brevity is the soul of wit
When I was four years old, my mom enrolled me in public school, but not without some resistance from the local elementary. "She doesn't need to wait another year," my mother said, explaining how I'd already learned all my shapes and colors, numbers, letters, etc. "And she's been reading since she was three." That apparently clinched it.
Fast forward several months later...
Mrs. W.--my kindergarten teacher--was, as I remember her, a pale, gaunt woman of advanced years with a pile of coarse gray curls crowning her head. I don't recall her being outwardly cruel to anyone, definitely not to yours truly, but she had that withering look about her, that wrong-side-of-the-fairy-tale-tracks manner that would inspire any savvy girl to make a mental note of the nearest wall oven in case teacher one day locked the door and started stuffing us full of unsolicited sweets. One afternoon, Mrs. W. insisted upon speaking to my mother. Presumably she’d meant this to be a one-on-one conversation, but Mom brought me along, as Mom always did, no matter where she went.
"I think it was too soon to send your daughter to school," Mrs. W. said, averting her eyes from mine, as if, by ignoring my presence, I would not comprehend her meaning. I mused that she'd also taken gross liberties with the word think, but, in the interest of decorum, I'd kept my lips firmly sealed.
Mom listened patiently then noted the consistently perfect marks--and, of course, the illustrious star stickers--that had appeared on the daily papers I'd brought home. My teacher elaborated. She agreed that I was excelling at the schoolwork, that I had surpassed my peers by far. Like many educators of the era, however, she also viewed my fundamental nature, my steadfast introversion, as an insurmountable defect. "She may be smart, but," she added, "the child hasn't spoken a word all year. I believe her to be mute."
In an instant, I had not only been reduced to the child, I’d become the derogatorily emphasized, wholly unacceptable mute child. I also learned a valuable lesson from my mother’s response, a sense of humor she—without a doubt—passed on to me.
Fast forward several minutes later...
The woman who had, since my first babbled words, graciously served as the primary audience to my often endless questions and commentaries finally ceased her laughing long enough to reply, her voice tinged with both genuine humor and affection. "Trust me, if my youngest has something to say, you'll be lucky if you can get her to stop talking." She then refused to back down and, despite my teacher's misguided protests, insisted that I remain at school and advance into the first grade. (Thank goodness for Mom; I'd been much too timid to mount my own defense at the time, another textbook sign of my apparent defect. Teacher briefly glanced my way with a spiteful side-eye. What did that W stand for anyway? Might it rhyme with itch?) In retrospect, what I actually heard between the lines of my mother's response was, "If you'd ever challenged her, inspired her rabid curiosity, instead of prattling on about coloring pages, you'd find my daughter discussing most any topic at length...and I do mean length," but, of course, Mom's good breeding and impeccable manners prevented her from ever speaking so bluntly. It's true though. No disrespect to the many inspirational and compassionate teachers out there, but Mrs. W., herself, possessed all the charisma of wallpaper paste, and her assignments could only aspire to be half as interesting as that. To be fair, it was kindergarten, not the Ivy Leagues. How riveting could the lessons possibly have been? Still, I'd have spoken had there been anything intriguing enough to warrant a contribution.
Mom and me, circa nineteen-something-something. Never, ever ask a woman her age.
It’s been three and a half years now since my mom so unexpectedly passed, though it often feels more like three and half weeks. It’s been more decades than I care to acknowledge since my earliest schooldays…or my latest ones, for that matter. My mother I think about often, multiple times each and every day; thoughts of my schooldays occur, on the whole, never at all, but today that changed. As I sat down to prepare this blog, that meeting with Mrs. W.--which had initially terrified then secretly amused me in the aftermath--popped into my head, entirely unbidden. Maybe it's that back-to-school time of year, conjuring up the ghosts of classrooms past, or maybe it's because I'd come here intending to herald in the changing season without any words at all, only a few fitting images snapped earlier today. Yes, sticking to photos of squirrels and Steller's jays, that is, indeed, what I should have done, for if, on this occasion, I'd embraced such extreme brevity--returned to the reticence of my primary schooldays--then any one of you might think me incapable of speech. And, in the moment of that erroneous assumption, I'd hear it in my mind as I'd heard it way back when: like prettily colored leaves cascading from the trees, the mellifluous sounds of my mother's laughter.
Now, as a season of blue skies canters into the sunset and cloud cover takes the reins, I leave you with the accidental lessons of this accidental anecdote: cherish any sliver of light that shines through the darkness, grant no one the power to define who you are, and always--always--keep an eye out for the nearest accessible wall oven.
