In my first memory of school, I’m four, and I’ve gone with my mother to Claremont Grade School where she teaches. She’s come to ready her classroom for the start of a new year, and I’ve come along. The hallways smell of floor wax. The lights are off in the gymnasium, where I’ve come to watch basketball games in the past, and it seems odd to peer into the shadows when I’ve spent so many evenings in the bleachers with my parents listening to the crowd cheer, and the squeak of sneakers on the glossy hardwood floor, and the cheerleaders shaking their red and white pompoms. Somewhere an oscillating fan makes a noise. A classroom door closes. I follow my mother to her room where she has textbooks to get ready for distribution, bulletin boards to decorate, supplies to check on: chalk and erasers, staplers and scissors, construction paper and tape. I breathe in the scents of pencil shavings, the cloth bindings of textbooks, an open jar of paste. My mother raises some windows because it’s a warm late August, and a breeze ruffles the folds of the small American flag in its staff at the corner of the chalkboard. I sit at a desk in front of my mother’s big desk. She gives me notebook paper and crayons, and I pretend to be a student.

Here, I think now, here is where it began—my lifelong love of being in a classroom.

On Tuesday, I’ll step into a classroom again—my 44^th year of teaching—and, no matter how much I’ll mourn the end of summer, I’ll pause a moment to remind myself how blessed I’ve been to do what I love for so long. I’ve taught undergraduate students and MFA students and Ph.D. students. I’ve taught in low-residency MFA programs and at various writers’ conferences. I’ve also taught community groups through libraries and writing centers. I’ve been privy to so many people’s personal stories as well as those that have come from their imaginations. I’ve taught them what I can. We’ve talked about characterization, structure, point of view, detail, and language. With enough consideration and practice, everyone can learn the techniques common to the craft of storytelling. The question is to what end? What story do you have to tell that comes from your heart?

Here’s one of mine. Once, when I was in the second grade, I lied to my mother. I told her I had to write a report about some aspect of Native American life. I had a children’s book, complete with illustrations, that did exactly that. It was past my bedtime. My father, who rose early each morning to attend to his chores on our farm, was already asleep. My mother was sitting at our kitchen table trying to finish marking her students’ papers to return them the next day. She didn’t have time to indulge me. I’m convinced she knew right away I wasn’t telling the truth. She must have been so weary. She’d taught all day. She’d prepared our breakfast and supper. She’d helped my father with the evening chores, and here she was trying to finish her schoolwork before it got too late. And here I was, a whiny kid who must have been eager for his mother’s attention, which she gave me.

She helped me go through that children’s book, choosing a topic, and helping me decide what I wanted to say about it. She was patient, only once showing any frustration with my insistence that my report be perfect. Her jaw tightened, pressing her lips together in a tight line. Then she said, “Oh, Lee, it’s getting to be so late.”

I feel that now, here in the late stages of my life. Time is running short. I don’t know how many first days of school I’ll have left, but I know I’ll have one on Tuesday, and I’ll remember this story about my mother and me, and the way she helped me write something she must have known I really didn’t have to do. She did it because she loved me, and I hope she knew it was because of her I came to love learning. She was my first teacher. For forty-four years, each time I’ve stepped into a classroom, I’ve carried her memory with me. I’ll do it again come Tuesday.

Oh, and that report? I carried it to school in my notebook, stuck it in my desk, and forgot it until the end of the year when I found it while cleaning out my desk. I was embarrassed to see it, ashamed of how I’d kept my mother from her sleep. For whatever reason, I had a red marking pencil like hers. I gave myself an A-. I didn’t think I deserved an A because, after all, I’d lied about having to write the report. I took it home and showed my mother, who’d not asked me anything about how my teacher liked it. My mother looked at the report, a little smile on her face, and then she said what she must have said so many times over the 38 years she taught. “Good,” she said. “That’s very good.”