Pushing her cat-eye glasses further up her slender nose, my fourth-grade teacher bends over my desk. “Debbie, it looks like you’re still having trouble counting American money.”

I frown and point to number four on my workbook page with black marks and smudges all over. “I’ll never figure this out. Did I get this one right, yet?” Living in our missionary boarding school in Nigeria, I get confused by American coins.

The teacher shakes her head and her floral perfume floats through the air. “No. A quarter plus a nickel makes thirty cents not thirty-five cents.”

I tug at my hair; my frustration climbs. “I can never remember how much a quarter, a dime, and a nickel are worth.” Looking up at her frowning face, I grin. “But I know how many Nigerian shillings are in a pound.”

The teacher sighs and stands tall. “The rest of the students completed this section last week. You should have it memorized by now.”

“Isn’t a nickel worth ten cents? It’s bigger than a dime, so the dime should be five cents. It doesn’t make any sense to me.” Then I giggle. “I made a joke. Sense sounds the same as cents!”

She turns and strides toward the front of the classroom, her heels clicking on the cement floor.

I think she’s mad at me.

When she reaches her desk, she says, “Class, it’s time to put away your arithmetic books and take out your geography textbooks.”

Oh goody. I love geography. It’s always a bright spot in my day. I love looking at the world maps and dreaming of where my parents are, four hundred miles south on their mission station.

The teacher clears her throat. “Please open to Chapter Seven.”

Daydreams and Dummies

On the first page of the chapter, there’s a picture of an island with a white-sand beach lined with shady palm trees. Beautiful blue-green ocean waves lap at the shore. I’d like to sail away and live there.

As we take turns reading the paragraphs, my mind drifts to the island in the Pacific Ocean where little, brown-skinned boys shimmy up palm trees and harvest coconuts. Smiling little girls dance with straw skirts twirling quickly, and birds call loudly to each other in the trees.

When the bell rings, I startle and pull myself back from my daydream.

Our teacher shuts her book. “Class is dismissed.” She walks to the side wall and stops in front of the Progress Chart. Down the left-hand side of the poster, all our names are listed in a column. To the right of each name is a paper race car. Across the top, numbers show each of the sections in arithmetic. All the cars have progressed halfway across the poster. Except mine, which lags behind.

The teacher says, “Good work, class. Debbie, you’re the only one who didn’t complete today’s section. You need to work harder.”

One by one, she moves each car ahead to the next column. But the car on my line stays in place way behind the others. My shoulders slump. I’ll always be a big dummy.

I shuffle out the door.

Finally, Some Fun in Class

The next morning, I skip across the playground from the dorm to the school building. Already the bright African sun has warmed the monkey bars, and I do a quick flip while holding my dress tucked between my knees. Two blue-feathered birds swoop past, cooing at each other. I hope today we do something fun in class, or else I’d rather stay outside like the birds.

After we finally finish the boring math class, our teacher makes an announcement. “Today we have arts and crafts.”

Yippee! I like that even better than geography.

The teacher explains the project. “Each of you will make a decorative item to give someone in your family for Christmas.”

As she walks to the back of the room, her yellow skirt swishes around her knees. “I’ll give everyone some plaster of Paris, and you’ll press it into a mold of your choosing.”

On the big table in the back of the classroom sit two dozen plastic molds with shapes of trees, cars, flowers, and animals. I scan the choices then grab a mold of a little bird sitting on a branch.

I turn to the girl next to me. “Doesn’t this bird look so sweet? It’s plain now, but I know my mom will think it’s beautiful after I paint it.”

She smiles. “Yes. And I love this bouquet of flowers I’m making for my mom. Don’t you?”

I nod. We return to our desks and get to work. The plaster is cool in my hands, and soon our desks are a white mess.

Flying Home for Christmas

The teacher helps me press a small safety pin into the back of my project. “You’ve done a nice job on this, Debbie. Your mom is an artist, and once you paint it, I know she’ll be pleased.” She pats me on the back. “The pin sticks out so the bird can be worn on her dress as a broach.”

Then she turns to the middle of the room. “In a few days your projects will dry, and you’ll paint them. When you fly home at Christmas, you can take your projects with you.”

* * *

Friday is the big day. The plaster for my craft project is dry. I tug my little bird out of the mold, and then choose my paints and begin to work at my seat. I paint the body a bright blue, then add orange for the feet and yellow for the beak. Mom loves the birds that sing outside our mission house on the edge of the tropical rain forest in southern Nigeria.

After I’m finished, I clean up my work area. Then I head out of the classroom, down the school steps and into the bright sunshine.

I can’t wait to see Mom, Dad, little Grant, and baby Cindy in three weeks. It’s so fun to have something to give Mom for Christmas.

Looking Back at that Time

During my first four years at Kent Academy (KA), I really struggled. I didn’t do well with academics or obeying the rules in the dorm or eating the food in the dining room. Living away from home at such a young age without the guidance and nurture of my parents took a toll. Although I had two brothers with me, I couldn’t often see them and seldom interacted with them. We were separated in the dorms, in the classrooms, and were even kept apart in the dining hall.

In my early years, navigating all the rules and social interactions were so traumatic I couldn’t focus on classwork. Later, in junior high and high school, I got A’s and B’s. Making this little blue bird was a joyful, creative venture. It was one of the few times I had the opportunity to create something beautiful with my hands. Giving it as a gift to my mom brought me even more joy than creating it for myself.

Some people ask me how I can remember all these vignettes from my childhood. My answer is, “That was my life. Don’t you remember your childhood?” But I realize there are also lots of things missing from my memory. I just happen to have approximately fifty crystal-clear memories, and I’m writing about those in my blog.

Sometimes I wonder if these memories are true. That’s when I go to our KA Facebook group and check to see what things other adult KA kids remember. I’ve never asked about this craft day even though I’ve thought often about the precious blue bird the teacher helped me make. Did this really happen?

Today I live on another continent and in a different culture. In all the moves from boarding school to home, from Nigeria to California, I lost things. My childhood was disjointed, fragmented. My parents missed out on many aspects of my life at school, and some of my craft projects didn’t make it home.

What I Know Now

In June 2023, my siblings and I helped my mom pack up her independent living apartment in a retirement center in Reedley, CA. We moved her belongings across the campus to her single room in the Assisted Living building.

She turned ninety-one that week and had lived in her apartment for sixteen years. That was the longest this world traveler had ever lived in one place. As we sorted through her accumulated possessions, she bemoaned the fact she had kept so much clutter.

However, I celebrated it. Throughout the weeks of packing, I uncovered many mementos representing our family’s history: curios and artifacts created by Nigerian craftsmen; our household guest books from Nigeria that chronicled the friends we hosted; the last pieces of my mom’s renowned salt and pepper shaker collection.

Suddenly my eyes popped open wide. I lifted the lid of a small cardboard jewelry box and pushed aside a square of yellow cotton. A little ceramic bird flew into my hands.  

“My craft project from fourth grade!” My mouth gaped open.

Mom smiled and walked to my side. “Let me see that.” She turned it over in her hands. “I guess I’m glad I saved so much stuff, after all.”

The little bird found me, all these years later. I was relieved to know my childhood memories created in a far-off land were real, after all.

Mom was an artist, but I hadn’t inherited the artistic gene. Sure enough, the paint was splotchy, looking very much like a clumsy nine-year-old painted it. However, this precious broach reminded me that created items don’t have to be perfect to be valued.

* * *

Breaking News! After I posted this, a classmate from KA, Joy Gould Graves, responded with her photo of the plaster of Paris broach that she made in this class. Since she’s Canadian, she chose to make a maple leaf, and her mom saved it over the years. Joy’s artistic abilities were beginning to shine even then!

* * *

This story first appeared in Inspire Creativity. The anthology including this and other stories is available on Amazon here.

For a fun read about preparing to fly home for Christmas, click on The Christmas Candy House.