Let Your Voice Fall

I just finished reading Mama's post about this past Wednesday---the day on which she taught her last co-op class.

She's been teaching me for as long as I can remember.

It's so hard to find words for this... the sweetness and sadness of an ended season; the quiet ache in my chest as I try to picture that classroom without her. Impossible! I've had many, many teachers in the course of my academic life, but I think I can honestly say that few of them were as gifted as she is, and none of them will ever love me as much as she does.

How do you explain what you feel for the person who taught you to read?

How do you reduce a thousand-thousand memories to an image that captures even the tenth part of the spectrum?

How do you say "teacher" and convey what she has been to us? How do you say "white" and express a rainbow?

You don't. This is one of those things about which, as she would say, you can only "let your voice fall."

But, in the progression to silence, let me leave this whisper....

She is the noblest woman I know.