Friday, January 7, 2011

Blog Challenge. Day Seven.: Would you take a word picture?

Today is a picture of a person or place that has impacted your life.

But I don't have a picture of her.
So I'll paint her for you.

She had the shortest, poofiest, blondest old lady hair you'd ever seen.
She smiled so big that you could never see her eyes.
She was a public school teacher (granted our po-dunk jr. high was more like private school) but would pull me into her room between classes and pray for me when I was having a bad day.
When we read Jabberwocky, she had a giant costume head she would stick on the end of a yardstick and run around the room waving it in the air.
She had the sweetest, most gentle voice. But could raise it to deafening decibels when necessary.
She told us she'd missed class because she'd been diagnosed with leukemia like she'd been at a hair appointment.
When she passed away a year later, she was most upset that we would hurt for her....when she wouldn't be hurting at all.
She called us her babies, and at her funeral...her husband hugged us each so tightly that we knew he felt the same way.

She was magical.
She told me I could write. She was the very first one.
She was the kind of crazy-beautiful English teacher I long to be.

Can you see her? Oh, I hope you can.
She was beautiful.

7 comments:

Brittany Fletcher said...

This is the sweetest things ever Han.
You made me cry.
Thank you.
Love you.

Anonymous said...

So sweet. How old were you?

Anonymous said...

I was in seventh grade....and had awful hair.

that last part was just for free :)

Regan said...

I hope everyone has a teacher like this at some point in their lives, I know I did. I can so see that you'll be the kind of teacher that makes kids fall in love with books and inspires them to use their imaginations to the fullest.

Anonymous said...

oh Regan, thank you!
one of my Meredith friends (I have several)...and I joke about how I should wear sweatshirts and denim jumpers with velcro weather shapes that I change out to match the actual weather.

Kids will say "who'd you have for freshman english?...that cool, pretty lady with the weather shirts?" "YEAH! she was great!" ;)

and I might actually do it. lol

Regan said...

I think that's a great idea, denim jumpers never go out of style!

Colleen said...

Crying...not surprisingly.

Love you.