Mrs. Richmond

I remember that I was about to turn six and was in first grade. We’d all made it through kindergarten - except Billy Johnson, poor guy - and were in real school. Meaning, in a GRADE, not in K. We had our own ergonomically-incorrect desks, which were all firmly bolted to the floor. I know that seems like something old-fashioned or impossible nowadays, with all the classroom configurations that have come about since Summerhill.

I sat on the left side, the one with the eight windows, tall and shiny, fly-specked at the very top, that looked in a direction which was probably to the east. This was also the front of the school, on Canandaigua Street. It was not far from what we locals all knew as The Four Corners (check out Ripley’s Believe It or Not for the whole story). I still don't know which way I was looking when I looked out the enormous, light-filled windows that year, but it was a view that made me happy.

Not only was the Canandaigua Street side the best side to sit; my desk was also the first one, the one nearest the teacher’s desk. Sitting close to the teacher, whom I must have thought of as a second mother as I did every year in primary school, it felt like the safest place in the world. Probably it was. Each teacher knew our families, the names of our parents and our sibling (if we had any). 

The color of the floor and the walls are all a blur now, as is most everything else that year that still straggles across the line between oblivion and faint recollection. Time rarely passed, because everything was in its place. We were all timeless and our lack of time was a great gift, even if we didn't know it at the moment. There was no future and nobody felt the need to look forward to it.

We started learning to read and write in first grade, with Mrs. Richmond. I am still grateful for that. For having learned to read, I mean. Having learned to make letters, too, although what we did was technically not writing but printing. Being illiterate never ever passed through my mind, and it would be many years before I would meet people who were illiterate in a language I spoke and wrote fluently, but which was not my first language. 

I state this because it is obvious that, in spite of not having a lot of things growing up, I did have my school and was able to attend it. Life was safe, and even small children were able to walk a few short blocks to school. At the Four Corners the town had crossing guards who were very conscientious, although they were never compensated for their service. I know, because my mother and her best friend were guards for years. My guard was before their time, but I bet I could remember her name if I tried. She helped me cross Main Street safely so many times.

In Mrs. Richmond's first grade class we had Dick, Jane, and Sally for reading. (I probably could finish reciting the books if given a good prompt.) The reading material did become rather boring around mid-year, but at least there were illustrations to look at when the words became worn out.

We had greenish-gray lined paper for writing. I didn’t know which I liked better, the reading or the writing. One hand held the other, if you can imagine it all the way I remember it. And it made me shiver as deep as a little girl can shiver, knowing that by learning to make the letters of the alphabet I was learning to reproduce the marks that made up words, those adorable beings that resided in books. I could even make my own words, have them live on pages I had made. The part about my own words is a very long story and I will not tell it here. 

In any event, all was definitely right with my world. I needed nothing more. Until I got curious, or greedy. Maybe both.

There were ideas that kept turning around in my little head, or maybe it wasn't ideas but rather a childish passion, pure and simple. However we define it, the ideas and possible passion led me to explore the phenomenon of writing at home. It was interesting that my family was not the literary sort, so books were few and far between. What few there were never got read, as far as I could see.

On the other hand, my home was full of writing produced by people who never had a degree of any sort. There were beautifully scribbled notes on scraps of paper, ones my parents left each other. There were hand-addressed envelopes, letters from relatives, greeting cards with long hand-written missives often in fountain pen script. 

The written messages often remained in full view after they were read, as if meant to be shared. Or maybe they were left there to be admire, because of course handwriting, good penmanship, was a work of art. Not like it is now. 

Writing back then was something everybody knew how to do and what people wrote was often quite elegant in form even if the content was less sophisticated. When you took the time to write to someone, it meant you cared. Sort of like the old Hallmark slogan: 'When you care enough to send the very best'. When you care enough, you send a card and write something on it, not just sign your name.

I am almost there, I thought, almost able to write. I can print, so now comes the next step. Soon, my hand will produce something called writing, and nowadays many people can't decipher. I ached with desire. Don't laugh.

No, I can’t for the life of me recall if I asked Mom or Dad to write my name in cursive, or if I figured out how to do it myself. Of course it would be nice to think the initiative was mine, but to claim it would not be honest. Now, to be fair, both my first and my last names were short. That meant not a lot of letters for a little girl's hands to learn, along with figuring out how to connect them smoothly. It was easy. No, I can’t recall how long it took. If I had to guess, I’d say less than a week, at home, after school. 

It was a solitary process, because I wanted to surprise people in my world with what I had learned.

It was yet another sunny morning, since that year of first grade it never seemed to rain or snow. Every day was a good one. This was a typical morning and when the bell grated on our ears, we ran to our desks, setting out what we needed for the first lesson. 

When I was ready, sitting there in the sunny seat with the skyscraper windows, I eyed the lined paper being passed out to the class. Then it was my move, my chance to shine for the teacher. I sat there and proudly, almost triumphantly, wrote - not printed - my name. It was very legible, and it was probably beautiful. 

As has been pointed out, I was not quite six or maybe just barely six, because my birthday came late in the calendar year. If I keep repeating that all was right in my world it is because I was in school and was enthralled by every minute of it. I was there to learn, to be the proverbial sponge of first-grade knowledge. Home was lonely and quite. School was doing things. 

Even so, school and first grade were not paradise. Apparently one could not cross a bridge before coming to it, as the saying goes. Unfortunately, there was no bridge between first grade and second grade other than the one that comes when you finish the first. Only then are you ushered into the second. Mrs. Richmond told me, with the calmest, most devastating voice in the world:

“You can’t write your name yet. You can only print it. You have to wait until second grade.”

There was definitely no joy in Mudville (to reference a great kids’ poem you probably don't remember it's so old) at that moment. I was not in second grade yet and no bridge was going to get me there until the end of the current year of first grade. No, I can’t recall if I cried, but it’s entirely possible that I did. Or maybe I was angry, biting my tongue. However, I suspect I was simply stunned. How could a teacher - a TEACHER - stand in the way of learning? Who had labeled knowing how to write in cursive a second grade skill? 

Well, thankfully outrage was not my style back then. In my head I wasn't shouting at all. I hung my shoulders, nodded, and went back to printing. Over and over.

You know, this is so ironic because nowadays schools don’t teach cursive in any grade and students graduate from high school never having learned to write. Everybody texts and e mails information, so pens and pencils are tools of the past. That's what schools think, although they're wrong and yes, I am outraged at that. Back then, I was mostly just sad. Impatient, too. Just waiting to string all those divine words together.

However, that’s not relevant at this point. The important thing was that my all-is-right world threatened to shrink. It was no longer any fun to be sitting near the teacher’s desk, and I wanted to turn against the alphabet, or at least against the prohibition to use it in its cursive form. I hated printing, hate it today. It slowed me down. Why print if you can write twice as fast?

Maybe this all all just the desire for forbidden fruit. A life in words. Freud might have had a theory about me wanting what I was being deprived of. Today people just look at me a say Who cares if you weren't allowed to write? It wasn't a big deal. We've got smart phones now anyway. People don't want to believe all the dumbing down that's happened in education due to all the theories about early learning. 

This had been years ago. Then one time I was back home visiting my mother and she happened to mention that Mrs. Richmond was still around. Why we were talking about my being in first grade isn't clear. When I found out my teacher still lived about ten minutes' drive from my house, I made up my mind to go see her. She lived on a road I had never been on, but I managed to locate it without using the internet and started to her house.

Why did I look up her address and then decide to go there? Why didn’t I call? That I have also forgotten. Maybe I felt I wanted to surprise her, show up at her door and see if she recognized me. That, or I didn't want to blurt out my real reason for wanting to see her after so many years had passed. Not on the phone. It had to be said to her face.

Or maybe I sensed that I was running out of time to see her again. After all, the question of to write or not to write was only an excuse to visit a person who was part of my first steps up the grand ladder of learning. (People really did think like that back then. You can only understand this story if you keep in mind how much people valued education, how much faith they put in it. My parents certainly were like that, because they knew from personal experienced what being uneducated meant.) 

Arriving at Mrs. Richmond's lovely ranch house, I could see the long, curved driveway was lined with cars, lots of cars. I felt foolish for just showing up and so I quickly turned around in the well-populated driveway and drove home. I thought I would call the next day and then I could tell my first grade teacher what she had done to me. Then I’d laugh, like I’d been waiting years to tell her how I'd felt when told to put the cursive so dutifully learned away for another year. Then we'd both laugh and I'd say I'd like to visit if she had a moment. 

The next day I was sitting at the dining room table with a cup of coffee and the morning newspaper. An old family habit. Coffee and the news, in print, on paper, not over the internet. I read the whole paper, just as I used to before I moved away. 

In the obituaries section, I saw a notice for a person I knew.

I began to shake. I was reading Mrs. Richmond’s obituary and she would never find out how I'd felt the day she told me not to write, only print.

Not that it matters any more, but I really had wanted her to know. And to give her a card with a long message written in my best penmanship. 

I'm sure Mrs. Richmond would have understood, because despite everything, she had been almost the perfect teacher.