One who made it

Sunshine strained through the post office windows, smeared from dusty spring storms. The young woman in the photo laughed back at me. She was kneeling next to a puppy, all smiles. The brown eyes snared me and I traveled back to another place, another time. I blinked. It was her shadow falling across my desk, rather than her photo, that had startled me then.

“Oh! I didn’t see you.” The papers slapped against each other with the fall of my pen.

I cocked my head to look at her. I started to ask her why she wasn’t at recess, but her stare stopped me. Dark eyes captured my complete attention as a wailing siren might have done on a dark night on the side of a road. I hadn’t expected the search and seizure of her watch.

OK. I surrendered. “What’s up?”

“My mom’s a drunk.” She dropped the words into my lap. “And she is mean.”

She was all of 10 years old. If she hadn’t said anything I would never have guessed. She didn’t fit into any profile I had been trained to consider. I knew I would need to report this and follow up with the family, but right then I returned her gaze.

“So, what are you going to do about it?” I looked her in the eyes.

We talked through recess about things like setting her own alarm clock to make the bus, how to make macaroni and cheese for her little sister and when enough would be enough. I told her that sometimes in this world all we could do was “know it and deal with it.” The bell rang as she slid into her seat so as not to be noticed by the others. And that was that.

I did not see her again until seven years later on the day of her high school graduation when she stopped by my classroom with a yellow rose. Afterward, she randomly appeared at my house to show off various tattoos and share stories I would have preferred not to know.

Then the visits stopped, the letters stopped, the phone calls stopped and I figured she was gone.

But the college commencement announcement bathed in sunshine proved me wrong. The smiling woman in the photo had earned a master’s degree in counseling. She worked at a home for troubled kids and her baby sister was moving in with her, finally. She loved her dog.

She had scribbled, “I guess I made it after all.”

“Yeah, I guess you did,” I said aloud to the post office table littered with mass mailings, not unlike my desk papered with worksheets so many years ago, “and then some.”

My keys jingled as I gathered the mail into a neat pile. It occurred to me that even if we believe that we teach for the thrill and wonders of the ah ha’s, it is the memories of the smallest of moments that keep us rooted in this odd career called public education.

Sometimes we teach, and sometimes we’re lucky enough to reach and make it after all.

Emily Forstner is the professional development coordinator for Mat-Su Borough School District.