Every Mother's Day for the past four years, I've quietly mourned my mother's passing. Maybe it's been long enough now that I can start to really think about what life will continue to be like without her, or maybe I'm more able to open up about it when letting my fingers dance across a keyboard. Regardless of the reason, this year, I'm going to share something that she wrote to the children and parents of Big Sur. She left an indelible imprint on generations of families in our big little town, and I continue to miss her kindness, optimism and smile each and every day.

By Heart

Paula Anita Walling
1938-2013

I know by heart the expectant eyes that greet each day
Mischevious maybe, yet innocent
Welcoming
Loving
On occasion tearful.

I know by heart the gentle touches and happy hugs
of thirty-three years of children who touched me from the inside out,
whose lives intersected and interacted with mine for a short year or two
to expand like a universe.

I know by heart, and to the touch, the size and shape and message
of the hundreds of hard earned books on our old library-lined wall.
Books snuggled, loved, lost, memorized, read again and again, internalized,
peanut buttered, repaired, and rediscovered in the hands of sisters and brothers,
carted home each day, homework to open the child's soul,
carried in red padded bags so lovingly made by caring parents.

Second only to the children, the books brought me back
day after day, year after year, decade after decade,
always promising a new adventure or reliving an old one:
A racoon taking the children with him to hunt for his first crayfish, teaching a lifelong lesson:
"Go back to the pool... But this time do not make a face. Do not carry a stone.
Do not carry a stick. Just smile... This time just smile at the thing in the pool."
Books about a pumpkin, a piñata, and a dead tree can show how to be useful, even in death.
Rain books, rain poems, rain paintings, rain songs, rain dances and chants
helped us celebrate the dark winter days when the wildflowers were but sprouts.
Picture books: The building blocks of a child's heart and mind!
The authors, the illustrators: Classroom heroes! Heroes who teach without preaching,
who practice in the age-old art of story, married with pictures,
pictures designed to pull children in and hold them spellbound,
walking wide-eyed through pages with wizards and walruses, elves and elephants.

I know by heart where to reach for the book to comfort the little ones who first sighted
the dead bird, and after, the homemade ceremonial burial, the hugs and sometimes tears,
all buried there in my memory where your small faces stay forever young.
These collected works were what helped me teach from the heart.

As sure as your children are your essence, I know you by heart
and thank you from that Artesian part of me for each joyful day that you
entrusted me with your greatest gifts, your children.
It was my honor and privilege to help them break down sounds and build up a world of words,
all the while hoping I'd handed them some of life's alphabet and order, without taking away
the wonder, the sense of adventure, and linguistic uniqueness they brought to school.

I know by heart what children love about their world, that they are in equal awe of
the Monarch and the Blue Whale, that if children are touched deeply by things too delicate
and too distant to actually touch, they seek ways to protect them.
I know that you mustn't miss that early opportunity to encourage caring,
be it about creatures or cultures, that when a child identifies with others on earth,
their empathy reaches distant lands. They cradle the classroom globe as if it were their child.
And it is.

Children so long to look after something, to nurture earth's fur and feathered creatures.
Given the slightest chance, they risk such tenderness. Their love shows in every sketch.
Once children truly care about the world around them, they will strive to learn anything.

I know by heart this lesson:
that if you decide to teach, no two years will be alike,
no matter the materials, no matter the swing of the pendant's pendulum,
your place is to keep the rhythm of your internal metronome
and learn to conduct each instrument of the little classrom orchestra you've been given,
until they have the beat and can read the music for themselves.
What I don't know is what I'll do without their small hearts beating nearby, day after day,
infusing me with their spirit, amusing me with their wit, and amazing me with their talents.

Listen to the words of your children.
Value them.
Recognize their magic.
Heart them sing.
Watch them fly!

With love for the child in everyone, but especially for the children of Big Sur,
Anita Alan
(Paula Anita Walling)