Teach your children well

Mt. Vernon is an 18-mile buggy ride from the Nation's Capitol, a distance that proved our first president was first and foremost a farmer. He was an unlikely leader who relinquished the power earned him as an officer in the Revolutionary War in favor of returning home to experiment and farm. “George Washington never gave up!” announced the tour guide to her 4th grade tutelage. The never-die spirit was sliced by a father’s unkind words said standing over the small 6-year-old frame, his humongous face inches from hers, spit occasionally sprouting from his lips. 

“Stop singing! You are always singing and driving everybody crazy.” 

I cringed and wondered if her song was her passion, the dirt under George Washington’s nails. I thought of Jane still wishing she was someone's teacher fifteen years after an influential elder stopped her pursuit of a teaching career with well-meaning warnings. I whispered in the child's ear when her Dad wasn’t looking, “I think your song is beautiful. Never stop singing.”