It looks like "back to normal" might be a long time coming.

When I went out for the paper this morning my feet crunched along the crust of whatever had fallen in the night and I had to pull up the hood of my jacket against a clattery rain. My footprints melted the thin snowcover down to the bare macadam. I turned on the television and saw that Lynn's school (and everybody else's) was closed today.

By 10:00 the snowfall had stopped and traffic was moving more or less normally along the major roads. I went out for a few hours -- got my hair cut, returned a sweater that didn't fit, bought a book I'd wanted (photographs of an 1860s Pennsylvania German farmhouse at Christmas) that was now on the 50% off table at Borders.

At 4:15 I heard the phone ring. I was sitting here at my computer, and I didn't even look up. That phone is never for me, and anyway it had been ringing all day with one or another of Lynn's friends. Many of them were preparing to go together to Winterfest, an annual two-day Lutheran youth event. They were leaving in about a half hour. Probably confirmation of carpooling arrangements, I thought, if I thought about it at all. 

I heard Lynn shriek, and then shriek again, and then call out, "OH NO!!" I ran to the door of her room. Her face was ashen and she was trembling.

"Mr. Rosenthal died this morning," she said.

Jerald Rosenthal is (okay, was) Lynn's English teacher. This was her second year with him.

One of the first conversations I had about Mr. Rosenthal was when Lynn was in ninth grade. Another mother and I were lamenting the flaws in our kids' writing instruction. Things had started out well in sixth grade with a dynamic two-woman team. But in seventh grade they'd had an uninspiring drudge (who at least did no harm) and in eighth grade a woman whose scattered and haphazard style (especially with research) really did confuse them. In ninth grade we were back to the drudge approach. 

The other mother, who has two older children and is herself a woman of letters, told me not to worry. In tenth and eleventh grade they'd have Rosenthal, and that would be their salvation as writers and readers. She then went on to describe in the most extravagant terms his style, his intellectual depth, his passion for his subject and his compassion for his students, his high standards, his way of giving a kid's paper a merciless critique with such grace that she'd immediately redo the piece and never make the same mistakes again.

Nobody's that good, I thought.

Mr. Rosenthal was.

And I kept my distance. In the written introduction that her new teacher requested, Lynn announced that she hates to read, she dislikes writing, especially about literature, and she finds poetry incomprehensible. I knew that these statements were exaggerations and that some of her attitude was born of a desire not to compete with me.

Under Rosenthal (kids say they take "Rosenthal" rather than "junior English," and they sometimes refer to him as "J-Ro") Lynn wrote three or four times a week, always something brief but exceedingly formal. She learned to analyze narrative structure, recognize rhetorical devices, place a writer and his work in historical context, and trace influences. (No "soft" writing, no "tell how you feel about this poem.") In March she wrote a 2000-word 15-source research paper entitled "An Analysis of Social Protest Writing in the Literature of Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn," work at a level of academic sophistication I was not called upon to do (nor capable of doing) until graduate school.

I helped her when she asked for it, primarily by being able to analyze an assignment and steer her research process away from dead ends. I acted as coach and advisor. If asked, I helped her with rewrites, but I did not do the work for her. I watched her develop as a reader and a writer, and by the end of the year both of us were as an enthralled as anyone else by this marvelous teacher.

About this time last year there was a rumor going around that Mr. Rosenthal might have to retire or take a leave to care for his wife, who has suffered some serious health problems. After all, he'd been teaching for forty years. (I lasted only thirty.) At a principals' advisory council meeting I made the declaration that if I had to quit everything I was doing and care for the beloved wife myself I would, because I wanted Lynn to have the fullness of the two years of Rosenthal she was entitled to as a citizen of Susquehanna Township.

Last year in tenth grade the literature was all world classics and contemporary European, Asian, and African work. Although I'm conversant with things like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Upanishads and Les Miserables and All Quiet on the Western Front, I lack depth in that area. Eleventh grade, however, is American literature, the very stuff where I live and breathe and have my being, academically and professionally speaking. I still continued to keep my distance because no teacher needs a hovering parent who thinks she knows as much as he does. And Lynn needed me less. She was now comfortable with Mr. Rosenthal's style and knew what was expected of her. 

Just about a month ago, however, I did approach him with an offer of a study opportunity for his students. They were beginning the unit which includes Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and Walt Whitman. ("He said THOR-oh!" Lynn announced the day she got the materials, indicating that Mr. Rosenthal, as expected, was certainly in the know about the really authentic way to pronounce that Walden guy's name.) I offered temporary (permanent if they found it useful) participation in the Dickinson discussion list I moderate, and I offered to make presentations on my extensive trip this summer to the literary shrines of New England.

We had a few preliminary conversations. I worked up guidelines for student participation in the list. I designed a presentation about ED and about Robert Frost. On Thursday morning Mr. Rosenthal spoke to Lynn for the first time about her talented mother and told her he would be contacting me later in the day. Then he left the building to attend the funeral of a tenth-grader who'd died on New Year's day. At 1:00 a substitute greeted Lynn's class. Mr. Rosenthal had taken the rest of the day as a sick day.

I don't have a lot of details yet. The call came at 4:15. Many of the people who will have the best information observe the Jewish sabbath, which began at 4:35. I'm assuming that the funeral will be on Sunday, since it can't be tomorrow. At 4:45 I took Lynn over to church to go to Winterfest. She'd be riding in our pastor's van which was apparently the mourner's bus, seven girls a-sobbing. The pastor and I agreed to keep in touch and that I would come down late Saturday night or early Sunday to help transport kids home early if that became necessary.

All evening now I've been moving around in a fog. This time last year I wrote about the death and burial of a young woman of our congregation, the sister of Lynn's best friend. The full moon shone down that night, Brandi's perpetual light shining on us. Tonight I thought of Romeo and Juliet: "When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night..."

I am too sad tonight to look for stars.