Mrs. Prezioso and Why I Loved Geometry

Senator Elizabeth Warren is collecting stories from Americans: “If you have a favorite memory from public school, you could only go to school because you got financial aid, or you have any story that can remind people why we need to save these programs [of the Department of Education]  share it now.” I shared an abbreviated version of my Tribute to Miss Brooks, and now I’m sharing with you my memories of another dear teacher: Mrs. Prezioso, my ninth grade geometry teacher. Senator Warren is reading some of the stories from the Senate floor, with the author’s permission. I invite you to send her your story.

On the first day of geometry class, Mrs. Prezioso gave each of us an index card and invited us to write on it our feelings and experiences with math. I wrote that I didn’t like it and sometimes feared it. No one was more shocked than I, when geometry quickly became my favorite class in ninth grade. 

I loved solving geometric proofs. They totally fit my abstract-sequential way of processing information and my affinity for logic. I remember the time I stared forever at a proof we had for homework, and finally saw the solution. It took three steps. After someone asked about it the next day, Mrs. Prezioso took everyone through her solution, which took  about 25 steps. I waited silently for her to finish. Then I revealed my vastly more efficient solution. Mrs. Prezioso and my classmates were amazed. That sealed my fate as the “best” geometry mind and the teacher’s pet. 

I was definitely the teacher’s pet. It was mutual. But  what I remember most about Mrs . Prezioso is the rapport she had with all of us. She told us that she felt so comfortable with us that she did things that she would not do with other classes. She read The Missing Piece, by Shel Silverstein, to us, because she had used it for an exam in her Master’s program. She brought in the film of her on the television show Candid Camera when she was little. In order to make it clearer for confused students, and then because we got a kick out of it, she would stand in the front of the room and say, “I’m an isosceles triangle,” while holding her arms at angles to her sides, and then turn around to demonstrate that it was the same on both sides.   

Mrs. Prezioso also shared with us that her son, who was in graduate school to be a psychologist, thought she was crazy because she loved math. Hearing that inspired me to create a sign using my family’s Macintosh computer. I drew a picture of Mrs. Prezioso, and above that it said MISSING. Below the picture, I wrote, “ Escaped from the institution where she was committed by her family because of her love for math. Be careful. She is disguised as an isosceles triangle.” I taped it to the chalkboard in front of the room before she got there. She took a really  long time to turn around, and all of us were snickering and trying very hard not to bust out in guffaws. When Mrs. Prezioso finally turned around, she read the sign and laughed. I don’t remember if we did any geometry for the rest of the class. I was too busy beaming. 

I remained in close contact with Mrs. Prezioso for the next 27 years. The summer before we went to college, Mrs. Prezioso took three of us who had stayed in touch with her to lunch. I continued to have lunch with Mrs. Prezioso whenever I was in town. I always looked forward to seeing her and catching up. Even when we corresponded by email, it was very special to see her in person, especially the time I brought baby Ethan to meet her. By then I called her by her first name, Arlene. 

Mrs. Prezioso had to retire because of health problems. Her family suspected that her breathing problems were due to her years of exposure to black mold in the school following the remodel, which happened long after I graduated. 

It got increasingly difficult to get together, because Mrs. Prezioso suffered from emphysema for at least the last 15 years of her life. More than once she had to cancel our get together, because she wasn’t up to it. She was hospitalized and almost died three times.  Her husband spent those years caring for her. We said he was a saint, because of the way he devoted himself to her care. 

We kept in touch until her death in 2012, 27 years after I was in her class. As much as she meant to me, there was no way I could have known that she would also offer me a model for living with a degenerative, fatal illness. I have often thought of Mrs. Prezioso since receiving my ALS diagnosis.

I really didn’t understand how she could be too tired to get together. Or how it could take her three days to recover from attending a function. Or how she could be happy just having her husband push her in her wheelchair around the grocery store. Now I do. 

On our second date, I told Barry that I was not looking for a caregiver. I meant it, but I got one nonetheless. With Barry, I got my own saint. And I do what I can to be grateful for the small things that bring me joy. 

Mrs. Prezioso with me in 1993.