At the funeral, I froze. Do I go right or left? Do I sit with friends and family, or with guests and acquaintances? I didn’t want to make the wrong move, so I stood stuck in the doorway. At the front row of a hot church, my friend TJ sat slumped forward, his girlfriend’s arm around him. It was his grandmother’s funeral, and I could see how much he was hurting. That hesitation took me back to another time when right and left felt impossible for me to figure out.
It was first grade at Ella Canavan Elementary School. My parents were divorcing, the house was chaos, and Mrs. Brown’s classroom was the only steady place I had. She was strict but kind, firm but compassionate. She gave me guardrails when everything else was falling apart. And she helped me with something that haunted me: I couldn’t tell my right from my left. The kids teased me about it, so I would hide in the classroom at recess.
Stories in a SnapPete Whitehead, Aaron Calafato
One day Mrs. Brown knelt beside me, flower dress and curly hair, and said, “Let me try something new.” She asked me to close my eyes and paint the classroom in my imagination. On the right, the wall, chalkboard, bulletin board. On the left, the window, trees, car in the distance. “Can you see it in your mind?” she said.
“I can!” I said with a smile. She smiled back and said, “Now, whenever you can’t find your direction, just picture this classroom.”
That memory became my compass. To this day, when someone says right or left, I go back to that room. And at the funeral, standing frozen in the doorway, I did it again. I imagined Mrs. Brown’s classroom, took a left, and walked right up to TJ where we hugged for what felt like forever.
Because it was Mrs. Brown who lay in that casket. Both TJ’s grandmother and my first-grade teacher, the woman who taught me my left from my right.
