Third Grade Move

 

We were late.

I was horrified.

The kind of fist-in-the-stomach

tense

that had tears trying to find

their way out the burning rims of my eyes.

I kept blinking,

as we hurried toward the numbered door.

Our new home’s construction

was delayed and so this September day

we had to cross the whole valley

to get to my new classroom,

in my new school,

in the new town,

with all new people.

My step-dad (Daddy to me)

had taken the opportunity this move offered

to reiterate to my older brother

and myself that if we wanted his

last name as our own,

he would be proud;

my mother added that it was our choice.

I thrilled from the unexpected

adult-like attention of that conversation,

and chose to try it on the first day,

remembering how my parents’ eyes

shone at my voicing this sweet shift.

School then and always has

provided me a realm

of competency, since I learn

the way public systems teach-

much of my esteem,

later ego,

grew from the strength

I drew from those roots:

of seek and find,

of truth and relativity,

of shared experience

and alien existence.

This 8 ½ year old that day,

flushed with the embarrassment

of walking past rows of

mostly white, well-bathed and eager faces,

wearing my favorite white knee socks,

and brand new red shoes

that were

making uncomfortably loud clacks

on the polished linoleum,

surrounded by the smells of chalkboards,

paste and pencil shavings

seemingly imbedded in the walls,

marched up with my step-father to

Mrs. Hinton,

who had brown hair

stacked higher than I had ever seen,

and curiously drawn-on eyebrows,

but also a wide smile that

crinkled her eyes and softened

her creased forehead.

She asked me for my name,

which I said a bit too quietly.

Then she asked me to spell

my last name,

and to my dawning horror,

I realized that I wasn’t sure…

in front of all my new classmates,

I wasn’t sure-fired ready

to shoot out a correct answer

and show everyone what a sharp

marksman I was

with the words that have always

wrapped themselves around my head,

heart and tongue.

My mother would have sensed my terror

without missing a beat,

but my daddy, a dear engineer who loved

us with a logical fierceness that

sometimes meant bewildered communication,

let me twist and turn inside

as my cheeks grew hotter and I gripped his hand.

Suddenly he looked at me, surprised

(at the time this doubled up my shame)

and spelled it, too loudly, to

my new, probably shocked,

teacher.

She waved me to my seat, right next to

a boy named Mike Inouye

and seeing his name tag penciled in

that precise teacher script

on the desk,

I grew humbler in my reading skills

as I tried to slump low in the chair.

Reflecting on the power of the moment,

in relation to the rest of my

truly wonderful third grade year,

gives me glimpse once again

that a first day

isn’t the end.