The eyes have it...

My beautiful art teacher had magical green eyes. I spend several lessons staring at her in that slightly disconcerting way I have. Other teachers always tried to help me over what they saw as social awkwardness. Not her. At the end of one lesson, just before break she asked me to stay behind. I sat quaking in my Mary Jane's at the table, wondering what I had done. She came over and sat on one of the little three legged chairs next to me and asked me the best possible question in the circumstance.

"What do you see when you look at me that puzzles you. You look at me like a puzzle you are trying to figure out?" Her whole being was focussed on me. She wanted to help me figure it out.

I sat there trying to make my awkward mouth say what I wanted to say. I was still having speech therapy and my words sometimes got away from me.

"Just start in the middle, doesn't matter how it comes out." I looked up at these words. Perfect understanding in her eyes.

So I told her about her eyes and trying to figure out how the colours went together so well. But when I tried to draw them they always looked wrong. She smiled. She walked to her desk and got a notepad out. A note to my parents was quickly scribbled and handed to me. I goggled.

"You are not in trouble, I am inviting you to extra art after school. We will try and figure eyes out together. "

I am still obsessed with eyes. But then they are the windows of the soul.