Sara, Book 1 (9 page)
She dropped down to a small kitchen window, glad that the curtains were open so she could peek inside. And there, sitting at the kitchen table, with papers spread all over the place, was Mr. Jorgensen, Sara’s teacher. Mr. Jorgensen was methodically picking up one paper, reading it, then another, then another. Sara was transfixed as she watched him. He seemed to be so serious about whatever he was doing.
Sara began to feel a little bit guilty, spying on her teacher like this.
But at least this is the kitchen window,
Sara noted,
not the bathroom or bedroom, or something private like that.
Now Mr. Jorgensen was smiling, seeming to really enjoy whatever he was reading. Now he was writing something on it. And then, suddenly, Sara realized what Mr. Jorgensen was doing. He was reading the papers Sara’s class had turned in at the end of the day. He was reading every single one of them.
Sara had often found something scrawled on the top or the back of the papers he had returned to her, and she had never appreciated it much.
You just can’t please him,
Sara had thought many times as she read his scribbled notes on her papers.
But watching this man, reading, then writing, reading and then writing, while almost everyone else in town was now fast asleep, left Sara feeling very strange. She felt almost dizzy as her old negative perspective of Mr. Jorgensen and her very new perspective of Mr. Jorgensen had a sort of collision inside her head. “Wow!” Sara said, as she looked upward, causing her little body to zoom up high above her teacher’s house.
A warm gust of wind seemed to come from inside Sara, wrapping all around her body and giving her goose bumps on her skin. Her eyes filled with tears, and her heart leaped a happy beat and she soared, ever so high, into the sky, looking down upon her beautiful, sleeping, or almost-sleeping, town.
I feel appreciation for you, Mr. Jorgensen,
Sara thought as she made one last swoop over his house and headed home. And as Sara looked back at Mr. Jorgensen’s kitchen window, she felt sure that she saw him standing there, looking out.
“H
i, Mr. Matson,” Sara heard her own voice ring out as she crossed the Main Street bridge on her way to school.
Mr. Matson looked up from under the hood of the car he was working on. He had seen Sara on her way to school hundreds of mornings throughout the years that he had operated the town’s one and only gas station on the corner of Main Street and Center Street, but she had never called out to him that way before. He really didn’t know quite how to respond, so he waved a sort of half wave in his surprise. In fact, most people who knew Sara were beginning to notice startling differences in her usually introverted behavior. Instead of looking down, watching her feet, and being deep in her own thoughts, Sara was strangely interested in her mountain town, unusually observant and amazingly interactive.
“There are so many things to appreciate!” Sara was acknowledging quietly, under her breath.
The snowplow has already cleared most of the streets. That’s really a nice thing,
Sara thought.
I do appreciate that.
She saw a utility truck in front of Bergman’s Store with its extension ladder extended all the way out. One man was at the very top of the ladder, working on a power pole, while another man watched intently from down below. Sara wondered what they were doing, and decided they were probably repairing one of the power lines that had become too heavy with icicles that were clinging to it.
That’s really nice,
Sara thought.
It’s so wonderful that these men are able to keep our electricity working. I do appreciate that.
A school bus filled with children rounded the corner as Sara walked into the school yard. Sara couldn’t see any of their faces because the windows were all fogged up, but she was very familiar with the routine: The bus driver, who had been gathering his unwilling cargo from all over the county since before dawn, was now releasing about half of them at Sara’s school. He would unload the other half at Sara’s old school down on Main Street.
That is a nice thing that the bus driver does,
Sara thought.
I really do appreciate that.
Sara took off her heavy coat as she walked inside the school building, noticing how comfortably warm it felt inside.
I do appreciate this building, the furnace that keeps it warm, and the janitor who tends the furnace.
She remembered watching him shoveling chunks of coal into the bin that would feed the fire for a few more hours, and she had seen him removing the big red clinkers from the furnace.
I appreciate this janitor who does his job to keep us warm.
Sara was feeling wonderful.
I’m really catching on to this appreciation stuff,
she thought.
I wonder why I hadn’t figured this out sooner. This is great!
“Hey, Baby Face!” Sara heard a contrived whiny voice taunting someone. The words felt so awful that Sara winced as she heard them. It was shocking to come from a place of feeling soooo wonderful to this sickening realization that someone was picking on someone.
Oh, no,
Sara thought,
not Donald again.
But sure enough, the same two bullies were at it again. They had Donald cornered in the hallway. His body was pressed up against his locker, and Sara could see Lynn’s and Tommy’s grinning faces only inches from his.
Suddenly, Sara wasn’t shy at all. “Why don’t you goons find someone your own size to pick on?” Well, that wasn’t exactly what Sara meant to say, since Donald was actually quite a bit taller than either of them, but the confidence that they seemed to gather from always running in packs, left Donald, or whoever they were picking on at the moment, at a seeming disadvantage.
“Oh, Donald’s got a girlfriend, Donald’s got a girlfriend,” the boys chanted in unison. Sara’s face flushed red with embarrassment and then redder with anger.
The boys laughed and moved on down the hallway, leaving Sara standing there, flushed and feeling very hot and uncomfortable.
“I don’t need you to stick up for me!” Donald shouted, again blasting Sara to conceal his tears of embarrassment.
Good grief,
Sara thought.
I’m doing it again. I just don’t learn.
Well, Donald,
Sara thought,
I appreciate you, too. You have, once again, helped me to realize that I am an idiot. An idiot who does not learn.
“H
i, Solomon,” Sara offered flatly, hanging her book bag over the post next to the owl’s post.
Good day, Sara. It’s a beautiful day. Do you agree?
“Yes, I guess it is.” Sara replied blankly, not really noticing, or even caring, that the sun was shining brightly again. Sara loosened her neck scarf and tugged it from around her neck, stuffing it into her pocket.
Solomon waited quietly for Sara to gather her thoughts and begin her usual barrage of questions, but Sara was unusually sullen today.
“Solomon,” Sara began, “I don’t get it.”
What is it that you do not understand, Sara?
“I don’t understand what good it does anybody for me to go around appreciating things. I mean, I really don’t see what good it’s doing.”
What do you mean, Sara?
“Well, I mean, I was getting pretty good at it. I’ve been practicing it all week. At first it was pretty hard, but then it got easier. And today, I was appreciating just about everything until I got to school and heard Lynn and Tommy picking on poor Donald, again.”
Then what happened?
“Then I got mad. I got so mad I yelled at them. I just wanted them to leave Donald alone so that he can be happy. But I did it again, Solomon. I joined their chain-of-pain. I haven’t learned anything. I just hate those boys, Solomon. I think they’re awful.”
Why do you hate them?
“Because they ruined my perfect day. Today I was going to appreciate things. When I woke up this morning, I appreciated my bed and then my breakfast, and my mother and father, and even Jason. And all the way to school I found so many things to appreciate, and then they ruined it, Solomon. They made me feel awful again. Like before. Just like before I learned how to appreciate.”