After school, Leona said goodbye to Jill, and then she and Arlene headed down Ohio Street with their neighborhood friends, while Jill walked westward along the School Road toward the Stream Road, taking the shortest route to her home.
When the jovial Haley girls were turning into their driveway, Margaret saw them through the kitchen window and came outside to greet them.
“How was your first day of school?” she asked to no one in particular.
“It was fun!” Leona said cheerfully. “We played tag in the morning and baseball in the afternoon. Oh, and yeah, I made a new friend; her name is Jill. She lives about a mile from here if you go through the woods. You can see her house from my bedroom, the one I showed you when we first moved in. Remember? Jill and I like the same things and we’re gonna be best friends from now on.”
“That’s wonderful, darling. What else did you do today?”
“My new teacher, Miss Hutchinson, told us what we’re gonna learn this year. And the things she told me are so wonderful.”
“Just what are you gonna learn?” Margaret asked her daughter.
“Lots of stuff. I’m even gonna learn how to read better so I can read to you, Mama.”
“Well, good. It looks like from now on you won’t be as down in the dumps about going to school.”
“No, I can’t wait ‘til tomorrow.”
“SPEAK FOR YOURSELF,” they heard Lillian shout. “I can’t wait for the weekend.”
She was walking up the Winter Fun Road, coming home from high school. Margaret laughed at her eldest daughter and spoke to her.
“I sure hope you take more of a liking to high school than you did to grammar school, Lillian. All you do is complain, complain, complain.”
“Oh, I like school okay, Mama. It’s the getting-out-of-bed-early part that I don’t care for.”
This time Leona and Arlene joined their mother in laughter. The joyful sound was music to Margaret’s ears because she had “worried her head off” the last few days about Lillian going to high school in Bangor, “all by her lonesome.” She was even more worried about Leona, so she was relieved to see that her children made it through their first day of school as well as they did. After talking with other parents in the neighborhood before the start of school, Margaret knew just how easy Miss Hutchinson made that first day of the unknown for her new students, and realized that she shouldn’t be too concerned. Still, a mother can’t help but worry, and Margaret was certainly no exception.
“I breathed a sigh of relief when the children came home from school today,” she told Murdock that night.
“Why worry about such a little thing, Maggie?” he said. “It’s not like they were going to war; it was just school.”
“I know, Murdy” she said. “I’m such a worrywart! I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You’re a mother,” is all he said.
Margaret just nodded and smiled.
—1—
The first-quarter of 3rd grade went well for Leona. Not only was she a good student who studied hard to earn four A’s and one B, but she was well liked by the other kids. She could hardly wait for school to let out on the day she received her first report card from Miss Hutchinson, so she could rush home and show it to her mother. When three o’clock finally came the excited 3rd-grader ran out the school door and began walking proudly down Ohio Street with her sister, all the while imagining the beautiful heart-warming smile she would see on her mother’s face when she handed the report card to her. It was hard for Leona to conceive of a more beautiful sight on that mid-October day, until, that is, she turned into her driveway and glanced up to see the brilliant multicolored trees that appeared in front of her that brisk fall day.
Many times in recent days Leona had marveled at the colorful foliage that every fall turns Maine’s countryside into a living painting, but the 8-year-old never appreciated its beauty as much as she did that afternoon. Maybe it was the anticipation of her mother’s beaming face that made the sight seem so spectacular to Leona on this particular day. Or maybe it was just the sight of the sunlight reflecting off the brilliant red, yellow, and orange leaves that were magnificently contrasted against the bright-blue sky; as usual, a sky abundantly sprinkled with puffy white clouds. Yes, maybe that’s what made the scenery appear more majestic than ever before.
No matter. When she saw that sight and then turned to see her mother up ahead, readying her once beautiful flower garden for the winter, Leona knew she would be hard pressed to ever experience a more wonderful feeling. And Margaret too was full of bliss when she saw her little girl come running home from school with that first report card in hand.
“Mama! Look! Look! I got my report card today,” the excited girl shouted.
“Well, I’ll be!” her mother said after dropping her garden gloves to the ground and opening the report card.
“Congratulations, young lady. I think this calls for a celebration. When your father comes home from work we’ll all have some homemade apple pie. I baked it fresh this afternoon; and I churned two gallons of vanilla ice cream this morning too, just for you children to enjoy. It hasn’t been in the icebox that long, so it may be a little sloppy, but it should be cold enough to eat now.”
Margaret always made ice cream and apple pie on the day that she knew her kids would be bringing report cards home. She hoped those treats would be used in celebration, as was the case this time with Leona. But if not, she had the dessert at the ready to help sooth the pain, or maybe the shame her children might feel if their grades were less than uplifting. Fortunately, the latter situation never arose. To date, her children were all remarkably studious and excelled in their studies, and if there was anything that pleased Margaret it was that her children were good students; even Lillian, who might have had trouble getting out of bed, but was not one you would call lazy once she did.
In Leona’s case, being so studious at such an early age made a good impression on her teacher. Because of that, plus being naturally a little shy, reasonably polite, and unquestionably cute, it didn’t take the little girl very long to win Miss Hutchinson’s praise and in turn become one of the teacher’s pets. That certainly pleased Leona because not having to worry about being picked on by a “mean teacher” was a great relief to the 3rd-grader. She had seen enough of that in Bangor, even though it was her friends and not her who had been picked on.
In addition to her teacher’s kindness, the added bonus of being able to watch others much older than herself interact in the tiny classroom was most helpful to Leona in adjusting to life outside of the safe environs of her home. That’s when she started to really enjoy school, but more importantly when she started to lose her innate shyness and to gain confidence in her own abilities.
In being exposed to children of all ages and abilities in the one-room schoolhouse, and to the advanced subjects that Miss Hutchinson taught them, it wasn’t long before Leona was learning things way beyond her grade level, things she had never even dreamed possible, even with her overly active imagination or in her most realistic dreams. And it was at least partly because of the thing she had once foolishly feared most: school. But more profoundly it was because of her new friend and mentor: Miss Hutchinson.