Stepping into a room to look for a friend, I discovered instead a petite stranger, a woman planted firmly in the room’s middle; bent over, packing boxes; a bright eyed force.

‘Who are you?’ The piercing strength of her tone, the timbre of her voice startled. Her grip was iron, commanding my attention as it fell out of her small frame and onto my hand. I winced slightly. I towered over her by almost a foot and I knew she was determination; her eyes glinted as she gave me a quick once over.

Dwelling outside the glass of fragile words; of wasted spaces; she wanders.

‘The land is good but the living is still poor under the gypsy skies, the picking was hard’; lines from an old song drifted through my thoughts as I endured her tight precise speech; angry memories of a difficult childhood and with it, the hard earned pride rising from suffering. Nothing wasted with excess verbiage, full eye contact and the occasional smile; she had much to say and I wanted to hear it completely. I could feel tears at the back of my heart, but I dared not.

Shocking; direct and trustworthy; any friendship required sealing with strands of struggle.

‘My mother raised us. I was a poor Mexican girl and we worked in the fields. I did not speak one word of English until I was five. We accepted no help, no charity. My mother kept a book; a careful record of what we paid each month for everything. The problem today is pity. There should be empathy but not pity. And now I look out at my property…’

I could only nod as she continued. ‘I told my administrators, ‘You were wrong. You were wrong’ and they were surprised’.

‘I don’t need to know if you are homeless. If you are a good teacher, you pay attention. You’ll know if a child needs a coat; you smell a child; you know which one truly requires an extra carton of milk’. She took a breath and looked at the boxes. ‘The incredible waste. We don’t need pity. Teachers know but our hands are tied. I’m in my seventies, you know’, she added almost as an afterthought.

She turned away from me. She had boxes to pack. She folded herself into the stoop labor position; cell memory waiting restlessly in back and legs. Cabbages, boxes, beans, books; the only sign of better times shone in her sparkling gold rings which swangled, ducked and spun in the air drifting down from the ceiling fan.

I bid her goodbye and stepped quietly out of the room, slipping away from probably one of the best teachers I have never known.

Summer’s golden strand…the longest day, the calmest center…pearly waters and miles of rest. Her nose pressed up against the glass of summer’s edge…in love with ghosts from the past…those creaky wagon wheels heading west, blue moon ice cream…the sweeping wheat winds of the glorious prairie lands…burnt brown with the threat of drought edged along the periwinkle blue of the flax fields. Ten years old again…feeling the cement of the tired school building leaving the soles of weary feet as each step edged closer to the slamming door.

She sat back in the chair by the window, carefully placing the pen on the table in front of her. Thoughtfully, carefully she lifted her right leg up over the left leg, avoiding striking the top of her naked foot against the curved, leaf shaped wrought iron table leg; bent and hammered with superb craftsmanship.

The edge of the curtain lay still, unmoving against the painted ledge of the open window. The backyard nestled quietly and resting under the June stupor of a blue sky and galleon clouds. The neighborhood was silent in the mid morning lull. The annual shifting of persons, property, job responsibilities and weather which began to emerge at the beginning of June and then with a gust of upheaval, newly planted rose bushes and fresh rain, had suddenly tossed away spring and presented summer as a precious gift to be enjoyed by all.

Windows opened in the evening and remained un-shuttered all day as the more brutal warming of July had not yet descended over the lake, fields and homes. The gauzy veil separating spring from summer dropped suddenly and overnight the pace of the neighborhood ceased its frantic thrashing. Where for ten months, there had lingered the sound and fumes of the morning school buses and the racing energy in the air…sleepers now turned over languidly and crawled under a soft comforter; no longer any need to rush anywhere. Those who could lie abed in the mornings indulged themselves while the neighborhood remained silent as the grave, save for the quiet movements of those few souls who slid stealthily out of the surroundings, headed for the open road and jobs lying elsewhere.

She brought her breakfast to the porch and sliced carefully into the top sugary layer of wild blueberry bread, careful to retrieve any errant crumb which might tumble onto the floor. The coffee was boiled and sufficiently layered in sweet cream right down to the bottom of the ceramic mug. The floor was heating up comfortably with the morning sun. Baskets of pink bubblegum petunias hung happily in the still air, almost motionless, shedding the occasional petal over chair cushions and railing on the patio below. The tiniest bird hopped and pecked on the edge of one of the baskets, looked curiously at her through the blossoms and then went back about his business.

‘What do I want?’ She stretched out leisurely in her chair and took the first sip of the creamy brew. ‘What do I really want?’ she asked the bird. The thick smell of flowers and greening lawns wafted through the porch shades. The neighborhood slept on. ‘I want this’ she answered. She looked around. ‘I want silence’.