Dear Nana,
Last night I was looking for an old essay that I'd written a few years back because I wanted to share it with you. In doing so, I found countless older pieces of writing that I'd left unfinished. Many, I'd simply forgotten. The one I share with you today is not the one I'd originally set out to find, but it seemed just the thing you'd like to read. Can you guess the recipient of my ardor? If anyone can, it is you...
Love Affair
Your passion for her is palpable the instant you meet. You marvel at her beauty—her superlative splendor. She glitters like a diamond and moves like a lynx. The vision of her intimidates. Her complexity daunts. But you can’t get her out of your mind. You’re drive to know her is overwhelming, despite your apprehension.
You study her and begin to see that she has a dual personality—at turns frantic and calm, challenging and effortless. When you are in her midst, she can make you feel more alone than you’ve ever felt before. Then, without warning, she can embrace you and make you feel that in her arms you’ve finally found the one place in the world you truly belong. She surprises you constantly. The moment you think you’ve memorized her face, the instant that you’re sure you’ve crossed every one of her avenues and turned all of her corners, she will prove you wrong. She will show you a side of her that you’ve never noticed. And even though it has been right before your eyes, somehow up until that moment, you’d missed it.
As you begin to feel comfortable with her, as she begins to whisper some of her secrets into your ear, your uncertainties about your compatibility are alleviated. Your mind eases because you’ve begun to decipher her intricacies. They are still alive, but you no longer fear them. You, instead, are drawn to them. They become the things about her that you most revere. And then one autumn evening as you walk alone down an empty street, crunching auburn leaves beneath your feet, you stop a moment. You inhale deeply and you find yourself thinking of her. You realize that you’ve been thinking of her the entire time you’ve been walking. And, it is then, at that instant, you know you are in love.
You don’t know how she did it. Somehow she lassoed your heart, this unpredictable entity that you may never fully understand. She’s taken root in your soul and won’t let go. Her grip on you is so strong that you surrender to it immediately. You are hooked. The love affair has begun.
Together you will traverse the rivers of emotion – from agony to joy. She will exhilarate you and bring you to levels of passion that you’d only heard about, but never known. She will enchant you with her beauty and you will flaunt her to those she’s just met. She will reinvent herself before your eyes and beg you to keep up with her, and you will. At least you will try, because you want to reinvent yourself, too. That is why you came to her.
She will constantly provoke you. She will test you and dare you to give up on her. And there will be moments that you almost do. There are times when you’ll look up at her and she will seem to tower over you, a menacing face looming overhead. But there will also be times that she’ll look at you with the eyes of child, willing you to frolic beside her. And despite the never-ending fluctuations of your relationship, despite the times you’ll wish for simplicity in place of this volatility, you will cherish every moment with her – every instance, from the thrilling to the infuriating. Because this is a love affair that might not last forever. After all, most don’t.
There will probably be others in your life who come after her. Certainly there were others who came before. But no one will ever be more unforgettable – no one else will leave an impression that will endure as hers will. Because there is no one else like her in the world. You will travel miles to find another. You will cross oceans and continents to find her match, but you will not, for she has no equal.
And when it is over, if it is over, you will look back on her with a profound sense of warmth, for no matter how many times she incensed you, she charmed you more. And those are the memories, should you leave her, that you will carry inside you forever.
She is a rare and inimitable goddess. She is New York City.
Inimitable. In Merriam-Webster's Dictionary the word carries this meaning: not capable of being imitated. Matchless. And that's what New York City is, after all. There is simply no place in the world quite like it. You would know. Your love affair with New York City lasted more than 90 years. And I believe mine will, too.
Love, Katie
Sunday, October 21, 2007
To Be Remembered
Dear Nana,
As you well know, being a teacher has its ups and its downs. There are days when the thought of Christmas vacation is the only thing that gets me through the day. Then there are days when my 2nd graders have me laughing all day long. But one of the best parts about being a teacher, I think, is knowing that no matter what I do in the future or where I go, I'll be remembered.
All children remember their grade school teachers. Elementary school children spend more time with their teachers than they do with anyone else, even their parents. When they move on to middle and high school with homerooms and sections and 7-period days, the time spent with individual teachers wanes. Perhaps that's why middle school and high school teachers are often less remembered. I can only remember a few of my middle and high school teacher's names and even fewer of their faces. But elementary teachers, we are a different story. We are more than teachers, instructing them in math and reading and science. We are also parents on Monday through Friday from 8 until 4. We wipe tears and gently place bandaids on scraped knees. We read our favorite stories to them and sing with them and make sure they eat their lunches. We help them tidy their things, encourage them not to give up in the face of obstacles, and listen to their hopes and dreams. We try to instill good manners and kindness and respect. We place lost teeth in plastic baggies zipped tight to ensure a safe trip home at the end of the day to be placed under a pillow.
So how will my students remember their 2nd grade year with me? They will most likely forget the order of the planets from the sun and the number of bones in the human body. They will most likely forget the words to the Harriet Tubman song and the name of their 2nd grade pen pal. What they will remember about me, I do not know. But the fact that they will remember is enough.
It is obvious from that glowing letter I shared with you a few weeks ago that Timmy Pragai remembers you. I'm sure countless others who graced your classroom desks over your decades as a teacher, still think of you fondly. Perhaps they remember your demand for precise grammar or your strong belief in good penmanship. Maybe they remember how your wore your hair. They might remember a book you read aloud to them or a trick you taught them to memorize their multiplication tables. Whatever it is that they remember, whatever image or words or ideas they've held onto and carried with them through life, you, nor I will ever know. But the simple fact of remembering means that you left your mark on the lives of all the little souls who passed through your classroom doors. And just knowing that I, too, will be remembered, that I, too, am leaving my mark a little each day, is an amazing feeling. Because to be remembered, well, isn't that what life is all about?
Love, Katie
As you well know, being a teacher has its ups and its downs. There are days when the thought of Christmas vacation is the only thing that gets me through the day. Then there are days when my 2nd graders have me laughing all day long. But one of the best parts about being a teacher, I think, is knowing that no matter what I do in the future or where I go, I'll be remembered.
All children remember their grade school teachers. Elementary school children spend more time with their teachers than they do with anyone else, even their parents. When they move on to middle and high school with homerooms and sections and 7-period days, the time spent with individual teachers wanes. Perhaps that's why middle school and high school teachers are often less remembered. I can only remember a few of my middle and high school teacher's names and even fewer of their faces. But elementary teachers, we are a different story. We are more than teachers, instructing them in math and reading and science. We are also parents on Monday through Friday from 8 until 4. We wipe tears and gently place bandaids on scraped knees. We read our favorite stories to them and sing with them and make sure they eat their lunches. We help them tidy their things, encourage them not to give up in the face of obstacles, and listen to their hopes and dreams. We try to instill good manners and kindness and respect. We place lost teeth in plastic baggies zipped tight to ensure a safe trip home at the end of the day to be placed under a pillow.
So how will my students remember their 2nd grade year with me? They will most likely forget the order of the planets from the sun and the number of bones in the human body. They will most likely forget the words to the Harriet Tubman song and the name of their 2nd grade pen pal. What they will remember about me, I do not know. But the fact that they will remember is enough.
It is obvious from that glowing letter I shared with you a few weeks ago that Timmy Pragai remembers you. I'm sure countless others who graced your classroom desks over your decades as a teacher, still think of you fondly. Perhaps they remember your demand for precise grammar or your strong belief in good penmanship. Maybe they remember how your wore your hair. They might remember a book you read aloud to them or a trick you taught them to memorize their multiplication tables. Whatever it is that they remember, whatever image or words or ideas they've held onto and carried with them through life, you, nor I will ever know. But the simple fact of remembering means that you left your mark on the lives of all the little souls who passed through your classroom doors. And just knowing that I, too, will be remembered, that I, too, am leaving my mark a little each day, is an amazing feeling. Because to be remembered, well, isn't that what life is all about?
Love, Katie
Monday, October 15, 2007
Delicious Secrets
Dear Nana,
At school I will soon begin to teach my students how to write a "friendly letter." And as I plan the unit, one that I've taught for the last four years but am always hoping to enliven, I feel slightly hopeless. It is not that I feel unsuited to teach the unit. It is that I will teach my seven and eight year olds a skill that they will most surely never use once given the choice. They will not pen letters to friends when they are away at college some day. They will not spray envelopes with perfume and write in longhand to their sweetheart. They will not anxiously wait by the mailbox each day to see if their sweetheart has written back. People simply don't write letters anymore. It's a dying artform. An artform. That's what it was. And you and Grandpa Saul had it in spades.
In my letters to you, I will share some letters that you and Grandpa wrote to one another; letters that I found a few years ago. Letters through which I've gotten to know you as a young woman in love. Letters through which I've gotten to know Grandpa since we never had the chance to meet. I am quite certain, although you might blush at times, you will enjoy them. This is the first of hundreds....
Class 7B3
June 1, 1931
My Precious, (my heart thumps as I write it - but there's nothing like a good little heart thump to keep one's spirits up.)
Darling, what can I say on paper, that I haven't already made evident in person? You must know how perfectly glorious our week-end was. The spontaneity and unexpectedness with which everything happened added all the more interest (although how much more interest do I need, other than just being with you?) Even the closing of our week-end seemed to have just "happened". It rained, so I went to get you an umbrella, but just as our minds were made up to that, fate decided that that was much too ordinary a good-night for two such unusual people, so before we knew it you were sleeping over at my house. Wasn't that itself a glorious state of affairs? Then breakfast to-gether, and even our morning tete-a-tete didn't end as expected, that is the call for school. Saul, dear, our affair, itself, was so unexpected, and everything since that impromptu dinner at my house on April 7, so delightfully surprising, that all I can do is hope that all our forthcoming surprises together, may hold as much joy for both of us. Everything is a joy to both, isn't it? I hope so, for unless it is mutual, the whole thing is empty. But there, darling, I deserve a spanking for even questioning the fact that all between us is "50/50". Otherwise how could everything we do to-gether be so whole-hearted, huh? Of course.
Now, honey, I'll return to this poor commonplace world of ours. Again I have the 7th & 8th yr. classes. My room is right across the hall from Mr. Weiss's and as he walked thru the hall before, he saw me writing at my desk, but I'll bet he couldn't possibly have the slightest conception of whom I was writing to, nor the spririt behind my writing. Dearest, it's wonderful keeping so many delicious secrets between only our very selves.
Tell me truthfully now, sweet, did you sleep well last night for if it inconveniences you in anyway I wouldn't have you do it again, for the world. How did you get to work this morning - on time, in good condition, physically, mentally, and spiritually?
Darling, I've written so steadily, so fluently and so sincerely that I am actually fatigued, but what a delicious worn-out feeling! Gee, really, I couldn't possibly think, say, or write another word.
Your Treasure, Henny
Perhaps this was the first letter you ever wrote to the man who would one day become your husband. You were just a few weeks shy of 22 years old. And if it weren't for this letter, this hand-written, lovingly penned, starkly honest letter, I would never know about the beautiful night you spent with Grandpa Saul on May 31, 1931. I would never know of your giddiness as you snuck a letter to your sweetheart from your teacher's desk when you were supposed to be substitute teaching.
People write emails. We save them in cyberspace, floating in the air somewhere, untouchable and unmemorable. But this, your letter, will live. Your letter tells of a time when people could write to the point of emotional exhaustion as you did. You probably walked to the post office afterschool, giddy with the thought that you would soon send your words out into the world. Perhaps you knew that even though the recipient lived in the same city in a nearby neighborhood, he would anxiously await the postman's delivery and write just as feverish a letter in return. It saddens me that my students will probably never know this feeling, this art. But I will try to teach them so that perhaps one of them some day, will choose stationery over email, a stamp over a click of the mouse, anticipation instead of instant gratification. And I thank you for reminding me what a treasure simple, honest words can be.
Love, Katie
At school I will soon begin to teach my students how to write a "friendly letter." And as I plan the unit, one that I've taught for the last four years but am always hoping to enliven, I feel slightly hopeless. It is not that I feel unsuited to teach the unit. It is that I will teach my seven and eight year olds a skill that they will most surely never use once given the choice. They will not pen letters to friends when they are away at college some day. They will not spray envelopes with perfume and write in longhand to their sweetheart. They will not anxiously wait by the mailbox each day to see if their sweetheart has written back. People simply don't write letters anymore. It's a dying artform. An artform. That's what it was. And you and Grandpa Saul had it in spades.
In my letters to you, I will share some letters that you and Grandpa wrote to one another; letters that I found a few years ago. Letters through which I've gotten to know you as a young woman in love. Letters through which I've gotten to know Grandpa since we never had the chance to meet. I am quite certain, although you might blush at times, you will enjoy them. This is the first of hundreds....
Class 7B3
June 1, 1931
My Precious, (my heart thumps as I write it - but there's nothing like a good little heart thump to keep one's spirits up.)
Darling, what can I say on paper, that I haven't already made evident in person? You must know how perfectly glorious our week-end was. The spontaneity and unexpectedness with which everything happened added all the more interest (although how much more interest do I need, other than just being with you?) Even the closing of our week-end seemed to have just "happened". It rained, so I went to get you an umbrella, but just as our minds were made up to that, fate decided that that was much too ordinary a good-night for two such unusual people, so before we knew it you were sleeping over at my house. Wasn't that itself a glorious state of affairs? Then breakfast to-gether, and even our morning tete-a-tete didn't end as expected, that is the call for school. Saul, dear, our affair, itself, was so unexpected, and everything since that impromptu dinner at my house on April 7, so delightfully surprising, that all I can do is hope that all our forthcoming surprises together, may hold as much joy for both of us. Everything is a joy to both, isn't it? I hope so, for unless it is mutual, the whole thing is empty. But there, darling, I deserve a spanking for even questioning the fact that all between us is "50/50". Otherwise how could everything we do to-gether be so whole-hearted, huh? Of course.
Now, honey, I'll return to this poor commonplace world of ours. Again I have the 7th & 8th yr. classes. My room is right across the hall from Mr. Weiss's and as he walked thru the hall before, he saw me writing at my desk, but I'll bet he couldn't possibly have the slightest conception of whom I was writing to, nor the spririt behind my writing. Dearest, it's wonderful keeping so many delicious secrets between only our very selves.
Tell me truthfully now, sweet, did you sleep well last night for if it inconveniences you in anyway I wouldn't have you do it again, for the world. How did you get to work this morning - on time, in good condition, physically, mentally, and spiritually?
Darling, I've written so steadily, so fluently and so sincerely that I am actually fatigued, but what a delicious worn-out feeling! Gee, really, I couldn't possibly think, say, or write another word.
Your Treasure, Henny
Perhaps this was the first letter you ever wrote to the man who would one day become your husband. You were just a few weeks shy of 22 years old. And if it weren't for this letter, this hand-written, lovingly penned, starkly honest letter, I would never know about the beautiful night you spent with Grandpa Saul on May 31, 1931. I would never know of your giddiness as you snuck a letter to your sweetheart from your teacher's desk when you were supposed to be substitute teaching.
People write emails. We save them in cyberspace, floating in the air somewhere, untouchable and unmemorable. But this, your letter, will live. Your letter tells of a time when people could write to the point of emotional exhaustion as you did. You probably walked to the post office afterschool, giddy with the thought that you would soon send your words out into the world. Perhaps you knew that even though the recipient lived in the same city in a nearby neighborhood, he would anxiously await the postman's delivery and write just as feverish a letter in return. It saddens me that my students will probably never know this feeling, this art. But I will try to teach them so that perhaps one of them some day, will choose stationery over email, a stamp over a click of the mouse, anticipation instead of instant gratification. And I thank you for reminding me what a treasure simple, honest words can be.
Love, Katie
Saturday, October 6, 2007
My New York
Dear Nana,
A few evenings ago I stood in front of my building on East 80th street and watched a family across the road as they stood in their New York City version of a front yard. Their townhouse has a small front patio, the closest that a New York City home can get to having a yard in the front, albeit concrete and gated and no more than 100 square feet. (They, no doubt, have a roof garden and perhaps a back yard, hidden from the likes of me and other passersby not so fortunate to have anything resembling outdoor space.)
The father and mother and their two young girls, both under the age of four, frolicked in their "front yard" admiring their new Halloween decorations - big, billowly balloons in the shapes of an eerie tree, headstones, skulls, and pumpkins. (It sounds a bit macabre, but it isn't at all. The puffiness of the balloon formations somehow softens the effect of a graveyard on one's street.) As I watched the little girls gleefully poking their new decorations, it occured to me that everyone who lives here has a different New York. The New York that these girls will grow up in will, in all likelihood, be much different than my New York. Theirs will include trips to Barney's for new patent leather shoes and school clothes, rigorous private school educations in which colleges are chosen and sought after before puberty, birthday parties to rival weddings, and countless trips in sleek Lincoln Continentals to avoid the pedestrian nature of the subway.
Whether or not I aspire to be like or unlike these people is unimportant. I simply highlight them here to make the point that every New Yorker's New York is individual. Your New York city began in Brooklyn during the heyday of the Brooklyn Dodgers when you lived within walking distance of Ebbets Field in a Flatbush that was a different universe than the Flatbush that exists now. Dad has told me that he could hear the roar of the crowd from his bedroom on warm summer nights as they cheered on Jackie Robinson, his childhood hero. Your New York later became the Upper East Side where you lived and worked as a teacher at PS 6 and Grandpa ran a bookstore on Madison Avenue. But I never knew you in that New York. I wasn't alive yet. Your New York, the one that I grew up hearing about, was a one-bedroom apartment on East End Avenue. When we visited you'd take us on walks by the East River and a stroll through Carl Schurz park. Your New York was the Metropolitan Opera house, Broadway matinees, and weekly movies with your best friend Beatrice. Your New York was dinner at Ottomanelli's where they had a delicious "steak" burger, long walks in your neighborhood, trips to the "market", and the New York Times in a chair by the window. (As I write this, your old newspaper stand that always held your Times sits beside my desk. It has been reincarnated as a music book holder containing Jim's guitar practice books. He's getting quite good I might add!)
My New York, although quite different from yours, intersects it in many places. I live, as you know, only a few blocks from where you lived, so my paths of today cross your paths of yesterday quite frequently. I go on runs by the East River often, passing your apartment and waving hello. PS 6 is around the corner. Ottomanelli's is just a ten-minute walk away.
And while my New York and your New York have similarities, my New York is, well, mine. Just as yours was yours. My New York is a small apartment on 80th Street, only steps away but miles apart from the neighbors across the street and their perfectly pruned windowboxes. My New York is the pub where Jim has worked for the last 8 years and where I first met him in 2001. My New York is walks and runs and picnics and Sunday Times crossword puzzles in Central Park. My New York is a glass of wine (or two or three) at a sidewalk cafe with a friend on an unseasonably warm October night. My New York is East Harlem where I go each weekday to teach in a wonderful little school that is small enough to feel like family. My New York is trips by subway downtown (and I mean below 42nd Street, Nana . . . I once asked you about 14th Street and you told me you hadn't been below 42nd Street in 30 years) where Jim and I wend our way through smaller streets and visit friends who live in the neighborhoods. My New York is running errands, something I absolutely love to do. Seriously. Because in New York it's just so easy! Everything is right nearby and I get absurdly satisfied when I efficiently map out my route to grocery store, bank, drug store, and home again.
And my New York just like your New York, is, quite simply, the most magnificent place in the world. When I was young and you visited us in Michigan, you would talk of your New York and it planted a seed in me. I wouldn't know it for years to come, but I would go there someday and I would live in the "city," a word that I thought belonged only to New York because you called it "the city" in such a way that it seemed like the only city in the world.
So here I am writing to you, Nana, from my New York which is no better or worse than anyone else's New York. Just different. And that's what makes New York City so unparalleled. Because on one block or on one subway or on one crosstown bus, one can find countless different New Yorks. And yet all of us with our uniquely individual New Yorks, have one thing in common. We adore it. And that, perhaps, is why, despite the differences between so many of us, New York continues to be "the city". It is a place where everyone fits in. It is a place that even we who have lived her for ten, twenty, fifty years, keep rediscovering and molding for our own.
As E.B. White wrote of New Yorkers: "although we have lived in New York . . . the place never seems anything but slightly incredible and we go along with our mouth open and face unbuttoned." My New York is more than slightly incredible to me, even in it's simplicity. And I have you to thank for planting that seed in me so many years ago, Nana. Here's to the next time our New Yorks cross paths.
Love, Katie
A few evenings ago I stood in front of my building on East 80th street and watched a family across the road as they stood in their New York City version of a front yard. Their townhouse has a small front patio, the closest that a New York City home can get to having a yard in the front, albeit concrete and gated and no more than 100 square feet. (They, no doubt, have a roof garden and perhaps a back yard, hidden from the likes of me and other passersby not so fortunate to have anything resembling outdoor space.)
The father and mother and their two young girls, both under the age of four, frolicked in their "front yard" admiring their new Halloween decorations - big, billowly balloons in the shapes of an eerie tree, headstones, skulls, and pumpkins. (It sounds a bit macabre, but it isn't at all. The puffiness of the balloon formations somehow softens the effect of a graveyard on one's street.) As I watched the little girls gleefully poking their new decorations, it occured to me that everyone who lives here has a different New York. The New York that these girls will grow up in will, in all likelihood, be much different than my New York. Theirs will include trips to Barney's for new patent leather shoes and school clothes, rigorous private school educations in which colleges are chosen and sought after before puberty, birthday parties to rival weddings, and countless trips in sleek Lincoln Continentals to avoid the pedestrian nature of the subway.
Whether or not I aspire to be like or unlike these people is unimportant. I simply highlight them here to make the point that every New Yorker's New York is individual. Your New York city began in Brooklyn during the heyday of the Brooklyn Dodgers when you lived within walking distance of Ebbets Field in a Flatbush that was a different universe than the Flatbush that exists now. Dad has told me that he could hear the roar of the crowd from his bedroom on warm summer nights as they cheered on Jackie Robinson, his childhood hero. Your New York later became the Upper East Side where you lived and worked as a teacher at PS 6 and Grandpa ran a bookstore on Madison Avenue. But I never knew you in that New York. I wasn't alive yet. Your New York, the one that I grew up hearing about, was a one-bedroom apartment on East End Avenue. When we visited you'd take us on walks by the East River and a stroll through Carl Schurz park. Your New York was the Metropolitan Opera house, Broadway matinees, and weekly movies with your best friend Beatrice. Your New York was dinner at Ottomanelli's where they had a delicious "steak" burger, long walks in your neighborhood, trips to the "market", and the New York Times in a chair by the window. (As I write this, your old newspaper stand that always held your Times sits beside my desk. It has been reincarnated as a music book holder containing Jim's guitar practice books. He's getting quite good I might add!)
My New York, although quite different from yours, intersects it in many places. I live, as you know, only a few blocks from where you lived, so my paths of today cross your paths of yesterday quite frequently. I go on runs by the East River often, passing your apartment and waving hello. PS 6 is around the corner. Ottomanelli's is just a ten-minute walk away.
And while my New York and your New York have similarities, my New York is, well, mine. Just as yours was yours. My New York is a small apartment on 80th Street, only steps away but miles apart from the neighbors across the street and their perfectly pruned windowboxes. My New York is the pub where Jim has worked for the last 8 years and where I first met him in 2001. My New York is walks and runs and picnics and Sunday Times crossword puzzles in Central Park. My New York is a glass of wine (or two or three) at a sidewalk cafe with a friend on an unseasonably warm October night. My New York is East Harlem where I go each weekday to teach in a wonderful little school that is small enough to feel like family. My New York is trips by subway downtown (and I mean below 42nd Street, Nana . . . I once asked you about 14th Street and you told me you hadn't been below 42nd Street in 30 years) where Jim and I wend our way through smaller streets and visit friends who live in the neighborhoods. My New York is running errands, something I absolutely love to do. Seriously. Because in New York it's just so easy! Everything is right nearby and I get absurdly satisfied when I efficiently map out my route to grocery store, bank, drug store, and home again.
And my New York just like your New York, is, quite simply, the most magnificent place in the world. When I was young and you visited us in Michigan, you would talk of your New York and it planted a seed in me. I wouldn't know it for years to come, but I would go there someday and I would live in the "city," a word that I thought belonged only to New York because you called it "the city" in such a way that it seemed like the only city in the world.
So here I am writing to you, Nana, from my New York which is no better or worse than anyone else's New York. Just different. And that's what makes New York City so unparalleled. Because on one block or on one subway or on one crosstown bus, one can find countless different New Yorks. And yet all of us with our uniquely individual New Yorks, have one thing in common. We adore it. And that, perhaps, is why, despite the differences between so many of us, New York continues to be "the city". It is a place where everyone fits in. It is a place that even we who have lived her for ten, twenty, fifty years, keep rediscovering and molding for our own.
As E.B. White wrote of New Yorkers: "although we have lived in New York . . . the place never seems anything but slightly incredible and we go along with our mouth open and face unbuttoned." My New York is more than slightly incredible to me, even in it's simplicity. And I have you to thank for planting that seed in me so many years ago, Nana. Here's to the next time our New Yorks cross paths.
Love, Katie
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
What Became of Timmy
Dear Nana,
This will be a letter within a letter. Sort of like how the musical The Producers is a play within a play, only not as funny and without the showtunes.
Today I was looking through a scrapbook that I made a while back. It contains some old photographs of you and Grandpa from your years of courting, as well as some of your old dance cards from the 1920s. But the most recent bit of history in the scrapbook is a letter written to you on June 29, 1961, four days past your 52nd birthday. I'd read the letter long ago and it had moved me. But I wasn't a teacher then. Now the letter, well, it simply blew me away. It reads as follows:
Dear Mrs. Shullman,
During these last two terms, since our Timmy joined your 5th grade, we had indeed many occasions to address short notes to you! Maybe too many. But none was quite like this one.
Now we have to say Good Bye to you and to try to express to you our feeling of gratitude for the understanding, patience, and love you always had for Timmy.
That these two school terms turned out to be such a happy and rewarding time for Timmy is first of all due to your efforts and devotions and we would like you to know how reassuring it is for parents to be able to cooperate with a person like you in the education of their child.
As a small and just symbolic token of our feeling of thanks we send to you a little Mediterranean jar, - in Israel, water and the preservation of it, stand for the future and life itself. So let us wish you many, many years of fruitful and rewarding work in this most important of all fields, - the bringing up of a worthy youth!
Thank you for the pleasure of working with you! Wishing you a happy and restful summer-vacation, for yourself and your family.
We remain sincerely yours,
D. and M. Pragai
After reading this letter that unabashedly applauds your work as a teacher, I was tempted to look up Mr. and Mrs. Pragai to see if they still live at 345 Riverside Drive. I wonder how Timmy turned out. No doubt, because of his time with you, he turned out well.
Timmy must have begun his year with you as a difficult child. I know the type. I have countless Timmys in my class now and have had many over the years. But never have I received such a heartfelt note. Words, yes. A handshake and a thank you, yes. A gift card to Starbucks, yes. But to take the time to write a letter so powerful ... well, it doesn't seem to be the thing that people do anymore. The note, typed on thin stationary paper, was lovingly folded into an envelope and mailed to you at your home. The words in the note were carefully chosen, as well as the accompanying gift of the jar with it's message of good fortune and honest hope for your future.
I may never get a note like this from a parent. In fact, I'm quite sure of it. In this day and age, people are too busy to write letters. Why use a pen and paper? Why use a stamp? The closest thing one gets to a letter nowadays is a hastily written email, often unsigned, and more often unmemorable. But this one, this one from Timmy's parents, has survived. And it will continue to survive as a testament to your commitment to teaching and the heart with which you went to work each day.
We rarely spoke of your job as a teacher, but the letter from the Pragais says it all. I know, now, what kind of teacher you were. And I hope to be the same kind. I hope that someday I touch a child's life just as you touched Timmy's. And that Mediterranean jar, whatever became of it, I hope it gave you all that Pragai's hoped it would.
Love, Katie
This will be a letter within a letter. Sort of like how the musical The Producers is a play within a play, only not as funny and without the showtunes.
Today I was looking through a scrapbook that I made a while back. It contains some old photographs of you and Grandpa from your years of courting, as well as some of your old dance cards from the 1920s. But the most recent bit of history in the scrapbook is a letter written to you on June 29, 1961, four days past your 52nd birthday. I'd read the letter long ago and it had moved me. But I wasn't a teacher then. Now the letter, well, it simply blew me away. It reads as follows:
Dear Mrs. Shullman,
During these last two terms, since our Timmy joined your 5th grade, we had indeed many occasions to address short notes to you! Maybe too many. But none was quite like this one.
Now we have to say Good Bye to you and to try to express to you our feeling of gratitude for the understanding, patience, and love you always had for Timmy.
That these two school terms turned out to be such a happy and rewarding time for Timmy is first of all due to your efforts and devotions and we would like you to know how reassuring it is for parents to be able to cooperate with a person like you in the education of their child.
As a small and just symbolic token of our feeling of thanks we send to you a little Mediterranean jar, - in Israel, water and the preservation of it, stand for the future and life itself. So let us wish you many, many years of fruitful and rewarding work in this most important of all fields, - the bringing up of a worthy youth!
Thank you for the pleasure of working with you! Wishing you a happy and restful summer-vacation, for yourself and your family.
We remain sincerely yours,
D. and M. Pragai
After reading this letter that unabashedly applauds your work as a teacher, I was tempted to look up Mr. and Mrs. Pragai to see if they still live at 345 Riverside Drive. I wonder how Timmy turned out. No doubt, because of his time with you, he turned out well.
Timmy must have begun his year with you as a difficult child. I know the type. I have countless Timmys in my class now and have had many over the years. But never have I received such a heartfelt note. Words, yes. A handshake and a thank you, yes. A gift card to Starbucks, yes. But to take the time to write a letter so powerful ... well, it doesn't seem to be the thing that people do anymore. The note, typed on thin stationary paper, was lovingly folded into an envelope and mailed to you at your home. The words in the note were carefully chosen, as well as the accompanying gift of the jar with it's message of good fortune and honest hope for your future.
I may never get a note like this from a parent. In fact, I'm quite sure of it. In this day and age, people are too busy to write letters. Why use a pen and paper? Why use a stamp? The closest thing one gets to a letter nowadays is a hastily written email, often unsigned, and more often unmemorable. But this one, this one from Timmy's parents, has survived. And it will continue to survive as a testament to your commitment to teaching and the heart with which you went to work each day.
We rarely spoke of your job as a teacher, but the letter from the Pragais says it all. I know, now, what kind of teacher you were. And I hope to be the same kind. I hope that someday I touch a child's life just as you touched Timmy's. And that Mediterranean jar, whatever became of it, I hope it gave you all that Pragai's hoped it would.
Love, Katie
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