My ability to write and think deserves a nod of gratitude to the nuns who taught me love of the English language in high school.  Today I got my high school alumni magazine and take this moment to say a prayer of godspeed and gratitude to Sister Helen Warren.  There were others who shaped my brain in other ways – the algebra teacher who made algebra funny (Now giiiirls…) in the best Cheech and Chong voice you can imagine, the biology teacher who made science just so interesting (even though we sometimes played four-handed mini old maid at the back two lab tables when she turned to write on the board), and of course J.C. and that’s a private joke for all the Carmel girls – certainly she brow beat us all to be able to put together a composition in advanced comp.  I didn’t know how fabulous that experience was until I got to college and had to read fellow student’s writing.

But Sister Helen Warren.  She taught poetry and drama.   It was the poetry that rocked my world.  She didn’t just teach poetry, she would READ the poetry.  I still come across poems she read to us.  I could have listened to her forever – it wasn’t that she was such a fabulous reader of poetry, but her passion for it was contagious to me.  She was not romantic, she was all business, but when she read the poetry she became a different person.  It was like watching a musician at her instrument.   She was certainly annoying at times, and the “cool” kids thought she was totally weird.  She was totally weird all right, bringing to life poems from generations long ago, translations of poems from other countries, introducing us to poems of the future.

Whenever I stumble across a poem she read to us, I am transported back to that classroom.   This was a class I never minded going to and hated to have end. That fifty minute period always went way too quickly.  A few years ago I tracked her down at a retirement home for nuns.  I sent an email thanking her for her gift of my lifelong love of poetry.  I received an email back thanking me and telling me that the message would be passed on to her.  I will never know if she was too infirm or demented to answer directly, or if she could understand what might have been read to her.  I just hoped that someone the spirit of my gratitude could be felt by her.

Peace be with you, Sister Helen Warren.  And thank you so very much.

And know that “the monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.”   (Look it up…:-)