Generations

A couple of days ago, I had lunch with my grade-school art teacher, my 10th-grade English teacher, and their spouses. My sister was there, too—in fact, she set it up.

Rachel still lives where we grew up. A few years ago, she texted me a photo of our art teacher—whom we now call Shirley, which is crazy—from a craft show. Shirley was buying one of Rachel’s paintings. We were both so geeked. Making art has always been a huge part of our lives, and Shirley is much of the reason why. Over lunch, I told her about an anecdote she shared in class that I’ve never forgotten. When she was little, her mom gave her a spanking for pairing red socks with a pink dress. I don’t remember what the lesson was—probably encouragement to do whatever we wanted to do with color—but I do remember how intense her emotion was recounting this story. She didn’t recall this moment from my life—and she was shocked to discover that she had shared this story with a room full of 8-year-olds—but she surely remembered that spanking.

And Sue… Where do I even start with Sue? Maybe the first day of 10th-grade AP English. As Sue—because that is what I call her now—was laying down her rules and expectations, my BFF—who was sitting right in front of me—turned around and mouthed “What. A. Bitch.” When I shared this with Sue, she was delighted. I also showed her my phone when a friend responded to a Facebook post about this lunch with “Please tell her she scared the shit out of me, and I respected her for that.” She was daunting, for sure. She is not a person who puts up with foolery, but I think her classroom style was also a reflection of her belief that what she had to teach us was worth knowing. I think that part of Julie’s reaction—and my reaction—was that, as high achievers, we were not used to teachers talking to us like that. We were not Sue’s gifted darlings. We were her students.

As an adult, I respect the bright line Sue drew between her personal life and her work. I had some relationships with teachers in the 1980s that give me pause now that I am a grownup and a parent, and since I’ve had some teaching experience myself. She took teaching seriously. But this doesn’t mean that she didn’t make connections. She loaned me books and made tapes for me. If she hadn’t encouraged me to read A Coney Island of the Mind, I would probably still think that all the Beats were full of shit. (I still think that all of them except for Lawrence Ferlinghetti were full of shit.) Sue gave me a dub of O Superman and taught me that Dolly Parton deserved my respect. As I type, I’m remembering that she encouraged me to read The Illuminatus Trilogy. I suspect that these books contain some elements that I would find problematic now, but I kind of want to reread to see just how much they shaped my worldview.1

Sue also taught me how to read critically and how to write well. Another AP English alum on Facebook commented “My talent at writing is all due to her. Period.” And I believe them because I don’t think I would be a writer today without Sue. Or maybe I would, but I might not be as good as I am. As a teacher in the aughts, I was flabbergasted to learn that my students didn’t know what a 5-paragraph theme was. I put the brakes on my syllabus to teach them how to make an outline and I walked them through introductory sentences, supporting sentences, concluding sentences… The fundamentals of making a coherent argument. And I thought about Sue as I was offering these tools to another generation. When I feel blocked, when I don’t know where to start, I go back to the beginning, back to the basics, to find my way.

There’s so much more I want to say about this gathering. For instance, time is weird. People who seemed generically “older” to me when I was a kid are not exactly my peers now, but the years since they were my teachers flowed at a different speed for them than they did for me. I grew into adulthood; they were already there. I want to say that when Sue walked into the restaurant, I grabbed her and held her for a long time and cried, because that’s true. But there’s also a lot I’m just going to keep for myself. I guess the only other thing I will say is that if you have a chance to tell the teachers you loved how much they matter to you, take it.

One more thing: The Sheela Na Gig issue of Croning is available for preorder. A preorder gets you a tiny discount and it helps us know how many copies to order from the printer. And, right now, a print copy of Croning is a gift when you become a Founding Hag.