Last month at a church rummage
sale, I discovered a book by one of my favorite authors. More than ten years ago, Sue Monk Kidd, who
penned The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings,
compiled a host of essays she had written for Guideposts magazine since the
1980’s. Reading Firstlight has lovingly
reminded me of Christmases long ago. My grandmother always gave me a copy of Daily Guideposts from the time I was in eighth grade and I spent the better part of every holiday afternoon holed up in my
room, eagerly searching through the book for Sue’s essays. Each one was captivating because of her
incredible attention to detail and open-hearted way of looking at
life, from the simplest moments to the most perplexing. Perhaps what struck me
the most was the feeling of as she writes in Firstlight, “a soulful
being together between the reader and the author".
Many of the essays I’ve been
rereading remind me of some of the ones I have written for Open
Road, so I now fully realize it was back then the initial seed of inspiration was planted.
A little more than a decade later, I would begin writing essays of my
own. One turned into a novel which
turned into a sequel which turned into eight more books. And I’m not done writing yet.
In one of my favorite essays,
Sue writes about how growth takes time.
A seed must be buried in the darkness of the soil, releasing roots
invisible to the eye, but necessary for the sprout to appear above the
surface. Over time the sprout becomes a
seedling, and the seedling a sapling, and so on until a strong, healthy tree grows
from what was once hidden in the earth. A caterpillar begins its life cycle as an egg,
then a larva, then a pupa where it completely transforms itself into an adult
butterfly, never to return to its original state again. It takes a butterfly only twenty-eight days
to go from egg to its magical metamorphosis.
Sadly, it only lives for four to six weeks. Of course a tree takes much longer to grow to
its full height, but its beauty can last much longer than one human lifetime.
A couple of weeks ago, Steve
and I were heading up to Posey Lake, Michigan for a much-needed vacation. While I sat in the car waiting for him to
fill the gas tank, I checked my phone for messages. To my surprise, one of my former first
graders sent me a private message on my professional Facebook Page. Remember
the trees you gave us and told us to plant them when we got home? Eric
wrote. Look at her now!
He sent a picture of a gorgeous
pine tree that dwarfed a two-story house.
Oh
my gosh! I wrote
back. That’s amazing! How old is that
tree?
I
planted it when I was six, he
replied.
You gave it to me when I was in first grade, so it’s been going now for
twenty-six years.
I quickly did the math. How in
the world are there kids I taught who are now thirty-two years old? I
wondered. Then I realized that there are
kids much older than that…and it made me laugh.
Steve got back in the car and I
showed him the picture.
“Who is that from?” he asked.
“One of my first graders…I gave
them saplings on Earth Day the year Eric was in my class. I think someone from a nursery donated a
bunch of them.” Smiling at the picture,
I sighed, “That made my whole day.”
When I asked if I could use his
photo in this blog, Eric enthusiastically replied, Sure! I’ll get a better picture
at my mom’s later today. Can my daughter
Mariah be in it?
What a joy a few hours later to
see their smiling faces standing at the base of the tree and to read Eric’s
profound caption: I planted the tree with my dad.
I’m really proud of it and talk about it often. I try not to be boastful about it, but I
think that talking about it will hopefully plant a seed in someone to do the same.
Mariah is one blessed young
woman to have such an incredible father.
I remember Eric fondly and am not at all surprised to know that he has
loved and nurtured that tree for decades, much in the same way I’m sure he has
and will love and nurture his daughter.
We can never know how our
presence will impact another person. I’ve
not given birth, but I did spend my twenties and early thirties with hundreds
of kids who I’m happy to still call my own.
Now every time a man or woman who I had the privilege to teach contacts
me, it always lifts my spirits and connects me to the distant past in
incredible ways which remind me once again that I didn’t have to have a child
of my own to be a mother. I’ve attended
weddings of my former students, spent time with their families at graduation
parties, and often run into people who ask, “Are you Miss Ingersoll?”
I laugh and nod. “Yes.”
“You were my first grade
teacher!” they smile broadly. “You don’t
look the same, but I could tell it was you from the sound of your voice.”
Then I laugh some more because
that’s often how I recognize them as well…even the men.
They reminisce about stories
from our classroom, and each one reminds me that even though teaching was incredibly
demanding, it was time well spent…and then some, for many of the lessons I shared with them when they were little are now, decades later, being passed down to their children. What an
incredible blessing to know that the
seeds which were planted back then have magically metamorphosed into a soulful
being together between what was once the teacher and the student, but has now transformed into something even more beautiful, yet indescribable.
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| Eric with his daughter, Mariah, August 2017 |
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