This is the season when children go back to school with all its challenges, academic and social. And I’m reminded of someone I’ll remember forever for her kindness. Someone who sheltered me when I was small and vulnerable. But this is for all, who since then, have modeled the grace of God when I needed it most.
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Sept. 1959. In first grade, the first thing I learned was that reading meant groups. The first group gathered around the front table with Miss Fontaine. Their hard cover book, The Little White House, displayed a boy in a cowboy suit riding a pony as if reading was galloping fun.
Elaine Bellacroix raised her hand, “May I read first?”
Miss Fontaine beamed as she cantered through the first paragraph.
Betsy Biermann waved her hand, “Me next,” and read at a steady trot.
The following group brought up their blue paperback primers. Maria Romano raised her hand and read, “Oh, Tom. Oh, Susan. See Flip in the wagon.” There were no more volunteers to read the rest of the fascinating story.
My group was last. My primer, the color of a stop sign. As I lifted the lid of my desk, the smell of its scarlet cover brought up a sour burp. My hands sweat.
Miss Fontaine selected Ralphie La Brie to begin, but her weak, “Good job,” couldn’t convince Ralphie or anyone else that his halting syllables were really reading.
Before it was my turn to read, I raised my hand, “Can I go to the nurse?”
Miss Fontaine sighed, narrowed her eyes, and said, “Again?” then walked to the wall phone and called Mrs. Lundgren.
In no time a woman wearing a starched white cap, appeared at my classroom door and led me along the trail to her office. I laid down on a green vinyl cot behind a privacy curtain. Underneath its canvas, I could see her white-stockinged ankles beside her steel desk. My stomach threatened to heave as the clock tick-tocked. When would reading group be over? I couldn’t tell time yet, and I didn’t want anyone to know I couldn’t sound out words.
Mrs. Lundgren peeked inside the curtain. “Want a Saltine?”
I climbed onto her crisp, white lap and laid my damp forehead on her cool, pearlescent buttons.
After a few nibbles, she said, “Feel better?”
I nodded in resignation.
She extended her hand, “Ready to go back?”
Reluctantly, I slid off her comfort zone, and she brushed crumbs from my green plaid dress. Together we walked down the dark hall, her white nurse shoes silent, my Buster Brown saddle shoes slapping each gray tile.
That wasn’t the first time we’d done this, Mrs. Lundgren and I, but always, before she left me at my classroom door, she bent to my stature, placed her wide palm on my little back, and whispered, “I’m here if you need me.”
Looking through the long pane besides the doorknob, I hesitated. Elaine and Betsy hunched over penmanship worksheets meaning reading group was over. Ralphie’s head swiveled around the room. When he spied me outside the door, he broadcast, “Miss Fontaine, she’s back!”
I gazed down the hall, but my angel of mercy was gone. I had no choice but to open the door and get back in the saddle again.
I assume both my first-grade teacher and my school nurse are long gone, but the attitudes of their hearts are eternally etched in my own. I have been especially impatient and judgmental this week while others have been especially kind and invested in me. This is an old story, but I share it because I’ve realized anew how much kindness matters.
For we are God’s handiwork,
created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10
Copyright 2022 by Ann C. Averill
Cover photo by Jeffrey Hamilton on Unsplash
Heart!