{"id":1770,"date":"2019-01-25T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T14:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=1770"},"modified":"2019-01-31T11:01:36","modified_gmt":"2019-01-31T19:01:36","slug":"a-welcome-ghost-from-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2019\/01\/25\/a-welcome-ghost-from-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"A Welcome Ghost from the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

I graduated from the University of Arizona in May of 1966. \u00a0By the fall of 1966 I was a beginning teacher at Pueblo High School in Tucson. \u00a0I had managed to grab what was then considered a plum job with Tucson District Number One. \u00a0In those years, due to overcrowding, Pueblo was on double sessions, so in September of 1966 when I was 22, I was thrown into a 6 AM class full of seniors who were all only a few years younger than I.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just say it was a challenge. \u00a0It was the old days. \u00a0I wore heels and hose and dresses to school every day. \u00a0I wore size eleven shoes at the time. \u00a0There was only one store in town that carried size elevens, and those was all narrow width. \u00a0My feet have always been medium. \u00a0So I ended up with a gorgeous pair of black and white spectators, but by the end of school each day, I was in agony. \u00a0That\u2019s my biggest memory of that first year\u2014that my feet hurt every day.<\/p>\n

It seemed to me that I never managed those senior kids all that well, and so, for my second year, I asked to be moved to the afternoon session where I ended up teaching sophomores. \u00a0I was more experienced by then and felt that I had better control of the classroom. \u00a0We did a recreational reading program that was a huge success. \u00a0Years later, one of those sophomore kids\u2014the one who had given me the most grief\u2014told my husband that I was the best teacher he ever had. \u00a0But all these years, I\u2019ve considered what I offered those older kids in my first year of teaching was less than stellar.<\/p>\n

So this week, I received an e-mail from a woman named Cindy whose late mother, Roberta, had been one of my students. Cindy said, in part, that her mother had come to one of my signings years ago and had a book signed. \u00a0Cindy added, “She loved your stories and she was also very proud to let people know that she had you as a teacher at Pueblo.\u201d \u00a0Cindy finished by saying that when she\u2019s reading my books, she feels as though her mother is looking down on her and smiling.<\/p>\n

That comment was enough to make me go all warm and fuzzy. \u00a0Knowing that reading my stories can elicit that kind of connection to a missing loved one is a comment to cherish, and I do.<\/p>\n

\"\"When the e-mail came in, it was too precious not to share, so I read it aloud to my husband. The thing is, I taught at Pueblo for two years, and I didn\u2019t know which of those years Roberta had been one of my students. A few minutes later, however, Cindy sent a followup e-mail. \u00a0It contained a photo taken from her mother\u2019s high school year book of a faculty member, \u201cMiss Judy Ann Busk.\u201d \u00a0My goodness! \u00a0Looking at that photo I was struck by how very, very young I was back then. \u00a0Since I married during that first year of teaching, I was Mrs. Judy Janc when I taught in the afternoon session. \u00a0Roberta had been one of those hard-to-crack seniors. \u00a0And she remembered me. \u00a0Despite my misgivings, I had been a teacher she looked up to and valued. \u00a0What a gift that was, coming at me out of the blue, all these years later.<\/p>\n

Then something else struck me. \u00a0In that yearbook photo, I noticed that way back then, I wore my hair the same way I wear it now\u2014pulled back on my head and fastened into a French twist with combs. \u00a0Some things never change.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m sitting here humming a few bars from the theme song of that BBC series, New Tricks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all right. \u00a0It\u2019s okay.<\/em><\/p>\n

It really doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019re old and gray<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s all right. \u00a0It\u2019s okay,<\/em><\/p>\n

Getting to the end of the day.<\/em><\/p>\n

But today, I\u2019m taking Cindy\u2019s gift with me.<\/p>\n

Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I graduated from the University of Arizona in May of 1966. \u00a0By the fall of 1966 I was a beginning teacher at Pueblo High School in Tucson. \u00a0I had managed to grab what was then considered a plum job with Tucson District Number One. \u00a0In those years, due to overcrowding, Pueblo was on double sessions, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-sy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1770"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1779,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1770\/revisions\/1779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}