back in 3rd grade

I hardly ever thought about race growing up. I remember learning about the civil rights movement in school - probably in 5th grade or so. I came home to ask my mom about it. "Mom, are there any black people uptown [this means on the mainland, in the city]?""I think there are a couple of black families.""Where do they live?""I don't know, probably wherever they want.""When you were a kid, and you were riding the bus, and black people got on it, did they have to sit in the back?""I don't think I ever rode the bus with a black person."Moving to Chicago and seeing how race was so strongly related to every aspect of life: where you live, how you talk, what type of job you have, whether or not you know you are on the right bus, etc, was a shock to me. However, now that I am aware of race and what it does, I am able to go back over my life before and find it - much as I was able to reconstruct from my memories some puzzles in the story of my 3rd grade teacher, Ms. Speere.I absolutely LOVED Ms. Speere. She lived on the mainland and had 2 dogs that she brought to school most days. The class was a combined 2nd and 3rd grade of about 12 students. We got to do a lot of independent work. I always liked that. We had a big checklist for each subject on the bulletin board. Every time you memorized a multiplication table (e.g. your 2s), completed a spelling/reading unit, etc. you got to check off the corresponding box by your name. Anyway, I thought Ms. Speere was the best - she had several of the kids over to her house in Portland to make cookies once. Going uptown was something I rarely did before starting middle school.Although I was a fan of my teacher, my mother was not. When Ms. Speere did not return to teach the following year, I learned that my mom was a part of the movement to hire someone else. At the time she told me that she didn't think that we learned too much with Ms. Speere, who seemed more interested in having us play with her dogs than learning cursive writing. I disagreed then and still do, although my cursive never was up to par. Several other parents, notably Mrs. B., the lunch-lady as well as mother of Rachelle and Ronda, my age and my senior by one year, respectively, did not concur with my mother's assessment. Mrs. B. gave my mother the cold shoulder for some time as a result of the whole thing.At any rate, in high school I realized that Ms. Speere was probably gay. How did I know this? I am not sure. My best friend in high school, Juniper, had a lesbian separatist mother so I had quite a bit of exposure, for the first time, to homosexuality. I ran into Ms. Speere at an Ann Murray concert in 7th grade and perhaps accumulated some observational data then although I do not remember it. What I do know is that I felt so sure that Ms. Speere was gay. Every now and then I would think of her and wonder so finally, in college, I decided to find out. I asked Ronda, a lesbian herself, whose family was still in touch with Ms. Speere. Ronda and I are quite close so I figured she wouldn't mind the question and would be willing to answer. Ronda confirmed for me that my beloved 3rd grade teacher was indeed gay.So what? Well, I realized that the reason the whole issue made periodic appearances in my mind, was that I had never really found my mother's objection to Ms. Speere equal to the extreme action my mother took by asking for her removal. I approached my mom."Do you remember my teacher, Ms. Speere and that you didn't like her and as a result Suzy (Mrs. B) did not talk to you for a long time?""Sure.""Why didn't you like her?""She always had her dogs in class, she didn't seem to have a lot of discipline...""So you didn't want her replaced because she is a lesbian?""Was she a lesbian? Don't tell your father."Of course, my mother was a very straightforward person but a great deal happened in her life and in mainstream views of homosexuality in the 12 years between my 3rd grade year and when I asked her about it. And, like I said, the whole dog thing just doesn't sit right. I would love to ask her one more time about Ms. Speere and about race too, because I have learned that there was forced segregation in Portland although it is possible my mother never rode the bus with a black person.