Harry Potter nothing;my first-grade teacher was a witch--a tribute to my mother

Is it just me or is there something concerning about that one?

Hermione step aside: meet Mrs. Eolne (and I didn’t spell that backward in case she has some loved ones…somewhere). And it is because of Mrs. E. that I have no problem, whatsoever, believing in witches. But when I was five years old, I had not, as of my first grade year, met one. (And for those of you who just want to get to the point about my mom and skip the witch part due to severe religious beliefs of severe scarring from flying monkeys..or both I guess.. then just go to the *)

Starry-eyed, and nearly literate, I began first grade able to read and write. Mine was the first generation after “See Dick Run.” We were the guinea pig 1970’s protégés of a little something called The Programmed Reader.

My brother and sister, however, were raised on Dick and Jane, the crazy wagon-pulling white kids with their dog named Spot. And my siblings made certain I knew how to decipher the secret “See Dick. See Dick run” code before starting first grade. In fact, come to think about it, considering the nearly library-sized collection of school books we have rubber stamped with “property of,” I’m pretty certain my brother probably stole the book from which I learned to read.

But first grade at Cantril Elementary held something much better than the

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old brown and blue cloth-covered primers of the 1960’s. Oh yeah…we received shiny purple magazine-like readers with happy cartoon characters named Sam and Pam and their dog named Zip and a cat named Nip. And everything in those readers rhymed, and no word was longer than three letters.

I  guess the creators of Sam and Pam thought the “ck” blend of Dick and the silent “e” conundrum in Jane were problematic for young reader—not mention that the sentence “See Dick Run” actually contains two verbs, or the implied “you” subject creates two subjects, or that “Dick Run” is probably an implied clause reading more accurately “(you) see (that) Dick runs.”  Honestly! How did they ever expect kids to learn to speak English?

Well, these must have been the same geniuses who decided to print the answers to each fill-in-the-blank on the inside margins and then trust six-year-olds to cover their answers with a wide bookmark which could be slid, one answer at a time, to check the answers.

Ah yes! The programmed reader was born. The thought, I’m sure, was to give immediate feed back to the student and eliminate grading for teachers. The inventors probably thought it would create a generation of geniuses. What it created, however, was a generation of cheaters.

When I finished my programmed reader in a week, Mrs. E—who was so nearly ready to retire she probably drove an RV with a red Good Sam sticker in the back window to school—saw in me the fulfillment of every prophesy she had probably uttered during the first staff meeting after the district proposed the death of Dick and Jane. There is an old Asian proverb that says something about when the lawn mower was missing the neighbor’s son looked like a thief, and I think it probably fits here. But regardless, I was labeled a cheater and sent to the…get this…cloak room.

Now, as I’ve said before, I was well educated at home, and I’d had enough Grimm’s Fairy Tales to know that the only people who ever wear cloaks are witches.

Yeah …that’s right…try being five and going to the cloak room with the Wizard of Oz and those creepy little flying monkeys in your head. Not to mention that the witch masquerades as a normal neighbor riding a bike. I immediately saw through Mrs. E’s thin disguise as a gray-haired, pinch-faced, child hater.

She was much more than that, and I shudder to think of what might have happened if I had brought my dog to school. Wait!...I did bring my new puppy to school one time and he peed on the floor right in front of Mrs. E. (If that’s not proof positive, well then, what is?)

Suffice to say I became intimately acquainted with the cloak room, a small hallway-slash-closet between the classroom and the outside door that smelled of wet mittens and rubber overboots. (Remember overshoes? It was the day when you wore your regular shoes to school and you had cool little white, red or…god forbid…black rubber boots that had a little button and an elastic band to hold them snug around your ankle. And if you ever forgot those overboots, your mom made you wear Roman Meal bread sacks—those ugly orange ones because she was convinced that Wonder Bread was too overly processed to be good for you—over your shoes held up with rubber bands!)

I found myself in the cloak room the day Mrs. E said she had discovered a “long-necked giraffe” in the classroom. I couldn’t have been more thrilled, but when I asked her how it got into the classroom and where was she hiding it, I quickly discerned that this was secret teacher code for “cheater” meaning somebody was copying answers.

Another time I was knuckle-headed enough to suggest that apples, like the ones appearing on our daily phonics worksheets, did not necessarily all come in red. I tried to explain the value of a Golden Delicious and the tartness of the bright green Grannie Smiths—the preferable variety for apply pies. This information, however, was not greeted at all with the enthusiasm I was expecting, and then—when she called me “smart”—I was stupid enough to think she really meant it. So I was sent to the cloak room to “think about being smart.”
The worst and funniest time I was sent to the dreaded cloak room was the time Mrs. E had the lack of common sense to sing the ABC's to us and end with "Now I know my ABC's, tell me what you think of me." C'mon! It's asking too much! She asked!

(*There’s that asterisk) I know by now you are asking “how in the world is this a tribute to your mom?” So I’m going to tell you. My mom just turned 75 last week, and she is the most remarkable woman I have ever met. This Christmas she went snowshoeing with the family and kept right up with her 20-year-old grandsons. She drives off to Texas, she flies to California, she runs women’s groups, she sings in the choir. She is sharp, and funny, and smart, and perhaps the most loving and compassionate woman I have ever met.

Which is why I adore her.

But the thing that sealed her in my heart forever was that day in 1970 when I decide to quit school for the rest of my life. That February day I had come home for lunch (we lived right across the street from the school,and in those days kids actually had moms who were at home and made lunches—go figure) and I had had enough.

I wasn’t going back. I wasn’t going to spend another day in the cloak room. I wasn’t going to read another sentence about Nip and Zip. I still didn’t know how to color inside the lines and-–worst yet—I just couldn’t figure out how to not be me.

My dad, unfortunately, didn’t see the situation quite as tragically as I did. He told me to dry up, buckle up my overshoes and get myself back over to the school, “pronto.”

Well, I didn't.
As the tardy bell rang, I stood on the front step of the school crying my eyes out, completely unable to understand or communicate what had gone so horribly wrong with something that I had been waiting my entire life to begin.

My entire school career could have ended right there. I was ready to face my own misfortune—whatever punishment or retribution it contained—because anything at this point would have seemed better than, or could not have been as horrible as, going back to first grade.

And then I saw her across the street.

My mom appeared in the doorway of our house slipping on her heavy winter coat. Even writing the words now brings a rush of emotion over me. My eyes get as hot as they felt when I first saw her swimming her way toward me through my five-year-old tears. Somehow I knew in that moment that she had not only defied my father, but she was also risking her very life to face the witch of first grade. And she was coming to rescue me.

As she took my hand to walk me down the long tiled hallway to the first-grade classroom, I tried to secretly communicate the fear and terror awaiting her. But there wasn’t enough time.

And that’s when I knew for CERTAIN that my teacher was a witch because she had pulled a transformation spell. When my mom walked into the classroom, Mrs. E had disguised herself as a caring mothering-type, bringing me a “tissue” and asking “what’s wrong, honey?” It was nearly convincing—shape-changer that she was—she nearly appeared to be a real person. And I was afraid, more than ever, because I was scared my mother would fall under her spell. I was terrified my mother would believe and then leave me to suffer the repercussions after the spell had worn off.

But here’s why I love my mom: She didn’t buy the magic act.

My mom knows a witch when she sees one, and she always has ever since.

My mom was fearless, and she still is.

My mom faced the most disingenuous person woman in the world and never even broke a sweat; and she still doesn’t.

My mom made Mrs. E, without a single hateful word, back off, and quit making my life hell. And that’s what she still does.

My mom with the calm confidence of a woman of highest valor, saved my life; and she’s still doing it every day.

I love my mom. I just want to say it here for the entire world! Because for over 30 years, she has been saving my backside and loving me beyond my greatest fears.

She turned 75 a couple days ago, and it makes me wonder, at times, what I will ever do 30 years from now. I wish more than anything in the world, that I can someday be half as a good a mother to my daughters as she has been to me. I learned what a witch was when I was five years old, But I also learned that there is something a lot stronger than any witch on earth.

And that, my friends is woman of God’s dearest heart.