Miss Ada

      When we moved to Georgia late in 1990, looking for a job was still a dilemma for me – I wanted to work in a lab, but Amanda was still pre-school age and I wanted to be near her. So I took a job at a day care and enrolled the girls there also. Sarah took the shuttle to school, Amanda was in the four-year-old room, and I had the class of two year olds.

        Miss Ada worked in the baby room along with Miss Joyce. Ada was probably a few years younger than I was, a mom with two kids both in school and a husband. It was hard to get to know the other teachers because the kids kept us so busy in our own classrooms – some days it was tough to even get an entire sentence spoken to another adult. (And being able to use the bathroom whenever I wanted was the major criterion in looking for my next job after day care!) But we teachers were familiar enough and comfortable enough with each other to ask for help and know we would get if there was an emergency or even a request not as urgent as an emergency.

        One day Miss Ada came into my room right before playground time and asked me what my favorite cake was? It seemed like an odd question, kind of out of the blue – but perhaps she was putting together a bulletin board or a daycare workbook unit – maybe it was not so odd after all. I told Miss Ada that my favorite cake was chocolate or devil's food, and left out the part about the marshmallow frosting and drizzled melted unsweetened chocolate over the top. Not too many days after that, it was my birthday. And the director of the day care told me that there was cake in the kitchen to celebrate my birthday – each teacher would get a piece individually, during her break. Ada had made a chocolate cake for me!

        Then I remembered that a few weeks earlier, I was told one day that there was chocolate pie in the kitchen of the day care to celebrate Miss Deana's birthday. I thought Deana had brought it in leftover from home or something. Chocolate pie is wonderful, so I thought about it all the way until my break, which was when the kids went to playground and the teachers all took turns with a 15 minute respite to use the bathroom and otherwise relax while other teachers watched the kids. I went into the quiet kitchen, cut myself a piece of the chocolate pie with meringue on top. Oh it looked so wonderful! Then I sat in a rocker in my quiet classroom, closed my eyes and put the first forkful of pie into my mouth.

        Bliss was broken by the taste of something I did not like! Something suspiciously banana-tasting! I do not care for bananas at all. Mom used to say that I would even spit out banana baby food as an infant! Why would chocolate pie taste like bananas? Who would do that to a pie? I opened my eyes and gently lifted the meringue off of the chocolate filling – and there, as my heart dropped, I saw a lengthwise slice of banana! It was an image I will never forget as my anticipation of chocolate pie did a 180 degree inversion to palpable disappointment.

        It turns out that Miss Ada had asked Miss Deana what her favorite cake was, and Deana had answered that her favorite thing is pie – chocolate pie with bananas on top. And Miss Ada had made it for her and brought it on on Deana's birthday to share with all the teachers.

        I did not know this until Ada made a cake for me. She made cakes for all the teachers – simply asking each her favorite and then without fanfare, making it appear in the day care kitchen on the birthday – for each teacher to have a piece during break. I don't know if she volunteered to do this and was reimbursed or if she did it with staff's reluctant approval but reimbursement, or if she did it out of the goodness of her heart with or without staff's endorsement and for free.

        I do know that I was touched by Ada's example – the modest gesture that brightened up a small part of the world – even if it did sometimes include a slice of banana!

217 20150805 Ms Ada