To Mrs. Esakov,

Pouring your heart out onto a piece of paper and keeping your content pure does not make it known. Doing everything you can and loving what you do does not give you appreciation. Honesty does not always grant you freedom. And the things that I am writing may not make me famous. But you, Mrs. Esakov, taught me things and lessons that I will never learn in a textbook or read off of the internet, because no one can fully explain how to love. It is shown by the bright and wondrous ways a person such as yourself can love a little girl with no father and a hard working mother and ten siblings as if she were your own. The story that I write about you and the legacy that you showed that now lives through me is all the proof of the love you gave me, the love you taught me, the love that grabbed me and made me to fly, the love that kept me safe, the love that kept me innocent and young and great. You and the things you teach your students follow us with every step we take, not unlike a shadow of protection from the harsh extremities that you taught us in the early afternoon. Your appreciation for history and studies, current events and languages, philosophy and politics that you never kept from us has granted us with opinions that would never be discussed in any classroom or home outside of yours.

It is a blessing that every student who can say with pride that they were at one time yours and will forever be yours have been given something priceless, nonrefundable, neither replicated nor replicable, without value to any but with large value in self. To me, you gave me empathy. You gave me the courage to be wrong. You gave me the ability to cry and to know that everyone has cried. And through the times where the yelling never stopped at home and my confusion on where my bruises ended and skin began, you taught me how to hope. Mrs. Esakov, you taught me how to give way to my tears in the dark of night and you taught me to believe. And for that I can never be more grateful. To Mrs. Esakov, the one thing I wish you to know the most, you taught me to be the person I am now.

     Kihya H.