Ode to Ms Wynan

My relationship with my father had always been tumultous. While I was trying to find myself and my purpose in the world, he had his own ideas about who I was and what I should be doing.

Preteen syndrome led to teenage rebellion... to a chaotic entrance into my twenties...a blur in my thirties and now.... steady reflection in my forties. I duly expect to be brain-dead by my fifties, but I will wait patiently rather than anticipate it with baited breath.

Ok, maybe I have Daddy issues. What woman these days, doesn't? A patriarchal figure that forms and massages us into what they want--like 'play-doh'. And we spend years trying to release ourselves out of that predetermined mould, which only melts and deforms itself over the years; yearning to be moulded over again, but this time, into our own liking. They have a grip over us, even when we move thousands of miles away, speak less to them over the phone, or meet with them at only special events--the force is unbreakable and undeniable.

Back as a preteen, my father represented the reality of the world that would break the dreams of the world my mother projected to me.

Mama: "You can be whatever you want to be!"
Daddy: "Are you kidding!? Not with those marks"
Mama: "Go, find a job and be financially independant"
Daddy: "Over my dead body you are going to work!"
Mama: "Go away to school and learn to live on your own"
Daddy: "Over my dead body you are going to live on residence. Pay your own tuition then!"
Mama: "Don't let anyone bring you down. Ignore and move on"
Daddy: "You don't listen to anyone! That is why you are in this position today!"

In Grade 6, God sent me a teacher who made up for the ignorant zombies I had in elementary school. Ms. Wynan. She was a homely, single and loving teacher who GOT me. I stood out in her class not only because I was picked on (something she saw from the first day of class) but because I was her star pupil. Our bond was instant and under her tutelage, I flourished. Every class with her yielded the highest marks I had ever achieved. She positioned me close to her desk and I was relentlessly picked on for being the 'teacher's pet.' However, this time, I didn't care. I was not concerned about the peer pressure of fitting in--it was the least of my concerns. My only care in the world was to have Ms. Wynan proud of me. She became my 'school mother'. Whatever my father criticized at home, that work was put on display in the school lobby for everyone to see.

When my father said, "You can't do that" I came home the next day defying his logic. My best work shone through my creative writing exercises that were modelled as the 'kind of effort everyone was to work towards to get an 'A' in the class'.

Ms. Wynan was blown away with my poetry and I would read it to her, after class, in private. She would tear up and tell me how beautiful my prose and poetry had become. Little did I know at the time, was as she read through the lyrics and ballads, and stories, she unearthed and understood the pain from which they were all created from.

We never spoke about what was going on in class when students would steal my pencil crayons or hide my shoes from the cubby hole but she did not hold back from reprimanding them in my presence. We both knew it only fuelled the fire of my bullying, yet at the same, I took comfort and solace from the fact she was protecting me at all odds.

I suspected many years later that she went through the same misfortune as I did and that history was repeating itself. This is the only reason I can think of now about who she was and what she represented to me in my life back then. We saw each other through a different set of eyes and realized each other's potential--she as a teacher and I, as her pupil.

I never forgot her generosity and support in middle school. From Grade 6, I stopped letting people cheat off my test to win their friendship, ceased trying to buy their affection, didn't mind being picked last for team sports and I finally learned to stand on my own two feet when affronted with challenges. At school and at home with my father.

Instead of fighting back the real and conjured demons most of the time, I finally sat back, reserved my energy and watched her in action--teaching me silently, how to accept the fact that my brilliance was only worthy to those who had equal brilliance to recognize and nurture it.