Day 2: A Classroom of Eleven

An old proverb says that many hands make light work.

I thought of it at half past eight this morning, when eleven pairs of hands pulled the chairs off the tables at once, and nothing about it was light.

Dear Grandmother,

Today was the first school day. One room, one stove, eleven pupils from six to eleven years old, and me at the front with a list of names I had learned by heart on the bus and forgot at the door.

Kostya came first. He is the tallest, and he told me before he said hello that his grandmother had told him to be good. Noor came with a jar of wildflowers for my desk and a question about homework. Mila came last, by herself, holding her bag in front of her with both arms. The others were Ari, Sofia, Leon, Ida, Sami, Bea, Pip and Yuri, and by lunch I had mixed up Bea and Ida twice.

I had planned the first morning down to the minute, and the plan lasted until a quarter past nine. Sami had lost a tooth on the way to school and needed to show everyone. Ari wanted to know where the toilet was, and then whether there was another one. Sofia asked whether the stove was ever lit, and who lit it, and whether she could. By ten o'clock I had put the plan in my drawer and simply started again with what was in front of me, the way you make soup from whatever is left in the cupboard.

So after lunch I tried a names game, and you could try it with any group of people who are new to each other. Everyone sits in a circle. The first person says their name and one food they love. The second says the first person's name and food, then their own. The third says both before theirs, and so on round the circle. By the time it reached me, I had to say eleven names and eleven foods. Kostya loves fried potatoes. Noor loves apricots. Mila said "plum cake", very quietly, and Pip said "everything".

It works because the names stop being labels and become attached to something. Noor and apricots. Kostya and potatoes. It is like labelling jars in a pantry: the flour and the sugar look the same until you write on the lids, and after that you never mix them up again.

An aside, because I read about it tonight. In schools with only one room, the older pupils have always helped the younger ones. Not because the teacher was lazy, but because one teacher cannot be in eleven places at once. A child who explains a sum to a smaller child learns it twice. I think you knew that. In the city school where I trained, every class was one age, and the rooms were very quiet, and nobody ever had to explain anything to anybody smaller. Tucked between two of your recipe cards I found a scrap of paper in pencil: "Big ones read to little ones, Fridays."

So this afternoon I tried it, even though it is not Friday. Kostya read to Pip. Sofia read to Yuri. Leon does not like reading aloud, and Ari does not like sitting still, but Leon read to Ari, and somehow they both managed. For twenty minutes the room had a low, warm sound, like soup at a steady simmer.

At the end of the day I wiped the blackboard and swept the floor. Mila stayed behind to help put the chairs back up on the tables. She did not say much. She asked if the teacher before me had been nice. I said I did not know, but the teacher long before that was my grandmother, and she had been very nice. Mila looked round the room as if you might still be in it.

Then she asked what your name was, and I told her. She said it to herself once, the way the children had said each other's names in the circle, and nodded, as if she had put you on a shelf where she could find you again.

I thought the proverb was wrong this morning. Eleven pairs of hands did not make the work light; they made it loud. But by three o'clock the chairs were up, the floor was swept, and the flowers were in water. Eleven pairs of hands, and one pair that stayed behind. The work was light after all. It just took me the whole day to see it.

Your Vera

Day 3: The Pencil Marks

An old proverb says: east or west, home is best.

I am not sure yet which house is home, but tonight this one came close.

Dear Grandmother,

It rained all evening, and the teacher's house was cold enough that I could see my breath in the kitchen. So tonight I finally lit the old stove. It took me three tries and most of a newspaper.

Here is what worked in the end, in case anyone ever hands you a cold stove again. Crumpled paper first, loosely, not packed. Then thin dry sticks laid across each other like the top of a lattice pie, so the air can move between them. Then one small split log on top, not two. Leave the stove door open a finger's width until the fire draws and you hear it start to roar softly, then close it. My mistake had been too much wood too soon. It is the same as adding all the flour to a sauce at once: it smothers what you meant to feed.

The house makes its own noises at night. A pipe ticks, the window rattles when the wind comes off the lake, and something in the roof creaks like a rocking chair. I lay awake the first nights counting them. Tonight, with the fire going, they sounded friendlier, the way a kitchen sounds when someone else is cooking in it.

While the stove warmed, I noticed the door frame between the kitchen and the little hall. It is painted cream, many times over, but on the inside edge someone has drawn pencil lines. Short marks, one above the other, each with initials and a year. The paint has been put on around them, carefully, as if every teacher who lived here decided not to cover them.

There are perhaps twenty marks. Most are low down, children's heights. A few of the low ones have the same year beside them, as if a whole class once lined up in this kitchen to be measured. And at about the height of my chin, in your round handwriting, there are two letters: A.S. Next to them is the year, fifty-eight years ago.

I stood with my back against the frame, the way children do, and put my hand flat on top of my head. My hand came to rest just above your mark. I am taller than you were. I always knew that, because you have been small all my life, but it is different to see it in pencil.

Then I took a pencil from my bag and made my own mark, with V.L. and this year. It looked very new next to yours. I hope the next teacher does not paint over it.

I wondered who measured you. Perhaps you measured yourself, the way I did mine, standing against the frame with a book flat on your head and drawing under it with your other hand. It is harder than it looks. The book slides, and you have to stand very straight and not breathe.

A short aside, because I wondered why your mark has lasted when so much ink fades. A pencil has no lead in it at all. The grey core is graphite mixed with clay, and graphite is a form of carbon, which does not fade in the light the way many inks do. A pencil mark can be rubbed away, but if nobody rubs it, it stays. That is why pencil notes in the margins of very old books can still be read, while some letters written in ink have turned pale brown.

Someone had left a basket of split wood by my back step this afternoon, with a note tucked under the handle: "For the teacher. From Leon's family." No name, no knock. I carried it in and stacked it beside the stove, and I thought that somebody in this town must have looked after you like that too, fifty-eight years ago, when you were the one who did not know how the stove worked.

The stove is ticking now as it cools, and the kitchen is warm. I sat here with tea and looked at the two marks, yours and mine, almost touching. The proverb says home is best, wherever you go. I came here thinking home was the city, the flat, my mother's kitchen on Sundays. Tonight home is a cream door frame with your initials on it, and a stove I finally know how to light.

Your Vera