We cried so when she left us . . .

It like to broke my heart...

I have been told to write. Just do it. So I am doing it. The person who taught me to write was a wonderful woman who abhorred, above everything else, the sentimental. She also had no patience for the cliché or unnecessary punctuation. And yet, though her strong red script adorned my papers, I came to love her, because there was no meanness in how she corrected us, or at least I felt there was not.

She wasn't my favorite teacher, that honor went to Patricia Nemec, for whom I have searched in numerous data banks, websites, social networking sites and so forth. Nemec is a very common name. Miss (there were no Ms.'s at my all-girl Catholic school) Nemec came up from Texas driving a blue 1964 Mustang. We were 15, she might have been 21. She taught us history with the wit of Molly Ivins and the steely eyes of Ann Richards. Fifth hour American History, junior year, is one of my fondest memories.

The last week of school we learned, I forget how, that Miss Nemec of Texas was not going to be at our school anymore. She hadn't done anything wrong, it was just one of those things that happen and students aren't let in on adult decisions. Anyway, she was leaving. We wanted to do something, Mary and Mary and Molly and Ruby and I. It is really not much to tell. Someone left campus at lunch time and bought (what else) a dozen yellow roses and when she came in on the last day we sang "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and gave her the flowers. Really, we were all the same age, girls in pastel colored uniforms and a young teacher who drove a blue Mustang. We cried.

She wrote us all a letter or two and that was it. I never saw her again.

I saw my English teacher many more times and some of the nuns. The school was a very nurturing place, maybe unusual for an all-girl Catholic high school, but the rich girls were boarding students (I was not one) and maybe they realized we all needed some tenderness in our lives. I have my yearbooks; I should scan pictures in. The grounds of the school were the old Studebaker estate. I got to go there because my parents wanted me to be sheltered from the cultural changes of the 60's and they did not like the other Catholic high school which was run by the diocese. It was a good place. Life changing you might say.

Ok, I have written, as I was told to. I hope you like it. I will write more, I promise.