Advanced Writing Class Under Mildred Adams.

We students knew she flew not as witches do on potions and at night, but right in front of our eyes while seeming not to move.

Her eyes gave her away: that clarity of blue overlay on Attic gray, enameled by gliding near the sun while we would run beneath her shadow losing ground but gaining wind.

We couldn't write like E.B. White or Forster, yet occasionally we penned a phrase that raised us above the commonplace and blazed into the wind she was and brought to us.

I say she flew. Perhaps I should have said she walked on air and thought our feet of clay could too. And so we believed we would, and so even in our wooden words we came to love the air she moved.

Jane McClellan