My first grade teacher, Aunt Trudy, passed away this week. Aunt Trudy was an amazing person. She was generous and quick-witted, warm, kind, clever, and all the things you dream of having for a teacher when you are any age, but especially very young and learning how to love (or not love) school.

She taught me to love school. She taught me that reading was about the words on the page and the feeling of a soft hand guiding mine as we turned it together. She taught me that I could write something that would make her laugh, and I tried to do that over and over. She taught me about fairness and gentleness, in a time of my life when not everything that should have been gentle was.

Have you ever had a teacher like that? Or different, but who gave you that lifelong spark for learning? Or one who showed you, told you, in some way, that you mattered, and changed your life – or at least your view of yourself – for years to come?

If you do, have you told your teacher what she or he meant to you?

I will be forever grateful that I had the chance to tell Aunt Trudy what she meant to me. I did it in a letter, in person, and then in a slightly more permanent way, by naming a character in Nightingale’s Nest after her. And now, even though I am sad she is gone, I don’t have regret.
All I have is a heart filled with love, and a life that was made infinitely better by a woman who cared.

By a teacher who loved me, too.

Thank you forever, Aunt Trudy.