Day 50: The Classroom Again

"Weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning." So says one of the Psalms, an old song of thanks.

On Monday morning I did not believe it. Tonight I believe it a little.

Dear Grandmother,

I went back to the school today. The substitute had left everything neat, too neat, the way a guest leaves a kitchen: the cups in the wrong cupboard, the chalk in a box instead of on the ledge. I put the chalk back on the ledge. I lit the stove. It took two matches, which is one more than usual, and I stood in front of it for a while with my coat still on.

Dora had been in before me. There was a loaf on my desk, wrapped in a clean cloth, still warm at the heart when I pressed it. No note. Dora does not write notes. She came to the door at half past eight, looked at me once, and said, "You'll want butter with that." Then she went back to her kitchen. It was the kindest thing anyone has said to me all week.

The children came in quietly. Someone had told them to be quiet, and they were trying very hard, which made the room strange. Eleven children trying not to make a sound is louder than eleven children talking. Kostya hung up his coat three times. Ida stood by her desk and did not sit down until I did. Pip has not yet learned how to be careful with grown-ups. He walked straight up to me and asked, "Is your grandmother in the lake now?"

Ida went pale. Kostya said, "Pip!" I said, "She is buried by the lake, Pip. Under a birch, near the ferry house. You can see the place from the shore." Pip nodded as if I had told him where the scissors were kept. Then he went to his desk. The room breathed out.

I did not know how to teach a whole day. So I did something I would like you to know about, because you would have liked it. I wrote the day on the board the way you wrote your recipes on the cards in the tin: one line at a time, small steps, nothing more. Reading. Sums with beans. Drawing the lake. Bread at eleven. Story. Home. Each time we finished one, a child came up and drew a line through it. By the afternoon the board looked like a card that has been used for years, and the day had been made, step by step, the way soup gets made when you are too tired to think about soup.

Anyone can try this on a day that feels too big. Write it down as a recipe. Cross out each step when it is done. It does not make the day smaller. It only makes it a size you can carry.

While Leon was crossing out "Sums with beans", he asked me what chalk is made of. I told him what I know. Real chalk is a soft white stone, made of the shells of tiny sea creatures, laid down on the floor of old seas over a very long time. Most school chalk is now made in another way, from a different soft mineral pressed into sticks. But the idea is the same. Something very small, gathered for a long time, becomes something you can write with. Leon looked at the stick in his hand for a long moment and then put it carefully back on the ledge, as if it had become more valuable.

At eleven we ate Dora's bread with butter. Sofia talked with her mouth full. Kostya laughed at a story about his own cat. Pip spilled his milk, and nobody told him not to cry, because he didn't cry, he only said "Oops" in a very loud voice, and then it was a normal Monday. I cannot tell you exactly when the quiet broke. It broke like a crust breaks, all at once, with a small sound.

I walked home past the lake at four. The water is open now, dark and moving. I stood near the birches for a while and told you about Pip's question. I think you would have laughed. You always said the youngest ones ask the questions the rest of us are too polite to ask, and that this is a gift, not a fault.

The Psalm says that weeping lasts for a night. It did not last only one night for me, and it will come back. But the morning came anyway, with bread and chalk and eleven children, and I let it in.

Your Vera

Day 51: Mila's Birthday

"Better a plate of vegetables where there is love than a fattened ox where there is hate." That is from the Book of Proverbs.

We had no ox today. We had a plum cake, and it was enough.

Dear Grandmother,

Mila is nine. She told me so four times before nine o'clock, and twice more at lunch, in case I had forgotten between the first time and the third. Tomas had asked me a week ago, in the plain way he asks things, whether I would make a cake. "She wants yours," he said. "Not one from the shop. The plum one. She used to say chocolate." So it was your cake, Grandmother. The card that says "for E." in your handwriting stood against the sugar jar all afternoon, as if it were watching.

There are no fresh plums in April, of course. Dora gave me two jars from her cellar, plums she put up in September with a little sugar and a stick of cinnamon. When I opened the first jar the kitchen smelled of autumn. It is a strange thing to stand in spring and smell the end of last year. I thought of you standing in the ferry house kitchen with Emil's mother, learning the cake for the first time, and I thought how many hands a recipe passes through before it comes to yours.

Dora's jars made me curious, so I asked her how they keep. She explained it while she wiped her hands on her apron. You fill the jars hot and close the lids. As the jar cools, the air inside shrinks, and the lid is pulled down tight. That is the small pop you hear later, standing in a quiet kitchen. Nothing gets in after that. The fruit waits in the dark, sweet and still, until someone is ready for it. "Like a letter," I said, and Dora said, "Like anything worth keeping," and went back to her bread.

Here is a small thing I learned from the cake, and you can try it with any fruit cake. Fruit from a jar is wet and heavy, and it sinks even in a thick batter. So drain the plums well and toss them in a spoonful of flour before you lay them on the batter. The flour holds them up. Without it, the fruit sinks to the bottom and the cake is all sponge on top and all plum underneath. With it, every slice has a little of both. I did the first cake the wrong way, on Sunday, to practise. Tomas ate it anyway, standing at my counter, and said it was very good, and then said, "The plums are all at the bottom," and I liked him more for saying both.

The party was at their house, after school. Noor and Bea came, and Ari, and half the class in the end, because in a small town a party for one child is a party for everybody. The children were very loud. Tomas had hung paper chains from the beams, a little crooked. Greta came on her green bicycle with a parcel in the basket, a box with a far-away postmark, and Mila held it against her chest for a long time before she opened it. It was a blue scarf from her mother, and a card. Mila read the card by herself, at the window, with her lips moving. Then she put the scarf on and wore it for the rest of the day, even while she ate cake.

We lit nine candles. Mila blew them out in one breath and then asked if she could do it again, so we lit them again. She did it three times. On the third time she shut her eyes very tight, and I saw Tomas watching her, and I had to look at the paper chains for a moment.

After the others went home, Tomas and I washed the plates. Mila fell asleep on the sofa in her blue scarf, with crumbs on her chin. The kitchen was full of the sweet smell of warm plums and candle smoke. Tomas dried each plate slowly and put it on the shelf. Neither of us said very much. It was the best kind of quiet, the kind you get in a kitchen after a meal, when the work is nearly done and nobody needs to leave yet.

The Proverbs are right, Grandmother. It is not the table that matters. Ours was plain, with mismatched chairs and a crooked chain overhead. But there was love at it, and a cake that you first baked for someone else, and a child who blew out her candles three times. I would not trade it for any feast.

Your Vera