“Painting Happiness”

Dear Teacher,

This week while on Fall Break to NYC with my elementary-aged daughters, we visited the Tenement Museum located in the Lower East Side at 103 Orchard Street, and home to many immigrant families between the 1950s-1980s.  Our chosen tour, the home of the Epstein family, focused on their experience as Jewish Holocaust survivors immigrating to America (Be sure to get the visual tour and teacher's lesson plan).

There in the home of Kalman and Regina Epstein, they made a life together, reeling after the loss of both their former spouses and infant children in the death camps.  Instead of sharing their heartbreak, Regina and Kalman came to America, creating a lovely environment for their little girls, Bella and Rosa.

As we moved from room to room in the small apartment, our tour guide pointed to a square patch close to the ceiling wall in the bedroom shared by the two school-aged sisters.  "Up there we can get a glimpse of the kind of environment these children lived in," he explained.  "The sisters remember their mother painting their bedroom a new, bright, fresh color every two years.  It's evident, because she would simply paint over the previous color, and now we can peel the original away to see the layers of happiness she gifted them."  It was only when an aunt shared the family secret, fifteen years following her mother's death, that Bella learned of the pain her parents had been through prior to coming to America.  "Both of them, I guess, longed for their first families.  But they had to make a life here," she reflects.

And you, teacher, there in your classroom, create a lovely environment for your students, too.  Every day, despite the heartbreak you may be experiencing, you welcome them with fists bumps, smiles, and hugs.  You spend hours creating beautiful decor, happy vibes, and classroom belonging in a place students can call home.  Despite the trauma, dysfunction, and heartache you and your students have endured, you bravely create a happy place for them to develop, grow, and flourish.  Thank you for layering on the warmth, happiness, and meaning as we long for our heavenly family and Home.

Rolling paint with you,
Mindy Salyers
Christian School Counselor