The Last Page

Question 1: (Fill in the Blank) The first page of the history book starts with “The…” The last page of the history book ends with “time.” 

That was the last exam I took in high school. I read the question, grinned, and set to work on my essay.

It was an exam that, in retrospect, was impossible for me to fail. It was an exam that said, “I believe in you. You will know what to write here. I don’t even have to give you a question; you will still come up with the answer.” With such encouragement, how could I write anything but a nuanced and detailed analysis of modern European history?

Four years earlier, the same teacher came up behind me during my first ever high school history exam, and asked me, as my pencil trembled in my shaking hand, “are you nervous?” Without waiting for an answer, she dug her fingers into my shoulders in a fierce simulation of a back rub, electrifying every ticklish nerve in my body. I spasmed hysterically in my seat, and, blissfully unaware of my discomfort, she whispered, “You can do it.”

And she kept saying it.

She was a teacher who gave me books.

Cowisms hung on her wall. They explained everything.

She introduced me to Woolf, to Bronte, to Margaret Atwood, to the Forsyte sagas and the world of fanfict by Jasper Fforde. She spent her free time talking with me about the books she’d given me. When I was kicked out of some other class, I wandered through the school to find her in the teacher’s lounge or library, to share literary sympathies, sure that eventually she would kick me right back into class. She left her classroom unlocked for me during lunch so I could lie on the floor and read. She gave me a few now-tattered pages that I still use: pages of literary questions, of literary terms, of poems.

In her class, we debated.  We debated God the most, and then our teenage idealized utopias, and the endings to our novels (it still upsets me to remember that Garret thinks Mrs. Mallard died of joy in “Story of an Hour”). We didn’t debate feminism. It was a given in her class. (How I wish she could have seen a female president!)

She pushed us. For her we wrote essays, memorized chapters, slept with the history book under our pillows. For her we gave speeches, acted out plays, and filled binders with notes on novels.  She was terrifying, and inspiring, and one day, when I lay feverish on the library couch, she used her free period to drive me home. I worked my hardest for her; even if it was a topic I didn’t care for, I couldn’t bear to disappoint her.

Often, when I stand in front of a classroom, I find myself channeling Mrs. Moskowitz. I had the most selfish of relationships with her: I was her student. I spent all those English and History classes concerned with what she could give me, with what she could push me to do. So it gives me the greatest satisfaction to pass on some of her essence in my own teaching; to demand greatness and foster debate and model feminism. And, most of all, to give students books, and to talk about them afterwards. For even after the last page, the story lives on.  

Baruch dayan emet. You will be missed, Mrs. Moskowitz.