After
"Help," I cried, within the first moments of opening the classroom door to a passel of first-graders. I fled into the adjoining teacher's classroom, three single-spaced typed pages of teaching plans sweaty in my hands. I had only checked off 1. Take Attendance, and bedlam reigned.
"I don't think I can do this," I declared.
The other first grade teacher, a tall, kind-eyed man with a reddish brown beard smiled. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean I can't do this!"
He followed me back into my classroom. Eleven children tumbled on the grey carpet in the circle area like manic puppies. One little brown-eyed boy bounced on a large blue exercise ball. Blocks were strewn about. Plastic baggies containing slim reading-buddy books were heaped by an easel upon which was written the Morning Message. There was a tumbled pile of homework folders, papers spilling out.
A cacophony of tiny shrill voices greeted us.
"He's not supposed to be on the ball!"
"It's the teacher's ball."
"No-o," the little bouncer Pierce, said, bouncing higher. "Mind your own business."
"First graders," my fellow adult, Eric, chanted in a dulcet-toned Mr. Rogers voice, "We have a guest teacher. Can you be kind and helpful today for our guest teacher?"
"No-o!"
"Okay!"
"You'll be all right," Eric said, patting me on the arm. He walked over to a white wall phone by the door, and pointed out an extension number.
"If you have any trouble, just call Mr. C in the PFS room, tell him what the situation is, and send the child up to see him."
"Thanks," I said.
I slid atop the teacher ball, and promptly slid off to a chorus of giggles. Chris sat on Jack, who burst into tears. Quinn, Mikala and Sophie climbed onto a bookcase, dislodging an arrangement of building blocks.
"They're not supposed to sit there!" Sierra alerted me.
"That was my castle!"
"Mind your own business!"
"No-o, mind yours!"
Some children spun in mini purple camp chairs. Someone was doing sit-ups. A few bucked like burros.
Nevaeh, or as had been loudly explained to me, Heaven-spelled-backwards lay on her tummy, yellow sweatshirt hood covering her curly head.
"Dear God," I said.
"So, can everyone please sit up and we can begin with ah, (I consulted my plans) a High 5 Hello. Er, how exactly does that work?" I whispered to Sierra, who was perched on a T-shaped green wooden structure.
"You give your neighbor a high 5 and say Good Morning," Sierra explained patiently.
The children went around the circle high 5-ing like mad until Jack got to me.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"I'm Mrs. Palmer," I said.
"Good morning, Mrs. Popper," Jack said, whopping my hand with gusto.
"Good morning, Mrs. Pom!"
"Good morning, Mrs. Pooper!"
"Mrs. Po!"
"Mrs. Poo!"
"Good morning," I answered, desperately scanning my body for signs of the flu.
"Can I go to the nurse?" Sophie asked. She proffered a pinkie.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"My pinkie has an ache."
"Sure, go ahead," I said generously.
Just then, I became aware of a Gollum-like presence worming its way across the floor on its stomach.
"Who are you?" I called out.
"That's William!"
"Why are you crawling on your stomach, William?" I asked. Clearly not comfortable with a direct question, William beat a hasty retreat by propelling himself backwards with his arms like Anansi the Spider to a far corner of the room. I spied pillows and a hooked rug.
"Can he be there?" I consulted Sierra.
"Yes, it's the Quiet Corner."
"How long should he stay there?"
"As long as he likes."
"Can I join him?"
"No-o!" said Sierra.
"It's sharing time!" Six voices announced.
"Okay, who'd like to share?" I asked.
Mikala's hand shot up.
"No-o! She shared last time!"
"I can share again," Mikaka said.
"That's not fair!" 10 voices yelled.
"Can she share again?" I asked Sierra.
"Yes," Sierra intoned, a pint-sized King Solomon.
Mikala's share was an overly long tale about having supper with her family at a place in town called The Firefly. She and someone else, a cousin, sister, or possibly an uncle were playing a game called "Dummies." Three children were allowed to ask a question or make a comment.
Jack raised his hand. "What was the game, anyway?"
"I don't get it," Chris said.
"We were playing "Dummies," Mikala repeated, "at The Firefly -"
"She doesn't get to say it all again!" Pierce shouted.
"Okay, okay," I said. "I think people might be a bit confused," I explained to Mikala.
"I'm confused!" Pierce shouted.
"I'm confused too," Nevaeh sighed.
"Since everyone is confused," I interrupted. "Let's just move on."
Next, Chris shared his Lego instruction book.
"That's confusing," Mikala commented.
Pierce, who had somehow resumed possession of the Teacher Ball, bounced on Ian, who began to wail.
"That wasn't kind or respectful," I said. "You'll have to go up to the PFS room." Then there were 10, I thought, or 9 if William stays in the corner.
Muddled memories of the rest of the morning mayhem are all that remain. I read a book called Amazing Grace, which prompted Nevaeh to break into song. There was seat work: cutting and pasting sentences that depicted the beginning, middle and end of the story. There was a fact or opinion page, which I explained 11 times. Children wearing headphones appeared for reading groups, reading aloud simultaneously something about a dragon, which was really a line of children going to the library, perhaps in China. During handwriting, children practiced writing F's.
"Who can give me a sentence using a word that begins with the sound of ph?"
Chris leaped to his feet from his sanctuary beneath his desk.
"William farted on me!" he proclaimed triumphantly.
"No-O!" William bleated from the corner. "I did not!"
I made for the phone.
"Another one is on his way," I said into the receiver.
Mikala gave me two paper snowflakes. Sierra offered to hold my hand. Ian approached me just before lunch, hunch-shouldered, to mutter that he just wanted to have a good day. "Me too, buddy," I agreed. "Me too."
I ate my lunch in my car while plotting my escape.
"Can't I just go home now?" I begged my friend Diana, a Pre-K teacher in the hall outside my classroom.
"No," she said. "You can't."
"WHY-Y?" I whined.
"Because you just can't," she said.
"Are you sure I'm invited to lunch?" I asked my mother. After two weeks of accompanying her to a seemingly endless round of social events, I was pooped out. I had nothing left to say.
"Of course you're invited!" Mom enthused. "It's a mother-daughter lunch!"
"Why do your friends have to sit all the way in the back?" I complained. I had my mother's elbow as we trudged painfully through the dining room, slow as snails.
"You're pushing me!" My mother said. "Stop it. I'm walking as fast as I can."
"If you'd just try to take big - "
"Don't say it! Don't tell me to take big steps!" Mom shot back.
"It would help your balance if you took longer steps," I explained. "Those halting, mincing steps are dangerous."
"They're NOT halting!"
"They're not steps," I growled.
When we arrived at the table I saw that it wasn't a mother-daughter luncheon at all. It was me and Mom and her two dear old friends, two sisters, Rosie and Mare. I gazed at the ocean, several hundred tantalizing feet away. I looked with longing at the rows of inviting lounge chairs by the pool.
Oh, well, I thought. I remembered when there had been a table of 12 every Friday; now there were 3. And me.
"Tell me, Amy," Mare said. She was wearing a beautiful pink flowered blouse and white slacks. A cloud of curled white hair framed her face with its clear blue eyes. "How much longer will you be staying?"
"We have to leave on Monday," I replied.
"Oh, that's a shame," Mare said. "Have you had a good time?"
"Yes," I said. "It's been wonderful."
I looked over at Mom, who was swiping at a palm leaf that drooped over her head.
"Do you want to move?" I asked.
"What?"
"The palm tree?" I pointed. "Is it bothering you? Do you want me to move you closer to the table?"
"What?"
"THE PALM TREE! IS IT BOTHERING YOU?"
"No, it's fine."
"Tell me, Helene," Mare said, turning to my mother. "How long can you stay?"
"We're leaving Monday," Mom said. "I wish we could stay longer, but Amy has to go back to work, and the girls seem to feel that one of them has to be with me while I'm here."
"And how long will you be staying this time?" Mare asked, turning to me.
"Until Monday," I sighed.
"Did you like The Music Man?" Rosie asked Mom. We had gone to a matinee the day before, and had nearly come to blows.
"Can't say I did," she answered. "All the music seemed repetitive somehow and boring, but Amy liked it."
"I loved it," I said. "And I saw it twice. You kept falling asleep."
"I did not!"
"Did too."
"Did not."
"Did too."
"Tell me, Amy, where do you live?" Mare interrupted.
"I live in Vermont."
"Oh, Vermont. We used to ski in Vermont years ago, up north somewhere..." she mused.
"Was it Stowe?" I ventured.
"Yes! It was Stowe."
"I'm going to The Music Man next Saturday," Rosie said. Her sleek blonde hair was swept to the side and she flashed an engaging smile. 30 years before, she and my young daughter had blown a ping pong ball back and forth across her dining table.
"It was hard to understand," Mom stated, pouring a packet of brown sugar on the table a good few inches from her tea cup.
Despite myself, I began to giggle.
"It's not funny," Mom said crossly.
"What, dear?" Rosie asked. "What's not funny?"
"Can I help?" I said to Mom, little remorse darts spiking my heart.
"No!" Mom retorted. "I can do it!"
"Amy, where do you live?" Mare asked.
"Vermont," I breathed, chomping down on a piece of rosemary cheddar flatbread.
"Oh! Vermont! We used to go there years ago..."
"Stowe?" I asked.
"Stowe!" Mare said, delighted.
"Do you know what Amy did?" Mom said, apropos of nothing.
"No," Rosie and Mare answered, turning to me.
"She walked on live coals!"
"Why would she do that?" The two sisters looked confused.
"Shall we order?" I suggested, holding up my menu. I had decided on a beet salad.
"Oh," Mare beamed. "Will you be joining us?"
"Amy!" Mom calls, the instant my sneakered toe crosses the threshold. I am crimson-faced and sweaty from an hour at the gym, worrying about a small terrier that yipped at me from a car in the parking lot.
"Yes!"
"I can't get Lynn! When I dialed the phone, a man came on and told me the line was no longer allegated. It made me think an alligator had eaten the phone or something!"
"I think you mean allocated," I giggle. "I'll dial it for you."
"I did dial it!"
"Well, maybe you just missed a number or something."
When Lynn, my mother's invaluable administrative assistant/driver/"4th daughter" answers, Mom and I are laughing and Lynn begins to laugh too.
"I can't wait to hear this one," she says.
"Allegated," my mother repeats, as I leave the room. "Made me think an alligator..."
"Amy!" she yells a minute or two later. "Do we have time to have lunch with Barbara Longfellow before The Music Man?"
"No!" I yell from my room. Even though I have already seen The Music Man just last week, I'm taking Mom to a matinee. I'm looking forward to it. I know all the words to all the songs. Mom took me to Broadway to see Robert Preston in the starring role when I was a child, and even though I dropped my toy derringer pistol with a clatter during Gary, Indiana, I still tremble and thrill when the curtain goes up.
"Who is coming for dinner tonight?" she asks, appearing at my door.
"Lulie," I remind her. "Your niece."
"Oh yes, of course. Did I ask Rosie?"
"I don't know."
"Oh! I asked the McIlwaine's, but, they think they have a previous engagement. The couple may be sick or something, so they may be able to come after all. I guess I should wait to hear from them first before I ask Rosie. Although, if they can't come and I haven't asked Rosie, it would just be you and me and..."
"Lulie."
"Yes, Lulie."
"We could just wait awhile and see what the McIlwaine's say, and we're having lunch with Rosie tomorrow anyway," I sigh. I'm knackered and not just from my workout.
"Rosie and Roz," Mom says.
"Right."
Mom marches inch by inch back to her room and when I peek in, she's wriggling into her black flowered bathing suit.
"I'm going to sit in the sun for an hour," she tells me. She reaches for some Aquafor cream and swipes some across the fronts of her thighs and her shoulders.
"That's grease, Mom," I say.
"So?"
"So, you don't want to burn."
"Why not? I want a tan."
I bring some sunblock from my room and gently rub the white cream into her shoulders. She wrenches away.
"It's just some sunblock," I tell her. "Look," I say brandishing a freckled arm. "I have a tan, and I've been using this."
She takes a washcloth and wipes away the sunblock on her forehead.
"You used to do this to us," I tell her. "And we hated it too."
"I did?"
"Yes."
"Dick called me," she says. Dick is 96 or 97 and lives in New Jersey. He is a retired newspaper magnate, and Mom turned down his marriage proposal roughly 65 years ago to marry Dad. ("I had 7 notches on my hairbrush," she told me, beaming. 7 proposals.) They became re-aquainted a few years back, but during a visit to her in Florida, poor Dick had to call his doctor and replenish his supply of Valium. She rather tortured him on several other occasions, because she didn't want him to think she was after him for his money.
"And?" I smile.
"Poor thing, I really think he's losing it. He wants me to come over for a visit."
"Did you tell him you were in Florida?"
"Yes. I told him I'd try to go when I get back."
Mom inches toward the sliding glass doors and the sun.
"Your hair might get drippy," I tease.
"So what," she retorts. "Laurel?" she addresses her nurse, "Where's my hat?"
