Left and Right

In kindergarten I made the same painting every day. I painted a full round yellow moon with a dark ultramarine blue sky surrounding it. The blue tempera paint sat in a pint-sized glass jar on the long wooden table. I painted with a two inch brush onto a huge piece of white construction paper taped to the table top. It was always still wet when my mother came at noon to pick me up.

Some days Miss Estep had us sit in a semicircle in our short wooden chairs behind her. She would stand with her back to us in her long bumpy wool skirt. She would point and say left. Then she would point and say right. Years later, as I drove a friend around town, he confessed he'd never properly learned left from right. I told him that in order for me to know which way to turn I have to picture Miss Estep, my kindergarten teacher in her Wheatena skirt, in the center of the room, with her back to me, pointing and saying left and then right.