She was from Virginia and drove a navy blue Volkswagen Beetle. She said “y’all.” And when my mother dropped me off at the new school with the new teacher and the new kids in a new city, I balked. Big time.
It did not bother me in the least to be weeping my eyes out in the cloakroom of the old Massachusetts school building. This was not going to be OK, despite what mom and dad had told me. But Miss Kelham knew better. Thank goodness.
“Now come along, Todd. Your mom needs to go,” she said, taking me by the hand and firmly ushering me into the classroom.
Suddenly I was seated at a wooden desk with a lift top and a strange hole that formerly had been used to hold ink bottles. She was reading “Misty of Chincoteague” to the class. By lunchtime I was eating strange new potato chips shared by Jeff, my classmate and new neighbor, and staring out the window contentedly. Gone was my tantrum. I was smitten with Miss Kelham. I still am. She saved me. And Jeff taught me to fish, build forts in the woods and gave me my first jackknife. We played with matches, too. I discovered fire, as every child must in the replay of hunter-gatherer developmental milestones. My world became larger.
That is the prosaic version.
Poet Howard Nemerov must have known what my mother was thinking and feeling. In “September 1, First Day of School,” he wrote:
My child and I hold hands on the way to school,
And when I leave him at the first grade door
He cries a little but is brave; he does
Let go. My selfish tears remind me how
I cried before that door a life ago.
I may have had a hard time letting go.
As I eventually discovered when I became the father to three kids, the parent, too, is learning to relinquish responsibility and control — to the child himself, to the new teacher and to the new phase of parenting and its demands. And at each such threshold we re-encounter ourselves. The child is father to the man, over and over. And although my kids are now 30-something adults, this beat goes on.
In hindsight my scene was more akin to John Wayne’s swimming tutorial. There’s a short video circulating the internet that shows the Duke teaching a youth how to swim. He picks him up by the belt and tosses him into the creek. There, now swim. Done.
Yes, there’s a difference between personal experience and individual attention and Hollywood lore. The truth and wisdom lie somewhere in the mix. As even John Wayne knows.
Who was your Miss Kelham? And who might your child’s be now? And what classroom door are you preparing to deliver them to as the next chapter begins this year? How will you face letting go — again?
Todd R. Nelson is principal of Brooksville Elementary School.