An excerpt about a special granddaughter

When I first began writing columns, many of my stories were about my only granddaughter, who has lived next door since she was a baby.

When Morgan began middle school, a teacher laminated an article I wrote about her and put it on the school bulletin board. Morgan told me, "I felt so special!"

Here’s an excerpt of the article I wrote many years ago:

When my three children began elementary school, it always started the first week after Labor Day. Perhaps that time was chosen because kids helped out on farms during the summer. Or it could have been because school buildings weren’t airconditioned. With cooled rooms and little farming, there’s no reason not to start the school year earlier. But, it still somehow doesn’t seem right.

This year my granddaughter is going to public school for the first time in her life. She’s in middle school. Since kindergarten this child has gone to a Christian school. When I asked if she missed going to chapel each morning, she said, "No, that gets pretty boring after six years."

I wanted to be at home her first day of school, but we were tooling back from Alaska. So I prayed for my granddaughter real hard all day, "God, give her courage and wisdom. Let her teachers appreciate what a wonderful child she is. Send her friends; don’t let her be lonesome. Make this an enjoyable experience, her first day at public school."

I need not have worried. (Or maybe God answered my prayers.) She was so excited as she saw us pull up in the driveway a couple of hours after her first day in the 6th grade. She came running to greet us. School had been wonderful! She’d made four new friends, saw two of her old friends from church. She loved her homeroom teacher. "This is the first year there are more girls than boys inmy room!" she gushed.

I noticed how cute she was dressed. I asked her mom if Morgan had trouble deciding what to wear her first day. (In Christian school she wore uniforms.) "Oh, she was on the phone threehours yesterday, with other girls, deciding what to wear," her mom answered.

There were none of the insecurities I had anticipated, that I always felt in a new school. My granddaughter is so healthily self-assured. When I picked her up her second school day, she told me how her schedule had been messed up. She thought nothing of walking into the principal’s office to get it straightened out - all by herself!

Morgan’s parents wanted her to experience a Christian education. Different factors helped her parents decide to send her to public school this year. Cost of tuition is certainly one, but Morgan really wanted to go. We believe she’s gotten a good foundation from her previous schooling. She’s a very caring and obedient young person and wonderful at communicating to us "old people"about everything that goes on in her life. At home and school she has learned respect for authority. I’m really not worried about the rest of her growing-up years.

And I realize there are many Christian teachers in public schools. Teachers who hold our same values; they are tender, caring, considerate, respectful, kind and, most of all, they love kids.

Marie Putman is a former Gravette resident and regular contributor to the Westside Eagle Observer.