Member-only story
My Horrible Mother Was Beloved and Adored
And I Am So Tired of Hearing About It
“Your mom was my favorite teacher, like, ever!”
“I just loved your mom. She was so good to everybody.”
“I remember your mom. She was always so…(insert great thing here).”
Stop. It.
Except, they can’t. I know they can’t. People can’t seem to help themselves.
I grew up in a small town — a very small town — think 2,500 people or fewer, in Northern Pennsylvania, where my mother was a high school English teacher at the very same school where she had gone to high school and where, in fact, her mother had been an English teacher and where, you guessed it, I went to high school.
Idyllic in some senses, horrifying in others.
And here’s the thing: my mother was an exceptionally good teacher, it’s true. She taught American literature and composition while another teacher taught British literature, and they were a powerhouse duo. There were a handful of other English teachers, but these two got the “smart kids.” I had my mom for class my junior year, and we studied Twain, Dickinson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, James, Faulkner, McCullers — some of the greats. We had an amazing education. Really. She was patient with the students who came from farms out in the…
