Small pieces of a life make a memoir. Memories of time, place, and people open the door to the larger picture needed for writing one. For example, yesterday, when I had lunch with JoAnne and Sarah, two of my former students, the door for another memoir opened, not for just the day (time) itself or the place we ate lunch, but most of all from the flood of memories from looking into their beautiful, now grown-up faces. I saw them in my high school classroom twenty-one years ago. I heard their young voices and remembered their youthful expressions and reactions when they received a paper handed back with too many red marks!
After I finish the three memoirs in my In the Wind series, I will write a memoir about teaching for thirty-five years.
Teaching will be in parts of all three of the memoir series I am writing now, but if I have time before I get to the “jumping-off place,” my memories of my life in education deserve a book of their own. (The Miracle Worker is pictured here. I have never found a better tribute to teaching than the story of Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller.) I directed the play twice; this production was for Prescott Center for the Arts. with JoAnne Robertson and Carly Fonda.