I just received another beautiful letter from Miss Shea. This would probably carry more importance for you if you knew Miss Shea was my kindergarten teacher … and I am 50 years old. And I’m in prison.
In this modern era of frequent upgrades, disposable everything and instant messaging, it’s rare to find an “old school” human being who doesn’t “unfriend” you at the first sign of a rain cloud.
I remember bits and pieces of kindergarten – but they are memories sewn together underwater. Highland Park Elementary was a K-6 public grade school. It was an average school in an average St. Paul suburban neighborhood. We lived close enough to walk to school – we were the “Red Line” – escorted by student school crossing guards carrying stop flags.
Miss Shea’s classroom was huge. I remember large bread-box sized cardboard boxes and wooden blocks that we used to build houses and forts. A large, standing rectangular sand box (with a lid) stood near the classroom door. I remember having our own blankets to unroll for nap time, including special areas to store them when not in use. I bet I could still pick my blanket out of a line-up even today. Mine was made out of multi-colored rags woven together to create a magical patch of safety and rest and comfort. There are many a day here in prison I wish I still had a special blanket to tell the world I needed a break and it was nap time. Everyone would know to be quiet and not bother me.
I remember Miss Shea’s room had a kitchen appliance play corner. I remember Frederick the Mouse – a large grey stuffed mouse who lived on the piano and was pulled out whenever Miss Shea read the book about Frederick. I don’t remember any of his stories or plots, just a warm feeling of rightness in the world when Miss Shea would read to us perched on her piano bench throne. Did she ever play the piano? Maybe the tapping of a piano key was her attention getting signal. Those details are rather blurry, but after 50 years, they’re still very emotionally real.
I remember the class collecting cardboard toilet paper rolls and cereal boxes and saltine boxes and paper towel rolls … and then we created a huge 3D city with towers and skyscrapers and lots of columns. Then we painted our futuristic city with thick tempera paints – gobs of greens and blobs of blues and flinging yellows onto our fantastic futuristic creation.
The city remains amazing in my memory, but like most things, the memory is probably prettier than the actual reality. Part of me wishes for a photograph of our artistic endeavor, but a bigger part of me is glad to hold the only real copy in my memory bank.
We drew pictures on heavy paper card stock and laminated it to make customized placemats for ourselves to use at home. I probably would have forgotten that memory but for me finding the placemat several years ago when going through boxes of stuff in Mom’s attic. That’s also where I found a First Aid booklet made and illustrated by our kindergarten class.
At first I was confused reading through it, as it didn’t seem wise to use a metal tweezers to remove splinters from an eye … but apparently kindergarteners are less concerned about things like reality and liability than a retired Emergency Medical Technician. I smiled at the booklet and returned it safely to Mom’s treasure box.
As I advanced through the school grades, Miss Shea’s room was always a safe place to visit before or after the school day. By the time I was in 6th grade, I was elected Captain of the school patrol, where I still walked the Red Line to and from school, but now I also had a midday route to walk the kindergartners home around noon. I remember the school patrol metal flag poles were upgraded with fancy white fiberglass poles with an adjustable black vinyl hand-grip. These new poles were much lighter and didn’t freeze your fingers during the cold Minnesota winters, and though it was never mentioned, I can imagine another selling point was the students weren’t carrying around long metal poles during summer lightning storms!
My 6th Grade teacher (who shall remain unnamed) should have retired decades before being reassigned to our school. I don’t know what she was like when she was younger (if she ever was) but she was just simply too tired to teach. So she made our class watch movies. Every day. Multiple times a day. Some were unforgettable classics like “The Red Balloon.” Others were unforgettable for other reasons – puppets taking a bath together talking about the importance of good hygiene.
It was painful. And so my best friends Peter, Norman and I would often vent our frustrations to Miss Shea who, God Bless her, listened with empathy but always carefully avoided saying anything bad about old Prune Face. And then Miss Shea started calling a few of us out of class (i.e. “movie-time”) to help her in the kindergarten classroom.
This must be where I developed my love of helping others. We got to read books to the kids (including Frederick) and help them create even bigger cardboard cities and solve their conflicts and wipe noses and help clean-up. I’m not sure how much help we were to Miss Shea, but it was such a great change to feel useful and needed instead of nodding off to another filmstrip.
Somehow our advanced reading group was saved by a play directed by our very beloved former 5th grade teacher, Miss Mahon. “Cinderfella and the Prince of Pollution” was the beginning of my future acting career … and the first (of only two) times in my life where I performed in drag. I was one of the ugly step-sisters. Now I know there is a photograph of that floating around somewhere and it’s not as bad as it could have been. I made a very handsome lady, if I say so myself. And even though Miss Shea had nothing officially to do with the play, in my heart she’ll always get the credit for listening to our issues and then doing something about it.
During high school I would often drop in to visit with Miss Shea and was always given a hero’s welcome home. Miss Shea talks about a time I visited her home and programmed her VCR to show something other than flashing “12:00″… I guess all those hours of multi-media movies in 6th grade paid off!
So Miss Shea had a lasting impact on me and thousands of other impressionable 5 year olds. And in this day of virtual friends, we miraculously stayed in touch. I will never forget Miss Shea gifted me my first briefcase for my High School graduation present. It got stolen several summers later at a rural laundry mat in Northern Minnesota.
Miss Shea lives with her brother Bill in their original childhood home in Saint Paul. They both attended my annual Halloween Parties with great panache. Bill has a not-so-secret love of cats (which, given their catless home, I would guess Miss Shea does not share) and actually grew wild catnip in his backyard just to bring for my cats on Halloween. I’ll never forget the time they made a grand entrance to the party and Bill held up a zip-locked baggie of dried catnip and, to everyone’s delight, loudly exclaimed “I brought the good stuff!”
I remember my foray into indie film acting involved some local screenings, and I’ll never forget Miss Shea showing up at one such shindig wearing a hand-written name tag she had brought from home that proudly proclaimed herself as “Matthew’s Kindergarten Teacher.”
For my criminal sentencing, Miss Shea wrote a character letter to the judge on my behalf. I still got the maximum sentence, but that didn’t stop Miss Shea in the least.
I remember my first month in St. Cloud prison, being scared to death of everyone and everything. I was mortified to discover my cellie was a gang-banger (a “Blood” or a “Crip”… they’re all the same to a Wonder Bread goodie-goodie like me!).
Then I received a letter from Miss Shea that reminded me I wasn’t alone in the world, she hadn’t given up or forgotten about me. Then, miracle of miracles, the next day, my cellie happens to mention he attended Highland Park Elementary school, and the next words out of his mouth was asking me if I remembered Miss Shea! You should have seen the look on his face when I said yes and then pulled out her letter and let him read it. We reminisced about Miss Shea and from that point on, I knew that he had my back just because of Miss Shea and her letter.
While serving time in prison I realized that most everything I needed to know about prison I learned from Miss Shea back in Kindergarten:
Learn your number by heart
Cover your mouth when you cough
Don’t push or shove
Don’t touch it if it doesn’t belong to you
Nap time is quiet time
Wash your hands after going potty
Don’t call people bad names
Learn how to play well with others
Recess in the yard is fun.
In the nine years I’ve been down, I continue to treasure the letters and cards from Miss Shea (and her brother Bill, who often picks cat-themed cards for them both to write in). I learned to bead in prison, and made a bookmark that said “Bill” on it and had a pewter cat on the end. I also made a crayon colored one that said “Miss Shea” and a shamrock. She got a big kick out of the fact I beaded “Bill” on his bookmark but still wrote the formal “Miss Shea” on hers.
In their last letter I found out they’re both filling out visiting application forms. Assuming they both pass the criminal background check, they should be approved to visit by this Christmas. Hopefully Bill will leave the catnip at home.
I can’t begin to explain how amazing it is to have been gifted by my friendship with Miss Shea. Obviously when we first met, I had no sense that this person would be such an integral part of my life 50 years later. On the other hand, Miss Shea maintains, however unrealistically, that she knew back then that I was a very special 5-year old.
I won’t ever be able to even begin to repay Miss Shea for all the positive influences she’s been to me. Though I’ve told her before, I can’t ever say “Thank You” enough. Although I’ve given up my acting career, I started writing in prison. One of my works was selected to be read at a public performance at Hamline University in the Twin Cities and Miss Shea (and Bill) attended along with my parents.
UPDATE: Miss Shea and her brother did indeed come up for an amazingly special Christmas visit, but I’m not sure the DOC guards quite believed her when she kept proudly telling them she was my kindergarten teacher! I’m at a new facility, but just last month I received a beautiful cat-themed Birthday Card from Miss Shea and her brother that is proudly displayed on my wall.
Miss Shea, thank you so much for believing in me through it all.
