The most beautiful, life changing messages happen when you least expect them.
Out of all the teachers my boys have had in my seventeen-year parenting career, I think about Mrs. Toth the most. That little lady haunts my dreams. Morgen's third grade teacher tried to make everything around her better. After teaching school for 34 years, she knew a lot about children. I sought to help in her class as much as I could to just be around her. But I’m still left with the feeling that I could have done more.
Because one Tuesday afternoon, near the end of the school year at field day, Mrs. Toth told me something that I will never forget.
It felt like a single beam of sun that somehow managed to shine through the darkest of menacing clouds.
It looked like a tiny yellow flower that somehow managed to sprout through a crack in the cruel rock cliff.
These are the words she spoke:
You may not work on Wall Street. You may not make a lot of money. You may not think so, but I have been watching you all year. I think you should teach a joyful parenting class. Every single one of us could learn from your example each and every day to bring joy into the chaos of parenting.
She then told me that she saw me when I looked into Morgen's eyes when he spoke, even though I’d heard the story ten times already.
And she mentioned that I paid attention when he said, “Watch me, Mom!” And not only did I watch, but I said, “I see you, buddy. I see you!”
She even said she heard me say, “How did I get so lucky?”
Maybe that’s why I look for the good, always the good in others, even when I have to dig a little to find it.
Because Mrs. Toth did. She retired the next year, Max and Markus didn't get to experience her example that loving a person means seeing him, really seeing him, above the distractions, the chaos, the mess, and the imperfections. She knew that loving a person means seeing him with so much love in your eyes that you can’t hold back the tears. Teacher's pet aside, she told me that she couldn’t bear the thought of him belonging to anyone else.
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| {Karsten, Dallin, Parker and Morgen at Graduation} |
