Miss L'eau - A litte bit of Chapter One You couldn’t tell it by just looking at her, ‘cause she looked pretty normal. She stood about 5 feet 2 inches, wore her hair in a neat & tidy little bun and dressed the way most of our other teachers dress. Why, you would never know how extraordinary she was until … you looked into her eyes. Miss L’eau had the most unusual pair of eyes! She wore glasses when she taught, but when she had to deal with just you – she would lean over your desk, move her glasses down to the end of her nose … and there they were! Miss L’eau’s eyes were as blue-green as the sea, and if you could get up the courage to stare right into them, you’d swear you could see angel fish, sea plants, coral beds and even sea anemones!! It was the most wonderful, yet frightening, experience when she would talk to you face-to-face. One day, my best friend David was throwing wads of paper across the room at one of the girls. Miss L’eau had her back to us, drawing a diagram of clouds to explain the different forms; cumulus, nimbus, stratus and cirrus … when all of a sudden – WHAM!! Miss L’eaus’s hand came down with a loud crash against her desk! None of us had noticed that she had turned around because we were so busy watching David throwing his papers. The whole class grew silent as could be. The only sound you could hear was your own heart, as if it were beating in your ears. Miss L’eau walked over to David. She walked so slowly that it seemed to take - all - day - for - her - to arrive - at David’s desk. When she finally approached the desk, Miss L’eau raised her hand up to her glasses and slid them down to the end of her nose. She leaned over and put her face even with David’s. You could see the color drain from poor David’s face until it was as white as the chalk Miss L’eau held in her hand. She whispered to David in a voice so low that none of us could hear what she was saying. If you closed your eyes you would almost think it was the wind outside. But, when you opened them … you could see that it was still Miss L’eau scolding David. Miss L’eau put her finger to her nose and pushed her glasses back to their proper position, stood up straight and walked back to the chalkboard. She began to explain about clouds again. “Nimbus – a uniformly gray rain cloud that extends over the sky.” Pretending to roll a knot out of my neck, I looked over at David. The color was beginning to come back to his cheeks. When the bell rang, I jumped. Miss L’eau informed us that we were to read the next chapter in our books for discussion in class tomorrow, then she excused us. I couldn’t wait to get outside and ask David what Miss L’eau had said to him. We all ran out of the building and onto the front lawn. I grabbed David’s arm and spun him around. “Well?? What did she say? What is she going to do? Do you have to tell your folks? Is she going to make you talk to Scaley Staley?” Mr. Staley was our principal and the one person you hoped never to have an appointment with. We all called him Mr. Scaley behind his back. David shook his head, looked at me and said, “I don’t know, James. I don’t remember a single word.” “What?” I grabbed him by the shoulders. “How can you not remember what she said? You must remember something!” Again, he shook his head. “Nope. Not a thing” “C’mon, David! She was talking to you for the longest time! One thing, you have to remember at least one thing. Think!!” David sat down on the grass, tilted his head toward me and said, “All I remember … is seeing a storm. A storm in her eyes! I swear, James. I could see these huge gray clouds moving over the ocean in those blue-green eyes of hers. I know I was looking at the ocean! I could … I could even see waves, James! With whales jumping right out of the sea and spouting water! I could see her mouth moving, but all I could hear was the wind and those waves. You believe me, don’t you James?” I guess if I wasn’t a student of Miss L’eau’s, I would have probably checked David’s forehead for fever and walked him to the school nurse’s office to lie down for a bit. But, I knew what he was talking about. I couldn’t explain it, but I understood it. “Yes, David. I believe you.” We sat there on the grass for a long while without talking. We just stared up at the clouds overhead and then recited the names we had just learned. Names like cum-u-lo-nim-bus. We knew that because of these kinds of clouds, there would most likely be a storm tonight. Pythagoras - A little bit of Chapter One “Priscilla Maria Villanueva! You stop that racket right now!!” Priscilla laid her head down on the keyboard sounding one last defiant dissonant chord as she wailed to her mother, “It’s not fair. I don’t want to be inside when everyone else is out having fun. Why are you torturing me like this?” Mrs. Villanueva smiled at her daughter and said, “Sweet girl, I’m not torturing you and there’s no need to be so melodramatic about this.” She walked over to the windowsill. “Here, I’m going to shut this until you’re finished. Maybe you won’t be so distracted.” Sliding the window shut with a snap, the room became quiet and only the muffled sound of the basketball on the pavement could still be heard. “You have another 15 minutes left to your practice time. I suggest you make the best of if.” Spinning around on the piano bench, Priscilla looked up at her mother as a tear rolled down onto the shiny black lacquered wood. “Why is it so important that I learn this song anyway? What is the point of it all?” “The point? The importance?” Priscilla’s mother folded her arms and frowned. “The reason this sonatina is important is because it’s the hardest piece you’ve had so far. It shows how much you’ve learned since you started piano lessons. The discipline of it is good for you and the point is to play it well at your next recital. You should want to do well to show off all of your hard work and Mrs. Brasshear’s hard work.” Priscilla snorted, “Oh, yeah. Mrs. Brasshear’s hard work. She’s probably at the mall or watching TV right now. I’m the one working here.” “It doesn’t matter. You finish up and give it your best.” Mrs. Villanueva kissed her daughter on the top of the head. “When you’re done, you can go out with the rest of the neighborhood and add to the childhood cacophony, I mean … Sport Symphony.” When the door closed behind her mother, Priscilla realized how quiet it was now. The silence was almost worst than noise and she felt the need to fill the room with some kind of sound. Placing her curved fingers on the keys in a C major position, she played a slow, legato walk up to G and back down to C. Then she played the same thing, this time in short bursts, a tap-tap staccato that she began to move up the keyboard: D E F G A G F E D, E F G A B A G F E each move making her smile, because she always thought it sounded like a cat chasing a mouse in a cartoon. She was glad Mrs. Brasshear gave her this exercise to play, it was one of her favorites and she played until she reached the octave. After her “Cat & Mouse” exercise was finished she took a deep breath and started her Hanon exercises. Priscilla had just begun working out of the big yellow book a few months earlier, but she knew they were serious exercises. The book held sixty exercises and every page was nearly black from all of the ink needed to draw in all of the sixteenth notes. Priscilla thought she would never be able to do any of them, but she already knew the first two perfectly. The first one was easy enough that Priscilla quickly memorized it after one week. The notes weren’t difficult, but playing both hands evenly and cleanly was a challenge. Last month she was pretty sloppy, but now she felt good about her progress and found exercise #1 to be very easy. The book said that eventually all sixty pieces could be played through in an hour. Priscilla couldn’t yet play the first two in five minutes, she wasn’t that fast. When she tried to calculate in her mind how long it might take her to get good enough to play the thousands of measures of music in the Hanon book, it made her head ache a little. Finishing the last exercise with a dramatic trill at the end, Priscilla then closed the exercise book and opened her sheet music for the sonatina. It wasn’t a very long piece of music, just two pages long, but it was challenging. The fingering was more complicated than anything else Mrs. Brasshear had ever assigned and there were a lot of Italian words and new symbols that Priscilla was still trying to memorize. It wasn’t easy and even though Priscilla enjoyed the sound of the music she made, she wasn’t sure she understood why she needed to work so hard. After three tries, she again smashed her fingers against the keys and said, “This is stupid. I don’t want to make music. I don’t want to practice anymore. I would rather be out playing with the other kids in the neighborhood.” As she hit one of the lower “A” keys it stuck, continuing to hum as the other keys grew silent. Then a curious thing happened, instead of growing faint, the sound of the “A” grew louder – but it sounded to Priscilla as though a voice began to hum. At first is sounded like faint mumbling, but as it grew louder she could hear a voice saying, “A – A – A … A.” and it grew like a freight train choo-chooing and then it suddenly stopped and said, “A is the tone that all instruments of the orchestra must match. A is the tone made by 440 v-v-vibrations per second.” Priscilla fell on the floor against the door and felt her mouth drop open as she watched a beautiful twirling column of colors rise from the piano keyboard. She thought it funny that she felt warm and tingly instead of cold and frightened, but she instinctively knew that something magical was at work, not at all something to be afraid of.
Miss L’eau was, without a doubt, one of the best teachers we ever had at Redwood Elementary. She seemed just like all of our other teachers … she gave out lots of homework, made us stand up in front of the class when we misbehaved, gave assignments over the holidays … but there was something special about Miss L’eau.
To hear the sounds of the other kids playing outside while she practiced piano was painful for Priscilla. She could hear the clickety-clacking-scratching noise of the boys playing street hockey as they whooped and whizzed in the cul-de-sac. She listened all morning to whirring and whooshing of bicycle, tricycle and scooter wheels. Plus, the constant whomp, whomp, whomp, whack! of basketball practice was driving her crazy. Priscilla banged at the piano keys with all 10 fingers to make as much noise as she could until her mother came in.
To hear the sounds of the other kids playing outside while she practiced piano was painful for Priscilla.She could hear the clickety-clacking-scratching noise of the boys playing street hockey as they whooped and whizzed in the cul-de-sac.She listened all morning to whirring and whooshing of bicycle, tricycle and scooter wheels.Plus, the constant whomp, whomp, whomp, whack! of basketball practice was driving her crazy.Priscilla banged at the piano keys with all 10 fingers to make as much noise as she could until her mother came in.
