Fifth graders are a tough crowd.
Behind the smiling, rosy demeanor affected by every fifth grade teacher I have ever known lurks a neurotic individual hanging on by the skin of their teeth. Stuck in a room full of insatiable 11 year-olds for 25 hours a week, they walk a tight rope between fear and love that is both noble and frightening. Charged with bringing these creatures into adolescence gently and efficiently, they must realize one slip of the tongue will damage these youngsters for life.
So it was in my fifth grade year at St. Francis of Assisi Elementary. It was Christmas; Sister Bernice Marie was explaining the story of how Mary and Joseph were traveling to Bethlehem for the census called upon by the Roman Emperor Augustus. Although it was fairly well known among the class how the story ended, we wanted details, no matter how tangential. What’s the big deal with the census? Why didn’t Joseph have his own mule? What color was the mule?
Kindly, Sister obliged our whims. In fact, in order to avoid further questions, she eventually began to embellish her story with rich details relevant to our own lives. By the time the very pregnant, very uncomfortable Mary got to the stable it was clear to all present that Jesus was going to be born in Lyle Meeuwsen’s loafing shed (seven years later our senior class would build our homecoming float in Lyle’s barn. It became a much less sacred place when I was gluing crepe paper to a giant sombrero while standing ankle deep in manure).
But when Sister got down to the nitty gritty, she was oddly vague: Mary and Joseph were in the stable; Joseph went out to collect wood for fire (Mary had complained that the barn was drafty); when he returned to the stable, presto! Jesus was swaddled in the manger. Apparently, the lesson in biology was sort of an added bonus. In the time it takes to gather an arm load of sticks, a woman can go into labor, fully dilate, and deliver. Granted, the Holy Land is a fairly arid region, wood is scarce, and Bethlehem was no doubt a zoo with the census and everything. We had just one question: How did Mary barricade the manger to prevent the livestock from getting to Baby Jesus?
We all bought it. The labor/fire wood timeline was never brought into question. It wasn’t until the birth of my own children that I really began to question the whole “go get some kindling while l have a baby” scenario. Even 2,000 years ago I doubt that men got off that easily.
Still, it is now impossible for me to look at a Nativity scene without imagining a plywood cut-out of Joseph, stumbling around in the dark behind Lyle Meeuwsen’s barn, cursing the inn-keeper and picking up brush. Minutes later, he clumsily enters the stable: “Hey Mary, I found some dry gopher wood over by the silo… Jesus Christ!”
------ 2009 Bonus -----
As a father he was prone to favor pushing forward rather than clinging to the past. It was his nature to disparage stopping to document, record, and authenticate an experience when another, brighter moment lingered in the near future. His guilt was eased by the habit of his thoughtful wife to save and pack away the artifacts of his children’s recent history. He appreciated that she took the time and care to file away the earliest scribbles and most current social studies projects. Handling these tangible items is like collapsing time itself.
So it was a bit surprising to find Joe on a warm autumn night making his way down the dark hallway, after his wife and kids had since gone to bed, holding in his cupped palm the recently self-extracted lateral incisor formerly belonging to his 10-year-old son. It was the last of the baby teeth from any of his kids; Peter had given it up in hopeful exchange for a handful of quarters. At the end of hall Joe opened a glass front display cabinet and found the tooth jar, a repurposed container that once held candy sprinkles used on a birthday cake. The little tooth, tiny relative to the current size of his kids, gently floated through the stale water and settled with a click onto the pile of teeth at the vessel’s bottom.
The father held the bottle up to the dim light in the hall and shook it, the teeth slipped around, stirring up not-so-distant memories along with bits of gum tissue in equal measure.
For now, the tooth jar is back in the cabinet at the end of the hall. As he makes his way to his bedroom each night, past the doors to his children’s rooms, Joe sometimes glances at the cabinet and is content in knowing that when his kids are long gone, traipsing across the country, busy with their own grown-up lives that he still has his little bottle of little teeth. He will always have their teeth.
