A Lovely Inconsequence Rx
March 15, 2020
I’ve read, and friends have told me that women are buying themselves flowers this week. I saw it today at the supermarket too. Every other basket had flowers in it including the basket of an 80+ fellow female shopper. And purple tulips reached out to me as if their leaves had tentacles. The color was so happy that I just had to bring them home. One can easily see that we are trying to soothe ourselves, reassure ourselves, and feel a little normal during an uncertain and scary time.
Many self-help gurus say that if we want to re-discover our true passions, we need to remember ourselves at ten years old. The theory is that age ten is when our spirits are still free and unencumbered by prejudices and opinions of others. Age ten is when we are still pure in youthful selfishness and right decision and we still have time to experiment and explore things that excite and spark joy.
At ten years old, I was in the fifth grade and assigned to a dreadful teacher. Fortunately, she left to have a baby in October but then a series of unfortunate substitutes followed, each worse than the one before. But in January, a breath of fresh air breezed in and turned our sullen classroom into a garden.
Mrs. Tanner was the mother of a student in the other fifth grade class and having her youngest child in first grade, she volunteered to teach us until a good permanent replacement could be found. Suddenly, our classroom was filled with flowers and plants. We had tender shoots sprouting up on every inch of the large window sills on the side of the classroom, we made moist terrariums and saw how plants can grow under glass. Soon, a green philodendron began to creep its way across the alphabet frieze at the top of the chalkboard. We placed bets in a decorated box on how long it would take for its leafy tendrils to reach the wall clock on the other side of the room.
But Mrs.Tanner fostered other things in us besides horticulture. We learned how to make an exploding paper mache “volcano” with vinegar and baking soda. She wheeled a colored TV into the classroom so we could watch some of the orbital rocket launches that year. We had lessons about the moon and homework assignments observing its phases from our backyards and recording our findings in journals we made by hand. And most importantly, Mrs. Tanner taught us to love books…
Each week we had to present a book report to the class but all books had to be teacher-approved first. Only once did she veto my selection – a much-too-grown-up story about a teenager who married in high school. “Why don’t you read about a teenager who lived during the Civil War?”, she suggested. And then she took me on a walk to the school library where I found a story about Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s famous teacher, and a touching story about a girl sent to live with her aunt during wartime. I devoured the books and this was the origin of my life-long love of history and reading.
But what I remember most about Mrs.Tanner was the book she read to us. About a half hour before the dismissal bell, she would remove a small brown book the side drawer in her old wooden desk. It was a true tale about a boy who got lost in mountainous woods after having been separated from his family on a camping trip. The spirited yet soft way she read, the pauses to ask us pointed questions about what we thought would happen next, enraptured us so much that we felt we knew this lost boy personally and collectively, we rooted for him on the edge of our desk chairs every afternoon. How disappointed we were when that bell released us back down to earth.
I’ve been thinking about the gifts Mrs. Tanner gave us that year. She not only rescued us from three tortuous teachers, but she loved us into our ten year old existence. We learned how to identify spring wildflowers and she let us tramp to a nearby bog where unbidden, we filled our arms with pussywillows, her favorite spring plant. Indeed, I still can’t see a branch of them without thinking of her. Tender and fresh, they arrive with a promise of warmer days to come, just like our teacher when she arrived in our classroom like a refreshing zephyr to heal and redirect a bunch of fifth graders.
There’s a prescription in this post, my friends. What did you love at ten? What can you bring to these frightening weeks ahead as we hunker down at home and fret and worry about our loved ones? I think flowers and books are in order, don’t you? Maybe a book of something wonderful that you can order online – something you’ve always wanted to know more about – constellations, how to make coffee desserts, a sumptuous study of romantic Scottish ruins, or a book like my new one about Monet’s fabled and beloved Giverny. Something new-to-you that you can get lost in over the next few weeks. Read every bit of text and savor each picture and illustration, live with your book and enjoy it. And grow something. Start some seeds, buy a cheery green ivy and watch how it leans towards the late afternoon sun. Perhaps there are pussywillows nearby too, just waiting to dress up that grocery store bouquet.
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A friend told me she spent some happy hours cleaning out her costume jewelry drawers the other day while she waited for her husband to fly home from a business trip.. My sister, who loved to draw at age ten, is soothing herself by coloring in coloring books and trying her hand at sketching with colored pencils. Other friends are baking bread and cookies. This not the time to give up routines for skin care and exercising can be done at home. Nourishing foods and regular mealtimes are helpful too. What is reassuring you these days?
