Pull Up A Chair

What is a role model?  Who do we define as someone worthy of our attention and adoration?  Is it someone famous or someone closer to home?

I looked up to a certain "teacher" during the years of pimples and blue eyeshadow. She taught a private kindergarten out of her house for 35 years. To visit this wonderland, even as a teenager, was magical. In her large master bedroom, there were two huge tables, dozens of little wood and metal chairs and shelves piled high with books, crayons, construction paper and glue. Hanging on the walls were drawings made with chubby little fingers and imaginations with no limit.

Cookies and milk were served for snacks and the backyard contained a jungle gym and trees to climb on. I remember how special I felt when I would sit in that classroom, as a 3rd "grader", and how sad I felt when, at 21, I knew those days were gone forever.

When my nana passed away in 1991, the grandchildren banded together and went to that little classroom in the back of the house for one last trip down memory lane. Immediately, "the box" was taken from its resting-place on the top shelf of the closet.

Inside this box held the most wonderful treasures in the world. We had known it was there, but it was off limits for as long as we could remember, and nobody crossed Nana's strictest rule. As my cousin removed the cover from the box, we all gasped when we finally got a look at what was inside Nana's secret treasure chest: pictures.

These weren't ordinary pictures. Nana suddenly wasn't just a kindergarten teacher.for what we found made our hearts sing. Nana's true calling wasn't just to love the little kindergartners that filed through her door everyday; her job was to love US!

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