Day Three- Mrs. Tracy and the Second Grade

      My journey of faith leads me to the second grade. A year that changed my life. A year that made it possible to write this blog without starting each sentence with the same word. :)
      It was a big year and at first it wasn't going the way I wanted it to.
      But thank goodness it unfolded the way it did.

  
      My second grade self; a bit chubby, with long, mousy brown hair and eager to learn; stepped into Mrs. H's room. It was a typical room, not exciting, not cluttered- just efficient and sterile. The huge chalkboard  took up the entire front wall of the class, with all the desks in neat rows facing it, like soldiers standing to attention. A row of big windows lined the entire wall opposite the entrance.
      I quickly picked a desk near the windows because outside those windows there was life.
      Adventure. A little bit of life in the otherwise cold, Arctic environment that was my second grade life.
     Towering maple trees lined the school outside my view and when I was bored it was easy to be distracted by the whirling and swirling of maple tree seeds, like little helicopter blades traveling where the wind took them.
     I wasn't fond of Mrs. H, not after she caught me counting on my fingers. 
    "Don't count on your fingers." She frowned, her white bushy eyebrows drawing together with icy disapproval.
    I just stared at her, afraid to question this imposing, strict disciplinarian.
    "When you're an adult all your fingers might be chopped off, or frozen off and then they'll have to chop them off and then what are you going to count on? You won't be able to count on them anymore. Math in your head."
     Chopped off? Frozen off? I swallowed, staring at my fingers, completely horrified.
     But that was Mrs H's teaching style.

    
     For reading groups, all the second grade was going to be tested and then divided into three different levels with each second grade teacher taking a class. Mr. S would take the highest readers, I know I would be in that group. Mrs. Tracy would teach the middle group and Mrs. H would have the struggling kids.
     On the day of the test, I knew, just knew that I would be put in Mr. S's class. I had devoured every book I could read since I was preschool age. The library and I were already great pals. There was no question in my mind which group I was going to belong to.

     Unfortunately, the reading test wasn't what I was expecting. I had to read passages from books- aloud- with perfect pronunciation.
     I, had to read aloud, the kid that had a speech teacher.

    I knew what the words meant, I had a huge dictionary inside my head.
    But I struggled to pronounce the words correctly.

   When the groups were decided, I wasn't selected for Mr. S's class. I was placed with Mrs. Tracy.
   Me. The smarty pants of the second grade was put in a class that wasn't the highest level.
   I was embarrassed. Mad at myself for failing. My pride had taken a hit.
   But sometimes pride has to fall.


   The day of our new reading groups I entered Mrs. Tracy's room with resentment and anger. I just knew I was in the wrong group, the teachers didn't know what they were doing.
   I stepped into her room ready to hate her and then I froze...if Mrs. H was rim rod straight and cold...
   Then Mrs. Tracy was the exact opposite. Her room was warm and inviting. Mobiles, made of natural materials, hung from the ceiling. Posters, not silly school charts, but art covered the walls. Her colors were forest green, warm brown and Earthy tones. In the corner, she had made a reading corner with bean bag chairs and an Earth tone colored rug, surrounded by short, wooden bookshelves. Kids with content smiles read intently.
    And even though she had been assigned the same sterile space that all the other teachers had been given, she had created something special and unique. A true learning environment.
   Our group from Mrs. H's class stood in shock. How come our room didn't look like this?
    This was a paradise.
 
    Mrs. Tracy approached us with a gentle, welcoming smile on her face. Some where in her fifties, her long, thick black hair was only peppered with a bit of gray. But it wasn't styled, just drawn back into a hippie braid and slung casually over her shoulder.
     She was slender, dressed in brown corduroy pants and a flowing blouse. Her hands were beautiful- long, sculpted fingers, wrinkled with age and moving delicately as she spoke softly.
    Every once in a while she would pause and tuck a stray piece of hair back behind her ear. The smile never left face.
    She gestured towards the room and we were invited, actually invited, to enter this wondrous domain she had created.
  None of us hesitated.

   During the next few months I settled into the best kind of learning with her. She had created an environment that was encouraging, nurturing, challenging.
   Softly, with a voice that never seemed frustrated or upset with any of us, she guided us to improve our reading while retaining our love for learning.
   Reading aloud to her I never felt embarrassed by my faltering words.
   She knew my difficulties weren't with the words and their meanings but with my speech.
   This meant she encouraged me to read novels to myself. And enjoy books and their wonderful stories for myself and not allow the difficult schooling part of it damage my love for literature.
   When I completed my work I could read in her reading corner. It was a treat. Not just for me but for all the kids. That corner was never empty because someone was always reading in it.

  She also worked on writing with us. My first story I wrote for her was about a dinosaur. And this poor dinosaur did a lot of things in my dozen sentences.
  But every sentence started with the word, 'the'.
  It was quite repetitious.

   Mrs. Tracy pulled me to the side, she never corrected a student with an audience.
   "Christy, I like your story." Her gentle smile warmed me and I beamed.
   "What if you didn't start every sentence with the same word?" She pointed to my obvious over use of the word, 'the.'
   I frowned at first, hurt because my favorite teacher had found something wrong with my dino story. And then I really started to listen to the encouraging tone in her voice that hadn't threatened me to learn or else but had guided me to learn something new without feeling like I had failed because I hadn't gotten it right the first time.
   From that time forward my stories never overused the word, 'the'.
  And instead of squashing something just blooming, she nurtured it. My love of reading and writing was strengthened by this teacher that I haven't even wanted.
   But I'm so thankful I wasn't put in the other class. I ended up right where I needed to be at that time. My pride had been scuffed but what I learned from Mrs. Tracy changed me. And to this day I still write her. A second grade reading class led to a life long friendship.

   So my journey leads me to believe that we must not let pride get in the way of our faith. We might miss opportunities to know the 'bestest' of friends and mentors.

Day Two- The Blessing of Music

"Ah, ha, ha, ha- staying alive, staying alive. Ah, ha, ha, ha- STAYING ALIVE"

Disco music. You have to love it. (grin)
Wait. What?
You don't?

    I don't blame you. It's not my favorite either but disco music and I have a strange relationship; one that started in the womb.
    See, I don't like disco music. You won't find disco on my iPod and I won't be downloading it from iTunes any time soon.
    As far as the Bee Gee's song, "Staying Alive' goes, I know two words to the lyrics. Are there more?
    Disco balls -spinning round and round- while people who decided they wouldn't be a hippie, thought wearing polyester suits were the ultimate outfit to being groovy.
     They were sadly mistaken, probably lead astray by bad disco music.
     But I digress.

    Disco music and I go way back. Apparently, while my Mom was pregnant she went and saw 'Saturday Night Fever.' There by subjecting me to a whole movie of disco music. The horror. It was torture. I was forced to endure the sounds of disco and John Travolta.
    And I was never the same.
    After that, when ever the fast beat, whirlwind rhythm of disco would venture across the air waves, (which thank goodness grew less and less as one hit wonders took over the radio)- I would start dancing.
   The boogie fever would not...
   Could not be stopped.

   It's like the Pied Piper playing his flute, the sweet sound beacons and I must answer the call.
   And then I'm a disco fool, dancing the hustle, the sprinkler, and whatever all those other crazy moves are called. My children know them. I should be able to teach them break dancing and eighties dance moves, not disco. Urghh.
   I must have been brainwashed in the womb.
   A child born in the seventies, cursed by John Travolta. So I don't like disco music but I'm irresistibly drawn to the beat every time I hear it. :) (small confession, I do like one song. "Walking on Sunshine.")
    How is disco music a blessing? I'm not sure it is. (GRIN and completely kidding.) Roller skating rinks wouldn't have been so popular without it.

   Music is a blessing. And by my parents exposing me early and often to different expressions of this soul stirring sound, I have found that our journey of faith is not only uplifted by music...But measured by the songs we keep in our heart.
   The songs that we combine with our memories so that sometimes all it takes is a few notes of a gently cherished melody to remind us of our love. Of our faith.

   Such a blessing of music, starts in infancy with lullabies; sometimes hummed; sometimes sung softly. The lyrics not always correct and the voice not always perfect but with love...
   knowing we are loved because the music is expressed with LOVE.
   We are forgiving as children if our parents' voice doesn't sound good. We don't care because we are listening to the emotions and those are far more powerful than a perfect octave range. (Although a song sung with love in a beautiful singing voice is a work of art. I'm just thankful that as small children my Bean and Abu were more interesed in being sung to, rather than my scratchy voice.)
    We sing to our babies, with tales of itsy bitsy spiders and pat a cake. Our children learn songs of hope, peace, and reindeers for Christmas concerts.
   And as teenagers we crank it up while driving and let our wildly, crazy, and certainty not sane hormones sing along with music by singers that clearly understand us better than our own parents.

   At weddings, funerals, and special celebrations do we not have some kind of music even if it's only from some one's CD player?
   We honor these events with music that is specially chosen for it's expression.
   Hero hottie and I had the most difficult time choosing a song for our wedding. We liked so many types of music and so many different songs but we couldn't find one that expressed the way we felt.
   Which was love, hopefully happily ever after.
    So we picked a song; sweet and innocent. It was perfect for the time and when life is too gritty or rough I play that song to bring me back to a less complicated time.

    Music surrounds us and if we would journey quietly into nature with hushed reverence and without gadgets stuck in our ears we would find that contrary to the beliefs of humans, who have this mistaken idea that we have created everything first; we will find that music was already apart of nature long before we drummed our fingers with impatience.
 
Music- 
    It's in the wind blowing and rustling.
   It's in the songs of birds and the buzzes of bees and the movement of trees.
   And without this natural rhythm we would live in a world of staccato busyness, artificial and forced, losing the words to an ancient song.
   In this ancient song that we were given, melodies like the beat of our heart, the soft even breathing of a newborn, the chorus of crickets greeting the dusk, we are blessed.
   I have to conclude that our journey of faith is not supposed to be a silent one.
   But one filled with music.

Day One- Teenage Parents

  


  I seethed with all the rage my fourteen year old self could muster...which didn't amount to much as I was the good sibling. So a very unflattering glare, accompanied by a loud, childish stomping tantrum up the stairs was my rebellion.
     Followed by slamming my bedroom door.
     There. That would show them.
     Those uncaring, non understanding, always telling me what to do-
     PARENTS!!

    They simply didn't get me. I know they didn't. How could they? There were old and couldn't understand what it was like to be a teenager. Especially if they were going to laugh at me while I was trying to make a statement with my purposeful stomp up the stairs.
    I threw myself onto my bed, staring up at the ceiling, clearly experiencing the most horrible of ordeals- A teenager trying to talk with her parents.
     Were all parents so tough to communicate with?
      They didn't even speak the same language as me.
      And they weren't any fun. All they did was work, clean and drive us kids around.
     I flipped on my music and ignored the happy family sounds coming from downstairs.
    After a while of pouting I was bored but unwilling to leave my room. What to do?
    I idly sifted through my special box. Silly things, precious things, just a small collection of my first fourteen years of life. Nothing real special. And then...photos of my very young teenage parents, smiling shyly into the camera, looked up at me.
     My Dad wore a blue long sleeve shirt with a seventies styled print on the front. He was barely eighteen and was already taking on the responsibilities of a wife and child. But he smiled.
     My Mom was beautiful in her high school photo, wavy blond hair, much like a Charlie's Angel, dressed in a blouse of red, brown, and orange. She had taken her glasses off and her brilliantly blue eyes sparkled.
    They had been teenage parents back when society wasn't quite as demanding, as say the fifties, for having to wed just for the baby. But it was still expected and assumed.
    My Mom said they didn't marry just because I was coming along though. They married because they were madly in love with each other. I always thought that was cool. Probably the start of my wildly romantic notions.

    My fourteen year old self sighed at the photos. They weren't much older than me and suddenly they had found themselves trying to raise a baby without any higher education, or great job prospects.
    The idea of it was frightening. I could never imagine being such a young mom. Ever.
    I flopped back on my bed, still mad at them but wondering how they did it. How did they raise me while being kids themselves? It must have been so difficult.

    Years later, I look back at my young self and my lack of understanding. Without having the experience of being a grown up and having my own children, answering those questions wasn't possible at the time.
    How had they done it? Through the rough start, poor paying jobs, crappy apartments, health issues and not much family support, how had they pulled it off?
    My answer leads me to love. It started with love and it is what has driven most of their decisions.


    They met in high school, surprisingly I live just a mile or two away from it even though I spent my childhood 1100 miles away from where the path of my remembered existence started.
    (I don't recall the time before my birth. Although, I would love to. Abu, when she was a toddler would always tell me about the angel house she was waiting in before her birth. Probably just fanciful stories of a small child but I will always wonder...)

    Anyway, it was a typing class that changed their life. I'm not sure if they learned how to type in that class or if they were too busy exchanging giggles, blushes, and grins.
    But I am completely grateful that they were forced to take that class together.

   From there, they were together and some time when my Mom was seventeen I was on my way. Ready or not.  With a great amount of courage and stubbornness and with the help of a special teacher my Mom graduated from high school.
   I will always feel gratitude towards that teacher, even though I never met her. She was there for my Mom, helping her accomplish something that was important for my Mom to be able to say 'I did it.'
    Angels come in all shapes and sizes.
  
    My parents married and from there on out it was full speed into motherhood and unfortunately the eighties. :) Luckily, her taste in music was hard rock not Madonna or Tiffany. Thank you Mom!

   Until I became a parent I never realized just how tough it must have been for them. How many hard decisions and difficult times they endured all in the name of love.
   Love for each other.
   Love for me and then my siblings.

  So on Day One of my blessings I find that the path to reclaiming my faith starts with love.

  I think it might even be the main ingredient.

  I thank my parents for giving me that firm and unshakable foundation. I hope and pray for my readers that they had someone in their own childhoods that gave them that same starting point. If not a parent; perhaps a grandparent, teacher, coach or neighbor.
   Call them, if you can and tell them thanks.

   I wish my fourteen year self had known just how important and tough her hippie wannabe parents were... if she had, she wouldn't have spent the next year finding trouble. (grin)