by Paul Abbott

November 30, 1959. My family has just moved to Pueblo, Colorado. I am excited, probably anxious, as I walk into Mrs. Bent’s fourth grade classroom. My new teacher looks around the room, rearranges a student or two to make room for me, then offers me a desk midway up the row closest to the door. I take my seat and there in the desk in front of mine sits a redheaded girl, curls spilling down her back. A few weeks later, I surreptitiously copy her phone number from the little ID tag on the book bag beside her desk because I am smitten with this redheaded girl. I never got the nerve to call . . . because what does a nine year old boy say to a girl on the phone?  

But it was the beginning.

Over the next ten years there would be other beginnings: debate team, a growing friendship, a realization that maybe we were more than just friends, dating, breaking up, falling in love, engagement and then on on September 5, 1969, still smitten, I married the redheaded girl. And I still remember that phone number.

Fifty years later, I am more than smitten, I am in awe. Through theatre programs, and storytelling classes and countless events, she has left an indelible mark on scores of young lives, and decades from now, when they recall the golden years of high school, “Mrs. Abbott” will remain a central character in their stories. “She was sort of like God,” one student said, “you really loved her, but you didn’t want to make her mad.”

With love and sacrifice – fierce sacrifices most will never see or know – she has played an integral part in planting three churches, touching hundreds upon hundreds of lives. It has been hard and costly; there are scars. And she’d do it all again.

With that same love and sacrifice, she cares for our family spread across three generations, four states and hundreds of miles, but closer than ever. She listens, for hours in any given week, to the minutiae and the momentous that make up our children’s and grandchildren’s lives. She celebrates them, sharing their joys and carrying their heartaches. She gives our children her time and attention and they take life from her.

And she has made me who I am. Her strength and passion for life have stretched and challenged me. Her words have dismantled my fears so many times they are all but gone. Her friendship has given me the grace to weather unnumbered storms. And the love through which she sees me (there’s a reason we say love is blind) has shaped me, shaped who I am and who I still strive to become. To say it is deep and unconditional is somehow not enough.

Fifty years later, I am still smitten with this redheaded girl.