It was the hottest summer anyone could remember—the kind that made the air feel thick, as if the whole world was holding its breath. I was eleven, doing my best to keep up with my mum as she led me toward the small, rustic, cabin-like classroom on the edge of the school grounds.

Behind us, the main school building loomed—a fortress of white walls and gray tiles, orderly and unyielding. My mother’s new classroom was nothing like that. It stood poles apart, half-forgotten, nestled near a scraggly tree with sun-scorched leaves. From the outside, it looked like a relic from another time, its wooden walls faded and warped, its windows cloudy with dust. But my mother, with her ever-serene smile, didn’t seem to mind.

“I know it’s not much now, but we’ll make it beautiful,” she said, her voice filled with certainty.

I wasn’t so sure. “Yeah, Mom. Sure.”

After a week of work, The rustic like classroom felt cooler than I remembered, the wooden interior comforting in its imperfections. My mother had already begun her magic: soft boards lined the walls with cheerful paper borders, and a stack of small, brightly colored chairs sat in one corner. But the transformation was far from complete.

She placed a stack of colored paper and scissors before me. “Today, we’re making bees,” she announced with a grin.

I squinted at her. “Bees?”

“Yellow, black, buzzing bees. Lots of them. Enough to make the whole ceiling come alive.”

For hours, we cut and crafted. Sipping lemonade from a battered old flask, the tartness cutting through the heat. My mother’s laugh rang out like wind chimes as she showed me how to draw perfect stripes. Even when I messed up, she didn’t mind. “Bees don’t have to be perfect,” she said, tapping the paper with her finger. “They just have to keep flying.”

That same year, I had watched Bee Movie with my dad, and I remembered the opening voiceover: "According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible."

That was enough for me to believe that Mom would turn this odd little classroom into something special.

Mom has always been scared of heights—like, even a tiny step up on a chair makes her nervous. So when it came time to stick our buzzing bees onto the ceiling, there was no way she was doing it. I still remembered the time she tried something similar and ended up with a fractured hand. Nope, not happening again!

Luckily, I was a little taller than most kids my age. So up I climbed, while Mom hovered nearby, handing me perfectly rolled pieces of tape like it was some top-secret mission. “Be careful! Don’t worry, I got your chair! Just focus on sticking them right,” she whispered over and over.

Of course, I had to mess with her a little. I pretended to wobble—just a tiny fake fall—and cracked up laughing. But Mom? She did not find it funny. Her eyes went wide. I quickly made a mental note: Never. Do. That. Again.

I got back to work, carefully following Mom’s “stick-here, not-there” instructions. The bright yellow bees made the whole ceiling light up, like tiny drops of sunshine above us. It was tricky, but when I finally stepped down and took a look at what we had created—our work, our masterpiece—I couldn’t help but smile.

It was bee-autiful.

The classroom was no longer just an old wooden room. A bright, colorful welcome was written in chalk on the blackboard. The alphabet was arranged neatly on soft boards. Small thank-you notes sat on each table beside tiny jars of sharpened pencils and crayons. It didn’t look forgotten anymore. It looked like home.

As we finished, sunlight poured through the windows, catching the bees and making them look as though they were truly in flight. The room felt alive, buzzing with color and joy. It was a stark contrast to the lifeless gray schoolyard outside, where the walls stretched endlessly without a hint of life.

“What do you think?” my mother asked, standing beside me, surveying our work.

“It’s…” I struggled for the right word, feeling something deep stir within me. “It’s magic.”

Her smile softened. “It is my love,” she said. “The little ones who come here will feel it, even if they don’t know why.”

And I guess, in the end, that’s what she meant. Magic wasn’t always about grand things—it was about believing in oneself and filling a space with enough love and warmth to make it feel alive. Just like Mom did.

Years later, that memory came back to me as vividly as if it had just happened. I finally understood what my mother had created in that little room—a place no one else wanted. It wasn’t just a classroom. It was a sanctuary. A haven. A world within a world. She had embraced a forgotten corner and filled it with joy, transforming it into a place where little minds could dream.

Now, whenever I think of her standing in that room, hands covered in chalk dust, her fear of heights momentarily forgotten as she cheered me on, I feel a pang of gratitude so deep it’s almost unbearable. She is more than a teacher. She is an artist, a dreamer, a magician.

Like the aviator in The Little Prince, she taught me to see beyond the gray walls of the world—to find the magic hiding in the smallest, most unassuming places. And for that, I will always be in awe of her.

Monisha Vyas 

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