I love teaching Kindergarten. I have been blessed to teach five and six year olds, and with that, comes a lot of sweetness, laughter, dancing, learning about bugs and trees, reading of books, and a vast amount of great stories to share! I get to teach them SO SO many things, among those being how to read, how to count, and my absolute favorite…how to write. They learn their letters and sounds and from there, they learn how to take those letter sounds and form words. They have learned how to correctly write those letters and words…and they become sweet stories that my brave little spellers get to share with each other. It’s truly a beautiful process…and one that I’m always so amazed by.

Before the winter break, I had my class choose a special person to write about. We had been writing about special things…like socks, or toys, or places we’ve been to, and I always like to add in special people too. They got to choose the person, had to draw a picture of them, label them with a ton of words that they sounded out, and then write a sentence about them. I always walk around their desks and help them with sounding out or asking them questions to encourage them to write even more.

On this particular day, I got to one of my student’s desks, and I was way beyond thrilled to see that they had chosen ME to write about! YAY!! Awww….those are the moments a teacher lives for! In my “dreamy teacher floating on a cloud” state, I was so calm on the outside, but inside, there was a HUGE, silent party going on in my head as I knew I had beat out their family members and playground recess besties for this honor!! I saw she had drawn me with big bright eyes and a cute outfit. She labeled my mouth (math), my hair (herr), my desk (dask), my chair (char) and even our computer camera that we use to project onto our active board with! She gave me shoes (sheos) and a flower on my shirt that she labeled as “picster” for picture. But then something confused me a little. I saw she had given me something labeled as “cregls”. When I asked her what that was, she said as if it was obvious, “Cringles!”

Cringles? My mind raced for meaning.

“What are cringles?” I asked. No sooner had I asked this, then my instincts began telling me that was a bad idea. She said, “Those are the lines on your face by your eyes.” She smiled up at me sweetly.

The party in my head was suddenly over.

I instantly felt my age…only much, much older…I felt like I was a hundred years old all of a sudden. Rapunzel’s hair had been cut and Mother Gothel was shriveling up!! Was “cregls” a combination of the words wrinkles and crinkles?? Did it connect me to Kris Kringle’s wife…Mrs. Claus?

I said in my most young-ish sounding Cinderella voice, “OH…you mean the lines by my eyes when I laugh?” Clearly, she must have meant laugh lines…not wrinkles!! We ALL get those, and quite honestly, I do laugh a lot. She just didn’t know what to call them.

(I know…I know… you’re the ones laughing now, right?). 🙂

“No…” she said. “Cringles are the lines here and there” and her sweet little finger waved around in the air to my face where my forehead wrinkles and eye wrinkles are.

I just smiled at her. The truth is, there ARE wrinkles there…or cregls… or whatever you want to call them, it doesn’t matter. They are there…where there once weren’t any. I know because I try to cover them up with makeup in the morning. Aging is happening whether I like it or not. But, I’m blessed by these “cregls” because with them comes 46 years of memories made…special memories. They remind me that life is precious and I am so grateful for the life God has given me. And the truth is, I will be an old lady one day…it’s just a part of living. This sweet student of mine reminded me of how truly blessed I have been…and that aging is in reality a gift.

Before moving on to help another student with their writing, I said to her, “This is really, really, good. I feel so blessed and honored that you chose me to write about” because with or without “cregls”, I am still a kindergarten teacher and in HER eyes, my “cregls” are special. She chose me…and even now, I can hear the party music in my head starting back up again.