Armor

May 7, 2015

Today I lunched with my Kindergarten teacher, Miss Shirleen. We have known each other these past 35 years since I was the little brown-eyed girl with the bowl cut in her class. She has been a steadfast fan of Missouri State, and since I grew up with my pops at the helm of MSU athletics, we would see each other off and on. I ran into her at the grocery store in the middle of the day back in fall, and she was surprised to see me when I should have been at school.  When I told her I had freed myself from the shackles of my teaching post, she was thrilled for me and mentioned grabbing lunch sometime.

So today we finally found ourselves together again, far away from 1979 and Pershing Elementary. My view from my little spot in her classroom was of a perfect, sweet lady who treated me like she was the luckiest teacher in the world to meet me and teach me. 

My Kindergarten year we were in the eye of a storm. Eight months before I walked through Miss Shirleen's classroom door my mom had walked out of our kitchen, climbed into her car, lowered the garage door, and turned the key. In the wake of her death that icy January, among a hundred other questions to be answered, was what to do with me. My brother was in school already, but my days needed something beyond what the bereaved parents of my dead mother could manage. Don't get me wrong:  they were wonderful, but I was a spirited five year old who liked to act out commercials with household products and sample beer and hide it beneath the shrubbery while my beleaguered Nanny and Papa took their afternoon naps. Dad had tried a preschool or two which I promptly vetoed, declaring, "nope! They want ME to take NAPS!" Finally he found an oasis for me that spring in a saint named Mrs. Tacke at a church preschool in town. And there I was distracted and out of the beer at least three hours a day.

There is no end to the descriptors of memories of that time. You would expect "horrible, tragic, awful." Yes. But I was five. I remember confusion and pain and happiness, too. Our time living with Nanny remains (quite ironically) among the favorite years of my life. I could always breathe a little easier there...and perhaps the oxygen was more abundant on Rogers Avenue because everyone in the house had been hit by the same twister. Or maybe it's because sounds and smells among the pipe and cigarette smoke and the back porch with the perfect swing and the familiar clap of the front door all heralded safety and love. 

The horrible, tragic, awful debris would fall unexpectedly over the next four decades on everyone. And often. That's what happens when moms get in the car and turn the key in a closed garage.  But we all have something that can rain down on us. I know that.

Today Miss Shirleen told me about her 16 grandkids and we swapped stories about baseball and mothering and teaching. As I could feel things wrapping up, Miss Shirleen told me she couldn't imagine how awful all that had been, and that she was proud of me. I don't deserve her admiration, but it was one of those defining moments that etched its place on the plus side of my soul's ledger.  

I thanked her, and then I asked the question I've harbored these many years: "what was I like?" She didn't even have to think. She said, "you would never have known anything had happened to you."

I'm not surprised. 

I lunched with my Kindergarten teacher today, and it was truly delightful. We promised to do it again, and we probably will. In this life, you gotta cling to the people who--however and whenever--help construct the armor you need to withstand the debris.