She wore the green sweater. The same color as the one Mister Rogers was wearing when she watched Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for the first time. She’d begged her mother for one just like his. When her mother explained they didn’t make sweaters like that for little girls, she decided she would settle for one the same color.
So, she and her mother took the bus downtown and walked to the department store to find a beautiful green sweater. Mister Rogers green was what she called it when people commented on her green sweater.
When summer came, she got in trouble for turning up the air conditioning, so it would get cool enough to wear her sweater in the house. Sometimes she would take a big glass of ice water to her room and put on her sweater while she drank it.
For her birthday, her Nana Ruby knitted a green sweater for Buckley the teddy bear. It was never too hot for Buckley to wear it.
Whenever her sweater got too small, they would take the bus downtown to find a replacement. Daddy thought this was foolishness. He told her to grow up. She was getting too big to watch a “kiddy” show. But Mama understood. She always did.
People used to laugh when she said she wanted to be Mister Rogers when she grew up. There was only one Mister Rogers… everybody including her knew that, but she wanted it anyway. She wanted to make everyone feel special and loved. You didn’t have to be a man to do that. Couldn’t a girl or a woman teach people about kindness and acceptance?
In her room, she made up little songs about being kind. She made sock puppets and pretended they were the puppets in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. She used funny voices and to her ears they sounded like Daniel Striped Tiger and King Friday.
When Eloise Nelson called her names, she imagined what Mister Rogers would have to say about it. When she thought of him, he was always wearing the green sweater even though she’d seen him wearing sweaters of many different colors on his show.
One weekend she and her mother painted a wall in her bedroom Mister Rogers green. Her father never noticed and if he did, he’d forgotten what color green it was.
When she was about ten, she stopped telling people she wanted to be Mister Rogers, but she never stopped wanting it. Instead, she said she wanted to be kind and to help people. Her father breathed a sigh of relief and decided she must want to be a nurse. Nursing was a sensible career. She let him and everyone else believe she wanted to be a nurse.
And, she could have been a nurse. They were kind and they helped people get well. Being a nurse would be a noble profession. So would being a teacher or a minister. Mister Rogers was a minister. She’d read that somewhere. Her father didn’t think little girls should grow up to be ministers. A teacher or a nurse, either would be a good career for his only daughter.
As she grew, she tried new things, but she never stopped being kind or trying to make people feel special. Whenever she had a big test or needed to write an important paper, she wore the green sweater or kept it draped across the back of her chair. It felt like Mister Rogers was there patting her on the back and cheering her on. She worked hard in school and earned a scholarship to the state university, but she still didn’t know what she wanted to be if she couldn’t be Mister Rogers.
She put on the green sweater and thought for a long time before the answer came to her. It was embarrassingly simple. Mister Rogers wasn’t an occupation. He was a way of life and a way of believing. She could be anything and still be Mister Rogers if she kept the lessons learned from him deep inside her heart.
So, after another good think, she decided to become a doctor and a helper in her community. Years later, when people saw her green sweater, her stethoscope swinging softly as she approached, they knew she would listen, and they knew she would care.