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Featured Author -
October 2005
Yasmine Galenorn |
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Featured Author -
October 2005
Yasmine Galenorn |
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Every year, during late August, my thoughts return to my childhood and elementary school. Autumn was skulking just around the corner, beckoning me in and school shopping was about to commence. I loved picking out new notebooks and pens and crayons, and each year I was allowed to choose a new lunch box. The annual shopping trip had become a ritual for me, a ritual signaling frosty mornings and crisp autumn leaves and sitting in rows with my friends. It signaled the thrill of new discoveries about the world around me. I loved elementary school and each year I looked forward to the first day with a fervor matching only an evangelist’s. I was going to be a writer, and school was my ticket to the gates of an ink-stained heaven.
Then, at the end of my fourth grade year, I got my report card.
Each June at Lincoln Elementary we would open our report cards nervously. At the very bottom was a note informing us whether or not we had been promoted to the next grade. On the same line, we found the name of our teacher for the next year.
On the last day of fourth grade I opened the envelope, trembling. I never had any fear of being held back, but fifth grade was critical because of the choice of teachers.
Please, I thought, please don’t let it be Mrs. Weed. Anybody but Mrs. Weed.
She was old and mean, all the kids whispered behind her back about what a horrible teacher she was. Some teachers could be old and nice, but Mrs. Weed was old and mean. She tolerated no back-talk. She twisted your ear if you misbehaved. She stood at the front of the class, staring from behind her black, horned-rimmed glasses with the silver chain that allowed them to dangle around her neck, defying anyone to challenge her.
I withdrew the slip of folded paper predicting my future and cautiously peeked inside.
Mrs. Weed.
Oh no, I thought. It couldn’t be true. But there it was, in clear, black type. I shoved the paper back inside the report card and went home.
Summer wasn’t quite so full of promise now. Every day that passed brought me a day closer to the dreaded class of the school’s most feared teacher. Come late August, it was school shopping time again and as much as I always enjoyed the ritual of choosing a new lunch box and trying (unsuccessfully) to get my mother to buy me the clothes I liked, the specter of Mrs. Weed hovered over me like a dark cloud.
I went to school that first day, gritting my teeth. How could the school do this to me? I loved school. The school loved me. I was one of their best students. How could they put me in the class that I knew would be brimming with troublemakers? Mrs. Weed got all the problem children because she could cow them into submission.
Mrs. Weed stood at the front of the classroom when we shuffled in, and she wouldn’t let us choose our own desks but instead, assigned us seats in alphabetical order. The desks had been moved to form a three-sided square so that at any given moment, Mrs. Weed could see exactly what any student was up to. There would be no hiding from her glinting eyes.
My distress increased when I realized that I had been assigned to sit next to one of the rudest, crudest boys in school. He was a known troublemaker, and just because our last names happen to fall next to each other in the role book meant that I was going to have to suffer his teasing for however long Mrs. Weed made us sit this way. I glared at him as I sat down, hoping to stave off any conversation.
Vincent promptly stuck out his tongue.
Over the next few weeks I finished all my work, tried to ignore Vincent (who didn’t want to be ignored), and basically did my best to avoid any confrontation with Mrs. Weed.
She daunted me. Not only was she old (she must have been over fifty, I thought), but she was tall and full-figured. My mother was a large woman, but she dressed homespun, making most of her clothes. Mrs. Weed was tall and large and wore business suits long before dressing for success became a catch-phrase. She saw everything that went on from behind those awful horned-rimmed glasses.
A few months into the school year, Mrs. Weed brought a book to class. It was a thick book, gray cover with a red spine. She said that she was going to read to us everyday. Being an avid reader and aspiring author, I immediately perked up. If she liked books, she couldn’t be all bad.
Then, she opened the book, began to read, and I found myself instantly transported to worlds I never dreamed existed.
Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels. Written as if to a class of young students, the book covered Richard Halliburton’s adventures as he traveled around the world. With Mrs. Weed at the helm, we journeyed through both ancient and modern wonders that made my head spin with images of far away exotic lands.
We climbed the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge and hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We explored Pompeii and shivered when we found those ancient bodies hardened by volcanic ash, still struggling to get away from the danger. We sighed through the beautiful love story that lies behind the building of the Taj Mahal. We scaled Mount Everest, and fought our way through the jungle to visit Angkor, the Walled City that was protected by giant seven-headed stone cobras. Each day we would take another journey and each day my imagination leapt into another world, another time.
Mrs. Weed made us an offer. Any student who wanted to, could take the book home during the weekend. No one took her up on the offer...except me.
I was enchanted. I loved hearing the stories and imagining myself there, right at Richard’s side. Mrs. Weed seemed pleased when I asked if I could take the book home and for the first time, we really smiled at each other. Perhaps she saw in me the spark she was trying so hard to kindle. Perhaps I saw in her the teacher desperately trying to open up new worlds to her students.
I took the book home for the weekend and my parents fell in love with it as much as I did. They immediately went down to the local bookstore and ordered a copy.
Monday morning, I carried the precious volume back to school. It was a large book and on the way, I accidentally dropped it. Mrs. Weed’s bookmark fell out and blew away in the wind.
I panicked. I had lost both her place and her bookmark. She would be furious. I’d get in trouble and she’d never trust me again. Her reputation for punishing delinquent students, now established as fact rather than rumor, suddenly swelled before me like a dark shadow and I crept into class, ready to cry. Always taught to confess to my crimes, I approached her desk. She smiled at me and said good-morning.
Guilt washed over me. I knew that she would never again trust me with another book, and somehow I knew that still other mysterious and fascinating volumes lay beyond the wonderful Book of Marvels.
“Mrs. Weed,” I began, my voice shaky. Then, because I could stand it no longer, I blurted out the truth. I’d dropped her precious book, lost her place and in the process, lost her bookmark.
Mrs. Weed stared down at me. What she saw, I can only imagine. A chubby little girl with brown hair so long she could sit on it, wearing a clumsy home-made dress, clutching the book so tightly that she might have been glued to it while desperately trying not to cry.
She must have sensed that my fear of her was secondary to my fear that I’d never be allowed to touch another one of her books. For, in looking at Mrs. Weed that day, in seeing her eyes crinkle with a smile even as she soothed my worry, it suddenly dawned on me that, old as she was, stern as she was, Mrs. Weed shared my love of adventure, she shared my joy of books and knowledge and she was doing her best to help me utilize all of my potential.
I don’t remember what she said, but my fear of her seemed to float away as she took the book and quietly opened it, marking it with a new slip of paper. I hadn’t counted on the fact that she would remember her place.
After that day, Mrs. Weed and I became friends. She gave me the extra assignments I wanted when I became bored with the regular homework; she pushed me to do as much as I could and helped me learn self-discipline in my studies. I had always been a good student but Mrs. Weed motivated me to become the best student I could be.
When the other kids whispered about her, I alone defended her. Even though I gained the reputation of the teacher’s pet, I still stood up for her and at the end of the year, I was actually sorry to leave her behind.
Mrs. Weed has long since disappeared from my life, and I’ve little doubt she no longer walks this earth. Today, the copy of Richard Halliburton’s Complete Book of Marvels that my mother bought sits on my bookshelf, alongside my own books.
As for me? I’ve managed to realize my hopes and dreams. Ever since I was three, I knew I would grow up to be a writer. Now, my own novels and nonfiction sit on the shelf next to that grand and wondrous book I so loved as a child, and I get letters from young and old readers alike, thanking me for inspiring them with my work.
And every now and again, especially on cold, rainy days, I take Richard’s book off the shelf, feeling the hefty weight in my hands. I curl up on the sofa and once again, I’m swept off to far-away sights in distant lands, adventuring with the lost explorer. And I always remember the stern, towering, gray-haired lady who first introduced me to a world brimming with marvel, and I wonder who her guiding star was.
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A little about my writing and me: I write fantasy, mystery, and metaphysical. I’m working on three series right now: the Chintz ‘n China Mystery Series (paranormal cozies with a bite); the Bath & Body Mystery Series (written under the name India Ink), and I’m just starting the Sisters of the Moon Series— a collage of fantasy, suspense, mystery and dark humor (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Charlie’s Angels meets I Love Lucy). Eventually, I hope to move into writing standalone novels as my career in fiction progresses. My heart belongs to fantasy and the paranormal when it comes to writing.
I also have eight nonfiction metaphysical books on the shelf (Yes, I’m a Witch and proud of it, and am considered one of the ‘elders’ in the Pagan community. No, I’m not Wiccan or a Satanist. Yes, I am a very practical, grounded person and about as far from a flake as you can get).
A few other interesting things I’ve done in my life:
I started college at age 15, then at 17, Associate of Arts degree in hand, hitchhiked to California to live with one of my sisters for awhile. Returned to Washington State and finished up my Bachelors degree, majoring in theatre and creative writing.
Married too young and ended up in an abusive marriage, mirroring my childhood in many ways. Came to my senses and when I was thirty, I dumped my abusive ex, quit my job with the State of Washington, moved into a 32’ long converted school bus, and lived off giving tarot readings, while focusing on my writing career. (Yes, I’ve been a professional tarot reader for well over 25 years).
I lived on the backend of five wild acres owned by some Japanese corporation (I wasn’t the only squatter ~grins~), had to wade through Scotch broom that was a good eight feet tall, my bus was parked in a beautiful little grove, and my cats and I would dance nekkid under the moonlight, read and write by candlelight, and listen to the trees sing at night.
Moved out of the bus and in with a friend for the winter, and within a week his roommate and I had fallen in love and I moved into his room, two months later he proposed, five months after that we got married, and over twelve years later, we’re still very happy and together, along with our four cats (we’re both ailurophiles and proud of it! Our cats are our children). I no longer live in a bus, thank the gods.
I view my life as a combination of tattoos and teacups—and I collect both, the tattoos (large, gorgeous, spiritually based colorful artwork) on my body, the teacups and teapots in my china cabinet. I love alternative/grunge, and I love classical music. I’m a sucker for old movies (think Rebecca, the Ghost & Mrs. Muir, How to Marry a Millionaire), and I love hardcore action flicks—the Terminator, Aliens, the Matrix. Life is a triple shot iced peppermint mocha (with rice milk) in the morning, and a cup of lemon-lime tea in the evening. My contradictions work together in their own, wacky way.
Learn more about Yasmine Galenorn and her books at www.Galenorn.com
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