Lessons on Napkins
In 1974, my mother was a junior at an all-girls Catholic college in New York.
She was an excellent student and wanted to be a special education teacher.
But, her dreams of becoming a teacher were interrupted by an unexpected child:
her own. My mother became pregnant with me during her junior year of
college and left school to marry my father. Yet even though my mother left
the field of education formally, she did not leave it entirely.
When I was born, my
mother immediately made learning an integral and fun part of my life.
Everything we did was a positive learning interaction, whether we were baking
cookies or spending the day at the library. I never watched television,
not because I was not allowed to, but because it was more fun writing stories
with my mom. There was never a lot of money in our home, but with all of
the books, laughter and hugs, it was a scarcity I never felt.
When I finally
entered a school classroom at age five, I was excited, but terrified. That
first day of kindergarten I quietly sat at my desk during snack time and opened
my Miss Piggy lunch box. Inside the lunch box I found a note from my
mother written on a napkin. The note said that she loved me, that she was
proud of me and that I was the best kindergartner in the world! Because of
that napkin note I made it through my first day of kindergarten...and many more
school days to follow.
There have been
many napkin notes since the first one. There were napkin notes in
elementary school when I was struggling with math, telling me to "Hang in
there, kiddo! You can do it! Don't forget what a great writer you
are!" There were napkin notes in junior high school when I was the
"new girl" with frizzy hair and pimples, telling me to "Be
friendly. Don't be scared. Anyone would be lucky to have you as her
best friend!" In high school, when my basketball team was the first
team in our school's history to play in a state championship, there were napkin
notes telling me, "There is no 'I' in team. You have gotten this far
because you know how to share." And, there were even napkin notes
sent to me in college and graduate school, far away from my mother's physical
touch. Despite the tumultuous changes of college – changing majors,
changing boyfriends, changing the way I looked at the world – my one constant
was my mother's encouragement, support and teachings, echoed in years of love,
commitment and napkin notes.
My
nineteen-year-old sister is now a college sophomore. Somewhere in her dorm
room, amid her varsity basketball uniform and her nursing books, she has a box
of well-read napkin notes hidden, but accessible. At home, my
sixteen-year-old sister and nine-year-old brother also have their own private
stashes of napkin notes. When they read them I know they feel the same
warm surge of confidence that I felt all through my school years.
For Christmas this
year, my mother received a book bag, a daily planner, notebooks and a
full-tuition college scholarship. These gifts reflected an impending
change in her life. After a twenty-five-year hiatus, my
forty-four-year-old mother was finally going back to school to earn her degree
in teaching. And although I was immensely proud of my mother for following
her dreams, I wanted her to know that she didn't need a degree to make her a
stellar teacher.
So I also gave her
a Christmas gift for school: a lunch bag filled with her favorite foods.
She laughed as she opened the lunch bag and took out cans of tuna fish and V-8.
Then she pulled out a napkin with writing on it.
As she opened up
her "You can do it!" napkin note from me, tears began running down her
face. When her eyes met mine, I saw she understood my unspoken message: My
mother is – and always has been – a teacher.