A mother’s concern

A Story

The mother was leading her son by the hand, though now and then various objects caught his eye, or the cars he longed for so much.

She gently squeezed his hand and reminded him to watch where he was going. But the mother, too, kept slipping into her thoughts, remembering her son’s maths exercise book: he had solved the problems correctly, but his pen had let out a little too much ink, or the line beneath the answer had come out a little too dark. The teacher had found no mistakes, yet the mark was “Satisfactory”. When she had looked at that homework and into her son’s innocent eyes, she had hugged him and told him he must write more neatly next time.

But that day the teacher herself had asked her to come, which was why the two of them were now on their way to school, hand in hand.

The mother approached the teacher. She had always disliked being the first to offer her hand. She would have preferred them both to reach out at once.

“I’m the mother of…”

“Oh, yes…” the teacher said. “Did he tell you?” She did not mention the boy’s name at all. “He’s fallen right behind in his lessons, he’s slow, he reads badly, he’s inaccurate.” She does not look the mother in the eye at all, but keeps her face turned towards the pupils, who are ready to go into the school, and sets off with them.

The mother feels awful. Everything she had planned to discuss with the teacher collapsed like the sandcastles her son built by the sea.

Then her feet carried her after the teacher, who meanwhile walked on, going about her business, accompanying the pupils.

Something told her to turn back and leave that teacher in her own world, but she wanted to speak to her, to tell her that her son had been ill for two weeks and that this was making him slower, to tell her that the pages in the folder she had marked contained not a single mistake, to tell her…

And so she decided to say it as they walked, thinking of so many things at once. An awkward position to be in, yet she was doing it. As she spoke to the teacher, she was also thinking that she should not be having this conversation in front of the children, and still she went on speaking, words strung together that were not a conversation, and very soon it all degenerated into an unpleasant argument.

The teacher began shouting and accusing her of being an “ambitious” mother, opening cupboard doors so that supplies tumbled out in a jumble and fell to the floor. She said that if the mother did not like her, she could take her son out of the class; she said she had been teaching for sixteen years and slapped the shoulders that had supported her and brought her honour throughout her career. Then she began going round to her colleagues, telling them what had happened to her with an “ambitious mother”.

Left alone in the classroom among the pupils, bewildered, unable to look her son in the eye, she left the school with her head bowed, thinking about herself, about her son, about the teacher.

This was only the second time she had met her.

The boy was new to that class, and on the first day of school he had been so nervous that he had been unable to find his homework book, and the teacher had kept him in class to do the work.

The mother had taken him by the hand, just as she had now, and told the teacher that he had done it but could not find it.
But this was the reply:
“I don’t know, I didn’t see it. Wonders can happen overnight.”
The teacher had questioned the mother’s honesty…

But how could the mother lie in front of her son? If he really had not done the work, wouldn’t she herself be teaching him to lie?!

But would this teacher, this “mother”, do such a thing herself for her own son?
“I don’t know you; I don’t know what you might do,” she had gone on.

But even if you don’t know me, teacher, act as though you do. Don’t insult parents, even if you have your doubts about them. Change them through your words, through your actions.

These were her thoughts as she walked home, but of course she did not forget her son or the teacher.

“How was the boy feeling at that moment. The teacher must have felt bad too, and still she had to teach thirty-eight pupils.”

The hours passed, as they had to. The boy came home. He was happy. He had had a good time in class, but…

“Mum, when you two were talking, I wanted to shout, ‘Enough!’”
“Who did you feel worse for?” she asked.
“Both of you, because I love you both so much,” he said.

A lump rose in her throat; something inside her soul snapped. She drew the boy inside herself and held him tight…