I have a soft, warm glow where my heart used to be located. That beating pump was replaced today by a cloud of puffy softness, which seems to expand every time I review the events of this day.
It started a bit sadly, to be perfectly honest. Grandma Long, Pauline Jewel, slipped away to meet her Maker two nights ago. I spent yesterday remembering her and surprisingly tearful. She was ninety-six, after all, and had been diagnosed with cancer for some time. I wasn’t surprised by the news. I just… I can’t even put into words why or what. I suddenly missed her, I guess. Anyway, I suppose I don’t need to defend myself to you. If I want to be sad, doggonit, I will be.
Yesterday morning when I arrived at school, I found a small priority mail package sitting primly in my mailbox in the workroom. I grabbed it and noticed the address as being from my hometown of St. Louis and the sender a woman who has known me most of my life. I gave the box a little shake, like a four-year-old snooping under the Christmas tree. I smiled as I identified the sound. Dirt. Had to be dirt. I headed to my classroom and placed the unopened box on the easel in the reading corner. I wanted to open it with the children as witness.
Reading and math block came and went, and with the shortened school week, I was trying to cram curriculum and concepts into their poor brains like trash in a compactor. About noon I got the news about Grandma, and suddenly I was trying to process, and function, and think ahead to getting myself to the funeral, and on and on. The day both sped up and began to drag like cement shoes. The package remained sealed and would have to wait for another day.
My first grade angels arrived this morning, and the usual cacophony of voices and early morning distractions began. Somewhere in the middle of “The Unload” as I like to call the backpack emptying ritual, Little Blondie handed me a zippered bag with a letter and a small sample of sand. My eyes widened. “What’s THIS?” I demanded. A slow smile spread across his adorable face. “My mom sent it,” was all he said. But from where, who, how???? He had no answers. I quickly read the note that stated the sand had come from Omaha Beach in France. Cool. Very cool. Way, groovy, completely cool. This soil sample thing was taking off. Mr. I’ve-Had-This-In-My-Backpack-For-
Who-Knows-How-Long suddenly remembered that he also had a sample to give me. It too was sand, this from a beach in Florida, couriered by his vacationing auntie. Awesome! Hugs of joy from Mrs. Dahl. My eye caught the still-unopened package sitting on the easel. OK, during reading we will open it together, I decide.
Pledge to the flag, morning snack, stickers on charts for books read, morning wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee song (that’s what I call it anyway). Sight word search in the newspaper, new 24-hour words dispensed, and finally we sat down for reading. I showed my students the wonderful sand samples and shared the note. “And look! Another package for us came yesterday. I think we should open it right now.” A package for us?? We are collectively excited. With flair I broke the seal and three small bags of dirt fell onto my lap, along with a letter addressed to me. The three bags were labeled and I now was curious about what they said. The first one read, “Ferguson Church.” A tender smile touched my lips. My life had revolved around Ferguson Church when I was a child. My dad was the school principal for the church school and I had spent most of my waking hours in that building. Wonderful and warm memories flooded me. How thoughtful, I marveled.
Then I lifted the second bag of soil. “Your home on Elizabeth.” What?! She sent dirt from the yard of the house where I grew up?? I instantly felt the sting of tears fill my eyes. The children are staring at me as I stare at a plastic bag of dirt. “I can’t believe…. How in the world…why would anyone….,“ I babble before my voice trails off. I pick up the third and read its label. This one lists the address of a second home. I had lived in only two houses during my years in St. Louis. She had visited both and sent a piece of each one to me.
Now the tears are unchecked and eight little faces are unsure what to do. Was I happy or sad? They weren’t sure and I felt their discomfort, but reached for the letter regardless. I needed to explore this amazing mystery to its fullest end. The letter is lengthy, but I share it because it is so precious.
It began:
“Dear sweet Vonda.” I am obviously going to need a tissue, and soon. How could she have known that on this day I would need the soothing hand of a familiar friend to comfort my heart? I read on.
“How busy you have been in the years between then and now. You have traveled from a beautiful girl, to a beautiful mom and teacher. You claim to be a first year teacher but as we all know, being a good mom means constant, often unintentional teaching.”
I check the computer daily for more word from the chilly north. I have copied all of your blogs and have them in an ever-growing notebook. I am so proud of you. God has truly gifted you with your ability to manipulate the English language making me hang on every word and thought.
How blessed your 8 charges are to be the recipients of your vast creativity. How blessed I feel I am, to be given the opportunity to share in one of your classroom adventures. Please find 3 bags of Missouri clay housed in the ever-useful zippered baggies.
One of the labeled bags contains dirt from the grounds of the church where you worshipped and were married.
Another bag holds the precious dirt from your back yard when you guys lived next to the church on Elizabeth. As I was dislodging the dirt from the ground I wondered if this could have once been one of the Miller girls’ mud pies.
I succeeded at some secret, undercover work as I boldly walked up the familiar sidewalk, trusty spoon and baggie in hand, to your former house in Florissant. Leaving all self-respect in the car, fully rehearsing my speech about a former resident who now teaches school way up north and is collecting dirt, I rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. I was relieved that no one answered but I felt like a burglar as I scouted out my surroundings looking for authorities who just might handcuff me and carry me away if I tried to explain my mission to them.
From there, I found a good spot under a tree where I thought a hole noticed would surely be blamed on a poor, unsuspecting mole. With my heart racing, I did my dirty deed and raced to the car and sped away feeling like I had accomplished the impossible when I caught, in my peripheral vision, a man standing by his car waving at me. Me thinks he was witness to the crime, however, no police have visited me thus far, so I think I’m in the clear.
Well, I trust your class will enjoy the Missouri Mud. Again, thanks for giving me the chance to be a part of your world. If I can help in any other way, suffice it to say, “I’d love to.”
I’m anxious to visit you again the next time you blog.
Forever Love,
Peggy”
By the time the last words of her precious letter had left my lips, I am sobbing. I mean, can you IMAGINE? The idea was genius. The time and trouble she went to extraordinary. The significance of each place in my life and the symbols they represent of how my life was formed are without compare. Knowing that she stole dirt is so ridiculously funny, it is priceless.
My earliest memories have their origins in that first house. It is quite possible that I am in possession of mud pie material. Goodness knows I made plenty of them. I stopped reading the letter at that point and asked the kids if they knew the recipe for mud pies. About half did. They all do now.
When I was a moody, silly teenager, we moved to a neighboring suburb, and that was the house that is now two ounces short of its original soil. I suppose if the cops catch up to her, I’ll have to post bond. (“What class project? I have no idea what you are talking about, officer, and I have never seen this woman in my life…”)
And the third representation of my life came from my church, around which my family’s life revolved. I worshipped there, attended school there right to high school graduation, and loved every square inch of that enormous edifice.
I stared at the black substance which had been such a gift from this thoughtful friend to me on this day and wondered at the incredible timing. As I was saying goodbye to my grandmother, I had been reminded that the small pieces of a person’s life accumulate to make the whole person.
It is just dirt. We walk on it everyday, we wash it off of our cars, and grow our hollyhocks in it. It is plentiful and free.
Today it became priceless to me.
My mind roared through memories like laps at Daytona. Racing outside after school to play in that very dirt, sitting on the grass outside the church with my cousin and best friend Sharlene, talking of boys and the things that trouble the young, and slathering my tuna white body with Coppertone as I broiled myself in the backyard in vain attempts to tan (one of the neighborhood girls told me her brother got out the binoculars when I did this and then that was the end of THAT).
I never, ever thought during those years of growing and defining who I would become, that one day many years later, I would sit in a classroom holding a few ounces of soil from my youth and shed tears over it.
Thank you, Grandma, for your part in the fabric of my life. Thank you for teaching me to drink the pear juice out of the can, and giving me homemade dill pickles on my sixteenth birthday, and gum right before we left to go back home every time we visited. You always won at Scrabble. Always. I think I got my love of words from you.
And thank you, Peggy, for showering me with love today. You couldn’t know, of course, that it would arrive and be opened on a day when it would be so incredibly significant to me. Today was the perfect day to be reminded that life’s small moments create the mosaic that will mirror the places and people we encounter. Life’s small moments and daily minutia accumulate to form the person we become. You modeled for me that when a great idea hits, I should follow through and do it. It just might brighten somebody’s day.
Life is short, even when you live to be ninety-six.
Today a dirt thief reminded me of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment