We belong to a community gardening group. It was Helena’s idea to join years ago and it is now so integral to our life. We go every Thursday morning. Most of the people are retired, bar us and the ex rocket scientist who is in his early 30s. It is community. Mostly H just does her own thing, like building fairy houses, but for a couple of weeks recently she followed one of the women around learning how to prune apple trees. I am not sure I could learn from this woman as her style of imparting information some how rubs me up the wrong way.. I try to fight this but a kind of rebellion just bubbles up inside and I don’t have the insight to understand why. H however lapped it all up, really listening and then could repeat loads of it back to me. She said that she wanted the information and this was her opportunity to learn it and who taught her was not important. I think it is important that children learn from a range of people, especially older people so that they can see all people as a resource. H did say after she got paid to prune our apple tree she didn’t follow all of her teacher’s instructions and that she was a bit more flexible about what she pruned.

I certainly remember having teachers I liked and ones I didn’t and they weren’t always the same as other people. I remember hating one teacher and trying to make her homesick so she would go back to the country she came from. I know she had no idea what I could and couldn’t do. My mother relieved at the school and one day was in my class and found that I just said “I don’t know how to” for everything and I was about to be held back a year. How many parents never get this insight? I worry about this for H. I am the only person she will openly express her opinions with, be her true self. The idea of doing the wrong thing paralyzes her, and that some kinds of injustice just distresses her and that she will not communicate these things. That is the good thing about choosing a teacher you can just as easily un-choose, that the relationship lasts as long as the Information you want from them.