our many trips together bonding  by pain and by sharing in the relief for each other.
As I look through my camera lens, I see this spot  and why it has become so important to us, especially to my son. "Yea" means we help each other cope. "Yea" means someone understands the pain of shyness. "Yea" means we've been through this before. "Yea" means comfort, love, caring, bonding and contact. "Yea" is the source of family. We'll take different trips, each of us.  Every trip will have a "Yea" spot if it invokes  a memory that their mother loved them.

to me and John B. Lee

I was at John's reading at the Lethbridge Public Library Theatre.  It was very clear to me from listening to his writing that John was a not only an exceptional writer, but a man who was undoubtedly a kind and caring parent.  So, when I found out John had free time to spare the following day in Lethbridge, I gave him "Marlene's tour" which included a trip to the Yea Spot.  During my tour, I showed John spots in Lethbridge that had gained special meaning to me -- some day I may share more of them with the rest of the world — for now, I'm only concentrating on the Yea Spot.  I spoke candidly with a man who writes well because he listens so well.  He has a kind and gentle nature which opens people up and he can quickly get to the heart and soul of things.

Here is John's poetic reaction:

Between the Yea Spot and Ticklebelly Hill

for Marlene
by John

Have you ever felt
on the long way home
the thrill
of something familiar, seen

some "yea" spot
you recognize
and mark from the window
of your mother's car
every time you journey back
to where you see
beside the ten-trunk baobab
a weird building fashioned in a spine of stone
and you celebrate
the closeness
you know then
by the last rut in the road
by the lean of the fence
and the look of the yard
and you know then
turn for turn
like pillow smell
you are home
and you can name 
five streets to the very slowing
you can 
sole-touch the threshold
of your own house
at the easing open of the door
you can join your sisters
cheering the well-known place 

or if your father
finds some hill the same way
where a dip in the land
means a weightless gully ride
down where you feel the lift
and you call 
it tickle belly because
the body remembers
though you are oceans away
in time
and you've entered
the heart of the land.

composed, 10 a.m., Monday, May 8, 2000

John B. Lee