The red tulip in our flowerbed this Mother’s Day unearthed a memory of my third grade teacher. She was an old maid, thin and tall, her face creased from decades of smoking, her clothes dark and musty, her face a perpetual frown.
Not a glimmer of anticipation cracked her crusty exterior as she explained the week’s art project one early May morning. “You’ll each draw the outline of one tulip on the front of your Mother’s Day card.” On the chalkboard, she demonstrated how to sketch a perfectly symmetrical, three-pronged tulip with our pencils, add a slim stem and one pointy leaf on either side of it.
Several of us dug in our desks for crayons so we could color in our drawings, as we’d done for every weekly art project all year long. “You won’t need your crayons. We’ll be painting them,” the teacher announced.
We looked at one another in eight-year-old, wide-eyed wonder. Painting? Had she said painting?
Now, that was the most exciting prospect in our classroom since we’d taken our first Iowa Tests of Basic Skills in February. On that day, after teacher read the directions for the vocabulary test, she said, “You need to know one more thing before taking the test. A peninsula is a body of land surrounded on three sides with water.” She pulled down the map of the United States. “Like Florida.” She pointed to the state. “Now, open your booklets and begin.”
We did as instructed. I was pleasantly surprised by question 3 – “What is a peninsula?” Me and everybody else did a whole lot of looking around in eight-year-old, wide-eyed wonder after we filled in the oval that corresponded to the answer, “A body of land surrounded on three sides with water.”
But painting was way cooler than realizing that you and everybody else in your class knew the right answer on an ITBS question. Painting had a messiness potential that completely overshadowed filling in the correct oval with a number two pencil. We were quivering with excitement.
The teacher nipped it in the bud. “Pass your cards to the front of the row. When I call your name, come to the back table to paint your tulip. While you wait for your turn, begin your phonics seatwork.”
So much for messiness potential.
When my turn finally came, I went to the painting table. It was covered with newspapers. My card sat beside two bowls of paint, one green and one red. The teacher frowned and said to paint the tulip red, the stem and leaves green, to stay between the lines, and to not drip the paint.
I dripped paint.
I tried to stay between the lines, but a loose bristle sent tiny scrolls every which way. Until the teacher said to stop. Then she used a tissue to remove the loose bristle. She rubbed red paint off her yellowed fingers and granted permission to proceed. I finished as quickly as I could, eager to get away from her accusing eyes and the unhappiness that dripped from her face, the discontent enveloping the table where we sat.
On Mother’s Day I gave the card to my mom. She admired it, oohed and aahed, and put it on the refrigerator. But I didn’t care if I never saw the card again.
Since that Mother’s Day red tulips have never been my favorite. Until this morning, when the tulip in my flowerbed unearthed this memory, along with a realization that escaped my notice for more than forty years.
