An important memory for me

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A memory of a teacher, a friend of mine.

It is sad to find that the remnants of life disappear so quickly, before you realise what is going to be lost.

A while ago I had occasion to be back in a small town where I went to grade school for a relatively short while. My father was in the military and foreign service, so we were always being shuttled around. I never formed long-lasting friendships; my longest standing friendships date from my college days, and indeed most of those are no longer active friendships, as I continued to move about after college.

When I returned to the town, I found that the school I had attended was boarded shut. The windows were blacked-out, and the huge copper sign announcing the name of the school, which had been dedicated during the time I was there, was no longer on the wall. As it had been copper (it always reminded me of a giant penny) it was probably taken and melted down for some other purpose.

I drove past the school and remembered the wonderful teachers I had there. I didn't remember any of the children, but remembered the three teachers who made an impact. One in particular, Mrs. Geyer, was in her last year of teaching I was there. She had been a teacher in that neighbourhood for decades, ever since the one-room schoolhouse days -- the foundations of that schoolhouse were still visible in a park across the road.

Mrs. Geyer had a gentle charm and sweet nature, succeeding in making each child feel special. But this is not why I remember her. She taught me something I had never learned before. She taught me that teachers were human beings, too.

I think many children don't think of their teachers as real human beings. But I knew Mrs. Geyer was. I knew where her house was (just down the street a few blocks). I knew what she liked to eat and what she liked to do outside of school. I'd never known that about my teachers before. I hadn't realised that they existed outside of school.

She used to walk to school most mornings. It was only a few blocks from her house -- she had been in the same place for decades, walking those few blocks first to the one-room schoolhouse and later to the much-improved multi-level modern school.

The summer after my time in school there, shortly before my family moved away once again, I helped her mow her lawn several times. She had a big hill, and despite her age (she had taught several years beyond a customary retirement age) she would let me mow everything except the hill, and then would do the hill herself, prefering not to let me risk injury.

She always gave me a little money, and gave me something to eat and drink, and then gave me little gifts; books, pictures, games. As I look back, she was probably clearing out the clutter of her life, having decided to retire. I didn't know that at the time.

I don't remember how I found out she had retired. I think my mother, keeping in contact with people in that neighbourhood, found out in the next year. My mother was always good at keeping some contacts with the neighbourhood we'd left, but then, when we left yet another neighbourhood, those contacts tended to fall away in favour of the latest 'left' neighbourhood. Life goes on for them and for us, and it just was too much to maintain such contacts. In my childhood, I never gave it a thought.

I drove by her old house, still there, still with a hill I wasn't permitted to mow. There were still flowers around the porch, but they weren't the same. Nothing was the same. The park with the old school foundation was still there, but had been modernised, so unless you knew there had been a school underneath, you'd never know. There was no sign indicating the true and valuable history of the place.

The new school had become the old school, shut up and abandoned, no more children's laughter, no more lessons, no more bells. Mrs. Geyer doesn't teach there any more. I wonder if the school just couldn't go on much longer after she retired, as she had been the heart for so long. I loved my other teachers there, too - Mrs. Cole and Mr. Damron; but Mrs. Geyer was the crown jewel.

It was a cloudy day. It was a bit chilly. I drove past and turned on the main highway to make my way back home. That trip seemed to take forever. I realised I'll never know what became of any of these people so essential in my life. I will try to live up their ideals and expectations. They are my friends in a true r sense than I had ever known. This is where I learned the humanity of teachers, and in so doing, some significant part of the humanity of myself.