Do you get intimidated by new things as easily as I do? The older I get the better I am at accepting change. Now when I have new experiences I tell myself I'm having an adventure, but it sure was hard when I was little. I remember my third grade year in school. It was full of new things, and it was hard.
My teacher was a new experience for me. Her name was Miss Fawcett, and she was the first teacher I ever had who didn't go to the same church as I did. You wouldn't think that would make such a difference to an eight year old, but it did. For starters, I had never been around people who drank coffee. Silly, I know, but the first day of school when I walked into Miss Fawcett's room I smelled the strangest thing, and it was unsettling. Of course, it was the cup of coffee on her desk, and after awhile I got used to the smell, but it was strange.
Miss Fawcett was young and pretty and very nice, and we all loved her, but she sometimes said things that made me look up in surprise. I think she got engaged during the school year. The last few months of spring she told us she was going to leave teaching, and Arizona, and move to California to get married. That was cool. Mom let me take a ceramics class with her in April, and she helped me make a ceramic Siamese cat to give to Miss Fawcett on the last day of school. It turned out beautiful, because the teacher and mom worked so carefully with me, and I was proud to present it to my teacher as a wedding present, too.
Mom was really talented. She could draw and paint and do crafts and sew. I was proud of her, but I didn't really like the dresses she made for me to wear. We could wear shorts and T shirts at home, but we always had to wear a dress to school. Dad was a school teacher, then in school administration, and we didn't have a very big income. Mom was frugal and careful, and we always had everything we needed, but never extra. That meant she sewed almost all of my dresses. She even sewed some of the boys shirts and pants, and once she made dad a leisure suit out of polyester knit. She was really proud of that accomplishment, but I don't remember him wearing it very often. Of course, all men looked pretty dumb wearing those suits, so I don't think it had anything to do with Mom's ability to sew.
I'm sure the dresses Mom made for me were fine, too. It's just that they didn't look store bought, like most of the cool girls at school wore. I don't remember really caring once I had worn them for a few times, but I was sure disappointed every time I would put on a newly made dress and look in the mirror, expecting to see the girl pictured on the front of the pattern. Instead it was always just dumpy old me, wearing a dumpy old hand made dress. Darn.
Mom spent weeks sewing school clothes for me the summer before I started third grade. She let me pick out the patterns and the material, and I chose one print that I really loved even though Mom tried to discourage me. It was bright yellow and covered in flowers. I thought it was so pretty, until I put it on. I guess that color wasn't very complimentary to me, because I looked sick. I was so disappointed. Funny, but I kept the idea that I couldn't wear yellow up until just a short time ago. I bought a yellow jacket this past spring and got so many compliments on the color and how it was just perfect for me that I was amazed. Maybe yellow is my color after all. Maybe it was just that dress.
I had to wear that dress anyway, we didn't have money to buy more material, and I got used to it after awhile. I remember one day, sitting on the swing set in the school playground. My friends and I had been swinging, but now we were just sitting. A bee came flying around, and it landed right on one of the yellow flowers on my dress. My friends screamed and shouted and ran around, but I just sat there, as still as I could be. I didn't want that dumb bee to sting me. After awhile it took off and flew away. The other girls gathered around, amazed at how calm I had been. I was just amazed at how life like that flower must have looked, if a bee thought it could get nectar out of a piece of material.
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