This is my beautiful and selfless mother. (Though after this post, she may disown me.)
Today, after 40 years of teaching, she’s retiring. Think about that. Forty years of watching other people’s children for seven hours a day! Forty years of explaining why the caterpillar is very hungry and why 2 + 2 equals 4. Forty years of creatively explaining why I am writing this and not I is writing this. Forty years of dirty hands, crayon marks and boxes of Kleenex on the first day of school. FORTY YEARS!
My mother is a woman full of grace and kindness. She is patient and gentle. She is an advocate and a fighter. She will stand in anyone’s corner, not just her own children. She has spent countless days showing up early and staying late. She has tutored. She has mentored. She has loved. And she has done all of them incredibly well.
Even still, when she’s “off-the-clock,” she teaches my niece. Without her even realizing it, Lacey is learning while she only thinks she is playing. My mother is one of the most passionate and caring people I’ve ever known. She sees the good in all things, and she is one of the greatest encouragers I’ve known. She brings her students’ hearts home with her, praying over them and always looking for ways to better their education while she has them in her classroom. There’s never really been a day off or a vacation, because even away, her heart is there.
She didn’t make an announcement about retiring because she doesn’t want the attention. There wasn’t a party and there wasn’t a celebration. She quietly said goodbye and she drove home as she’s done for the past 40 years. She has been so much more than a teacher to so many kids across Alabama and Tennessee.
She is my mother, and it’s been my honor to share her with hundreds, if not thousands, of other kids through the years. I don’t know what it feels like to be proud of your own child, but the feeling I have for my mother must come close. I am so honored, and proud, and humbled by my mother’s service for the past four decades. I wish there were adequate words to say those things, to convey those emotions. With absolute certainty, I will claim today: This country lost one of its greatest educators in my mother. She will be missed, and it’s my prayer those teachers that follow will care as passionately and as genuinely as she has for 40 years.
Congratulations on your retirement, Mom. I’m so proud of you. We all are!