MEMORIES OF A YOUNG READER

I am one of the fortunate ones. I had a mother who read to me.

As the poet Strickland Gillian says at the end of The Reading Mother:

“You may have tangible wealth untold;

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.

Richer than I you can never be—

I had a Mother who read to me.”

My mother read to me before and after I could read to myself. I started reading to myself, as well as out loud to Mother and other family members, between the ages of three and four. By the time I turned five, I was reading “chapter books,” like the Bobbsey Twins. My mother had read these books as a child, so she put them in my hands as well. There were other helping hands that nurtured me as a reader. This story is about one of those people, Mrs. Eleanor Dybdahl, my first-grade teacher.

When I started first grade, my family was living in California. However, I hadn’t been in school a month, when the US Air Force, my father’s employer, uprooted our lives again. By early October, we were living in Great Falls, Montana in a house in town within a short walk from Lincoln Elementary where Mother enrolled me in first grade on a Friday. So, when Monday came, she walked with me to the school and introduced herself to my teacher, Mrs. Dybdahl. After that, during those lovely fall days, I walked by myself to school and home again.

I was excited about my new school and teacher, as well as meeting new kids. Mother had told me there would be “stuff” I already knew how to do and “stuff” I didn’t yet know how to do. For instance, I could already read and none of my classmates could do that yet. I read whenever books came my way, usually via my mother taking me to the town’s small, but to my eyes, book-packed library on Saturdays. My mother loved libraries.

About a month after I started in Mrs. Dybdahl’s class, a momentous thing happened which directly involved Mrs. Dybdahl.

One afternoon when I arrived home from school, my mother announced, “Your teacher Mrs. Dybdahl called me today and wants to have a conference about you.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine what I could’ve done. But, in my short experience of school, teachers only called the parents if the kid was in trouble, or so I had heard.

“She didn’t say so,” responded Mother, as my thoughts tumbled along.

“What did she say?” I asked boldly.

“She said she wanted to talk to me about you.” Mother pulled me to her in one of her healing hugs. “I told her I would be happy to come in.”

I trusted my mother. I knew she loved me. I was steeped in fairy tales I had first heard her read to me and that I now read to myself from one of my few collections of fairy tales she had purchased for me for my very own.

I blurted out, “So, you think this will be a happily ever after ending?”

Mother kissed me on the top of my head, as she was wont to do and smiled saying, “Yes, that’s exactly what I think. Now, quit worrying and go play. I’m sure it will be alright.”

Since there wasn’t any snow yet on the ground in our yard, I called to Poochie, my dog, pulled on my jacket, and happily lost myself playing with Poochie until Mother called me in for supper. My father was on a flight somewhere, so he wouldn’t be at the table.

The day of the meeting came. It happened after school on a Friday when everyone except the janitor and the principal had vacated the building. Mother and Mrs. Dybdahl met in Mrs. Dybdahl’s classroom while I waited in the hall. It was a tortuous wait, but I kept repeating fervently in my mind “and they all lived happily ever after.”

After what seemed ages to me, but I later learned was only about ten minutes, Mrs. Dybdahl and Mother opened the door smiling and invited me to join them. Mother held out her hand, which I grasped, and we walked together into the classroom. Mrs. Dybdahl had arranged reading circle chairs so we could sit together. Mother sat and I sat beside her. Mrs. Dybdahl joined us in the circle and began to speak, “Candee, you are not in trouble. I wanted to talk to your mother because I think you are extraordinary. You see, I’ve never known a first grader who could already read at the beginning of school.”

“Thank you,” I murmured in amazement. Mrs. Dybdahl was talking to me like Mother, kindly and respectfully, appreciatively, without any of that adult know-it-all edge in her voice.

She continued, “I have noticed lately that in reading circle you have stumbled over words that I was sure you knew and allowed other children to help you sound out the words before you continued reading. Your work sheets are always correct, so I knew you knew how to sound out those words for yourself. It was a puzzle to me, so I asked your mother to come in and help me solve the puzzle.”

Mother had been nodding as she intently listened to Mrs. Dybdahl, and then she gently asked me the big question,

“Why did you do that in reading circle?”

I answered truthfully, “I didn’t want to act like I was smarter than the other kids, cause I didn’t think they would like that. I was afraid they wouldn’t play with me.”

Mrs. Dybdahl smiled at me, “I wondered about that. Your mother said it was probably something like that.”

“Am I in trouble?” I asked again, despite Mother's previous assurance at home. 

“No, no,” Mrs. Dybdahl and Mother said simultaneously.

“Quite the contrary,” continued Mrs. Dybdahl. “Your mother and I have arrived at a solution. She tells me that you love reading stories aloud and often your only audience is your stuffed animals and your dog because she is busy with your baby sister and your dad is working.”

I nodded a firm yes.

Mrs. Dybdahl continued, “So, I thought what if we have you reading aloud to some of your classmates while I work with a smaller group. Then, we’ll switch and you’ll read to the ones I was working with while your first audience gets my attention. You would be helping me and getting to do what you love with your classmates, who will love hearing more stories I’m sure. What do you think about that idea?”

“I like that idea,” I said, “But…” I looked around the room. There were no bookshelves with books in sight from which I could choose to read.

“Ahh, yes, the lack of books, your mother said that would be a problem.”

“Yes,” Mother entered the conversation, “and so I made a suggestion. I told Mrs. Dybdahl I would take you to the library on Saturdays and let you choose five books to check out and bring into class on Mondays. I will get you a special book bag for the books. She can give final approval.”

She had me at Saturdays and library and book bag sealed the deal.

“Can we start tomorrow?” I asked hopefully.

“Mrs. Dybdahl clapped her hands and said, “I was so hoping you would ask that.”

Mother beamed and said, “Yes, we can!”

Mother and I left, knowing that tomorrow we would go to the library and choose the first books. Mother and Mrs. Dybdahl worked together on bringing books into class, and eventually other children brought their favorite books from home and I read all those books aloud to my classmates. Sometimes a story was so beloved that on the playground at recess we “played” the stories in real time.

For the rest of that year, we all lived happily ever after.

Afterword:

I left Montana at the end of first grade when the US Air Force sent us back to California.

I never forgot Mrs. Dybdahl and her creative solution that encouraged me and all the other first graders in her care to further our love of stories and reading.

Thirty-five years later, after I had become a teacher myself, I attended a professional conference. I was sitting in the lobby of the conference hotel waiting to go into an auditorium to hear a keynote speaker, when a fellow teacher sat down next to me. I glanced at her name tag and saw Great Falls, Montana on the label. I told her I had gone to first grade in Great Falls. She asked me what I remembered. So, I told her the story about my first-grade teacher in Great Falls Montana who encouraged me to blossom and grow as a reader.

When I finished telling my story, she asked, “Do you remember her name?”

I answered, “Of course, Mrs. Dybdahl.”

My fellow teacher clapped her hands with glee and said, “Eleanor Dybdahl was a friend of mine. My daughter and hers were in and out of our houses all their growing up years.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you sat down here now. Is Mrs. Dybdahl still alive?”

“No, but her daughter is.”

“Please tell her when you go home that her mother is still remembered for the understanding and kindness that she bestowed long ago upon a little girl who loved to read.”

I taught for many more years and read aloud to my students with joy. Some of them grew up to be teachers and read aloud to their students. Some of them grew up to be mothers and read aloud to their children.

And so the stories go, on and on and on…