Freeda’s Way

She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother, a sister, a daughter, a friend. 

A teacher for decades.

A lifelong warrior for the not-quite-yets, Freeda Richardson’s classroom was a haven. Students found their way there for the jar of peanut butter and the box of saltine crackers she put on the table every day at lunch (a practice that gave those with no set place to go a place to be.) But they came for a hundred other reasons, too. Like mostly how she made them feel. Teenagers wandered in and hung out. Word got around: Mrs. Richardson was kind. 

Freeda’s room was the one with the chalkboard you couldn’t help but pause to take a peek at. Her trademark calligraphy handwriting was never too big, never too small . . .always in line, always evenly spaced . . . generally with the just right amount of loop.  She wrote the way she taught, with precision and lots of beautiful, generous curves.

And throughout her whole life, she loved to write. A “survival practice” she often called it. A way to remember, a way to forget. A way to understand.

“The sounds, the epiphanies, the mysteries

all from lines on a previously bare page

The right to write, a privilege if I consider it

could make me weep.”

Freeda wrote when she was a student. She wrote when she was a teacher. She wrote at a coffee shop with her posse for years after she retired. Words were her passion.

She lives on in those she used so well.

P.S. “Rest in peace my colleague, my sister in Christ, my friend”