Mrs. S___.

Don't get me wrong.  If my kids are happy at school?  That's fantastic.  If they love their teacher?  Perfect.  But I think we may be getting carried away here.

Rewind to last month.

The grade 6 portion of Juliana's class left on a two-night field trip.  Juliana and the rest of the grade 5's were left at school.  The afternoon that they left Juliana called me at work to tell me she was sad.  She called me later, when I was in the middle of a meeting, to tell me that she was really sad and she needed to talk to me about it.  When I got home, 30 minutes later, she was in a full blown meltdown.  

About what, you ask? 

She missed Mrs. S___, her teacher.

I gave her a cuddle and she calmed down.  Ever so slightly.  When I could finally break free from her oh-so-sad grip, I texted Peter, who had been in Pittsburgh since the beginning of the week.

"Holy crap.  Your daughter." was all I wrote.

His response:  "She called me crying because she misses Mrs. S___.  I didn't remind her that I've been gone for three days."

It was an hour later when her tears were finally starting to dry up, and while catching her breath, she said to me:

"Mrs. S___'s daughters are really, really lucky."

"Why?", I ask.

"Because they have her as a mom."

Then just the other morning, Juliana woke up as I was leaving for work, and she told me she had a bad dream.  When I asked her if she wanted to talk to me about it, she said it was scary.  

"I dreamt that Mrs. S___ quit her job."

Mrs. S___.  Dream teacher.  In so many ways.