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Mary Stearns (Tuley)
I wrote this today.
. . . . . . .
My high school classmate Louise White died the other day, and I'm in disbelief and so very sad.
In our home town, some of us went to the old Central School for eight years (yes, eight!) and some of us, including me, lived in the neighborhood that qualified us for the newer but not much spiffier Covington Street School. Then the entire unruly gaggle of us were funneled into the ancient and decrepit L:aurinburg High School, and that was where I met Louise.
A temporarily boisterous group of us were massed in the third-floor hallway, and I was standing behind Louise, whom I of course did not know. She caught my attention, though, by turning around to tell me, "It's too bad that we got Old Lady Stearns. Nobody can stand her!"
"Oh I don't know... " I ventured.
"What makes you say that?" she asked.
"She's always been a pretty good mother to me."
And we were friends ever after.
I never blamed Louise for reporting the erroneous news to me. She was only saying out loud what plenty of other fourteen-year-olds were supposing as they ground their teeth in apprehension. And the moment was SO FUNNY!
My mother was a remarkably wonderful English teacher, incidentally. We diagrammed sentences (I still love to do it), made horrifyingly dreadful oral book reports (shriek!), and loved every word of Great Expectations. My grandson Satya and I are reading Oliver Twist to each other right now, at his dad Joey's suggestion, and we may even finish it one of these days..
Once upon a faraway life, Louise and I learned all about Dickens together, and both of us became better people because we did.
“There was a long hard time when I kept far from me the remembrance of what I had thrown away when I was quite ignorant of its worth.” Thanks for the memories, Louise.
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