Joyce Dear

Sunday, Jun. 07, 2009 - 3:32 a.m.

On Saturday, John and I went to my 7th grade music teacher's retirement party.

And it's the best day I've had since my birthday.

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In the fall of 1976, Joyce Schipper began to undertake the unenviable task of taking over the Music department at Gray Avenue Intermediate School.

As an eleven-year-old seventh grader, I was in her first batch of music students in her first year of teaching.

And for reasons that remain a mystery to me to this day, that woman trusted me with the part of Marian The Librarian in the "The Music Man" portion of the music and drama department play.

Because she chose me for that part, and for additional work as one of the between-the-scenes focus pullers (the people who go out on stage in front of the closed curtains so the set crew can redecorate between the scenes), I was less afraid of speaking up and more self-assured than I'd been before.

My classmate Leslie Hobbs' father had taken about a hundred pictures of the performance, and had offered us the chance to order prints, so I ordered about forty or so -- at least several from each segment of the presentation -- and only a week ago, this little stack of pictures turned up again.

I was grateful for this, because I wasn't sure she would remember me by sight, so I brought the snaps with me in a little photo album.

The drive up to Petaluma was gorgeous, and thankfully pretty quick. We got there about fifteen minutes after the party started.

Joyce herself answered the door, and when John and I went in, I opened the album to the page with my focus puller image, and said "Hi, my name is Brin, and I went to Gray Avenue school and here's me on the right."

Then her eyes opened wide as she remembered me, and welcomed us in.

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The turnout wasn't bad at all:

And she asked John to take a picture of us, so he did:

I basically went around and showed folks the pictures I'd brought.

People really seemed to enjoy them, especially the ones of Mrs. Schipper in the spring of 1977.

Throughout the afternoon, I kept trying to hide my gum, and I kept calling Joyce (who is nearly the same age as my husband) "Mrs Schipper." She JoyceDeared me several times, but I just didn't get the hang of it for the entire time we were there.

What is there to say, really, except that it was a shining example of operant conditioning at its finest.

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It was really nice to meet the family; I remembered her husband from Way Back When, and I was impressed with her kids. Well, I say kids, but they're thoroughly past teenage, themselves. One of them is even taking a break from a band tour right now, so it was nice to imagine I could almost talk shop with him sortakinda.

Eventually, though, John and I made our farewells and headed back down 101 to San Francisco.

Here's a picture taken as we were on the final approach from Marin County:

Yeah yeah, I know, yet another picture of the bridge. But hey, it's just down the street from me, and somehow, even though it's made of steel, and feels very solid -- somehow it changes every day.

We got home just fine and after dinner, we went to sleep early.

It had been a really nice vist, and I was glad I'd been able to go.

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When I think about my life, and the teachers in it, I have some regrets that a few of them have passed from this incarnation to the next without my having imparted to them how influential and special they had been to me.

Because of Saturday, I am reassured that I won't have that regret with Mrs. Schipper.

I mean Joyce.

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That's it. Have a good Sunday.

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