Preschool, and a teacher like my grandma
Before kindergarten there was Our Redeemer Lutheran School in Overland, Missouri. A teacher whose kindness I still remember, a blind pastor who taught me something early, and a pair of enormous bear slippers.
I have a surprisingly good memory for my teachers, all the way back, so I want to start writing them down before they fade. The earliest one I can reach is preschool.
I went to preschool at Our Redeemer Lutheran in Overland, Missouri, the same church my family went to, just up the road from where we lived in St. John. So before I ever learned to read I was already spending my days in that building, and a lot of who I am got its start there. (The class photo says it was the Monday and Wednesday “Orange” group, 1992 to 1993, under principal Mr. Dittmar.)
What the church taught me before any lesson did
One of the pastors there, or one of the assistant pastors, was a blind man. I was just a little kid, but I understood something from that without anybody having to sit me down and explain it. I understood that a person could have something happen to them, or be born a certain way, and still stand up at the front of the room and be somebody. If you had the ambition to be a pastor, then you were a pastor. It did not matter whether you could see, or what your skin color was, or anything else.
That turned out to be one of the quiet gifts of growing up in St. John. It was a genuinely mixed place, all kinds of people living right next to each other. Every sort of background, every sort of ability, the churchgoing and the not, the people who had it together and the people who were struggling. As a kid you do not have words for it, but you absorb it. The whole community was vibrant in that way, and I am grateful I got dropped into the middle of it so young.
Mrs. Diehl
My preschool teacher was Mrs. Diehl. What I remember most is that she reminded me of my grandma. It was partly a visual thing. She had that same soft permed hairstyle, and she carried herself in that same gentle, grandmotherly way. But mostly it was the warmth. I remember being happy around her. I remember her kindness more than any one specific moment, which is its own kind of memory.
The one scene that did stick: it was Halloween, and my mom let me wear a giant pair of bear slippers to preschool as a sort of costume. Huge, fuzzy bear feet. I got to wear them all day and I thought that was about the coolest thing that had ever happened to me. I remember the naps too, lying down in that room in the middle of the day, feeling completely safe.
It was so long ago that I cannot point to a single big story. But I do not really need one. She was wonderful, and being wonderful to a four-year-old is not a small thing. It is most of the job.
And here is the part that gets me: she is still there. As far as I know, Mrs. Diehl is still the director of the preschool at Our Redeemer, all these years later. She must be getting up there in age by now, but she found the thing she was meant to do and simply never let go of it. Mrs. Diehl, you did the job, and from the sound of it you are still doing it.