Olivia’s Age Six Memory
By Linda Saholt, East Sierra Branch
The East Sierra Branch conducted an interviewing exercise in which members asked each other about early recollections. When Linda Saholt spoke to Olivia Shatto, this story emerged:
Olivia spent kindergarten in a public school. Class was only half-days, with a happy routine – her grandfather picked her up after school and took her home, where they watched I Love Lucy and then took a nap cuddled up together.
But her first day of first grade was in a Catholic school. Dressed in her unfamiliar new uniform, Olivia walked down the hallway to where her classroom was, holding her older brother’s hand. He let go and walked away to his fifth grade class.
Olivia stood in that drab hallway, trying to get her bearings, and feeling a sudden sense of anxiety, verging on panic. The teacher’s name, Miss Miles, was on the classroom door. What was this teacher going to be like? This would be Olivia’s first experience with all-day school – what was expected of her? She had to be a big girl now.
Fear of the unknown settled like a cloud over her, as she looked from her departing brother’s back to that enigmatic door.
A desert-dweller for three decades, Linda Saholt
spent one of them as a newspaper reporter
specializing in off-beat human interest.