Top Notch

by: Joan Hitz

In 1974 June Laakkonen was my sixth-grade teacher. She was that one teacher who bursts immediately into memory when you’re an adult and someone asks, "Who was your favorite?" She gave us all her love, every day. And while she certainly understood love in the large sweeping conceptual sense of the word, most importantly, she attended to it, in the minute, detailed sense, where its impact was greatest.  

“Top notch work,” she’d spout all day. “The sky’s the limit.” 

Our class was enrolled in an environmental education program that had us continually strolling beaches and woods, measuring soil temperatures, spotting owls, collecting algae.

“Oh, beauuuuutiful ...” Mrs. Laakkonen crooned. “What a gorgeous piece of algae. What an amazing stick. Top notch.” She drenched you with waterfalls of admiration.

As far as that lucky school year went, it would’ve been enough just to have had it, to reach back across time, for the rest of my life, to remember her.

But here’s the kind of synchronicity that makes me know that tracks of magic--pure connective magic--run through our lives, at least at certain junctures.

In 1994, I'm thirty-two years old, in a time-pressured search for an apartment. One apartment I tour is in a house on Woods Road in North Babylon; I tour it with the homeowner (call him “Fred”).

Well, I don’t like it. It isn’t awful, but it’s on a busy road and there’s only one tree in the yard and I like trees, so, I've decided to say “no.” Before departing, I chat with Fred in his driveway, a blacktop which blends with the neighboring driveway.  

We’re winding down, and I’m about to say "No thanks," when up zips a car into the neighboring driveway, and who steps out but ... June and Ralph Laakkonen.

I know them on sight. I say my name, so they won’t have to fumble, but they recognize me, too, and in milliseconds we’re embracing, fiercely, while poor Fred is left standing in his unhugged dust. From the midst of the smothers, I grin at Fred like I love him, and shout, “I’ll take it!” 

The rest is a magical ten years during which I got to be adult friends with two of the best people I’ve ever known. They cooked me Finnish pancakes, I cooked them some disasters (they ate my botched corned beef anyway). They attended my soccer games like proud parents. We shared 5,642 things I’d never have experienced if I’d exited Fred’s apartment one minute earlier/later and missed their car pulling up.

June said, “Call me ‘June,’” so I did, but the portion of my brain labeled “Eleven-Year-Old,” silently reframed it: "Mrs. Laakkonen." Since June didn’t drive, she sat, buckled in, while I chauffeured us to yard sales, bookstores, restaurants, fairs. 

When we drove places, we had to pass Woods Road Elementary School, just up the block from her house. In my secret mind I thought: I'm ELEVEN ... years OLD!! ... and ... DRIVING!! ... my TEACHER!! ... past my SCHOOL!!!!! It was an unbelievable surreal reality.

We had a blast. June was the same as ever, madly in love with people and sparkling all the way. An enormously reluctant retiree, she remained on the substitute "call list" for various districts. Over coffee, she'd launch into enthusiastic detail about a troubled student she'd taught that week, and the ways she’d tried to intervene to turn his life around.  (She'd only substituted in that particular classroom for the span of ... two ... life-changing ... days.)  

That was June Laakkonen. Every minute counted. Every person counted. Every problem deserved her best attention. Even for a two-day run. It was all so utterly, utterly worth it.

Then, in 2003, June and Ralph died, within two months of each other. Though my heart broke, I reminded myself to be grateful I’d had them twice--once by entering sixth grade, once via driveway magic. 

Actually, I’ve “had” June more than just twice. There is, you see, that little thing called ... forever.

I now work in a sweet little elementary school a lot like the one June called home.

Sometimes when I'm with the kids, I consciously try to channel her. I look into their trusting eyes and deliver compliments, June Laakkonen-style: "Top notch! Top notch! The sky's the limit ..." 

But, sometimes, a “top notch” simply slips out, unbidden.

In those moments, I sense that June is beaming down on me from somewhere, happy to be so remembered, to have her words slip through invisible gates in the ether back to where they belong--the sunny golden hallways of an elementary school. 

Then, she gets to come out of “retirement” and continue her work--top notch work. Thank you, Mrs. Laakkonen. The sky is the limit.

Because, it’s limitless.

(first published on June 22, 2011 in the South Bay's Neighbor News)