Are You Mrs. Swartz?

By now, I know the drill. It’s a look. And then another, like they’re trying to figure out a puzzle, trying to see beyond my grey-streaked hair and my wrinkles to catch my essence.

Then the question: Were you a teacher?

And a growing smile.

“Are you Mrs. Swartz?”

But I’m not the only one changing. My former students—those kids who were so exhausting and so much fun, such jerks and so sweet within minutes—have left middle school behind. And high school. And now life has come for them.

They’re looking less carefree, more like they’ve been through something, like they’ve got more than one thing on their minds.

“Help me out,” I say. “You look so grown up now. Tell me your name.”

That’s when I almost always see their middle school faces—the same eyes looking out at me, the same lifts to their chins.

And I ask the question that works—Could you tell me something about your life?

Today a student looks at me for just a fraction longer than most, as if she’s considering.

“I’ve been to prison,” she says.

I nod.

“Tell me about it.”

“It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she says.

That’s where she got off drugs and went back to school, where she finished high school and then two years of college, learning horticulture.

“The person who got me going in prison was an older woman,” she says. “A lifer, who told me to get involved, to make something of myself, and who wouldn’t let me stop.”

And now she’s out of prison, clean of drugs, and working in her field.

“So glad you went to school in prison,” I tell her. “I taught at a prison once.”

I place my herbs on the counter—rosemary and basil and sweet leaf—and give her my credit card.

She runs my card and hands me my flat, ready for spring planting.

As I walk to my car, a picture’s in my mind—of the way she sashayed down the middle school hallway between classes, young and popular, and full of hope.

Hope that she once again carries, but with a more measured step.