It's hot and she is done in, turned off to whats outside her. She can only feel herself and herself feels overwhelmed.
She's a perfect cut of fresh beef, left on the grill too long, moving past pink to overcooked.
With all her new books and all of her new fears, we turn and we leave.
We exit the middle school gates and walk through the heat mirages clinging to the surface of hot pavement before us.
I start my car and try not to look at my daughter's tense face.
My phone rings and it's a friend in the know.
"Tell us what teachers she has", my friend asks.
I take the new school schedule from my daughter's clenched hand. I un-crumple the damp page and I read the list of hard to pronounce, foreign sounding teacher names and classes my special child will begin in just a few days.
As I accidentally murder one name after another, my friend interjects, "OH YOU ARE SO LUCKY! That last one, she's a life changing teacher!"
A cool chill runs through my overheated body and I smile in total and complete relief.
Here it is, the gift in all of this hard to handle change...
The shade spot on a sunny day.
The hidden, bubbling creek secreted in the desert.
The much hoped for but not expected break.
The cant help but sigh after a day of pursed lips.
The unforgettable teacher, the one who for no reason you can explain at the time, changes who you are and leaves you irrevocably improved in ways you will never understand until you are 48 years old and you wake up and read a letter from your mother telling you that your life changing teacher is coming to the end of her own precious and much appreciated life.
Then suddenly you know the words, but you don't want to say them, because if you do, then things are welcome to move forward.
I'm kidding myself I know, but sometimes I believe I can control the universe and the events that affect my own world.
Like... If I never say goodbye, then no one can actually leave me.
I loved this teacher.
She made me feel special.
She made everyone feel good and included and strong and comfortable in high school. Impossible ways to feel at an impossible time in young people's lives but she did it and whats more, she made it look effortless.
When I met her again near the lake where my mother lived, in my twenties, I felt as though she climbed down from the distant place she must have existed all these years, Mount Olympus - - after all, teachers are not humans.
She wasn't real until she reappeared into my life, this time we were peers, friends, drinking buddies, lovers of the lake, appreciators of beauty, complimenters of one another's talents.
She watched me as I became a wife and mother, then just a mother and not a wife.
She came thousands of miles and stayed in my home, I went happily and felt blessed to be asked into hers.
We laughed, we told truths, we opened up to one another. We ate, we drank, we sang, we lived and it was heaven to know her this way. Like children we swam, hunted and picked berries in the woods, walked, talked and played together.
She was even more of a life changer for me as my friend then she was as my teacher.
My tears blind me.
I can find but can't seem to use my words.
I can only tell you that I loved her, that I admired her and I cherished the time I spent with her. I am so much more then grateful to feel that she loved me too.
If I ever doubt that God exists, I should think of this person and what she meant to me and of my great fortune in having had her not once, but twice in my life - as my teacher and then
as my beloved friend.
How blessed I have been.
Nancy, you are my hero.
I loved you then and again and still now and I always, always, always will.
