A few days ago, I posted my memories of my elementary school teacher, Miss C., who I had for the third and fifth grades. I forgot to mention how much she liked poetry and recitations. She read us poems in a slow, dramatic voice, made us copy poems as handwriting exercises, and had us memorize them and recite them to the class.
The poem I remember best from her class was October’s Bright Blue Weather, by Helen Hunt Jackson. Although it appears in many anthologies for children, it’s pretty long and the language is challenging. I don’t think we had to memorize this one, but I remember sitting at my desk in our classroom on the second floor of the Charles J. Capen School, dutifully copying the poem on composition paper.
I copied the first verse, hearing Miss C.’s poetry voice in my mind:
O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather
I paused for a moment after writing the line “October’s bright blue weather,” and looked out the window, and there it was — a dazzling blue October sky! This was a thrilling moment for me, literature and nature coming together. And every October, that phrase sings in my mind, every time the sky is blue and even when it isn’t. I think it’s a beautiful line, but I don’t know if I would have appreciated it as much if Miss C. had not read it to us in her dramatic poetry voice.
I remember a few other of Miss C.’s favorites. In the spring, she read us Wordworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” still one of my favorite poems. She did a great reading of this, pausing slightly after dreamily reading the first two lines, “I wandered lonely as a cloud, That floats on high o’er vales and hills…” and switched to her surprised voice for the next two, “When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils!” There isn’t an exclamation point in the original poem, but that’s how she read it. Every time I see daffodils, I hear her voice in my mind.
I also remember her reading us psalms every morning after the Pledge of Allegiance. Hard to imagine such a thing now, and I don’t remember any other teacher reading from the Bible. Her favorite was Psalm 24, King James Version. The first few lines she delivered in a matter-of-fact, almost sing-songy fashion:
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas,
and established it upon the floods.
But then she’d switch to dramatic mode to ask the questions, placing emphasis on the word who:
Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?
And then to her teacher voice to clearly state the answer:
He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart!
She recited this as if there were an exclamation point, and I always expected her to add, “That’s who!”
And now that I know she’s gone, that’s how I picture her, on top of the hill of the Lord, standing right next to his throne, inspecting the hands and hearts of incoming souls to decide who shall pass and who should fail. It would be a perfect role for her — she had standards and knew how to enforce them, and I can’t imagine her ever wanting to rest in peace.
One of the things I like about having pets is that it’s clear that they’re different from us, and have different interests and needs. Right now, I’m living with two dogs, and they’re not only differerent from me, they’re different from each other. Nina, who is my dog, loves the snow and wants roll around in it, run around in circles scattering it around, loves to dig in it. Toby, my daughter’s dog who is spending a few months with me, dislikes the cold and hates snow, and never wants to leave the house if there’s snow on the ground. His point of view in undoubtably affected by his size — he’s a tiny thing with short little legs, so even a few inches of snow is overwhelming to him.
But today the three of us went for a walk that was perfect for all three of us. The weather was mild and the sidewalks were clear, which was good for Toby; there was still a lot of snow piled next to the sidewalk, which Nina enjoyed; and we took a route with a lot of stone walls, which I like to photograph. (At one point, Toby decided he’d had enough and stuck a pose of passive resistance, but after I picked him up and carried him for a few minutes, he was willing to continue walking.)
