Roses for Runaways

It was just about twenty five years ago that I got my very first rose.  Nearly a quarter of a century.  It doesn't seem like such a long time until you put the actual measure of years on it.  It's a wonder how twenty five years can seem so short and yet so long.  It's not like I'm really old now, or that much different, even; it was just a long time ago.

The occasion happened to be my birthday.  To be exact, it was the day before my birthday.  This is hardly important now, but it sure was back then. I tortured myself wondering, whether my rose bearer knew my REAL birth date?  It was my 8th birthday.  Exactitude plagued my second grade brain.

On this auspicious spring Saturday of 1975, the day before my 8th birthday, I was playing with the neighborhood pack.  We were a group of kids who regularly ran around the development, played games, climbed trees, explored, whispered secrets, forged alliances, dared, fought, made up, and generally did what kids do.  On this warm gray day before my birthday, we happened to be in my front yard, playing Duck Duck Goose.

Such an innocent, easy venture back then, if you think about it.  All we ever worried about was, will I get tagged?  Will I be fast enough to catch someone, or will I be doomed to tapping heads for the rest of the afternoon?  Now, twenty five years later, if I ever dared to play, I'd be plagued with more mortal fears: Can I get up without breaking something?  What if my knee gives out?  Will my asthma get the better of me?  - And all that good stuff you get attached to after years of sloth and surgery take their toll.

Anyway, we were playing this game.  I was happy in the spirit of it, knowing that tomorrow, which was MY BIRTHDAY, we were gonna go to Riverside Amusement Park after church, me and my family and all of my friends.  That was going to be my party, and I'd get to ride the teacups and go on the roller coaster because this year on MY BIRTHDAY I'd be tall enough, and I'd get to eat pizza and win prizes and I would get to do everything first.  I didn't know it right at this moment, but I would also have a stupendous fight with my best friend/nemesis Mary Lee Vaco about the whole thing later (as only young girls can do). I'd also get my first – my one and only - Bible from Reverend Olson the next morning at church.  My name and the date graced the first page in neat, godly black ink. MY BIRTHDAY, printed even on a Bible!  It was a big year.

With all the lovely thoughts of our ensuing debauchery, of which I would be the center, and with the joy of playing outside in the grass getting muddy, I didn't really notice the car that was approaching us until it parked right in front of our mailbox, about fifty yards from where we played.

A willowy dark-haired woman got out of the car and walked over to us.  She had something in her hands.  We all got quiet very quickly, the way you do when you're a kid and the grownups get too close.

"Hi, everybody!" she called gaily, waving as she walked towards us.

Smiles erupted all around, as everyone realized that it was Mrs. Smalley, our second grade teacher.  What was she doing here?  No one could have guessed.  Then we became suspicious, and started to whisper… who's in trouble?  Must be bad, really bad, for her to hunt the culprit down on a Saturday!

No one was more surprised than me when she came right over to me, and extended a long, thin package from her hand to mine.  "I wanted to wish you a happy birthday," she said.

It seemed too perilously fragile for me as I took it awkwardly from her hand, and too grand, too spectacular, for me to be worthy of it.  So rather than unwrap it, I peeked carefully at it from behind a corner of its yellow tissue wrapping.  It was a perfect red rose.

To explain what happened next, you'd have to understand how I felt about Mrs. Smalley, and the kind of kid I was.  Mrs. Smalley was more than a teacher; she was a goddess.  Children are already prone to thinking of adults that way, I think; at least I was, as far as I can remember, because adults are so massive and so all-encompassing, so very unfathomable.  Mrs. Smalley was a particularly benevolent deity of the second grade world, because she was kind, and she was fun; she was pretty, she loved to spend time with us, she could do the most amazing things, and she could make us do cool things, too.  She could make paper maché without a single stray dribble of goo.  A boring sheet of paper pressed into squares and treated to a few simple scissor slashes would become a flurry of valentines in her hands.  We all became authors and illustrators at an early age when she helped us create our very own books.  She livened our days with marble painting, puppets, math, reading, and gentle discipline.  The entire school adored her.  Especially me.  When Mom and Dad read "Cinderella" to us at bedtime, I always imagined that the fairy tale princess looked just like Mrs. Smalley.

She seemed to like me back, which I could never fathom.  Kids learn quickly what their role in groups is to be. I already knew that my complete lack of athletic coordination and my big nose doomed me to be forever teased by my peers, and I had already adopted my mantle of social awkwardness without question.  I was painfully shy.  Plus, I was horribly messy; I'd stuff papers into my desk as I got them, which eventually resulted in a fantastic pile that Mrs. Smalley made me skip gym once to clean (which made me love her even more, since I hated gym).  She sat with me while I cleaned, and she even gave me a butterscotch lifesaver when I finished.  Her goodness seemed to know no limits.  Once, during Art, when Scott Perry pushed me, I lost my temper and punched him.  My world crashed around me a second later when Mrs. Smalley's hand fell on my shoulder and she pulled me away.  I was sure I was to be exiled from her good graces forever… prison, I figured.  But she only made me apologize, and after that she seemed to like me just as much as before.  It was a miracle.  She was the first person who taught me that you don’t have to be perfect to be loved.

As I said, everyone adored her.  She used to monitor us at recess, and she would even play with us, jumping rope to the strains of “Teddy Bear Teddy Bear” just as quickly as the rest of us.  She could even double Dutch! She was always surrounded by a mob of children. One day, I got outside late, and the usual mob around her was unusually active.  It jumped and shouted, "Me, pick me, over here". I ran over to the fray and started jumping just like everyone else, without any idea of what was going on. Mrs. Smalley was spinning wildly, and she slowed spectacularly and stopped with her arm extended and finger pointed… right at me. Choruses of disappointment - "No fair" and "lucky" - broke out. Mrs. Smalley congratulated me and briskly led me off. I followed obediently, not knowing what was happening, except that it seemed I was losing my recess outside to go see the principal with Mrs. Smalley. Was this what my peers considered to be a prize?!  I started to sweat.

As it turned out, we were going to the office to call my mother to ask for permission for me to go home with Mrs. Smalley and help her bring her dog and its new litter of puppies back to school. Wow! She had picked ME for that. So I got to skip a class and ride in her car and see her house and play with the puppies. The other kids were appropriately jealous and impressed, and regarded me with a new sort of begrudging respect. I never did find the words to thank Mrs. Smalley for picking me out of the crowd and for sharing a piece of her life with me like that - so I stayed silent about it.

And all that was before MY BIRTHDAY.

So, when Mrs. Smalley, the teacher I adored, came to my house to bring me a perfect red rose on MY BIRTHDAY, or at least the day before, in front of God and Mary Lee Vaco and everybody, I didn't know what to do. My heart felt too big for my body.  I stammered a thank you, and I ranawayasfastasIpossiblycould. Into the house, where my mother waited.

"What's that?"

"I don't know."

"Where'd you get it?"

"Mrs. Smalley brought it."

"She's here?"

"Well, she was..."

"Well, what are you waiting for - invite her in!" Mom reprimanded. My feet were glue. Mom clucked at me and went to the door. Mrs. Smalley was bidding the other kids goodbye from the front seat of her car and preparing to drive away.

"Thank you!" Mom yelled. I waved from behind her.  Mrs. Smalley smiled, waved back, and drove off.

"Why'd you run away like that?" Mom wanted to know.

...

"Why'd you run away like that” on that fine day is something I've never quite figured out. It was not the first time Mom had ever castigated me for running away. I already had a habit of noisily packing my pint-sized flower suitcase (the kind that only could have been mass-produced in the seventies) and clumsily biking off with it whenever I got mad at my family, only to return twenty minutes later. But I'd never before run from something that brought me such joy. I can say now that I didn't understand what I was feeling, that I was embarrassed for my teacher to like me when I didn't believe anyone should, that I was embarrassed to love her as plainly as I'm sure I did, and that I was deathly afraid I would somehow damage the beautiful living creatures she kept entrusting to my hands. Something exploded in my soul, and the only way I could express it was by taking to my feet.

Mrs. Smalley wasn't fazed by my panic in the slightest. She continued to shower me with the same warmth, even when I moved up to the third grade and got bigger and didn't see her every day. I would visit her after school once a week or so; she would treat every visit as a special occasion, and she would let me help her do things for her new second graders. We moved away nine months after my first rose, and I never saw her again, but I never forgot my beloved Mrs. Smalley.

Now, at the ripe old age of 32, I don't worship any grownups.  (Well - except maybe Annie Lennox.) I pretend I don't have a big nose anymore, and I tease back. I don't have to go to gym class, and sometimes I even exercise voluntarily. The stories I write now are a bit more articulate, though probably less entertaining. And I don't play Duck Duck Goose anymore for fun. Now I go to clubs.

You, my new teacher, picked me out of the crowd there one chilly night. Spinning wildly on the dance floor, surrounded by the usual mob, you slowed spectacularly and stopped with your arm extended… right at me. And later, once proper permissions had been exchanged (though we didn't call my mother), you took me home with you. I never did find the words to thank you for picking me out of the crowd like that. So I stayed silent about it.

Almost twenty five years after I got my very first rose, I walked out to my car one fine morning and found a red rose there. It was a bright, cold day. I was late for work. The rose had been carefully tucked into the windshield wiper, with a romantic little note that took my cold fingers a full minute to pry open. It offered an apology for the rose being fabric, and a sweet sentiment besides.

You had brought the rose in the dead of night, to grant me a sweet wish in the morning. You found the rose, took a cab, sleuthed out my car, carefully made your mark, and took a cab home again. All to make me smile.

Twenty five years didn't do a lot for my ability to handle sentiment. I have a bum knee now, so I just ranawayasfastasIpossiblycould, away from you the way big, slow, grownup kids do. I shut down, I pushed you away, and I got the hell out of there. Because what would happen if you were to realize that my nose is still too big? And that I still can't throw a softball?  And that my desk is still a mess?

Running still gets tiring, even when it doesn't involve your feet (or your bike). So once I slowed down, and looked around, I realized that you weren't there, and that I wanted you to be. I realized that the state wasn't going to force me to go to school anymore, so if I wanted to be in your class, I had to get myself there. And it would fall to me to try to make the lessons worth your while. 

So, here I am. You are massive, you are all-encompassing, you are unfathomable... you do the most amazing things. You took me back when fear led me astray, and you've even managed to love me through my bouts of bad behavior.

Thanks for my rose, my teacher.  Thanks for giving me another chance.  Happy Valentine's Day.

 

© 2000, 2006 Melissa Cross.  All rights reserved.  No part of this piece may be reproduced without the express permission of the author.