Big Dreams

My teacher looked down at me with a condescending smile and that nod with a slight head tilt that adults get when they are trying to placate a child. She didn’t believe what she had just said to me. But worse than that she didn’t believe what I had said. Not that she thought I had lied, but that she had no faith in the statement I had made to her.

I was in fifth grade and my English teacher had had us write essays. I had written poems and stories and little things in the grades prior to this but this felt real and serious. I took my time, I proofread my work, I edited it until I was thoroughly happy and satisfied with what I had created. I was proud of myself because for the first time in my life I felt like a writer. That is what I told my teacher that day as well. I was a writer and one day I was going to write a book. Her class and this project had instilled in me the confidence to do so. I was on my way to changing the world at the age of ten. And then she gave me that look, that smile and that nod.

For an instant I believed her. Not her words but what she conveyed non-verbally. Maybe I wasn’t good enough. Maybe my becoming a writer was a silly childish dream. Maybe I couldn’t do it or worse, maybe I shouldn’t. I felt it on every level physically and emotionally, I was being crushed by the opinion of one adult.

But then a tiny spark in my mind whispered that maybe she was wrong. Maybe she didn’t know everything. Maybe I really could do it. My parents always said I could do whatever I put my mind to. My mom always praised every poem and story I had written up till that point. They believed in me. I could believe in me too. So I did.

I didn’t tell my teacher that. I let her have her smug manner and attempt to destroy a future I saw clearly in my mind. Maybe she thought she was doing right. But that day my future was decided. I was going to be a writer – and I was going to dedicate a book to her.

Now here I sit at my computer writing about that fateful day. At the desk where I do all my writing. Next to the wall holding framed copies of the covers of my books. I smile as I think of the interviews I have done, the books I have sold, the countries where my readers reside. A small yet not condescending smile and a little shake of my head instead of a nod. As I look around my office at my bulletin board of future book plans, the dry erase board where I am plotting out a storyline and the business cards that say “author” I know one day I will write a book that I feel fitting to that dedication and hopefully some other little girl will go after her dreams no matter what a single teacher says. I don’t remember what that essay was about, but I know it was good.