My Teachers: Miss Farrington

Yes, somehow I survived my childhood. We can probably all say that to some extent. But third, fourth and fifth grade were hard. Third grade started in Tennessee and finished in New Hampshire. My parents then decided the public school system in New Hampshire wasn’t where they wanted their children educated. So, in fourth grade I got moved to Calvary Christian School. Talk about another dramatic change. I wrote in my last post about my teachers that I left third grade seriously questioning my future career choice as a teacher. By the end of fourth grade, that coffin had been nailed shut. I would not grow up to be a teacher. Not after Miss Farrington.

 

When I first met Miss Farrington I thought I was in the “good” fourth grade class of the two at Calvary Christian. Perhaps because Mrs. Perry was older and Miss Farrington seemed so young. Looking back, I don’t know that she was. Oh, she was certainly younger than Mrs. Perry who was in her 50s if not 60s. But I’m now guessing Miss Farrington had to be in her 30s. Not really young – just unmarried.

 

Now I was not of the age that I cared if my teachers were married or not. I didn’t think much about my teachers outside of the classroom. I didn’t think about their husbands or kids. Hobbies or vacations. Likes or dislikes. They were teachers – not people. They belonged in their classroom and if I happened to run into one in the grocery store it was very wrong. Looking back, though, and having been single well into my thirties…my fellow students and I probably didn’t care if anything about Miss Farrington’s marital status but I have a feeling she did. Especially as she was the only unmarried teacher in the whole elementary school. I think she felt she had something to prove. And her students got the brunt of it. 

 

Miss Farrington was about as short as Mrs. Cassidy. She was also half as wide as she was tall. She always dressed very carefully in neat tops and long skirts or jumpers with flats and far too much makeup. She was not shy about saying anything, and she handed out discipline almost too easily. I felt picked on quite often, but I’m not sure I was any more or less picked on than any of the other students. In a class of only fourteen kids, not one of us could fly under the radar. The classroom was small – barely large enough for our desks, her desk, and room for us to work at the chalkboard. In a room that congested, there was almost nothing Miss Farrington didn’t know about. Which made her omissions almost as obvious as her commissions.

 

Miss Farrington was the teacher who when you asked, “Can I go to the bathroom?” she immediately responded, “I don’t know – can you?” I wasn’t the only one who was constantly correcting her verbs and came to hate the word may. One of the worse sins you could commit was to forget something, whether it was how to spell a word or forgetting your snow pants on a snowy day. The first because she hated imperfection. The latter because you weren’t allowed to be in outside in the snow without snow pants so you disrupted her half hour of quiet when we were all supposed to outside with another teacher on recess duty. But the very worsething a student could do was have extracurricularactivities during the school day. In fourth grade that meant music practice. Every single one of us was highly encouraged to try an instrument for band that year. At least ten out of the fourteen of us did so. And while full band practice happened during recess one day every other week, specific music practice happened just as lunch period was coming to an end and ran into reading class. I had flute practice with the other flautists every other Monday. We would all miss most of reading class, and Miss Farrington would make us stay in from recess until our reading work was complete. I’m not sure if we wanted out to recess or we wanted to get out from under her glowering brow. Whichever it was, we’d rush…we’d make mistakes…and we’d be seriously lectured in front of the rest of the class later. I suppose it should be a comfort that I wasn’t the only one who suffered through this. Any of us who played an instrument and had to be at practice were targets. It didn’t make me feel any better, though. 

 

The best of teachers encourage a love of learning in their students. Thanks to Miss Farrington, to this day I abhor penmanship. That’s not to say I don’t believe one’s writing should be neat and legible. I’ve gotten compliments that mine is, but that’s because I use to scribble stories for hours a day which eventually turned into well practiced handwriting. But I find myself not being very particular about the way my kids write their letters. Oh, I want neatness. And I should be able to read each letter. But I don’t care if they start at the top or the bottom. I’m not even particular about their letters looking exactly as they are printed in the book. In third grade, I learned cursive. In fourth grade, I learned that whichever curriculum Calvary Christian used (Bob Jones?), it dictated several cursive letters be written differently than I had learned them. I very politely approached Miss Farrington at her desk and asked if I needed to change my cursive so it was like the book or I could continue writing them as I had learned. She announced the question to the whole class and then proceeded to inform us that I had learned my letters wrongly and the way they did them was the right way. I needed to change. And I did. But after fourth grade, I never wrote those letters that way again. I still don’t.

 

But by and large the number one thing that made me decide never to be a teacher was Miss Farrington’s response to my being from the South. I was not the only little girl in her class from Tennessee. Annie, too, suffered for the sake of our heritage. First in how we say the word “aunt”. We say “ant”. Up in New England they say “auhnt”. Well, “aunt” was a spelling word in fourth grade. And when going through our words on a Monday morning, Miss Farrington had Kyle read that word. “Auhnt,” said Kyle. “Very good,” Miss Farrington nodded. “Annie, would you read that word?” “Ant,” Annie pronounced. “Yes,” Miss Farrington said. “Where Annie and Melissa are from, that is what they say. But I would not like to be called the name of an insect.” I almost cried. 

 

Even worse would come later when we studied the War of Northern Aggression in history. Of course, it was not called that in our history book. It was properly termed “Civil War” but it felt like the War of Northern Aggression. For nearly two weeks, Annie and I were mocked by several of the other kids as being “Confederates” and “losers”. In a classroom as small as hers where nothing escaped her, I know Miss Farrington knew. But she never said anything. Not a word. To me, her silence meant she agreed.

 

I was glad when fourth grade was over. And even happier when my parents told us they were going to homeschool us. I didn’t know what that meant, but I did know it meant I wouldn’t have to be in the same building as Miss Farrington. Or in a classroom with a Bruno. It sounded great to me!

 

Me at Christmas in one of my favorite sweaters with my siblings (left to right): Grace, Daniel, Sally and Katey. (And, technically, I was in 5^thgrade by this picture but I can’t find a decent picture of myself in 4^thgrade!)

My Teachers: Mrs. Cassidy

In 1987, my dad decided the Lord had called him to the foreign mission field. In a round about, he was right. The day after Christmas in 1988, we moved to New Hampshire. The foreign mission field.

 

I was very nervous about starting in at a new school in the middle of the school year. I hid that fear behind being disgruntled that my Christmas vacation got cut short. In reality, I had no idea what I was getting into. It took one day to realize I had left the wonderful place called Tennessee and landed in some place that couldn’t have possibly been on the same planet.

 

I don’t think we had reached lunch before Bruno, the class troublemaker from some good Italian New England family (whom I would later learned lived just up the street from me and had an older brother named Luigi…very goodItalian family), did something. I can’t even remember what, but what I do clearly remember is my new teacher Mrs. Cassidy (who was all of barely over five feet which made her the same height as Bruno) told him not to do it. Now where I came from, that would have been the end of that. Or the kid would have ended up in the corner. And if that didn’t work, there was always the coat room with a paddle. But not in New Hampshire. When Bruno got in her face and basically said “you’re-not-the-boss-of-me” she couldn’t put him in the corner. She most definitely couldn’t paddle him. She might have sent him to the principal’s office, but Bruno was a regular there and the principal couldn’t do much either. Basically all she could do was take him by the arm and force him back to his seat. Which was a stand off unless Bruno decided to move since he was certainly heavier than she was. I sat at my desk across the room watching this play out and wondering where on earth my parents had decided to move me.

 

Before the day was out, my next drama would be on the playground. A wonderful little girl named Summer had been putting her classwork in her cubby the same time I had and invited me to play with her during recess. I thought she was an angel from Heaven and happily agreed. Only to find myself stepping into a soap opera. Summer and I hadn’t played long before a couple of other little girls from class asked if they could speak to me: privately. They then told me what an awful person Summer was and that I shouldn’t play with her. And so it went the entire recess until I was very confused. I honestly liked Summer and thought her one of the nicest people in the class. We wouldn’t become fast friends, but I never did understand why those two other girls didn’t like her. They weren’t bullies or ever mean to me and one could be really nice when she wanted to be. Talk about third grade drama. 

 

To be honest, the last half of third grade is somewhat of a blur. It was a very confusing time. I didn’t live far from the school and had to walk if mom or the neighbor next door whose kids went there didn’t drive me. Our relationship with our neighbors was precarious at best and those kids were often bullies if they felt I had stepped over some invisible line. I felt the kids in my new classroom were mostly unfriendly, not realizing they were just New Englanders. I spent those five or six months being on my very best behavior because I honestly felt sorry for Mrs. Cassidy who could nothing whenever Bruno stepped out of line (which was almost daily) or Timothy, the class clown, did something stupid. I didn’t want to be trouble, too, so I mostly kept my head down, didn’t ask questions, and tried to be helpful.

 

It was very hard not to ask questions…simply because there were so many things I didn’t understand. Mrs. Cassidy was my first introduction to the foreign language called the “Bawston Drawl”. It’s a language I now speak fluently, but I didn’t then. I could not understand why she introduced me to the class as “Melissar” and continued to call me by that name for the next five months. As she wrote my name correctly on the tag on my desk, she obviously knew it did not have a “R” at the end of it. And yet she never said it without the “R”. I didn’t have the courage to correct her. I didn’t know why she would say she had an “idear” or why she said “cah” or “pahk”. We didn’t have to provide our own ruled paper as I had in the last school. She had “drawring” paper which was a weird brownish colored paper which was glossy smooth on one side and not quite so glossy on the other. It was hard to write on and even harder to erase on, but all of our work was to be done on it and I just assumed that “drawring” was an adjective like “construction” or “note”. It would be months before my dad finally asked someone in church about all the random R’s and Ah’s tossed into words. Once this man explained it, I could finally interpret Mrs. Cassidy…not that it made being called “Melissar” any easier.

 

I think I was a foreign to Mrs. Cassidy as she was to me. I remember the first time I ever approached her desk. I had finished all my homework and when I had done that back in Tennessee, I could always approach Mrs. Edwards’s desk and ask if there was anything I could do to help her. She always had little things I could do. When I asked Mrs. Cassidy the same thing, she looked surprised and speechless. I don’t think a student had ever asked her that, for most of her students didn’t finish their homework in class. I didn’t always, but when I did she started to find little things I could do. Thankfully I wasn’t there long enough to become “teacher’s pet”. I have a feeling in Mrs. Cassidy’s world, simply having a student that didn’t get in trouble was a relief. Aside from Mrs. Steely, I think she was the oldest teacher I had ever had. I would have pegged her closer to my grandparents’ age than my parents’. But I was only nine and not a good judge of an adult’s age. Still, I do remember thinking if I was her, I would quit. Before being in her class, I had wanted to be a teacher. Watching her try to teach when Bruno decided to give her a hard time…before third grade was over I was seriously re-thinking my future career choice. Mrs. Cassidy probably was too.

The Rest of the Vacation

Like so many trying to save money these days, we only took a short vacation. In an attempt to relax after Pittsburgh, we took the long way home through scenic Kentucky and found ourselves staying at a Shaker Village for a night. I can’t say it was very relaxing as I hit the bottom of my pool of resources the next morning when we were trying to load the car and broke down in tears, but so go vacations with three kids totally off their schedules. Still, it was a really nice place to stay and we got tickets to tour it the following day with our reservation which was fun.

 

My first encounter with Shakers (so called because they would “shake” in the spirit during worship) was in third grade on a field trip a few months after moving to New Hampshire. Everything in New England was still so foreign I remember thinking it was just one more really bizarre thing New England did. Like most cults in early America, this one started in England and came over to America in the 1780s. They started communities in New England before heading further west into Kentucky, Ohio and even Indiana. They believed in Christ’s eminent return and by living in communes believed they were preparing themselves for the millennial kingdom. Part of this preparation meant no marriage and no families. Men and boys lived separate from women and girls. Obviously this meant they weren’t going to grow very large and so relied on new converts to replace the ones who died. They also took in orphans and children whose families could not care for them. A self-sustaining group of people, in the 1800s they grew to memberships in the thousands. When I was in the third grade, there were still two old women Shakers living at that village. Today, though, they have all died off. A dozen of their villages are museums.

 

It was hard to explain this to the kids. I don’t think they got it at all, nor do I think they were interested. They also don’t yet relate “Shaker” to brooms, furniture, or the old song “ Tis the Gift to be Simple”. Someday they probably will and then they can say they actually stayed at a Shaker Village!

 

It was surprisingly nice. We had a two-room suite on the second floor of one of the old women’s dormitories. One room had a pair of twin beds with a bath and the other a king size bed with a bath. They were wonderfully air conditioned and quite simple with a couple of “Shaker” chairs, a desk, and a dresser. They also had pegs around every wall. Think of a chair rail on a wall only at the height of your head and with a pegs, spaced about every foot. I could hang anything! Had we stayed longer, there was also a community room with a huge fire place, nice chairs and couches, and tables for puzzles and games on the shelves in the building next door which had more rooms as did five or six other buildings on the 3,000 acres of land. If you ever need a place to stay just south of Lexington in Kentucky, you should look it up.

 

The next morning we roamed around a bit. There are trails you can hike, a creek bed that was all dried when we were there and a pond to fish in, but we just wandered a bit. We visited one building where their gatherings took place – a huge feat of Shaker architecture at four floors and a basement they used to cook and conduct school. It was astounding. The kids found it boring so we didn’t go into any of the other many buildings. Instead we made our way over to the “farm” where the animals are kept. Ellyson could have spent all day watching the chickens and turkeys. The other two went back and forth between the fowl and the other animals like goats, llamas and sheep. There were also cows and pigs as well as two large horses they got to meet and pet. After that we had lunch and they chased ducks around the orchard. It was quite amusing to watch them “herd” those ducks who couldn’t seem to run unless it was together in a tight pack.

 

We left to head home after that, stopping in Louisville to play at a splash pad along the Ohio River before making the drive home. Truly, a longer vacation with a little time to rest would have been nice but it was good to get away for a while.

 

Emry on the big swing near the building we stayed in.

 

Ethan and Emry at the front door of the building.

 

Ethan climbing one of many trees he found on the trip. All trees are tempting, but this one especially.

 

Ellyson and Ed watching the chickens and turkeys.

Pittsburgh!

When you’re a mom, a “vacation” isn’t really a vacation…it’s just doing everything you always do somewhere else. Tack on taking our very short summer vacation to Pittsburgh…well, Pittsburgh isn’t anyone’s idea of a vacation spot. But my littlest Pittsburgh native was delighted to be “home”. Of course Ed was happy to be home. Emry always loves to travel…and Ellyson didn’t know the difference. The fact that I didn’t get screamed at as I had on our last visit…we’ll call the trip a success!

 

                                                                                        At the Point. 

(For those of you who have no idea what this is: it’s where the Monongahela River meets the Allegheny River to form the Ohio River. It’s also where Pittsburgh started as “Fort Pitt”.)

 

On top of Mt. Washington with the Pittsburgh skyline behind us.

 

Emry eating a sandwich at Ed’s favorite Pittsburgh spot: Primanti Brother’s.

 

Ed at the Strip District with Primanti’s behind him. 

(For those of you who are possibly thinking what I first thought when Ed would tell me about his days spent at the “Strip District” it is not referring to strip clubs. It was actually a strip of warehouses. When Ed would waste time down there he was usually trying to kill himself with motorcycles and fast cars. When we lived there it was falling apart. Today it’s been “revitalized” and looks quite hipster.)

Emry, Ethan and Ellyson with three of their four Camus cousins: Declan, Macey and Zoey. 

(Missing is Caley, the eldest, who was at band practice.)

 

Ed with his mom and younger brother David. 

The Last of an Era

My grandmother’s house in Lewisburg, Tennessee was situated at a kind of fork in the road. A road ran directly to the driveway which ran around the backside of the house and up the one side. At that road, you could go into the driveway or turn left or right. The road to the left ran directly along the front side of the house (the side we almost never saw) while the road to the right ran over and into another part of the neighborhood. The first two houses on the left of that road had backyards that ran into my grandmother’s backyard. In those houses lived Mrs. Little and Mrs. Cochran.  Along with my grandmother, all three were widows for as long as I knew them.

 

Mrs. Little and Mrs. Cochran had lived in those two houses forever, just as my grandmother had lived in her house forever. Of course that wasn’t true, but they had lived there for as long as I had been alive and they had been widows for as long as I had been alive. As a tiny girl, I don’t think it ever occurred to me that there had been a Mr. Cochran or a Mr. Little at some point in time. Nor that Mrs. Cochran or Mrs. Little had families outside of my own. They were just Mrs. Little and Mrs. Cochran, as much a part of my life as my own grandmother.

 

Mrs. Little and Mrs. Cochran were always at family events at the house. Sometimes they were there the whole time, sometimes they just made an appearance. Christmas, Thanksgiving, other get togethers – they brought over dishes, sat around the table, told family stories as if they had been there (because they had!), and wiled away countless hours on that side porch with the rest of us. For that matter, they were even at family events that were not at my grandmother’s house. They were just part of the family.

 

Mrs. Cochran was the first to pass away. I don’t recall when, but I do recall the loss. Wondering what visiting to Tennessee would be like without her: the woman who apologized profusely for bringing store bought ice cream to a church ice cream social because her churn wouldn’t work. That is certainly not something a proper Southern woman would ever do, but of course she was forgiven. They just don’t make ice cream churns like they use to. Visiting wasn’t the same without her. I would look over at her house and resent whoever it was that now lived there. It wasn’t right. Some things just shouldn’t change.

 

My grandmother died in October of 2016. When Ed, Emry and I drove down from Pittsburgh for her funeral, we stayed with Mrs. Little. I had been in Mrs. Little’s house before, but mostly when one visited Mrs. Little you just sat in the old chairs in the garage (where the car was never parked). It was so gracious of her to put us up in her own bedroom, brimming over with Southern hospitality as she walked about with her cane and told us stories of when she was younger. I remember thinking how difficult it must be for her having outlived both Mrs. Cochran and my grandmother, but she mourned in private as any Southern lady does. She was always cheerful and happy as she fed us breakfast or asked us about our lives in Pittsburgh. Even though I hoped we could return on a happier occasion and visit with her again, I rather knew I would probably never see Mrs. Little alive again. Not when she would turn 90 a week after we left.

 

This weekend, my mom told me Mrs. Little has been put on hospice. She had been moved to an assisted living home in recent months just for her own safety, but she’s perfectly cognizant and full of memories. So, friends would come and take her back to her home just so she could be there to visit with people, and then take her back to the assisted living. She has cancer, though, and it’s only a matter of time. 

 

I don’t know who lives in Mrs. Cochran’s house now. Someone bought, fixed up and flipped my grandmother’s home. Now the same fate likely awaits Mrs. Little’s house. One day I will take my kids to Lewisburg. One day I will show them the places I loved as a kid, the places my mom and dad loved growing up, the places that are a part of me…and so a part of them. But when I take them to see their great-grandmother’s house and tell them about her, and Mrs. Cochran, and Mrs. Little, I will cry...as I am crying now. An era has ended. A part of my life has come to a close. And all that’s left is the memories I can share with them.