Goodbye Ms. H.B. and may we meet in a library in paradise!
Yesterday I was talking with my family, one of my younger sisters asked me if I had known Ms. H. B., who had been a literature teacher in my junior high school. Unfortunately, she had just passed away, while still having been an active teacher (meaning she was younger than 65). The news saddened me deeply.
And the answer was, yes, I indeed had known here. My literature and Albanian language classes were in fact taught by Mr. B. B., who was Ms. H. B. husband and she had filled in for him in a couple occasions when he was absent. Having been a passionate reader even back then, I had a chance to interact with Ms. H.B., many times through asking and answering questions.
I am not proud of our first interaction though, although we had laughed over the memory many years later. It went like this:
I was sitting on the last row, sharing a table with my close friend M. In recent days, we had been battling on who was better at Nine Men’s Morris. It was a close score and in our boyish competitive spirit, every match mattered. Taking advantage of the absent of our full-time teacher and knowing that the substitute teacher would have her hands full organizing the class, we set the board in the middle of the table and started playing. Relaying on the hidden cover of the last row table, we focused and focused all of our mental capacities on the game. Lo and behold, the shadow of someone covered the table.
Ms. H. B. was looking at us with a stern look, that for a moment appeared stronger and rougher than that of her husband. We were caught red-handed. But she didn’t flip out on us, she gave us a fighting chance. And damn, if I didn’t make the most of it (pardon the lack of humility). She asked me to explain the day’s lesson.
The lesson was related to a story of a local myth hero, by the name of Gjergj Elez Alia. Not only was I very familiar to the story on our book, but as a passionate reader I had gone deep into analyzing deeper sources, other versions and many angled analyses on how the story reflected the country’s mindset, some feministic issues as seen from a contemporary standpoint and so on. I was relentless back then.
Me and Ms. H. B. went into a deep, natural discussion on the points I put forward and she didn’t even talk about the board game incident anymore. Although a huge age gap between us, we had a common passion: Literature. Later, on the corridor, I apologized for the game and made sure to get my point across that we didn’t mean it as a disrespect to her or her lesson. She just smiled and told me not to worry about it.
Looking back on the many teachers I have had; I can say that I had established a great rapport only with the literature ones. Later in high school, I had another great literature teacher who I bonded enormously and she was such a great support for those insecure teenage years of mine.
Having taken the teaching route myself, I live with deep appreciation of the good teachers I had, the ones who were willing to take the extra step for us. Ms. H. B., was sure one of them, may her soul rest in peace. She was an amazing human being, a great teacher and I will cherish her forever for guiding me in my path.
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