#29. What It Is About Miss Honey? It DAWNS ON me. Warning: this entry contains a pun, some Shakespeare, and a memory from the way-back seat. All good. I guess this COULD have been a PS to the Kindergarten Troubles entry, but it seemed to need its own space; it’s that important to me. Plus, Pop guessed it in his looooong comment on the last blog piece. (Make sure to read the comments, people!)

by storytellerisabel

In my new bedroom (Dad’s old bedroom here in Pop’s house), my dormer window faces East, and every morning, after the sun clears the hemlocks, it beams into my window and floods me and my quilt with its rosy-fingered light.  I’m bathed in sun. I get a cozy bit warmer.

I’m dawned-on.

(Do you get this? Dawn is morning’s first light? OK. OK.  Of course you get it. Right. Sorry. So, you know what I mean.)

I’m working on a comparison. Stay with me here.

It’s just dawned on me why Miss Honey seems familiar.

She acts like Mom. She bends like a gentle, sweet queen to hold each twin’s hand. She jog-skips like a marathon-gymnast-ice-dancer. And she smiles down at them all at the same time.

Dad used to say Mom was an Earth-treading star with the power to make light the dark. Dad liked to quote Shakespeare; he said this is one of the many ways Mr. Shakespeare describes beautiful ladies. It was one of Dad’s many ways to describe Mom too.

So, Miss Honey brings my memory of Mom out of the shadows. And, like the dawn’s early light, it warms me up. I’ve worried that I might forget Mom. Not forget-forget her, but forget what she looks like. Now I know it’s not gonna happen.

Back to Miss Honey: I’ll come right out and say it: I. Am. Happy. About This.  Or a version of happy. I’ll be able to scramble into the way-back-seat of my memory where Mom’s sitting, just by taking Clyde and Sam to Miss Honey’s classroom every morning.

Isabel Scheherazade (The dawned-on version of Isabel, that is.)

PS. Hmmmm. I might even reveal this to my very compassionate and sympathetic teacher, Mr. Grim—can you believe it, a teacher named “Grim?” It’s like having a surgeon called “Cutts!”  Mr Grim. Mr. Grim! Please excuse me from pre-Algebra.  I need to gaze at Miss Honey. I’m lonely for my Mom.

I never used to be capable of irony. I wonder if all the tragedy in my life is making me more inclined to indulge in it? I  have dabbled with it. Last year I started putting air quotes into my talk, maybe to throw shade on an idea or person? Dad warned me to beware the pitfalls of irony. It’s probably a good idea to say what you mean most of the time, Isabel. Is it because he worried that if I got into irony I would become fierce and bold…and carefree? Oh Dad. I miss you scolding me about using air quotes. I wonder: Is it possible to put the opposite of air quotes around the word miss?

isabelwithlegupwriting.jpg(sketches by my friend Ryan)