bare

In about seventh grade I got to be the student of Eli Hadley at Fremont Junior High. She was marvelous - a spitfire at the front of the classroom making grammar seem somehow interesting, hip, do-able. Mrs. Hadley graded our essays in green ink, never red. She taught us Mark Twain's real name. She invited me to attend a creative writing event for middle school kids from around the area. She posted a poem I wrote about Arachne the goddess. (I laugh at you Arachne as you scurry up that tree. I hope that this will teach you not to mess around with me...)

Eli Hadley's room meant comfort - we sat in table groups rather than rows. The expectations were simple - treat one another well, do your best. And we did.

The details are fuzzy, but somewhere in there she figured out reward system for us...we earned paper "bucks", I think, that could be spent at each term's end on odds and ends she collected in between.

During one such sale or auction or whatever it was, I used all of my bucks to purchase an Eli Hadley original - a water color of a copse of trees on an autumn bluff.

My goodness it was divine. Perfect, really.

I still have it, course, one of my first artistic influences. To this day, I still paint the trunks of my trees as Mrs. Hadley did hers. Simple. Flowing. Sturdy.

It's only in my adulthood, maybe only now in my teacher and parenthood, that I recognize the depth of her artistry as an educator. Mrs. Hadley influenced me. I became an English teacher. Would that be true without her encouragement? I never score my students' work in red - always blue or green. I invite students to writers groups and surreptitiously grow their awareness of self with conversations and suggestions of good books and acknowledgement of their unique turns of phrase. In my classroom we use all kinds of table groupings and the lights are low, the plants plentiful. And they know, here we are good to one another, we do our best. I realize now that it's her vibe I'm recreating, or that is being filtered through my lens.

With my son in middle school now, I'm keenly aware of just how bare we were when we showed up in grade six, grade seven, grade eight. We were our parents' children, but we began to be imprinted by the other people in our lives. I know for certain that is true for Zane.

It's this period of time that I feel the most powerless as a parent - he's out there, being touched by all manner of influences that he may not even recognize until decades from now. Imagine that.

Imagine that...like Eli's trees. Her trees that come out of my brush onto the bare canvas.

It's with gratitude I send this vibe to my mentor Mrs. Hadley. May I carry your energy forward and draw others in - to themselves, their art, their best.