Picture For The Teacher

 

I have told you before what a wonder my mother was. When I was a child I thought all mothers were as talented.

One year for Christmas at school each of us gave our teacher three little cakes. Mom had been saving 15- ounce vegetable cans. 

We each thoroughly scrubbed three cans inside and out. There was not a trace of what was inside the can nor was there a trace of the label or anything else on the outside. Then we completely greased the inside of each can. We set the cans standing up on a cookie sheet.

Mom made the cake batter. Can you imagine the mess if each of us made our own batter? She poured batter into one can of each group. Three different kinds of batter - white, chocolate, and spice. Into the oven they went.

After they baked and cooled Mom carefully removed the cakes from their cans onto a nice piece pf aluminum foil. We carefully rolled our cakes to look like little silvery logs. We twisted the ends much like a Tootsie Roll is twisted at the ends. A sweet little ribbon bow at each end our gifts for our teachers was wrapped. and ready for the school Christmas party.

We are not Native American. Along with family stories our DNA confirms it. However for much of her early life Mom lived on or near Reservations. Often she would be invited to school to tell about the way the Indians lived. She would answer questions too.

Mom taught herself to draw with help from John Nagy on television. She was so artistic. She learned how to make copies of pictures by making grids. She only did that for portraits. Everything else was freehand.

As you might have guessed she decided to give each of our teachers a charcoal portrait of themself. Mom used the school pictures our teachers gave us earlier in the year. she made a grid of small squares. On the 20x30 paper she drew the same number of squares only proportionately larger.

Naturally they turned out great. Each of our teachers received a portrait for Christmas that year.