Life After Life Read Online Free PDF

told parents. “My job is to help that child find his natural speed and not to pit him against another.”
    She tried to teach her children to be positive—to dream but to also do it with their feet on the ground. If you let loose that balloon, you will lose sight of it, she said. The best way to enjoy it is to hold tight to the string and plant your feet on a good solid path. She thinks now that maybe part of why she was so happy and positive is because she saw so much that was not good. She got to be quite good at figuring out which children were neglected at home, but then she was never sure what to do with that information except to love them a little more, hold them close whenever the opportunity allowed. Sometimes it was hard to be cordial to parents she suspected of misdeeds, and it was hard not to quiz the children a little too much. People think it’s a problem of economics, but that is not always true at all. There can be just as much neglect and abuse in a big fine house with professional parents as out in the trailer park. Alcohol is alcohol and meanness is meanness. An eight-year-old heart is just an innocent eight-year-old heart—fragile and wanting.
    In the classroom, she often told stories about her own household and she painted pictures of all that should happen in a home, the good things people should strive to possess. Eight is a good age for this. They are bright-eyed and know so much, but they are still such babies in so many ways. She told how she apologized to her son after falsely accusing him of eating the last cookie. It was eaten by the plumber, who happened to mention it, or she might have forever thought her son was lying and he would have thought she falsely accused him, teaching him a terrible lesson way too young in life. Old-fashioned stories with little morals were great in the classroom. She got tired of all the younger teachers coming through and saying how old-fashioned she was because she still believed in dictionaries and manners. And she didn’t like the shift away from just good old pencils and paper and regular spelling tests. She hated this creative spelling mess. She loved cursive and phonics. For years her favorite thing was the lessons in cursive—taking children from a world of boxy print letters to beautiful script. It was like teaching a language and suddenly notes home and envelopes in their mailboxes didn’t seem so foreign and foreboding. Learning and facing language teaches children to learn and face other things as well, and no, she didn’t learn the computer with only one more year before her retirement. The typewriter and overhead projector were just fine to get her to the finish line of a long and lovely race.
    Of course, who writes anymore? She has a whole box of letters from her husband, each a little masterpiece, at least to her it is. She taught her own children the importance of a handwritten note or tried to. And she loved spending time on manners. Those boys busting to be first in line. Slow down! she would say. There’s no fire! But it was like they couldn’t help themselves, like those jumping-bean bodies were on fire and she was constantly needing to remind them to use their indoor voices as opposed to the outdoor voices. She said that all the time and still does. There are people here at Pine Haven who constantly need to be told to use their indoor voices, not to touch or invade the space of their neighbors and to please slow down. Where is the fire? she asks Stanley Stone all the time when he goes tearing down the hall to be first at the cafeteria. Please, just tell me where’s the fire. Of course, poor Stanley is not the best example since his mind is so far gone. But at least he is on foot. It’s those in wheelchairs, like herself, who are so dangerous when they pick up speed. Please use your manners, she often says. Were you raised in a barn?
    There was a time when a child who squirmed too much in class was thought to have worms, but now they