Always Carry Extra Hope

Aside from a description of her cheery appearance, Lynette is best explained in one brief fact that somehow encapsulates her whole person: she is a woman with a trunk full, yes full, of teddy bears.

Some espresso brown, some ashen beige, some the color of fresh snow. Several pink, at least one blue. All of them the softer than the foamy soap from a perfect bubble bath, with kind eyes that love you effortlessly.

How one person came to own quite so many of these bears remains a whimsical curiosity, but what she does with them might actually be more adorable than their expressive little faces.

Lynette spent her 30’s and 40’s as a sixth grade teacher at Parkview Lane Elementary School downtown. This school wasn’t well known for its teachers, its test scores, or anything else a school might get attention for. There were no mathletes. There was no soccer team. There was no budget. There was just Lynette and her heart of gold and her indelible dimples, who loved each of these unruly kids as if they were the only kid in the world. Most of them weren’t breakthrough stories. Few of them even finished high school. Only three or four of them remember how much she mattered. One in particular, named Jamie, will remember Lynette, or “Miss J,” for the rest of her life. 

Jamie never told Miss J this, but she was completely homeless and without a family. Her parents left for different reasons at different times, telling their mature-for-her-age daughter she’d be fine and she’d find her way. She had nothing to fill her days other than school, and nowhere else to get a good solid lunch—so she went. Every day, she went. She did her homework in the train station. She showed up early for school. She stayed late helping Miss J with the classroom, a fact that didn’t go unnoticed but was presumed by the teacher to be a simple miracle. What did go unnoticed for quite some time was that Jamie often waited for her teacher to leave for the day, then slipped in behind her and stayed in the classroom. 

Lynette left the school one evening exhausted from several extra hours of test grading, bleary-eyed and wanting little else than to get home to catch her favorite show before she fell asleep on the couch. Once at her car, she stood any stared at it in utter disbelief that she’d left her purse back in the classroom. She trudged all the way back to room 213 and opened the door as uncarefully as she’d ever done anything in her life. The stark shaft of light from the hallway shot across the room at an angle to the opposite corner where she’d set up a small reading corner. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like there was something on the fuzzy orange beanbag chair. Propping the door open, Lynette made her way across the room gently, and looked down to see Jaime curled up like a kitten, wrapped around a small stuffed bear that lived in the reading corner. 

Stepping back. A moment of consideration. A small internal conference—what does one do in these situations? 

Half a breath before a decision was made to let the girl sleep, her eyes popped open and she gasped deeply, rattled with fear. No, there was no fear that Miss J would punish her. Never. But Jamie was so unprepared to explain herself—she’d never had to before. Lynette vaguely gestured as if to calm her student, but unsurprisingly it didn’t help. Jamie fumbled to her feet on the way out the door, faster than a teacher in her 40’s could manage, and was gone. 

Jamie wasn’t in school the next day, but she did come in on Friday to find the small bear sitting at her desk. When she looked up and saw Miss J looking right at her, she could see that her ocean-blue eyes were shimmering with tenuous tears. Jamie had told her nothing, and somehow she knew. There was a silent conversation between teacher and student in an instant.

Jamie spent a few nights a week sleeping in the reading corner with J.K. Rowling, Mark Twain, Suzanne Collins, and Shel Silverstein watching over her and the small bear she clutched. When the year was over, Miss J wouldn’t think of accepting the bear in return. He was Jamie’s now. As was the bedroom on the left at the end of the hallway at her friend Alisha’s house—the room with the purple curtains and the old roll-top desk. Jamie’s life changed and it was because of a small bear with the face of an angel. 

So now the retired sixth grade school teacher keeps her trunk comically full of teddy bears of all shapes and sizes, and when she sees a young girl asking for money, or walking with her whole life in a backpack, or curled up at the train station, she hands her a bear. Their names are Hope.