Dear Sister Maria
Marin used markers to draw a butterfly with spiraling antennae. I hope you find happiness in everything you do, she wrote.
Jenny covered her card with a yellow sun on an orange background. You are way too good for this school anyways, she wrote. Ur the BEST, nun or not.
Carlos wrote, You were my favorite teacher this year and I’m really going to miss you.
*
It’s a compilation of index cards spiral bound into a little book, a goodbye from every student in my F Block sophomore religion class.
I found it after 25 years, wedged among mementos crammed into a floppy Victoria’s Secret gift box. I had two Sophomore groups for Christian scriptures that year, a course I barely remember teaching. It was the year I defended my dissertation and raced from school each Tuesday to see a therapist and coordinated a service day that placed each student in nonprofits across three counties and, that spring, told the sisters in my house I was going to leave.
But despite the tumult, I can still see our classroom. A print of Simon Silva’s Amor de Padre: a farm worker home from the fields embracing his son. Art projects pinned in a row above the whiteboard. Desks in two rows lining the long walls, students facing one another, not me. The sheen of light from the window side.
I had a freshmen religion class, as well. The block right after lunch, Old Testament and personal development. I remember the way they sang along when I played an LP of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat:
Go go go Joseph!
Could you use a slave, you hairy bunch of Ishmaelites?
Any dream will do.
And the way they took turns leading a prayer at the start of class, sharing family tragedies because we understood you never know what kind of burdens other people carry and it was a safe place, lights off and a candle we weren’t supposed to ignite but nevertheless did, kids competing for a chance to light the match, nervous jokes about pyromania before settling into the quiet.
*
In purple ink, Natalie wrote, Finding answers is one of the hardest things in life. Hope you find what you are looking for.
In green ink Angela wrote, Please remember me because I know there will always be a place for you in my heart. Maybe we will meet again later down in our lives.
Jeremy cartooned a skillful self-portrait. In the word bubble: Good luck and I’ll always remember you. I love you!
Dreamy, artistic Jarrett drew a moonbeam.
Katie wrote, I know that wherever you go, people are going to love you as much as we did.
*
Four years out of the convent, I interviewed for a job that would bump my salary from the mid-thirties closer to around fifty K, enough to bag a loan on a 600 square-foot condo. The Catholic headmaster knew I used to be a nun.
“It’s special,” he said. “Sisters teach as a ministry, from a place of love.”
“Is that what it’s like for you still, a ministry, not a job?”
Talk about a leading question.
“Oh, yes,” I murmured.
Hell no, I thought.
I no longer walked a rosy path from a convent to my classroom; I commuted in East Bay traffic. Weeknights and weekends, I wove my Geo Prizm through the Oakland and Berkeley hills where I augmented my income with in-home tutoring gigs. New to middle school teaching, I spent my summers learning age-appropriate pedagogy and reading young adult literature. My classroom was a portable with mold in its walls, and I competed with the sound of HEPA filters for my students’ attention. The in-between-ness of middle school kids bemused me, like when a kid swallowed a button during a fire drill and asked me what he should do. Definitely, a job.
Sure, I got good at curriculum and keeping eleven-year-olds engaged for ninety-minute class periods. We had some laughs, like when someone removed all but the middle fingers of the rubber hall pass monkey or when I would say SHUT THE F-ront door if it got too loud. Sometimes I came close to loving them, like during outdoor ed in the redwoods, my trail group competing to kiss the most banana slugs.
*
Heather wrote, Thanks so much for your never-ending, saintly patience throughout the year. You have been a role model. Keep smiling!
Nicole wrote, I was losing my mind, and you were so comforting and loving. You reminded me of the marvels of God. You helped me understand God and the Holy Spirit and I was confirmed. The “confirmation glow” is how I feel around you. The Holy Spirit radiates from you.
Monique printed in pencil. I thank God that our class had the opportunity to have you not only as a teacher, but a friend.
*
If I squint really hard, I can see a shadow of the minister I used to be. Saintly patience. A vessel of the Holy Spirit. A friend.
I’d later teach a sixth grader rarely prepared for class. Start of one class, he asked to borrow a pencil.
“You’re pathetic,” I said.
He was probably the nicest kid I met in my years at that school. Maybe Monique and Heather and Nicole projected their goodness on me the way I projected frustration on a boy it’s impossible to imagine wanting to hurt.
Why is it so hard to get past the anger stage of grief?
*
Jill’s card was bordered in rows of red stars. You are a great teacher and person.
*
Maybe I was reaping the benefit of my status. Like when I attended the school’s annual fundraiser and the dad at the bar offered to comp me a drink. A few years out of the convent, I was at a secular school’s fundraiser at a parent’s posh Woodside estate. The dad at the bar handed me a drink and several seconds passed before I realized that Oh shit, I have to pay for this.
Of course, it’s about much more than a free rum-and-coke. I was an unspoused woman whose primary relationship was with God and after that, her students. I taught their older siblings. Their parents liked me. I was invited to their graduation parties and actually went. I represented the community of women that started a school in Napa back when it was still a blue-collar town. They believed I was there because of love.
*
Tim wrote, I believe I must give you the Tim’s Two Thumbs Up award.
Jeffrey wrote, Keep this. I’ll be famous one day.
You were the only teacher ever to call me a punk. I’m scarred for life, wrote Erik.
Stark in black ink, Drew wrote, I hope you enjoy whatever you decide. I also hope you gave me an A.
I never fell asleep in here, wrote one anonymous student.
Also anonymous was this epitaph from T.S Eliot’s gravestone: The language of the dead is tongued through the eternal fire of the living.
Those kids really got me.
Aaron offered, Why don’t you look into the LDS religion? Honestly, you can serve diligently and be married too.
Michelle bordered her index card with orange felt pen squiggles, purple hearts and blue flowers. I know that wherever you go and whatever you do, God will be with you and you will have strength and happiness.
Red Dog wrote, You should have been allowed to stay for a couple more years. Good luck.
*
My father was relieved when I left the convent. My brother said, “It was about time you got the hell out of there,” and gifted me a butter dish with a cow-shaped lid. But no one supported my decision like the last ones ever to call me Sister Maria.
I miss her, the confident young woman who got every kid in the school out on the lawn, holding hands and dancing in a circle to one love, one heart, let’s get together and feel all right.
Within a year of leaving, I realized I would never love my students the way I loved those kids in Napa.
And then I didn’t think about it at all.
Maria Hetherton is a retired teacher with a past in academia (PhD in Folklore, Indiana U), but a career mostly in high and middle school. Having time to write has been the dream of a lifetime. Her nonfiction appears at Herstry, Hippocampus, The Malahat Review, and the blog at Dappled Things, among several other outlets. She lives in New Mexico with her husband and two cozy black cats, close to the beautiful bosque lining the Rio Grande.
