Teaching Patience (Homespun) (5 page)

Daniel said, “We’re going to work on getting our wiggles out.  First, everyone stand up.” 

Daniel and Amos took turns leading exercises for the children.  One would have them run in place and then the other would have them do jumping jacks.  By the end of the hour, each of them had a fine sheen of sweat on their faces, and all looked ready to drop.  Patience smiled.  An exhausted class would make for an easier day.

While the boys worked with the children, she put the beans on the stove to boil.  She’d underestimated the amount they had.  There should be enough for at least three meals, and hopefully by then, the storm would be over and they could all go home.

She went to her desk and leaned back against it.  “I thought today we’d do something different.  I’m not going to hold regular classes.  Instead, I want you to divide up into two groups by age.  Grace you’re on the first team.  Sally, you’re on the second.”  Sally was Grace’s closest friend and the only other girl in the school over fifteen.

She took a few minutes to divide the children, and once they’d all joined their teams, she explained the assignment.  “We’re going to create two plays.  Grace, as the oldest, will lead the first team.  Sally will lead the second.  You are to make up plays and practice them.  You’ll perform them for Mr. W
alker and me at the end of the day.  If they’re good enough, you can perform them for your parents the night of the end of school party.”

The children cheered, obviously very excited by the idea.  She walked over to Mr. W
alker.  “If you will help team two, I’ll join team one.  We’ll see if we can help them, without guiding them too much.”

Hugh looked at her for a moment as if she’d lost her mind, but then his face broke out into a grin.  He hadn’t done anything that required any type of creativity since he was a boy, and it sounded like fun.  Like all other farm boys, he’d had to grow up too quickly.  He was working the fields full time by the time he was
sixteen and married at seventeen.  Charlie was born when he was only eighteen and his wife had left four years later.

The day ended up being the most fun Hugh had had in a long time.  He’d worked nonstop except for Sundays for all of his adult life.  Now, here he was, playing games with children in the middle of the week like he had nothing else he should be doing.  The play his team created was a hilarious little story about a schoolteacher, who seemed nothing like Patience to him, who wasn’t always as proper as she should be.

They had her running around at recess playing ball with the children and making sheep’s eyes at all the young men in church.  They had her different beaux show up at the school at odd hours, serenading her while her students watched.  Finally, at the end, they had her drop to her knees and pray to God to help her decide which of the men she should marry.  She waited, peeking up out of her hands, for a divine response, and when she didn’t receive one, she wrote all the men’s names down on different pieces of paper, closed her eyes and chose one.

Charlie wasn’t in his group, and he watched him out of the corner of his eye as he talked to the children he was working with.  Charlie seemed to be having fun with the play they were working on in the other group. 

After an hour, Patience called a recess, and they all got drinks of water and trooped out to the outhouse two by two.  Once they were back, they divided back up into their groups for more hilarity.  By lunchtime, each group was ready to start rehearsing their plays.  Hugh was surprised to find himself actually excited about watching them acted out. 

They ate the beans Patience had soaked the night before for lunch.  They had to eat in shifts again, but each child ate as quickly as possible so they could go back to working on their plays.  Patience did the dishes herself while Hugh dried.  He just shrugged at her protest, and she realized if he was a single father, he was doing dishes at home. 

“After the blizzard is over and life is back to normal, you’ll have to come to dinner at my house.  My mama is the best cook in the world, and you won’t have to wash or dry a single dish.”  She felt bad for him, having to play both mother and father to Charlie, admitting to herself, she’d love to fill the role of Charlie’s mother.  Hugh was a handsome man, but more importantly, he truly seemed to be a man of God. 

Hugh grinned.  “I think we could do that.”

Patience cut her eyes over to him, slightly embarrassed.  She’d never invited a single man for dinner before, and it technically wasn’t proper, but since he was the father of one of her students, she decided not to worry about it too much.  Her mama wouldn’t mind.  “Charlie and my little brother Frank are fast friends.  I think they’d both enjoy that.”

When they were finished, Patience threw the pan of water she’d been washing the dishes in out into the snow.  Hugh followed, taking the time to shovel off the area in front of the door.  He’d done that every couple of hours since they’d woken up and had barely been able to push the door open
because of the huge snow drift in front of it.

The more he saw of how Patience worked with the children, the more he wished he’d had a schoolteacher like her when he was young.  His schoolteacher had been male and had strongly believed sparing the rod meant spoiling the child.  He couldn’t count the number of times he’d gone home with marks from his teacher, and his father had always matched the number of swats the teacher had given. 

When he went back into the school after shoveling, his hands and face were numb from the cold. He stood watching her from in front of the stove while he warmed up.  The children obviously loved her, even Charlie, who had complained about having to go to school since they day they’d arrived.  The first month, when he’d realized the older boys stayed home to work in the fields until the harvest was in, he’d insisted he should stay home and work as well.  Hugh had refused, but he realized now, Charlie was just complaining because it was different and he didn’t like being away from his father.  He was treated well here and seemed to truly enjoy learning.

By the end of that long day, when they were having a time of silent prayer for their families and any who may have been caught in the blizzard, his entire view of the pretty schoolteacher had changed dramatically.  She wasn’t there to simply draw a paycheck as most teachers seemed to be.  She was there because she loved the children and loved learning.  She’d make some young man a wonderful wife. 
He found himself wishing he could be that man.

He noticed Charlie seemed to be the most rambunctious of the bunch, but he was also
one of the youngest, so he was certain that was the reason.  Patience lived up to her name with him, though.  He watched as she spoke to him calmly, explaining over and over why it was important to be quiet indoors and how he was disturbing others with his loud speech and fidgeting.  He always watched her and listened with rapt attention, but went back to his boisterousness soon afterward.

He made sure he got up and shoveled in front of the door, and fed the fire every couple of hours during the night.  Patience didn’t wake at all.  For a while, he laid awake, watching her sleep, her head pillowed on her arm, her mouth slightly open.  He couldn’t help but wonder what being married to someone as sweet and loving as she was would be like.

He’d thought when he married his childhood sweetheart back when he was seventeen, life would be perfect.  They had a small farm, and he was thrilled to be able to work it for his family.  Diana was petite with long raven colored hair.  He felt like the luckiest man alive when she got pregnant right off, but she became more and more unhappy as the days wore on. 

After Charlie was born, she spent her days sewing fancy dresses.  Often, he’d come in from the fields to find Charlie in a diaper that was soaked all the way through.  Hugh wasn’t sure Charlie was being changed at all during the day.  He had to start going to the house several times per day, just to make certain the baby was fed and changed.

She would often drop the baby off with her mother and spend the day in the city shopping with her unmarried friends.  Once, when Charlie was three, she went off for an entire weekend to visit New York City with a friend without letting him know in advance.  She’d just left a note for him on the table to get Charlie from her mother’s.  Her mother had told him with an embarrassed look she’d gone to the city.

It was during that weekend she met Bart, a banker who had fallen instantly for her beauty.  He’d been willing to wait while she divorced Hugh, and had done exactly that.  Neither of them were interested in Charlie, so she’d moved to New York and started fresh.
 

Hugh shouldn’t have been surprised by her abandonment, but he’d never even heard of such a thing.  She’d told him it wasn’t anything he did wrong; she just wasn’t cut out to be a farmer’s wife.  Her mother had told him
that in the city, she had a maid and had to do very little work.  That had been the real issue.  Diana had hated work, and always felt like someone else should do it for her.  That wasn’t possible as a dirt farmer’s wife.

By the time she’d left, Hugh was almost glad to see the backside of her.  He’d been very much in love with her at the beginning of their marriage, but after the years of her selfishness, he couldn’t see how having her around was any better than having her gone.  He just wished he hadn’t been left with the stigma of being divorced.

He looked over at Patience again.  How he wished he was a young man who’d moved out here never having been married.  Well, no, that wouldn’t work because then he wouldn’t have Charlie.  He wished he’d moved out here a widower, and felt free to marry a sweet young girl like her.  He couldn’t ruin her reputation by asking her to consider him, though.  A divorced man had no right to even think about a girl like Patience.

He rolled over so his back was to her and forced his eyes closed.  He needed to stop thinking about her.  He wasn’t ever going to marry again.  He’d promised himself that as soon as Diana had left.  He needed to keep that promise.  He and Charlie had been alone for
almost four years and they were doing great.  He didn’t need a woman to come along and change things.  Why would he?

Patience woke just before dawn and sat up abruptly.  It was quiet.  At first she wasn’t certain what was wrong, but then it hit her.  The storm had stopped!  She said a quick silent prayer thanking God for getting them through.

She got up and made her way over to Hugh, who was
standing looking out the window.  “It’s over.  We made it!”  She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, so excited to have made it through with no harm to any of the children.

He grinned down at her.  “We sure did.  You did a great job preparing.”
  She looked so happy as she stood there, with her hair falling out of her braid, and her dirty dress, he wanted to laugh.  His ex-wife would have been horrified for anyone to see her like that.  Patience didn’t seem to have a vain bone in her body.

“I’m glad you were here.  It was easier knowing I wasn’t the only adult.”  She wanted to say more, but she wasn’t sure how.  How could she tell him he was so much more than she’d thought at first, and she’d love to get to know him better?  She couldn’t. 

“You’d have done fine without me.  I wouldn’t have made it without your rope, though.”  They stood smiling at one another in the dark before dawn.  The children slept all around them.  Patience felt as if she were totally alone with a man for the first time in her life. 

“I’m glad you ran into it.” 

They kept their voices low so they wouldn’t disturb the children who were still sound asleep.  He looked at the huge drifts out the window.  “What happens now?  Do we send the children home this morning, or have a regular school day?”

Patience smiled.  “Their fathers will be coming as soon as it’
s daylight.”  She paused for a moment watching the first rays of the sun rise over the prairie.  “I remember when I was trapped here during the blizzard when I was a student.  I’ll never forget how exciting it was to see my papa come on snow shoes pulling a toboggan.  My two brothers and I piled on and he pulled us home.”  

“You were never caught here during a blizzard again?”

She shook her head.  “Of course, after that all the teachers have been prepared.  We could have lasted several more days if we’d had to.”  She paused resting her forehead against the window.  “I’m so glad we didn’t have to.”

He watched her as she talked smiling at how happy she seemed now that the storm was over.  “Do you have big plans for your summer off?”

She smiled.  “The same as always.  I’ll help Mama with the gardening and the canning.  I’ll probably make some new dresses for next year, and help make clothes for my little brothers and sisters.  We’ll go for picnics at the lake after church every Sunday.”

“No beaux to take you around?”
  He almost bit his tongue after asking that.  What was he thinking acting as if he was a young bachelor who could court her?

She blushed
, shaking her head.  “My papa tends to scare men away. He’s so strict about everything.  When my mama’s best friend came to live with us before the twins were born, I had to go with Charlotte and James every time they left the house as a chaperone.  Imagine how he’s going to be when I want to start courting.”

“You’ve never been courted?”  He was honestly surprised.  She was such a pretty little thing and there were so many more men here than women, it didn’t make sense to him she’d never had a beau.