HER LAUGHTER NOURISHES ME STILL On Tuesday night in my hometown Lancaster SC, I had the privilege to read a poem dedicated to my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Bob Perry Seagle Gardner, who rocked my world and embraced me as part of her family. The fictional Harrison family in SPELLDOWN and BEWILDERMENT OF BOYS, is based on the respect and love I felt from and still feel toward this family. SPELLDOWN was dedicated to the memory of her laughter. WHAT I LEARNED IN SIXTH GRADE for Perry Gardner I was eleven when I met her a woman thoroughly convinced life was never to be taken seriously. Her smile wider than the chubby feet she flaunted in expensive black patent leather thongs, her toenails painted cherry red. The dimple on her right cheek so deep I wanted to crawl into it — live there forever closer to her laughter. Her huge calves like swollen turnips strutted between rows of desks straight into our hearts bringing summer with her no matter the weather outside. She knew firsthand about haves and have nots: her clean educated husband Plant Manager of the cotton mill that daily took the laughter of our parents and wove it into cheap cotton sheets. Words tumbled from her like noisy clowns: Bless your little pointed heads Look what the coyote drug in Ain’t worth a nickel’s worth of jelly beans: sentences as crazily lovely as she— a woman more contagious than death.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 16:59:36 +0000
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