Just Mama and Me
Following the guidelines of the local board of education, Mother and Daddy sent me off to first grade when I was five years old. In 1958 in our town, children could begin their twelve-year public school adventure at five years old as long as they turned six before the first of January. My birthday was December 2, so off I went.
Now I was in school like my aunt Emily. She had started the year before when she was six (her birthday was in July). Emily lived seven miles out in the country, but I lived in town. She rode the school bus unless Daddy Leland brought her to school. Like the other children in town, I walked. Monday through Friday, I slammed the back door on the screen porch, walked across the backyard and across the parking lot into Daddy Leland’s grocery store, found my Daddy working inside, walked out the front door, crossed a street, crossed in front of two car dealerships and another grocery store, turned right at one of our town’s three traffic lights, followed the sidewalk to the school, turned onto the school sidewalk, went through the front door, and headed into Miss Massey’s first grade classroom.
The next year I went to Mrs. Powers’ room for second grade and the next year to Mrs. Smith’s for third. Mrs. Smith was a great teacher. I enjoyed her class very much, especially the class program we performed. I told you about our class program a little over a year ago; but before I go on with my main story for today, I’m going to take a couple of paragraphs to tell about it again for our new readers and especially for blog reader Karen who always ribs me when I tell a bathroom story .
In our program I was in a sort of chorus line of tap dancing bunnies. I wore white flannel footed pajamas that my mother made me, along with a matching hood with bunny ears. We learned our tap dance from Delia Hallums who was in our class and who took dancing lessons. She taught all us bunnies how to do a basic tap dance, which I still know, and which I still do sometimes in public bathrooms when I’m in there all by myself or with only my daughters. I do the tap dance when I have been riding a long time in the car and I’ve been snacking too much. I try to tell myself that if I do my bunny tap dance maybe I won’t gain quite as much weight; and besides, it gives me happy memories of third grade.
Unfortunately I don’t have a third grade picture handy, but here is the one I showed you last year with my bunny story, even though it was probably taken in second grade. Note that I am wearing a dress. We were never allowed to wear pants to school until I was a senior in high school and then the top had to come down to our thighs. But there I go repeating myself again and I do digress . . . .
However, the story I really want to tell you today happened in fourth grade. This was the first year that I had someone to walk to school with me every day. My only sibling, my little brother Steve who was three years younger than I, started to school that year when he was five.
I don’t remember any problems until the day it was “bring your Mother to lunch day” in the school cafeteria. We had discussed it all at home before school. Steve was new in school and now it was his turn for Mother to come to lunch with him.
I don’t remember a negative feeling or thought until it was time for the first graders to go to lunch. The first graders passed by the gym door on their way to the lunch room just at the time that I was sitting on the bleachers during P.E. class in the gym. That’s when I saw Mother pass by with Steve and my little heart broke at the thought that she would be with him and not with me at lunch time. I cried and cried. Poor Mr. Jareau, our elementary gym teacher who later became the high school football coach, had to comfort me. Poor guy. I don’t know why were sitting on the bleachers instead of touching our toes, bending at the knees, or sticking our arms straight out from our shoulders and making tiny circles with them, but there we were sitting on the bleachers when the first graders went by. Poor Mr. Jareau — and my poor mama — someone brought her in to comfort me, too.
Poor little children. We certainly have times when we want our mamas all to ourselves and we don’t want to share them with anybody or anything — not siblings, not chores, not Facebook or Pinterest or cellphones, not anything. Precious mama and child times — don’t miss out on ’em!
. . . and a voice came out of heaven,
“You are My beloved Son,
in You I am well-pleased.”
Luke 3:22
My goodness, you were Ramona Quimby!! OK, she was a sheep in the pageant, but the walking to school alone, wearing dresses, all of it sounds so idyllic. My girls always wished for a world that Ramona and Beezus grew up in. They always wished they could walk to the library alone.