When the Horse Comes in from Recess

Daily writing prompt

Do you remember your favorite book from childhood?

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Charlotte’s Web. But only because my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Pendleton, read a few pages every day. It was luxurious, sitting at my wooden desk, still sweaty from recess where I’d been running around with my friend pretending to be horses (this went on for several months), and grateful for not having to do anything hard for a while. I could spread my hands out on the cool of the desktop, even put my head down if I wanted to, though I never did lest Mrs. Pendleton thought I wasn’t paying attention. It was a magical fifteen minutes. It would have to be for me to remember it so long.

Mrs. Pendleton had short hair and glasses that hung from a chain around her neck. She wore wool plaid skirts and heavy sweaters even though the radiators overworked in our classroom, sometimes steaming up the windows in winter. She read Charlotte’s Web standing up with one hand holding the book open. How long she read depended on I don’t know what. Usually fifteen minutes, sometimes longer. It was always dreamlike, I remember that.

No one else read to me. Not because they were uncaring or unconscious of the importance of reading but because they didn’t. My parents did other things that were important, my brother rode his bike, often with me sitting on the handlebars, my sister – she’s a cipher of my childhood. My grandmother, who lived across the park from us, peeled potatoes for dinner and every so often would cut a thin slice for me to eat, something I still do and think of her every time.

I read Charlotte’s Web to my own children. At least I think I did. It was all a while ago.