Adieu

My favourite teacher, when I was at school, was my art teacher.

I don’t know if she would remember me, so many years later, but I haven’t forgotten her.

She only taught me for two years, when I was one of her ‘leetle leetle Std 6s’ and then one of her ‘leetle’ bigger Std 7s (in Grades 8 and 9), but the interest she took in me and my work made all the difference, especially at a time when my own interest in my school work was flagging.

She seemed to delight in each of us, her artists, in our mischief as much as our imaginations. And I think we, at a rather rigid and old-fashioned girls’ school, appreciated her impishness and wonder as much as her artistic and teaching abilities...

This was her farewell to us...

As a teacher now myself, I’ve since found out how hard it can be to say goodbye to students – but also how much easier it is to stay in touch.

We may have gone our separate ways, but I like to think that we may still meet up again, my past students and I, somewhere in the world – in the UAE perhaps, or Bahrain, Turkey, Pakistan, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Japan... That our farewell was more an au revoir than an adieu...

So...

Till we meet again...

Later...