I didn’t like my grade one teacher.

Because I didn’t understand that a cheque was money, I threw away my school fees payment in the garbage on my first day of school. After the whole misunderstanding was resolved between the school and my mother, my dad wrote another cheque and said: “Tell your teacher not to lose this one.”

Well, I was pretty much a parrot in those days. Next day I went to school, handed her the cheque and told her not to lose it. She didn’t have any ‘ha ha’ in her. She sent me to the corner and made me stand facing the wall all day long.

Needless to say that experience pretty much ostracized me from the other kids. No one wanted to be my friend after that. Then she put me in the back of the class and said I was ‘slow.’ After all that negative attention, I was so vulnerable that I believed her.

It wasn’t until grade five, when a smart girl in my class was unable to answer a question that was so simple to me, when I had this epiphany that I was as smart as anyone else. It was a true ‘aha’ moment for me.

Then in grade six I met the first teacher that would change my life. Faye Pokeda Wakulchyk was just so wonderful! I loved her and better than that, she liked me. She was the first teacher who ever saw any potential in me. She was our Language Arts teacher and it was from her that I learned to love words and writing. I truly can’t tell you what an impact she had on a little four eyed girl that was so used to being ‘unseen’ and unnoticed.

In high school I had an impressive psychology teacher, Kent Donlevy, who had a big impact on me and then in college I found the greatest friend in one of my writing professors, Leah Fowler. She believed in my writing abilities more than I did and always encouraged me to believe in myself. She was both a mentor and a friend.

Then as life changed again in the way that it does, I found another wonderful teacher - this time in all things mystical and spiritual - Skye MacLachlan. For me, Skye was like Grandmother Willow in Disney’s Pocahontas. She was like tapping into this incredible wealth of wisdom and knowledge about all things that are unseen but yet so real.

Amusingly, I was still yet to meet the most important teacher of my life at 36. She came to me (in quite a ruckus really) in a Misericordia Hospital delivery room. I never thought when that little baby came out of me that she would be my greatest teacher. Yet that little darling Gabi has taught me more about love and life than anyone.

When she was born, it was one of the most stressful times of my life. My mother was very sick after having one of her kidneys removed due to cancer. Then my brother Gene died of cancer a month and a half later. Gabi wouldn’t eat, cried all the time and I just wanted to run away. I thought that surely God had made a huge mistake and dropped off my baby at the Royal Alex while I was drugged at the Misericordia. 

But there are no mistakes. I know that now. Yet, at that time, I couldn’t have comprehended or even prepared myself for the things I was about to learn from her.

By about day 10 of her life I knew that something extraordinary was happening. I was beginning to remember myself as a baby. I remembered things that happened. I remembered what I thought. It was as though she was a mirror or portal for me to enter and heal my past. And she hasn’t stopped teaching me about myself since.

Now she is seven and I am still continually amazed with the depth of my love for her. Some days I’m a great Mom and teacher. Yet on other days I fail miserably and she becomes ‘Guri Gabi’ with her comforting words: “It’s okay, Mom.”

We share this dance of love, forgiveness and growth. I always tell her that I’m so lucky that God gave her to me as a daughter and that she’s the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

She’s a part of my soul. And when I look at her, I know there is a divine plan. Who else would sign up for the tough job of being my greatest teacher? Only someone who loved me long before this time …

Thank you to every teacher I’ve ever had … you were all good for my soul.

Connie