9

Today my baby turns 9. Nine is a big deal. I think my real childhood memories began at nine. Not including the ones that are attached to photos, or stories, or family anecdotes. I remember my 4th grade teacher, the beautiful 28ish year old Mrs. Deborah Penney, (a teacher named Deborah, how very chic) with her Farrah Fawcett wings, blouses with puffy sleeves and high heeled boots. I adored her. She was sweet and kind and patient. I was the classic type A nervous kid. 100s on every spelling and math test. Nail biter. I did that weird nervous blinking thing sometimes. Somewhere in my mom's attic is a polyurethaned certificate I received that my dad made into a plaque that reads "Highest Achievement in Second Grade". You get the idea.

Well, in 4th grade you were able to go from writing in pencil (babies!) to writing in pen. It was probably early November when Mrs. Penney started calling students up row by row, checking notebooks for neatness, erasings, etc. I had this one nailed. My work was pristine. I underlined with a ruler just because I liked the way it looked. Like everything else, this one was mine. Then she called me up and flipped thru my notebook, breezing through the pages. Waiting for the nod, I stood there smiling. My smile slowly turned to an awkward grimace, when I realized what she was saying to me. The bored scribbles and doodles in the front and back of my notebook were preventing me from moving on to pen!! The rest of the memory fades, and I can only assume that I had to either take my notebook home and put a paper bag book cover on it, or sit down with a fat pink eraser and get to work removing the mess from my otherwise perfect notebook. I was floored and humiliated. My confidence dissolved like the etchings of a pencil.

Yesterday I was at my daughter's school. She is in fourth grade. Youngest and smallest in her class. Sometimes I worry about her because some of the kids in her class will start to turn 10 this month, because their parents decided to wait to send them to kindergarten. We were faced with that option 5 (gasp!) years ago, and decided to send her. I never wanted to her to look back on that decision and question that we didn't think she could handle it. So we sent her. And she's been fine. She's always been the middle of the pack, the kid that every teacher has said makes their job easier, but maybe not the strongest reader, or a "mathaholic". She's a hard worker and goal oriented. Yesterday she and 11 other 4th graders (out of maybe 85 kids) were "knighted" in math. That means they memorized and passed 5 minute drills for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and are honored in front of their peers and parents for their hard work. Yesterday was the first knighting ceremony of the year and my kid was up there. She was dubbed Dame Erin with a meter stick, in a purple fur robe. I am so proud of her. I hope she remembers that day.