Creative Nonfiction: The light that guides the birds

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The light that guides the birds

There are some things that you don't know when they start, at what moment the difference was made, but in others, yes. That is perhaps why I can tell you the precise moment when a difference was made in me: the first and one of the most important.
I had finished my school year and my previous teacher had only praised my school performance: according to her prognosis, I would be very successful academically. She, my parents and I were very satisfied with the results of that first year. With that premise, I started my new school year with teacher Onilde Limpio, whom everyone called Azote, after an evil character from a soap opera that was very famous at the time.

On my first day of school I entered the school, lined up in a row and started talking to my friends. Immediately I felt someone firmly put their hand on my shoulder and ordered me:

"Nancy, stand up straight and stop talking". Who was speaking was a tall, thin woman, with a face without makeup and thick glasses: it was teacher Onilde. At that moment I was very scared because it was the first time a teacher scolded me and because I didn't know why she knew my name. Later, as time went by, I learned that teacher Onilde knew the names of all the children in the school.

That day I returned home deflated, like a balloon after a party. According to the corrections my new teacher had made in my notebook, I was having trouble with some math operations and penmanship:

"I want you to change my teacher, please",─ I asked my mother with a distressed face.

"If she corrected you, what you should do is correct the mistakes"-accented my mom trying to convince me.

"I want to go back to see classes with my previous teacher," I pointed with a sad puppy pout.

"Of course not. You will see class with teacher Onilde who according to me is a very good teacher," my dad stated categorically, ending the matter.

After that, every afternoon, instead of going out to play or watch TV, I had to do all the assigned chores. My little friends would come looking for me at home to coax me:
"Xiomara has her ball. Ana brought her new doll," they would say, and I couldn't be more unhappy.

"I can't go out because tomorrow the teacher will check homework in class",─ I would say and watch my friends leave without me.

Certainly there was the obligation to do homework, but there was also another reason that, after many years, I understood was the most important for me.

In the school, in the back, there was a garden where there was a cage with many birds, all of them of a thousand colors and shapes. They all had their wings clipped and the students, who did their homework well, could go out into the garden and feed the little birds. Since I always did my homework excellently, I had the privilege of being with the birds.

Once, I don't remember how, I realized that my teacher gave me twice as much homework, even the most difficult ones. Not only did I have to do subtraction and addition, I also had to multiply and divide. While my classmates were reading a short story, she had me read longer and more difficult stories. At that moment I felt exploited. Without being able to understand because I was very small, I felt that teacher Onilde had a preference for my classmates and not for me: she made me work twice as hard as they did.

At the end of the course, I was exempt and had obtained the best grades in the school. Pleased, I heard my teacher Onilde tell my parents that I was a child capable of giving more than what they demanded of me: that while my classmates had read one book with difficulty, I had read three in class.

At the end of the year ceremony, my teacher and I went to the garden and she took a little bird in her hands, then we went back to the ceremony. There, in front of the other children and their parents, she said a few words that had to do with being light in the darkness, with dreams that are fulfilled and goals that are achieved. She also spoke of the freedom that knowledge gives. Then she handed me the little bird to fly away. The little bird, which had already grown wings, flew away and that year I began to understand that the desire to learn is a candle that can never be extinguished.

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