5 posts tagged “education”

My ten-year-old son, W., is working on a short story for his language arts homework. His idea shares some elements of a book he's recently read, so he comes to me with his concerns. "Is that okay?" he asks, after giving me a synopsis of the story. 

"You cannot copyright an idea," I tell him. I use the Cinderella story as an example. "Did you know that in the original French fairy tale, Cinderella's shoes were not made of glass at all? They were made of fur." I say the words "vair" and "verre" to show him how easy it would be to confuse glass and fur. "Maybe the translator knew, but thought it made for a more fanciful, romantic story if her shoes were made of glass. Anyway, you cannot use certain elements unique to Disney's 'Cinderella,' but you can retell it in your own words, your own way. Just steer clear of characters Disney created for their version."

"Like what? Like the glass slippers?"

"That, maybe, and a mouse named Gus-Gus, a cat named Lucifee, all the singing, the birds always twittering around, helping Cinderella sew..."

"So, other than the vermin in the shoes, everything was the same?"

Thinking back on that, I think he must've said "vermin and the shoes." Either way, it sounded terribly funny coming from a ten-year-old.

We mothers – we are merely rudders, guiding our children’s ships through the storms and over the turbulent seas of life – we guide them as steadily and as best we can, but we are not the only influence that determines the outcome of the journey...

Who am I today? I am a woman, a daughter, a wife and mother, a writer. I am confident with unexpected moments of self-doubt, calm with occasional thunderstorms, selfish but generous, affectionate but reserved, intelligent with a few Swiss-cheese holes in my brain, rational but prone to flights of fancy, a dreamer with her feet planted on the ground – and I see none of that as contradictory. I am my mother’s daughter.

My mother nurtured me with love and learning. My parents married young, with the understanding that both would attend and graduate from college. Did having a baby at nineteen deter my mother from her commitment? No! She told me once that my earliest bedtime stories were chapters from her college psych texts. If I am determined, efficient, and able to multitask, it’s because I was raised by a woman who could study, cuddle an infant, and read to her child simultaneously!

Astrologers might argue that the Pisces child, born on a Sunday, so near the pull of the ocean’s tides would naturally be gifted with creativity and a vivid imagination. But I contend that any innate creativity and imagination I possessed was nurtured by a mother who got down on the floor and played with me, allowing herself to be cast in the thousands of roles I invented for her. My love of writing was sparked when she installed a bulletin board in my room, and daily pinned a writing prompt – a quote, a photo, some whimsical item – to it, and supplied me with endless reams of paper and a variety of pens. (She later insisted that I learn to type; I later thanked her for it.)

I have a great appreciation for languages. If I can’t speak fluent French today, it’s not my mother’s fault! My mom’s answer to a whiney eight-year-old who cried out, “I’m bored!” was to enroll her in private French lessons at Berlitz. If I believed that college was just an extension of a child’s compulsory education, it was my mom’s doing – she was still working towards her Master’s degree when I was twelve! She made studying seem as natural as breathing, as essential as eating. Blame my mother for the fact that I started college at age twelve – the early French lessons, her schedule of classes from Kent State lying open on the bed, and my natural curiosity combined: “Do you think they’d let me take French I?” Well why not? With three years of French under my belt and my parents there to support my request, doors opened – and I was enrolled in summer school!

Okay, maybe I can’t speak French fluently today, despite eight years of lessons - but I have learned to entertain myself! If I love Oldies, it’s because my mother handed down her 45-RPM records and a phonograph; if my tastes are eclectic, it’s because she also made sure I attended the symphony and the ballet, met Beverly Sills, saw Linda Ronstadt and The Irish Rovers in concert, and took piano lessons. If I can appreciate fine art, it’s because one of my mother’s most cherished books was Jansen’s History of Art – and because she saw to it that I got to tour the Louvre.

While my mother built my confidence and self-esteem, she took care never to talk down to me, never to sugar-coat the truth, never to inflate my ego unrealistically so that the world at large could tear down what she had so carefully built. All her life, I could rely on my mother to be a trustworthy touchstone, an honest critic as well as a staunch supporter. If I am happy, content with who I am, it’s because my mother never allowed me to believe that my best wasn’t good enough. If I am able to appreciate constructive criticism and learn from it, it is because I had a mother who dished it out with love.

Eighteen years ago, I became a mother, myself. When I held my daughter in my arms, I realized the awesome responsibility my mother took on at the tender age of nineteen. For the first time, it hit me just how much I was loved. And that’s when I knew that the debt I owed her was marked “payable to my grandchildren.”

When my mom died – on Valentine’s Day 2002 – I lost not only my mother, but my best friend. Though she always insisted “It’s not my job to be your friend – I’m your mother,” she couldn’t help but be both. I miss her, but because of her, I am strong enough to wipe away the tears, smile, and go boldly forward in my own journey of motherhood.

Consider the source

There's a little game I refuse to play. It's called, "You can't be friends with me if you're friends with [fill in the blank]!" My stock answer to that is, "Fine, I'm sorry you feel that way. I guess we can't be friends." I don't care if the person saying it is my best friend at the time, and [fill in the blank] is someone I hardly know.

I also learned, back in grade school, not to judge someone based on others' opinions. Oh, granted, others opinions hold some sway; I may be more cautious in getting to know someone if I've been given specific reasons to be, or I may be more open if people I trust and respect speak highly of the person. I can also be persuaded by facts - like rap sheets. But opinions and hearsay have no power.

The Witch

One Halloween, my friends and I dressed up and met on the road to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. It was a small, close-knit village; my mom had grown up there, too, and many of my friends were children of her school friends. None of us could make a move without it getting back to our parents, so we were all pretty well behaved. And the neighborhood was safe; we were allowed to roam, mostly unsupervised, for several blocks at night, ringing doorbells and begging for candy, provided we only went to houses that had their porch lights on.

Just around the corner from my house, there was an older wooden home set back from the road, almost within reach of the railroad tracks. I'd never been there before, on Halloween, but the light was on so I started up the sidewalk. My best friend, Mary, and her sister, Val, stopped me.

"You can't go there!"

"Why not?"

"Because that woman's a witch. She hates kids. She's got a gun, and she'll shoot you. And she's got a guard dog. He's mean. He'll eat you."

I thought this was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard, but they were quite serious, judging by their wide eyes and pale faces. They tugged at my sleeve and tried to drag me away from the house. "The light's on," I said.

"So?"

"Well, wouldn't the light be OFF if she didn't want us to come to the door?"

"She'll shoot you with her gun. She'll sic her dog on you."

I pulled free and marched right up to the front door. Val hung back, on the road, ready to run for help. Mary timidly joined me. I rang the bell.

The door opened, and the woman who answered it peered out at us through Coke-bottle glasses that made her eyes seem three times larger than normal. "Hello," she said. She looked like somebody's grandma.

"Trick or treat!" I said.

"Oh, do come in. You're the first trick-or-treaters I've had all night. I was afraid no one was coming!" Her dog, a tiny little bundle of energy and enthusiasm, pressed his nose to the door and wagged his tail. "I'm Mrs. Morgan. And you are…?" She opened the door and we introduced ourselves. We stepped into a well-lighted foyer, where card tables were covered with little cups full of apple cider and plastic bags filled with homemade cookies. There were enough treats, there, for all the neighborhood kids.

Mary and I looked at each other. How could we tell this sweet old lady that the other children wouldn't be coming? That the word on the street was, she was a mean old hag who liked to shoot kids and feed their bones to her dog? I bent down to pet the vicious mutt. He licked my hand.

We couldn't do it. We drank some cider, took a bag or two of cookies, and told Mrs. Morgan we had to go - but that we'd be back.

After knocking some sense into Val and goading her into walking up to Mrs. Morgan's house for cookies, herself, the three of us made the rounds and told everyone that they'd better go to the "witch's house" or be branded chickens and idiots for life. We showed them the cookies they'd be missing if they didn't. We told them all about the nice old lady and her yappy little furball "guard dog." I think we made her night.

Mary and I became frequent visitors at Mrs. Morgan's house after that, bringing her flowers from our gardens: bright yellow branches of forsythia, fragrant purple lilacs, red and pink tulips, and the occasional sticky, ant-covered peony bouquet. She always seemed delighted to see us, and spent hours telling us about herself, her family, her dog, and the history of the little town we were growing up in. She had an old-fashioned crank telephone and lots of antiques. Her house was one of the original resort homes back around the turn of the century, when the whole village was a resort and amusement park.

I finally confessed to my mom that I had befriended the woman everyone had said was a witch, despite worrying a little that my mom would be mad I'd spent so much time talking to a "stranger." She laughed, and told me she knew Mrs. Morgan - who, Mom said, seemed old back when she was a kid. The kids had called Mrs. Morgan a witch back then, too, and Mom was glad I'd discovered the truth for myself.

The Bitch

Each year, on the last day of school, we were told who our teacher would be the following year. I was delighted to be moving on to Second Grade, but terrified by the news that my teacher would be Mrs. Hansen.

"Oh, she's mean."

"She hates kids."

"You won't like her. She's strict."

I went home in tears and begged my mother to call the school. I just couldn't have the dreaded Mrs. Hansen next year - for a whole year. After all, she was mean. And I had worked myself into a state: my eyes were red and puffy, my cheeks stained with tears, my whole body heaving with sobs at the utter injustice of it all. I knew my mom would come to my aid and save me from a fate worse than death. After all, we had moved so that I wouldn't have my awful Kindergarten teacher in First Grade. (That's another story for another time; suffice it to say that the woman truly did dislike me and actively worked to make me miserable. Furthermore, she "kidnapped" our entire class - okay, not kidnapped, exactly, but she took us on an unauthorized field trip to the donut shop on the city bus, because for some unfathomable reason she decided a class full of Kindergarteners needed to learn how to use public transportation. So yeah, my parents had reason to move when they learned she'd been "promoted" to First Grade at the same time I was.)

This time, though, my mom just smiled. "Have you met this Mrs. Hansen?"

"No. But everyone says she's mean."

"How would you feel if everyone said horrible things about you, called you mean, and people believed them, without getting to know you first?"

This was a trick. I knew it. I just wasn't smart enough to avoid it. "Pretty bad, I guess."

"Would that be fair?"

"No."

"Isn't that what you're doing to Mrs. Hansen?"

"I guess." I sniffled.

"Do you think maybe you could just give it a try? Get to know her for yourself, see how it goes?"

"But Mom--"

"If it turns out that she's really as mean as everyone says she is, I'll call the school and insist they move you to a different class, okay?"

"Okay. I guess. You promise you'll get me out of her class if she's really mean?"

"I promise."

I tried not to spend my summer worrying about it. In fact, I pretty much forgot about it until the first day of school. I went to class wary. But the blue-haired old lady known as Mrs. Hansen didn't seem all that scary. She wasn't particularly mean; she simply laid out the rules and expected us to follow them. But she smiled, too. She might be okay.

A few weeks went by, and I don't remember much about them. They were unremarkable. Mrs. Hansen was just a teacher, like all the others, only older than most I'd had. Probably eighty, at least. And she had that funny, blue, curly hair.

One day, she gave us a worksheet. I don't know if I was bored or what, but I didn't bother to fill in any of the blanks. I hadn't been paying close attention, and didn't realize we'd be required to turn it in - or that we'd be getting a real grade on it. I turned it in blank.

And I got my first "F" the next day.

"F"? Oh, my God. My parents would be furious. I was horrified. Little Miss Smartypants got an "F." I grabbed my #2 pencil and proceeded to grind "I hate Hansen" into the margins of my paper, while my classmates corrected their errors. Apparently, I'd missed the part about correcting errors and turning the paper in again.

"Five minutes," called Mrs. Hansen. "You have five more minutes, then I want those papers on my desk."

I was screwed. I didn't know the word "screwed" back then, but I understood the concept, and knew I was screwed beyond redemption. I frantically tried to erase the hateful words. Not because I didn't mean them, but because now I'd added insult to "F" and that would surely mean a call home to my parents. They would not be amused.

Have you ever tried to erase ground-in pencil marks from manilla paper? Hmm? It can't be done.

I turned the paper in. I don't remember breathing, after that. The phone became a deadly snake, coiled and ready to strike. My adoring parents were going to kill me for this one.

The next day, Mrs. Hansen passed our papers back to us. I still had a big red "F," of course. But beside my horrible, half-erased sentiments, the woman had written - in bright red ink - "I'm sorry."

What?

She was sorry? Oh, God, no one could be sorrier than I was at that very moment. What did Mrs. Hansen have to be sorry for?

Then the worst happened. Those of us who had failed to raise our letter grade would have to come up to her desk for a private chat. I stood in line. My feet were made of lead. I wished God would just strike me dead. And then it was my turn.

Mrs. Hansen stood up. Our eyes met. And she did the strangest thing: she hugged me. "I'm so sorry," she said.

"So am I!" I said. We both cried. The rest of the kids thought we were crazy, but in that fraction of a second, I had found my favorite teacher ever.

Mrs. Hansen never did call my parents. About a year later, my grandparents were throwing a lawn party some twenty miles away, and who should be there but Mrs. Hansen and her husband. I was still afraid she might call - what teacher wouldn't? - but she hadn't. I didn't like her being there at that party at all.

"What is she doing here?" I asked my mom.

"Who? Mrs. Hansen? Oh, she and your grandmother have been friends for years. Didn't I ever tell you? Mrs. Hansen was my Eighth Grade teacher!"

Uh, no, Mom…you omitted that little detail.

Once again, my mother let me discover the truth on my own. And years later, when I 'fessed up to what I'd done back in Second Grade, my mother assured me that Mrs. Hansen had never betrayed me to her. "It was between the two of you. You resolved it, didn't you? That's all that mattered."

I kept in touch with Mrs. Hansen until the day she died, sometime when I was twenty-one. Her son wrote to me and told me how much my friendship and letters had meant to her over the years, but words were inadequate to describe how vitally important her teaching and friendship had been to me over the years.

I love you, Mrs. Hansen. I miss you, but you live on in my thoughts. You are a part of who I am today.