The Kindergarten Teacher

June 24 2020

The kindergarten teacher

sits in a tiny chair

in a cluttered room

where watercolours hang to dry.

Mostly modern impressionist paintings

with florid brushwork

and a surprising use of colour.

Artists who aren't afraid

to mix it up

with their fingers and hands.

She waters the plants

on the low tables

that are placed to catch the sun,

each

in its little cup

with the name of a small child.

Where every moment is teachable.

Where children learn

about getting along

and the singing of songs

and when to politely ask,

about quiet time

and clever rhymes

and how seeds give rise to plants.

She has grey hair

and a kindly face

and favours long flowered dresses.

In a month

the bright green stems

will be too big for their cups,

the sun-warmed soil

she took care to keep moist.

As if everything grows, no matter what.

Year after year

as her hair has gone greyer

and she sits a bit longer

and finds it harder to get up

from that twee little chair.

As if she could contain

these small exuberant humans

in this warm cozy room

no matter how much she wishes they might stay,

little seedlings

full of life

at the point of germination.

I loved The Kindergarten Teacher, a little film I discovered on Netflix starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. She plays a married mother of three who, it eventually emerges, feels quietly thwarted in her artistic ambitions. She discovers in her class a precocious but unassuming 5 year old boy who spontaneously composes beautiful short poems, sparely evocative poems far beyond the sensibility or knowledge of any normal 5 year old. He reminds her of a prodigy like Mozart, and she desperately wants him to be cultivated and cared for like a rare hot house flower, despite his Philistine father and a consumerist money-driven society which no longer cares for art. And perhaps, as well, as a kind of antidote to her own adolescent kids, who never read or create and are constantly on their phones immersed in social media. The story takes a surprising turn; which, of course, I will not elaborate.

But it wasn't so much the plot that stuck with me. And while the poetry did, it was mostly Gyllenhall's lovely nuanced depiction of a kindergarten teacher, her tightly bottled up frustration, and her quiet determination.

Just say those words – kindergarten teacher – and the immediate and inescapable image is a kind, patient, and maternal one. An image of purity. It's this that inspired the poem. And also inspired its title: not just as a paean to the film, but because I find its simplicity and directness so appealing.

I lifted directly from the film the cute little chair, the watering of the plants, and the room festooned with watercolours. Perhaps some day I'll write another piece about the poetry teacher who runs her continuing education class, and whom I could only wish to be more like (even if he does flirt with the stereotype of the bohemian male poet): handsome, exotically foreign, very open and enthusiastic, and not above a small spontaneous act of seduction.