Page 37 of Kiss Me Now
“I’m excited,” I replied, touching one of the fruits. It was turning orange, soon to deepen to red. “How much longer?”
“A week, I think. Your tomato sandwich is almost here. Maybe I’ll make you one to celebrate finishing your first week of teaching.”
“Can’t think of a better way to celebrate surviving it.”
“Did I use the word ‘survive,’ girl? I didnot.” Miss Lily gave the final “T” some extra oomph. “I said celebrate, period. There will be no surviving. Only thriving. Like the tomatoes.”
I smiled at her. I appreciated the vote of confidence, but I suspected that it had been so long since Miss Lily’s very first week as a teacher that she may have forgotten how overwhelming it felt.
“Don’t think for a second that I’m forgetting how overwhelming it is,” Miss Lily continued, and I felt a slight thrill of terror that Miss Lily could read my thoughts. “Every first week is unnerving until you’re about twenty years in. But what Idoknow from my years of long observation are the telltale signs of a teacher who has what it takes to succeed. You want to know the only thing that might trip you up from having the school year you hope for?”
“Yes, please.” I definitely wanted to know but also felt kind of disappointed that any such thing existed. I was hoping the dread of getting it wrong was just my anxiety talking.
“Your dread of getting it wrong.”
This time, I stared at Miss Lily, my mouth slightly open in surprise. “Are you...can you read my thoughts?”
Miss Lily gave a big, happy laugh. “No, child. Not in the way you think. That’s experience speaking from talking many new teachers through the process over the years. You want everything to be perfect. It won’t be. If you measure yourself against perfection, you’re always going to come up short. Does that make sense?”
“Yes, ma’am.” It wasn’t the first time someone had talked to me about my perfectionist tendencies.
Miss Lily walked down the row and stopped in front of me to smile. “What experience gives you is perspective. By the end of the year, you will have a much better yardstick for measuring success. You’ll have a better sense of how much your students can do and what standards to hold them to. My best advice is that those expectations should always force them to stretch in ways they don’t think they can because that’s how they grow. But you definitely shouldnotmeasure progress against the ideal you have in your head at the moment.”
Miss Lily leaned over and rustled the tomato plant nearest her for a minute, pushing back the leaves to expose a misshapen tomato. “Look at this, and then compare it to the one right next to it. You see how that one is shaped like every tomato you buy from the market?”
I nodded. I did see, and I saw where Miss Lily was going with all of this too.
“You know which one is going to taste better when we slice into them?” Miss Lily asked.
“They’ll taste the same?” I guessed.
“They’ll taste exactly the same,” Miss Lily confirmed. “So we’ll have grown two perfect tomatoes even if they look different.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
“No, you won’t,” Miss Lily grinned. “Not until about the late spring, and then you’ll remember I said this, and it will make more sense in the context of your classroom. You’ll be exhausted and dying for the year to be over, but also completely excited for the next school year to begin so you can implement everything you’ll have learned by then.”
“I can’t tell if that’s overwhelming or encouraging,” I said.
“Both,” Miss Lily said, her eyes twinkling. “You’ve got what it takes, Brooke-girl. Hang in there. You’ll be fine.”
We settled down to do more weeding, working in companionable silence save for the chatter of birds and Miss Lily’s soft humming. Miss Lily tended toward happy hymns, and this afternoon was “For the Beauty of the Earth,” a good fit for the peaceful garden.
We’d been at it for almost an hour, moving on to the bean plants and then the carrots, when the sound of a car door closing nearby stopped Miss Lily’s humming.
“Well, well, well,” she said, smiling, without even looking toward her driveway.
“Are you expecting someone?” My heart had started an odd skip-beat, knowing it was probably Ian.
“Always and never with this one,” Miss Lily answered, and before I could ask what she meant by “this one,” Ian appeared at the end of the row.
Unlike the previous week, he was dressed casually in gray shorts and a blue T-shirt that looked like the kind of soft only a thousand washings could get you.
“Hey, Gram. I see you roped Brooke into being your unpaid labor again.” He wrapped Miss Lily in a hug that made the petite woman grin.
“Good to see you, handsome grandson. What brings you out this weekend?”
“Wait, just ‘handsome grandson’? Can I be ‘most handsome grandson’? I mean, have youseenLandon lately?”
