Writing from the Heart: Thank your mentors

The other night, my friend Rick and I were talking about how many teachers had influenced our lives. He had five. I had four. My first great one was my mother. She had learned English at age 11, fresh off the boat from Germany. Education in Hartford, Conn., in 1930 must have been exemplary, and since my mother was a voracious student and had to be the mouth for her Yiddish-speaking parents, her language skills became impeccable.

My first words, instead of “Dada” or “Mama,” were probably “If I were.” “Was” wasn’t even an option. (Later, while my husband was making our kids say a prayer to the duct-tape god, I was making them bow to the subjunctive.)

As a kid, growing up in our house, we weren’t allowed to buy Hallmark cards. We had to make our own. In retrospect, it probably had nothing to do with creativity, but everything to do with economics. Which is how it came to be that this was my first poem at age 6: “Happy birthday to Mom to Mom from Margie and Nancy and Tom and Tom.” I had a sister named Margie and no brother named anything.

My mother looked a bit confused and said, “This is wonderful, sweetheart, but who’s Tom?” I actually remember rolling my eyes and saying in frustration, “It rhymes with ‘Mom.’”

When I think now of how many negative responses that woman could have given this fledgling poet, I love her even more. She lit up, and as if I had explained the theory of relativity to her, she held the card aloft and said, “Of course,” like “Stupid me, how could I have missed your brilliance?”

Another big validation came from my third-grade math teacher. On the first day of school, she passed out plain paper and said, “I’d like to know something about each and every one of you. Please write me a note.” And the next day she read mine, only mine, to the whole class. I had written:

I am very very tall
All my friends are very small
Whenever you look I always show
Gee I wish my friends would grow

That confirmation must have been like a hot cup of cocoa with those tiny marshmallows bobbing at the top, because I know it nourished my little writing soul.

Rick and I continued having the conversation about teachers who had changed our lives. He said that when you’re a student and you’re having the actual experience of great teaching, you don’t have a clue how it will manifest later in your life. You’re just having the experience. He told me how his 11th-grade English teacher, out of the blue, said, “For those of you who don’t know what to do with your life, there’s this thing called ‘cultural anthropology.’ Look it up.” Rick, like probably everyone in his class, had never heard of it. And today, guess what? He’s a cultural anthropologist.

My third great teacher was Mrs. Grenfell. I sat front row center junior year of high school in journalism class. She would throw a blank piece of paper on my desk and say, “Quick, I need an article on abortion and the law,” and I would write it, and it would be in our weekly paper with my byline. The next week she’d repeat the process: “Quick, I need a piece on kids and car wrecks the first week they get their licenses.” Once again I’d get to write the story, and it would appear the next week, with my name prominently in Bodoni bold.

Rick and I talked about how many teachers probably never see the results of their kindnesses and wisdom. He did get to thank his teacher at his 20th high school reunion, and I got to thank Mrs. Grenfell, at her book signing for her collection of essays titled “Women My Husband Married.” (Her husband was a minister.)

My fourth teacher, Mrs. Carter, made a huge impact on me. She was the drama coach, tiny, sexy (of course I only knew that part in retrospect), and adorable. She did something that I had never seen another teacher or adult do. She singled out the hoods, the tough guys, the kids who had been written off by our small, conservative community and, it seemed, by the world at large. She gave them the leads in all the plays. She coached them, she listened to them, she showed them a respect I don’t think they had ever felt before. I saw how they walked taller, got quieter, needed less attention, and instead of making sure you were afraid of them in the hallways, they smiled and said, “Hi, how ya doin’?”

From that petite, charming, completely lovable woman, I learned how important it was to validate the outliers — that with one sweep of a bighearted hand, you could possibly affect change in a person’s life trajectory. (Turned out one of the guys ended up a successful Hollywood actor, one a doctor, and the biggest troublemaker in the school was a professor at a Seven Sisters college.)

My friend and I talked about a bunch of other stuff, told stories about our kids and grandkids, hugged goodnight, and wished each other a happy spring. The part of the evening I’ll remember most, and the reason I wrote this piece in the first place, is to remind you to thank your mentors before it’s too late. Because if you don’t, they probably won’t ever know how much they did for you.