First day of school, September, 1957. 

I’ve been in school forever, or so it seems.  Monday morning, bright and far too early, I start my 29^th year of teaching. 

I couldn’t wait to be old enough to go to school.  You can’t tell from the picture, but I was so excited that day.  I was horridly impatient for my dad, who felt it was necessary to record every major milestone of his children’s lives on film, to just be finished with the pictures, already!  I was itching to take my treasured, brand new Alice in Wonderland lunchbox (with a thermos!) and head off to kindergarten.  In the 1950’s we had school clothes and play clothes and girls never, ever wore pants to school.  This was a problem for a tomboy like me who lived in her brothers’ hand-me-down jeans and flannel shirts, but at the same time, I was over the moon to be grown up enough to have a school dress and a red one at that. Red, always my favorite color; the color of blood and love.  I was the youngest of three – all of us adopted - exactly three years apart.  My brothers had been in school for years it seemed and finally - finally – it was my turn. 

One of the main reasons I wanted to go to school was to escape my mom.  With my brothers away most of the day, there was no other target but me.  When the rage would build up, I would look for a place to hide, out of her direct line of sight and strive to be as quiet as possible.  The penalty for not hiding well enough were purple hand marks on my upper arms, red slap marks on my face and white wooden spoon marks on my bottom.  It was imperative to disappear.  Disappearing, even for the terrified, can be boring, so in order to entertain myself, while keeping one ear tuned to her whereabouts, I taught myself to read.  What better way to make yourself invisible and silent than to read?  I started by writing my brothers’ names on their lunch bags, laboriously tracing the letters in their names.  L-E-E and B-R-U-C-E, and from there I progressed to the rest of the alphabet.  There was no stopping me.

On her good days, for she had some wonderful days which only confused me more, my mother would give me old catalogs to cut up and paste on paper.  I would choose my favorite items, maybe a doll from the Sears Wishbook or a piece of interesting furniture, and carefully cut them out and paste them on scrap paper.  Painstakingly, I'd copy the names under the pasted images, sounding them out as I worked.  I especially loved the gardening catalogs with their beautiful flowers and colorful vegetables.  At that age, due to a congenital heart condition, I wasn’t allowed outside much, and those catalogs transported me into a sunlit garden where I made up stories about sad little princesses and talking birds.  It was also where “bad girl” lived.  She was the one who was always making my mother angry.  It couldn’t be me, could it?

I knew my mother didn’t realize I could read and I kept it my secret.  If she knew, it would become a weapon to be used against me.  She had weapons for all of us.  They were terrible and cunning weapons designed specifically to inflict the most psychic harm on whomever they were directed at.  I don’t like to think about them even today, as if pondering them will make them real again.  Later when she found out I could read, she knew just how to wound me.  Destroy or hide my precious books.  She's scratch out my awkward penmanship with my indelible pen and then break the pen. And so I hid my treasures, my books and papers and pens, well.  But at the same time, I felt empowered.  I had a window into the grownup world of scribbled notes, grocery lists and oh, yes, my brother’s love letters.  I don’t think he’s forgiven me yet.

Reading was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with words.  I would read anything I could get my hands on: newspapers, my father’s medical magazines, even the backs of deodorant cans if nothing else was handy – reading the multisyllabic chemical names of the ingredients seemed somehow exotic.  Once, in a fit of kindness when I was about seven, my mother took me to the library.  I was stunned.  A whole building full of books just for the taking (and of course for the returning as well!)?  Bliss. 

And school?  It became my haven, my escape, my paradise.  I was free to gobble up all the words I wanted until I was full to bursting and was still offered more.  A banquet for a begger.

We have a choice in dealing with our family backgrounds.  We can either repeat it or we can vow to never emulate it.  I chose the latter.  I became a teacher because I knew there were others in red dresses or red shirts, eager to be filled and, at the same time hiding terrible truths.  Others who needed a safe place with someone who really did love them and wouldn’t rip pages out of the books they treasured.  I do my best to lead them to that garden and show them they will be out of harm's way there. 

And so, as another school year dawns, it's time to go pull the red dress out of the closet and get ready to share the feast.  After all these years, red is still my favorite color...