Day 25

Name: Lee Hillman

Profession: Teacher

Location: Her home in Napa, California

Question: What led you there?

Answer: The lessons from my mother

“I spent most of my life in Napa. I grew up in Napa. I was born in Washington state and we moved to Napa when I was probably about four. My mom and dad had just divorced, and my mother’s brother, my uncle, lived in Napa, and being a protective big brother, wanted my mom and I to move to Napa and live with them so he could kind of take care of us while Mom got back on her feet. So we lived with them for about a year while I was in kindergarten. And they moved to Sunnyville and wanted us to go along with them so he could kind of continue to look out for his little sister, and my mom said, ‘No. We’re fine.” So we stayed in Napa and I was raised by an incredibly strong and single mother and it was just the two of us for all my life. That probably more than anything shaped who I am. Growing up a child of the sixties, and an only child being raised by a single mother, was pretty rare. Everyone I knew had two parents and siblings and lived in a big house. We lived in a little apartment. So I always felt a little different than everybody else. “

“At the time, I don’t think I thought too much of it. I only look at it now, years later, and realize how different that was. I don’t think at the time I thought a lot of it, although I remember wishing that I had siblings I had two cousins, who although we didn’t live in the same town, we were close. We would go visit them on weekends and that meant a lot to me. That made me seem a little more normal, when we were there with my cousins in their big house with the built-in swimming pool and the two parents. I think I just grew up certainly learning how to be comfortable by myself, which I don’t think a lot of people—well, I shouldn’t say that—I certainly think that some people aren’t comfortable being alone, and I am completely comfortable being alone. Which is nice. Handy.”

“I’m never one of those people like you see in the movies that just don’t want to get married because they don’t think it will be successful. I never felt that way. But you know what’s funny? I’m don’t remember growing up, I don’t remember thinking about it much. I guess I just imagined myself married with kids one day. I don’t know. I don’t think that it affected my views of marriage much. It might have affected my views of men a little. Well, I was fortunate to marry a man who was not your typical male who needs to be out with the guys type of guy, you know what I mean? He’s kind of a woman’s man. He’s just really thoughtful, and he wants to be with me more than anybody else. I don’t know that I ever forgave my dad for what he did. And then my mom subsequently went on to date a little, but she never remarried and the men she dated were not great, so I guess I sort of resented men who treat women badly. I ended up and the antithesis of that. I ended up with an amazing man.”

“[My mother] was a secretary all her life. She worked for the Chamber of Commerce for a while and then she worked for the county, and you know we never had a ton of money, but we always had enough. I certainly never went without. It was great, and it was a really special relationship growing up just the two of us. She always liked to think of our theme song as “You And Me Against The World.” And to this day, we’re extraordinarily close, and I’m sure Geena has told you that she’s living with us now because she’s in really poor health, which is heartbreaking. So I treasure now, and I’m thankful that, almost, my mom and dad were divorced because who knows how that would have affected my relationship with my mom and how I would have turned out differently had he been in the picture.”

“[She taught me about] just unconditional love. I mean, my mom… There was never a second when I didn’t feel completely adored by her and I’m sure Adam and Geena feel the same way about me. I just think that they can’t doubt for a second how much I love them. I mean, they’re my world. They’re everything to me. I like them as people and I don’t know. It’s so hard to explain the love that a mother has for her children. There’s just nothing like it. And I was completely spoiled. And my kids are spoiled. I think Mom never felt sorry for herself for a second and has no patience for people who feel sorry for themselves. I wish I could say I’m more like that. I try to be more like that. I hope that my children can learn from my mom just how strong and independent she is. I just think she’s really the most heroic. All that she’s been through. You know, she didn’t have an easy life, but she was able to just do so much on her own and, you know, started playing tennis in her seventies. I don’t know. She’s just such a great woman. I’m hoping that my kids have learned just as much from her as they have from me.”

“I am a teacher. Currently middle school. Well, I started out teaching elementary school. And then about five years ago shifted to middle school. It’s weird: I’ve always, I still can’t believe I’m teaching middle school, and I always thought I’d go back to elementary school. I’ve always thought of myself as an elementary school teacher, but now I’ve been teaching middle school as long as I’ve ever been teaching elementary school.”

“Ay, ay, ay. I love it, but I can’t say that as pectorally as I used to. I think it’s just been kind of a hard year. I was pink slipped last year. The state of California is not always a fun and easy place to be a teacher, and just the whole process—instead of having to clawing myself back into the position teaching—sort of kind of sucks the fun out of it a little bit. And it’s hard, it’s rewarding teaching middle schoolers, but it’s hard. The stuff that they go through. And you’re just so much more than a teacher. You’re kind of part-social worker and part counselor and I don’t know. It just starts to beat you up after a while.”

“I’m not smart enough to teach high school. I don’t have enough confidence to teach high school. I don’t know. I go back and forth. Every year at about this time I just start thinking about going back to elementary school, but I think that I have a lot of compassion for middle schoolers, and the middle schools that I teach are really the tough ones. They’re the oldest struggling readers. I teach at the Reading Intervention Program, so these are kids that are really struggling. I teach ELP, so I’ve got older, struggling Latino kids. So they’re not always everyone’s favorite kids to teach, and so sometimes I think that I need to be there. And sometimes I think about certain individual middle schoolers that I’ve taught, and I know that the relationship that I’ve formed with them has really been special, and you don’t really get that teaching elementary school. It’s just different in elementary school. It’s definitely more meaningful and a bit more powerful to form these relationships with older kids, so I would miss that. I would miss that a lot.”

“Ten years from now. Ew. Ten years from now I hope to be maybe a grandma. Kendall is saying, ‘No!’ What? In ten years she’ll be twenty eight! Kendall says fifteen years. Ten years from now, I guess I’ll still be teaching. I just hope that I’m loving it still. I hope that I feel like I’m making a difference, instead of feeling kind of hopeless. I hope that I’m traveling a little bit more. I’m hoping that my kids are really just doing great. My biological kids, that is. I don’t know. Ten years from now? I don’t really look ten years in the future. These days I just kind of go a day at a time.”

“Most rewarding being a teacher in English? I don’t know that any one big event comes to mind. It’s really just the little things, and I wish I could even think of some of the little things. I just think it’s the relationships. I’ve got a kid who’s a senior in high school right now who was one of many eighth grade boys who made my life miserable the first year I taught middle school. It was just such a hard year, all these big eighth grade boys who I had no experience with at all. And I just felt like I had no idea what I was doing. And four years later, he’s come back and wants me to be his mentor for his senior project and we have a nice relationship. If you told me four years ago that that would have happened… [Laughs] You just kind of never know at the time what seeds you might be planning. So I don’t know. I do know that I have touched kids’ lives. In the notes that I get from them, the letters that I get from them, when they come back to visit me years later…. So that’s rewarding.”

“I have a file in my file cabinet. I think I called in “Inspirational Notes” that I just keep. They’re nice to look at once in a while, because there are days when you’re just really beat up and you think you’re the worst teacher in the world. And usually at about that moment, a student walks in and says something or does something or just wants to hang out with you, and then you’re reminded that at least for that kid at that moment, there’s a reason for doing what you’re doing. So I think when I was a little bit truer in my faith and I was in the process of becoming a teacher, I definitely felt that I was led here to be a teacher. That I was meant to be here. That God always wanted me to be here. And every step of the way, I remember saying, ‘Okay, if this isn’t what I’m supposed to do right now, then this is where you can put up a road block. And He didn’t. And although I’ve not been terribly faithful to Him the past couple of years, I still think this is where he wants me to be. So until he leads me elsewhere, this is probably where I’ll stay.”