"Zenna Henderson - Holding Wonder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

HOLDING WONDER

Zenna Henderson

1971

To my rainbow of cherubs who are cherubs before they are rainbow components

THE INDELIBLE KIND

I'VE ALWAYS been a down-to-earth sort of person. On rereading that sentence,
my mouth corners lift. It reads differently now. Anyway, matter-of-fact and
just a trifle skeptical-that's a further description of me. I've
enjoyed-perhaps a little wistfully-other people's ghosts, and breathtaking
coincidences, and flying saucer sightings, and table tiltings and prophetic
dreams, but I've never had any of my own. I suppose it takes a very
determined, or very childlike not childish-person to keep illusion and wonder
alive in a lifetime of teaching. "Lifetime" sounds awfully elderly-making,
doesn't it? But more and more I feel that I fit the role of observer more than
that of participant. Perhaps that explains a little of my unexcitement when I
did participate. It was mostly in the role of spectator. But what a
participation! What a spectacular!

But, back to the schoolroom. Faces and names have a habit of repeating and
repeating in your classes over the years. Once in a while, though, along comes
one of the indelible kind-and they mark you, happily or unhappily beyond
erasing. But, true to my nature; I didn't even have a twinge or premonition.

The new boy came alone. He was small, slight, and had a smooth cap of dark
hair. He had the assurance of a child who had registered many times by
himself, not particularly comfortable or uncomfortable at being in a new
school. He had brought a say-nothing report card, which, I noted in passing,
gave him a low grade in Group Activity Participation and a high one in
Adjustment to Redirective Counseling-by which I gathered that he was a loner
but minded when spoken to, which didn't help much in placing him academically.

"What book were you reading?" I asked, fishing on the shelf behind me for
various readers in case he didn't know a specific name. Sometimes we get those
whose faces overspread with astonishment and they say, "Reading?"

"In which of those series?" he asked. "Look-and-say, ITA, or phonics?" He
frowned a little. "We've moved so much and it seems as though every place we
go is different. It does confuse me sometimes." He caught my surprised eye and
flushed. "I'm really not very good by any method, even if I do know their
names," he admitted. "I'm functioning only on about a second-grade level."

"Your vocabulary certainly isn't second grade," I said, pausing over the
enrollment form.

"No, but my reading is," he admitted. "I'm afraid-"