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The Day I Lost My Baby Boy / by Martha Marshall I wanted to convince him he would like school. I wanted him to want to go to school. I tried to make it all sound positive. Still, I fell short of my goal. Then father said, "It's the law, David!" "Okay, I'll give it a try. But I know I won't like it," David responded. We slowly walked the two blocks to school in silence that first day. As we turned onto the wide sidewalk leading to the big red schoolhouse, he slipped his little hand in mine. His grip tightened as we walked through the large double doors. We stopped at the first door to our right and were immediately greeted by a tall slender attractive woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Mayfield. I introduced myself, then said, "This is my son David." Looking at him she said, "David come in and join your classmates. We have some very interesting things in our room." Still holding onto my hand firmly, David looked around the room but made no move to enter. I was surprised to hear Mrs. Mayfield say, "Mother, would you like to stay and visit our class today?" I gratefully accepted and sat down on the chair she had placed just inside the doorway. With his little hand in mine, David stood beside me. "David, this is your chair." Mrs. Mayfield pointed to the only empty chair around the long low table in the center of the room. David started to take a step, then squeezed my hand as he leaned closer to me. For just a moment he remained thus. He then pulled his hand from mine, walked over to the small chair, picked it up and returned to sit beside me. Mrs. Mayfield smiled. She gave each child a construction paper collar on which she neatly printed their names. She came over to David and placed his collar over his head as she instructed the other children to carefully put their collars on. She walked to the front of the room and wrote the word JUMP on the blackboard. She asked the children to repeat the letters and the word. She then wrote MARY in front of the word JUMP. She asked, "Who knows this word?" as she pointed to the word MARY. A little girl with black neatly braided hair, dark brown velvety skin and big brown eyes slowly raised her hand. "That's my name." "Good Mary!" Mrs. Mayfield said. She then explained to the class, "These two words make a sentence." She had the class repeat the sentence. "Mary, will you stand beside your chair and show the class what this sentence is telling you to do." Mary timidly stood up and gave a small jump. Mrs. Mayfield replaced the world Mary with Peter. The boy sitting across the table from Mary sprang from his chair and gave a big boy jump. |