Text, Old School

On May 25, my high school art teacher turns 90. And my mother, her longtime friend, told me that Mrs. Reynierson only wants homemade cards from her friends.

Holy cow. I haven’t picked up a paintbrush (for art reasons) in a hundred years. Shame on me.

I’ve been thinking about what to paint, draw, collage, to tell Mrs. Reynierson how special she is to me. And here’s what I’m sending her.

A text!

We moved from New Hampshire back to Kentucky when I was just minutes away from starting my junior year in high school. After a couple of attempts at finding a friendly table in the cafeteria, I just kind of gave up. And without really talking about it out loud, Mrs. Reynierson understood that I needed a place to be during unstructured hours. She gave me a key to the art room.

I didn’t need to escape, exactly. I needed somewhere to ponder this new place and to reinvent myself.

In the art room, I made a little corner for myself, where I painted and charcoaled, sketched and collaged. And soon, I emerged and friended.

I joined clubs, I pepped at pep rallies, and I even ran for student congress.

Mrs. Reynierson must have loved watching me find my way out of my corner and into my new life.

Because that’s what teachers do.