Inspiration
Bette held her head high as she delivered the valedictorian speech at the graduation of her Harvard law class. President of the Student’s Association, editor of the Harvard Law Review, and top student in her year. Bette had attended Harvard on a full ride and had been offered articling positions at most of the country’s topflight law firms.
No matter how successful, she never forgot what had brought her here, nor the teacher who had inspired her to excel. Mrs. Morris had taught Bette during eighth grade.
It had been a hard year for Bette. Her brother, two years older, had been battling leukemia. The strain and expense of his illness had brought her parents’ already difficult relationship to a breaking point. Her father went out for milk one day and never returned.
Bette’s few friendships withered as she struggled to keep up with school, while taking on the burden of managing the household: cleaning, cooking, shopping for groceries, and anything else she could do to ease her mother’s burden as she juggled work and Jake’s treatment schedule. Not to mention the days he was too sick to get out of bed.
Bette tried for months to keep up, skipping sleep and missing meals. In the end, something had to give. That something was school. She scraped through the year with fifties: just enough to pass her through to high school.
Mrs. Morris had to have seen the dark circles under Bette’s eyes, noticed her increasing anxiety and weight loss. At no point did she ask what was going on or offer support of any kind.
On the final day of school, handing Bette her report card, Mrs. Morris looked at her with disdain. “You will never amount to anything.” Bette stared at the floor, fighting back tears.
She spent that summer taking care of Jake while her mother looked for a better-paying job. By September, he was in remission and Mom was bringing in enough to pay someone to come in once a week to clean. Bette vowed that this was going to be her year. She was going to show Mrs. Morris just how wrong she was.
Today, as Bette looked out over the auditorium, she saw Jake’s face beaming out at her from the audience. Her mother sat next to him, tears glistening as she proudly listened to Bette’s speech. A tiny smile played across her lips as Bette said, “And most of all, I’d like to thank Mrs. Morris, my eighth-grade teacher. I might not be here if it weren’t for her.”
When I published “The Three Biggest Roadblocks to Setting and Achieving Your Goals” at the end of May, Barb Long sent me a prompt. The other day, she reached out to me to ask if I had received it. I had not. It seems she had the wrong email address. I’m so glad she followed up.
Inspiration was inspired (pun intended) by a story Barb told me. I’ve traveled far afield, as I often do but have kept, I think, the heart of prompt. Please leave a comment or a prompt of your own. I love the interactive nature of creating stories based on ideas generated by my readers.
And please, if you enjoy Fiction in 50, share it with your friends. The more the merrier!
Fortunately, Bette had the self-confidence and determination to not believe her teacher.
I think we all have someone like this in our past, someone who seemed to defy us and who we were and where we wanted to go. I, too, had a teacher like this in middle school. She was a school counsellor back when we did aptitude tests and were told what we should grow up to be. We did not like each other. I knew she didn't understand my challenges and what was happening in my life. But I had to see her anyway. I wanted, with all my heart, to work in the medical field but she told me I was wrong, that it wasn't the field for me. To prove her wrong I graduated as a medical laboratory technologist and, after 1 & 1/2 years, had to accept she was right. What an awakening. I learned that everyone has wisdom but we can miss it when we get caught up in emotional responses. She had urged me to become a school counsellor, like her, and now, a lifetime later, I realize I would have loved it. Thankfully I diverted into a completely different field where I found success in my career but, oh, if only I had listened instead of hearing 🤣🤣 Good story, Dascha!