Rest in Peace, Mrs. Ingles. Belatedly.
The other day, I went with my son on a nostalgiac tour of my childhood, visiting old schools, the house I lived in when I was very young, and topping off the evening by watching a movie at a drive-in theater in a 1960's-era automobile I own.
In addition to feeling the need to pass on these experiences to my son, the odyssey satisfied a long-held urge to revisit my childhood through my adult eyes. I was very pleased with what I saw and felt. I had a textbook perfect childhood, with caring and giving parents, a secure and care-free middle-class life in American suburbia, surrounded by good friends, dedicated teachers and pastors, and a solid ethic of setting lofty goals and working hard to achieve them.
Ruth Ingles was my fifth-grade teacher, and my brother's fifth-grade teacher a year earlier. She was a sweet and soft-spoken, yet stern and dignified older woman who had been teaching at Crescent Ave. Christian School long before I was born.
People tend to remember smiles from special people in their childhood, and hers is still vividly kept in my thoughts. When Mrs. Ingles would smile, usually as an exclamation point to completing a thought, it was as if her smile broke through an otherwise consistently sensible demeanor to reveal the beautiful vibrant human being that lived inside this elderly woman. Her smile was a prize to those on the receiving end of it, and she was gracious in giving them.
I also vividly remember Mrs. Ingles's way of speaking, stubbornly reflective of her generation. She used figures of speech and euphemisms that were alien to me, but were strangely soothing in their indirect representation of the kind of world Mrs. Ingles herself grew up in: a world that seemed simpler, kinder, driven by common sense and genuine compassion.
As I walked the main hallway of classrooms at Crescent Ave., I asked our host how long she had been working there, and if she had been there long enough to know Mrs. Ingles. I was told that Mrs. Ingles had passed on many years ago.
Although this came as no surprise, (Mrs. Ingles was already well advanced in age way back in the 1970's when I was her student), actually hearing it felt to me as if she died yesterday. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind, I had hoped Mrs. Ingles was still somewhere to be found at Crescent Ave. so that I could give her a hug and thank her for enriching my perfect childhood.
That hug will have to wait until I see her again in Heaven, where I will no doubt find her enriching the lives of the angels, and the world of the Supreme Aglet is once again in perfect balance.
In addition to feeling the need to pass on these experiences to my son, the odyssey satisfied a long-held urge to revisit my childhood through my adult eyes. I was very pleased with what I saw and felt. I had a textbook perfect childhood, with caring and giving parents, a secure and care-free middle-class life in American suburbia, surrounded by good friends, dedicated teachers and pastors, and a solid ethic of setting lofty goals and working hard to achieve them.
Ruth Ingles was my fifth-grade teacher, and my brother's fifth-grade teacher a year earlier. She was a sweet and soft-spoken, yet stern and dignified older woman who had been teaching at Crescent Ave. Christian School long before I was born.
People tend to remember smiles from special people in their childhood, and hers is still vividly kept in my thoughts. When Mrs. Ingles would smile, usually as an exclamation point to completing a thought, it was as if her smile broke through an otherwise consistently sensible demeanor to reveal the beautiful vibrant human being that lived inside this elderly woman. Her smile was a prize to those on the receiving end of it, and she was gracious in giving them.
I also vividly remember Mrs. Ingles's way of speaking, stubbornly reflective of her generation. She used figures of speech and euphemisms that were alien to me, but were strangely soothing in their indirect representation of the kind of world Mrs. Ingles herself grew up in: a world that seemed simpler, kinder, driven by common sense and genuine compassion.
As I walked the main hallway of classrooms at Crescent Ave., I asked our host how long she had been working there, and if she had been there long enough to know Mrs. Ingles. I was told that Mrs. Ingles had passed on many years ago.
Although this came as no surprise, (Mrs. Ingles was already well advanced in age way back in the 1970's when I was her student), actually hearing it felt to me as if she died yesterday. I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind, I had hoped Mrs. Ingles was still somewhere to be found at Crescent Ave. so that I could give her a hug and thank her for enriching my perfect childhood.
That hug will have to wait until I see her again in Heaven, where I will no doubt find her enriching the lives of the angels, and the world of the Supreme Aglet is once again in perfect balance.
posted by The Supreme Aglet at 5:28 AM
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