Love Comes Late
by Sandy Penny 2-10-2014
Clarabell Rynearson had always been a school teacher. Even as a child, she loved to learn and teach others. She also loved the children she taught in the poor midwestern town of Venice, Illinois, located on the banks of the Mississippi River directly across from the famous St. Louis Arch. She watched the Arch being built and thought the money could have been better spent to improve the lives of those who languished in the shadow of it. But that was not her decision, so she focused on her own life and left those decisions to the men in charge. It was 1961, and the men were definitely still in charge, although the women's movement was making headway. She secretly liked that and felt empowered by it, but she was too much a lady to ever speak it in public.
Miss Rynearson was built a bit like the nickname her students gave her, Miss Rhinoceros. She was short and stocky and plain. She didn't have much time to be glamorous. Her life was filled with responsibilities she never expected. Her mother had cancer, and everyone knew she was not going to live much longer, so Clarabelle took great care of her. She was kind, shopped and cooked for her, and had long since moved back into her mother's house to be there as needed. No one really knew the struggles she had, and she was not about to tell them. She was completely capable of handling them herself. She was a private person.
Although the kids in her classes respected and feared her somewhat, she had a sense of humor. Clarabell was the name of the clown on the Howdy Doody show, and of course, the kids had a field day making jokes about that. She headed them off at the pass, buying up Clarabell dolls, and giving one of them the place of honor displayed on a table beside her desk for all the kids to see. Each week the best speller got to keep the Clarabell doll for the weekend. It was amazing how no one ever harmed the Clarabell doll during their weekend stays, in hopes they would be the one to win it. At the end of the year, the top speller from the weekly spelling bees got to keep the doll. The next year, another one would magically appear in the class. It was a coveted award and a testament to her understanding of her students. No class was ever more motivated to learn their spelling words.
Years passed, and Miss Rynearson's mother died. We never knew how old our teacher was, and of course, we thought she was ancient, which she probably wasn't. But soon after her mother passed, a rumor started that Ms. Rynearson (we had become liberated and changed from Miss to Ms. by this time) had a boyfriend. No one knew who he was, and speculation ran rampant, but a secret was never better kept in Venice than this one.
One September, when school started after Labor Day, Ms. Rynearson announced that she was married now, and her name was no longer Rynearson. She had married the school janitor, which seemed a bit of a scandal as teachers and janitors were of a different class in those days, but that's not how she saw it. She was more open minded than most people. I never figured out how that romance began. Was she working late one day grading papers, and he came in to empty her trash cans, and they began to talk? Had she admired the way he polished the granite floors and made them shine day after day of little feet scuffing them up? She never said and left it to her students to gossip and speculate.
But one thing was sure, they stayed together for the rest of their lives. Love may have come late, but when it arrived, it decided to stay.
by Sandy Penny 2-10-2014
Clarabell Rynearson had always been a school teacher. Even as a child, she loved to learn and teach others. She also loved the children she taught in the poor midwestern town of Venice, Illinois, located on the banks of the Mississippi River directly across from the famous St. Louis Arch. She watched the Arch being built and thought the money could have been better spent to improve the lives of those who languished in the shadow of it. But that was not her decision, so she focused on her own life and left those decisions to the men in charge. It was 1961, and the men were definitely still in charge, although the women's movement was making headway. She secretly liked that and felt empowered by it, but she was too much a lady to ever speak it in public.
Miss Rynearson was built a bit like the nickname her students gave her, Miss Rhinoceros. She was short and stocky and plain. She didn't have much time to be glamorous. Her life was filled with responsibilities she never expected. Her mother had cancer, and everyone knew she was not going to live much longer, so Clarabelle took great care of her. She was kind, shopped and cooked for her, and had long since moved back into her mother's house to be there as needed. No one really knew the struggles she had, and she was not about to tell them. She was completely capable of handling them herself. She was a private person.
Although the kids in her classes respected and feared her somewhat, she had a sense of humor. Clarabell was the name of the clown on the Howdy Doody show, and of course, the kids had a field day making jokes about that. She headed them off at the pass, buying up Clarabell dolls, and giving one of them the place of honor displayed on a table beside her desk for all the kids to see. Each week the best speller got to keep the Clarabell doll for the weekend. It was amazing how no one ever harmed the Clarabell doll during their weekend stays, in hopes they would be the one to win it. At the end of the year, the top speller from the weekly spelling bees got to keep the doll. The next year, another one would magically appear in the class. It was a coveted award and a testament to her understanding of her students. No class was ever more motivated to learn their spelling words.
Years passed, and Miss Rynearson's mother died. We never knew how old our teacher was, and of course, we thought she was ancient, which she probably wasn't. But soon after her mother passed, a rumor started that Ms. Rynearson (we had become liberated and changed from Miss to Ms. by this time) had a boyfriend. No one knew who he was, and speculation ran rampant, but a secret was never better kept in Venice than this one.
One September, when school started after Labor Day, Ms. Rynearson announced that she was married now, and her name was no longer Rynearson. She had married the school janitor, which seemed a bit of a scandal as teachers and janitors were of a different class in those days, but that's not how she saw it. She was more open minded than most people. I never figured out how that romance began. Was she working late one day grading papers, and he came in to empty her trash cans, and they began to talk? Had she admired the way he polished the granite floors and made them shine day after day of little feet scuffing them up? She never said and left it to her students to gossip and speculate.
But one thing was sure, they stayed together for the rest of their lives. Love may have come late, but when it arrived, it decided to stay.
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