Monthly Archives: August 2025

A going back to school story

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For all you teachers. Thank you for what you give us. It is priceless.

The neighborhood kids got together and built a snowman. When he was good and done, they gave him a hat and a pipe, two button eyes and a nose and a smile. Just as they finished him up, Miss Morgan called the kids into her house for hot chocolate and  treats. Miss Morgan always made the bestest of treats and her hot chocolate was heavenly. Marshmallows and pieces of chocolate melting in the hot milk.

Miss Morgan never had kids of her own. She had been a fifth grade teacher. One of the best at her school. She did fifty years there and then retired. When she retired, kids and parents and grandparents came to the ceremony. And the whole school turned out. There were so many that they moved the event to the town’s theater. It was packed.

Many of the attendees had tears in their eyes. She was so beloved. It was a two-hour ceremony.

First there was the choral society, singing several of her favorite songs. Then a fifth grader came up, gave her a hug and said a few words of praise. Then an eighth grader. Then a senior. Then a young woman in her twenties. Then a man in his thirties. Then a woman in her forties. Then one of her first students stepped up to the podium.

“I became a teacher,” Maggie Heller said. “And now I am finishing my thirty-fifth year. I’ve loved every minute of it. You may not remember me but I stole some money from your purse. Instead of punishing me, you told me that you brought the money just for me.” Maggie started to cry. The principal of the school went over to her and comforted her, then she continued. “That forgiveness has carried me through so many hard things. When I saw the look in your eyes, it wasn’t of disappointment. It was with love. If you could love me even though I did what I did, I could love myself. And your final hug that year. I will never ever forget that. Thank you, Miss Morgan. For teaching me how to be a good human being.”

Finally the superintendent of schools walked to the podium. “Miss Morgan….you know I don’t even know your first name. HR has kept it a state secret all these years.” Tears filled his eyes. He had been a Miss Morgan student too. Then he swiped them away and continued. “Your name is famous throughout the state. For your excellence in teaching and for the quality you have brought to our children. In your name, we have created a scholarship fund and now we have a special surprise. Miss Morgan, please step up here.”

The Teacher rose from her seat and walked to the podium. Standing beside the superintendent, she turned to the man who was once her student. He said, “As our gift to you, we have an all-expense around-the-world cruise. Thank you for all you have given us and will continue to give us.” He hugged her, then handed her a dozen roses and the envelope with the details for the trip.

Miss Morgan looked out at the filled auditorium. Tears were in her eyes too, but she held them back and gave her friends a smile. All she could get out was, “Thank you, And I love you all. Each and everyone of you.”

She spent a year seeing the world. Then she returned to her house on Green Street. Each afternoon one child or another dropped by for tutoring or a story or some advice. On the weekends, the neighborhood kids came to her house for treats. Her door was never closed to a child.

The neighborhood kids gathered in her dining room and consumed their treats. Miss Morgan looked at them all gathered around the dining room table, laughing and swapping jokes and jabbering away as children do. She poured a cup of hot chocolate, then she sneaked outside and went over to the snowman. His smile had fallen into a frown.

“Well, Irving,” she said as she sat the chocolate and cookies in front of him. “Your name is Irving, isn’t it? Of course, it is.”

The snowman stood there all silent.

Miss Morgan brushed some dirt from his shoulder. “You know, you’re a handsome fellow. If I was a snowgirl, I would date you. I bet you’re a good dancer. I love to dance.”

She stood there for fifteen or so minutes. Then she kissed him on the cheek and returned to the children.

As he melted later in the month, Irving remembered Miss Morgan’s final words. “Oh,” she whispered, her whisper so quiet no one else in the whole wide world could hear her. “Just between you and me. My name is Roberta.”

Grandparents

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La Grand Mere. We, in the family, knew no other name for her. Not Grandmother. Not Grandma as in Grandma got run over by a reindeer. Not Granmama. Not Granny. Not Nana. All those names were fine for the grandmothers of other people. It was Le Gran Mere for our grandmother.

You would think she was off-putting with a name like that. She wasn’t. She was the warmest of human beings. When she smiled, that smile could fill a room with its warmth. Now our grandfather, Grumps as we called him, was not like that. He was one sour puss of a human being.

I’m here to tell you that no one knew how those two ended up together. No one. When we asked La Grand Mere, she said, “Ask your grandfather.” When we asked Grumps, he just grunted and returned to what he was doing.

It became a joke in the family. Our parents made up stories. Our grandparents on my mother’s side made up stories. My wife’s stepmother and her stepson had a story. My best friend Jed and his stepfather and his stepbrother offered even more stories. I am here to tell you no one in the family knew the truth of the matter.

But the ones with the best story were our twins. One day they came into the kitchen and said, “We know why La Grand Mere and Grumps are together.” They had mischievous smiles on their faces.

“Why?” my wife asked for me as well as for herself.

They sang, “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.”

The Woman in the Park

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From her bench in the park, the woman looked into the camera. It was not a stare, just a look. History stamped her face with all its sorrows and its joys.

Her hair now turned grey and thinned was once a full and a solid auburn. In those days, it hung down to her waist. Her forehead wrinkled, her skin now tough from all those days she spent in the sun. Her temple carried a large splotch of yellow. Her eyelashes had thinned like her hair. Only her left ear heard the sounds of the world around her. Both her eyes were a deep blue. She was blind in the right one.

A mole rested just above her lips. Her nose slightly bent from a break in her youth. Her left nostril was slightly bigger than her right one. Her chin was small but so was her mouth. She reached up and stroked her jaw as if she were remembering some long-ago boyfriend who kissed her cheek. She had been loved once. And that was all that matter to her. Her name was Sara and she had once been happy.

She smiled at the photographer. He snapped her picture, thanked her and walked away. They were two strangers who had encountered each on a Saturday afternoon in the park.

He went off to photograph others. Sometime later he decided he wanted to tell her something. Sara was gone from the bench.

The next morning Sara’s daughter, Margaret, found her mother dead in her bed, a peace on her face, a smile on her lips. That last photograph had been the gravy on the mashed potatoes. Somewhere someone would see the picture, maybe hundreds of someones, and they would love that face as the photographer had.

The Tractor

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Jed’s father’s tractor sat in the field. It was an old tractor his dad often had to work on but somehow kept it going. When he had a particularly hard time repairing the tractor, he’d say to Jed, “That’s the way with tractors.”

Jed asked him once, “Why don’t you get a new tractor?”

“What, and turn this fellow out to rust? He’s got a lot more miles in him.”

Jed looked at the tractor. What was he going to do with it? He walked up to the beast and crawled up into its seat. He checked the gas gauge. It had a quarter of a tank. He put the key into the ignition and said to the tractor, “Now don’t give me a hard time.”

Jed turned the ignition. The tractor didn’t start. He tried a second time. Still no start. Just a grrrrrr. The grrrrr seemed to say, “Say please.”

Jed gently, patiently, said, “Please.” It was a serious please.

“Grrrrrrrr,” went the tractor. Then it’s engine kicked off with what Jed thought was a “Thank you for asking.”

Denise

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Denise had a cousin who was nothing if not a dreamer. Denise’s cousin died of a broken heart.

Denise decided that was not for her. She had big dreams. But nobody in the family believed her. Not her brother, not her sister. They went their separate ways, found spouses, settled down. Each had a son and a daughter. Her parents liked their children’s spouses. And when they had kids, they made her mom and dad so happy. They now had grand children to spoil.

Denise’s mother kept asking, “When are you going to get a husband and have kids. All those guys you hang out with are gay. They are not husband material. Find a guy. You’ll be a happy Mr. and Mrs.” Her dad said nothing. He wasn’t a talker.

Now Denise liked her sister-in-law well enough. They went shopping and laughed and gossiped the way women do. Her brother-in-law, Marvin, only talked politics. The president this. The president that. And he was loud about it. “Oh, that’s just Marvin,” her sister excused her husband. “He’s got a good heart and he cares about the world.”

Right, Denise thought.

The times she saw her brother and his wife became fewer and fewer. They seemed to drift away from the family. Denise thought it was because of Marvin. He was a hater. Little did she know that her brother’s father-in-law had cancer. Her brother and his wife were helping her mother.

Denise always liked her nieces and her nephews. They seemed like good eggs. Her brother’s daughter especially. She had big dreams like Denise. That was when Denise decided to be a role model and really pursue her dreams. She had talent. She knew she did.

So she was going to New York and become a Broadway set designer. It had been something she wanted since she could remember. When she was seven or eight, she watched a tv show and she wasn’t at all interested in the actors. She wondered how the sets were made.

Oh, sure she liked boys but they were never as handy dandy with a hammer as she was. She could drive a nail into a board, and she could drive it straight. When she went into high school, she joined the drama club. Her drama teacher was sure she had the goods to be a set designer par excellence.

After high school, she let go of her dream. Her mother convinced her that life was too scary. She had to make a living, everybody told her. So she went off to nursing school and became a nurse. It was the easy way out. Dreams were risky, and they were scary. The closest she came to Broadway was the Community Theater.

Now she was in her early thirties. She finally had her education loans paid off. It had been a hard scrimp. She saved and lived with her parents to do it.

Seeing her niece one day made up Denise’s mind. It was now or never. She decided it was time to grow up and prove she had the goods. Be the woman she was meant to be.

On her last night at home, she and her mother had a fight. The next morning her mother didn’t come down to wish her good luck. But her father gave her a ride. In the car, her handed her $1000. “Just in case,” he said.

She wanted to cry but she didn’t. She pushed back her tears.

“Call me at the office if you need help,” her father said. At one time, he’d had dreams. He had not had the courage to pursue them. So he knew what his daughter was doing and how hard it was. But it was the right thing to do.

They pulled up at the bus station and went inside. Her dad bought the ticket. It was a round trip ticket just in case. Denise refused it. So her dad paid for a one-way ride to the big city. Then they hugged.

He left her sitting on a bench waiting for the bus.

“Man, I can do it,” she told herself, caught the bus and left town. As she rode the bus, she thought about all the stages of her life. That was then. Now she had the future ahead of her. She was thirty-two and just starting. And she realized that it is never too late to pursue her dreams.