Make Way for Goslings

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Steph

Noah had a sketch of a bicycle he drew in art class selected for a countywide art show for elementary and middle school students. The show was at a mall about a half hour from Takoma Park, and quite near one of our favorite vegetarian Chinese restaurants, so clearly we were obligated to go to the show and then eat at the Vegetable Garden. Late Saturday afternoon, we set out for the White Flint Mall.

The outing started off with some errands—I needed to deposit a check and the car needed gas. While I got out of the car at the bank I dropped the camera we’d brought to take pictures at the exhibit on my seat and joked that Beth and the kids could take pictures of each other while they were waiting for me. Beth laughed, but June thought it sounded like a good idea, so while they were parked and later as we drove around she snapped over sixty pictures—a few of me and Beth, but more of Noah who was conveniently sitting right next to her, some close-ups of herself, plus houses, other buildings, trees, the sky, her shoes, her car seat, pretty much anything that caught her eye. Noah also took a picture of her when she handed him to camera to delete a photo she didn’t like. (Included here. Isn’t it a great shot of her?)

At the mall, we went to Noah’s school’s display first. Each school had a very small area to use, and as Beth noted it was the same amount of space for K-5 schools like June’s as for 3-5 schools like Noah’s. Noah was not particularly enthused about his drawing, saying he’d done others this year he liked better, but we admired it as well as those of his classmates, and then we moved on to other schools. We went to June’s school’s display next, to see if any of Noah’s old classmates or June’s current ones had work in the show. It was at this point that I realized we’d only told June that Noah had a drawing in an art show and we hadn’t mentioned it wasn’t only for his school. It slowly began to dawn on her that he had been selected for an honor for which she was also eligible and she had not been. This must have been almost inconceivable to her, because art is her thing and she’s good at it and Noah doesn’t even like art much. (I’ve noticed, however, that even though he doesn’t draw for fun the way June does his drawing has improved a lot in the past couple years. He’s much more careful with it than he used to be.)

At first June resisted the realization, saying maybe there would be something of hers in the display. We’d received an official notice about Noah’s drawing (as we had the last and only other time he was in the show, in the first grade for his print of the letter N) so we knew there wasn’t going to be any of June’s art there.

When we got to her school’s display, matters got even more galling. Several kindergarten students were represented. I read their names off the tags. “They’re not in my class,” she said somewhat dismissively. The kindergarten projects were called “Art Elements” and consisted of paper boxes. When you lifted the lids you saw wooden blocks in different geometric shapes arranged inside. June had actually mentioned this project to me previously, but I hadn’t really been able to visualize the boxes until I saw them. June asserted that she never finished hers. This could well be true. She has art on Thursdays and they did have a Thursday off the week before last so her class might be behind the ones who have art on other days. Her implication was clear, however. This was the reason her Arts Elements box was not in the show. No one challenged June; it was clear she needed to save face somehow.

We visited a few more displays of schools where the kids’ friends go, and saw some interesting work. Beth especially liked the skeleton marionettes one school had made for the Day of the Dead.

We passed by a Gap and asked Noah if wanted to go shopping for shorts—he needs some new ones—but he wasn’t in the mood. Just as well, I thought, because June didn’t need anything and if we went to see his art and bought him clothes it might just be too much for her to bear.

It was time to leave the mall for the restaurant, but now that June’s psychological crisis was resolved, Noah’s began. We couldn’t leave the mall, he said, we hadn’t gotten a snack. Beth and I were puzzled. Why would he want a snack– we were heading straight for dinner. We always get a snack when we go to a mall, Noah insisted. Usually a soft pretzel, but sometimes something else. We couldn’t leave without it. “We wouldn’t want to mall police to come after us,” he wheedled, mostly joking but not entirely. By now we understood well enough. Noah had turned a pattern into a rule and he really felt as if we were breaking an unstated but important agreement. He hung behind for a few moments as Beth, June and I headed out into the parking lot, then he gave up and joined us.

He was out of sorts but luck was with us. Beth spotted two geese with two goslings strolling across the lot. It was an unexpected and welcome distraction from the unjust lack of soft pretzels. We got a little closer to observe the fluffy bright yellow and brown goslings. A mall security vehicle was following the birds, presumably to ensure their safety. We wondered where they’d come from, how they’d entered the lot (up the ramp perhaps?) and how they’d get back out. Alone the adults could fly, but with their babies, they were stuck on foot. It was like being really near somewhere you wanted to go but couldn’t get to with a stroller, I said. Those days are recent enough for me to empathize with the geese. At least the baby geese seemed co-operative, Beth observed. They were sticking with their parents and not complaining.

And neither were our goslings. Despite their trials neither of them had made much of a fuss and by the time we got back into the car, they were both happy and we drove off toward soup, dumplings, fried black mushrooms and other delights of the evening.

Crouching Kitty, Hidden Frog

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Steph

June’s been busy the past few days. She had a four-day weekend so we filled the time with play dates, three in all, two of which featured tea parties, and she also had a birthday party to attend. But what I want to write about is her first experience with public speaking and her new Kung Fu class.

Kindergarten Roundtable: Thursday

There was no kindergarten at June’s school Thursday and Friday of last week so next year’s kindergarten students could tour their classrooms and meet their future teachers. June and Maggie had a six-hour play date on Thursday that began at our house and ended at Maggie’s– the idea was that Maggie’s work-at-home dad and I could both squeeze a little work into the day. After they played here and before they played at Maggie’s, I took the girls to the Purple School where they and Gabriella gave a presentation to the current Tracks class about what to expect from kindergarten. June was looking forward to the talk. She and Maggie compared notes on what they might say beforehand and they both seemed excited to go back to preschool and be the experts. When we got to school Lesley and Andrea and P.J., the teacher’s aide, all greeted her warmly.

It was only about two minutes before she was to go on that June got cold feet. She held tightly to my hand as she waited to begin. Lesley arranged the three kindergarteners on chairs in front of the Tracks, who sat on the bench built into the wall and on the floor. June spoke so softly at first that her answers were inaudible. One of the Tracks complained that he couldn’t hear her. Lesley asked what we do when someone speaks softly. Be quiet and listen closely someone answered. I suspect there’s a very quiet child in the class, because the answer sounded rehearsed. After a couple questions, however, June began to relax and speak in her normal voice and soon all three girls were answering questions and volunteering information about how they got to school, where they ate lunch and went to the bathroom, what their favorite part of school was. June said hers was listening to the teacher read stories and doing her work. “That’s a new one,” Lesley commented. Apparently gym, art and recess are popular answers.

It was nice to be back in the cozy atmosphere of the Purple School and to see the teachers and some familiar parents– Maggie’s dad and Gabriella’s dad of course, but also some Tracks parents I know. The Eastern Fence Lizard (whom June met at camp last summer) was happy to see June, insisting she come back in to say goodbye to him once she had left the building.

Kung Fu Kitty: Saturday

“Look at what I’m wearing,” June said to Beth, who was in the shower. I’d advised June to wear something that would allow her to move easily because in the morning she had her first Kung Fu lesson and in the afternoon one of the Purple Pandas was having a basketball-themed birthday party. As it was being held in a church gym, I suspected they would actually play basketball at the party.

Beth peeked out of the shower to see June in her pink Hello Kitty pants and t-shirt. This was not much of a surprise. Ever since her birthday, she wears this outfit (with or without a long-sleeved tee underneath) pretty much whenever it’s clean.

“You’re a Kung Fu kitty,” Beth exclaimed and June laughed.

June is allowed two activities per season and spring will be a science class and Kung Fu. She’s taking science because I let her choose one of several after-school activities at her school and a lot of her friends have been in the science class so she wanted to try it. The same group that teaches it has a summer camp at the community college she might try that out next summer if she likes it. (Noah went to that camp for years and loved it.) Kung Fu, though, was entirely her idea. She said she wanted to take karate and this was the closet thing I could find that was offered at a convenient time and place.

The Kung Fu class meets in the dance studio of the community center. It’s a room with a full-wall mirror, which is handy for watching your moves. We were early and then the class was locked out of the room for a while so we were all waiting for a bit before class started. The group consisted of eight kids, three girls and five boys, ranging in age from four or five years old to maybe nine or ten. At least three of the kids were returning students.

Once we were inside the room the teacher started off right away, without much in the way of introduction; he wove his comments throughout the class instead. He taught them how to bow and had them pledge not to use what they learned in class against siblings or classmates, and never to harm any living thing except in the defense of other living things. He explained how you have to be calm to do Kung Fu– it was not all crazy kicks like they might have seen on television. Also, this would be Jamaican-style Kung Fu, he told them, not Chinese. The instructor learned from his uncle, a Jamaican Kung Fu master, he said. I had no idea there was such a thing as Jamaican-style Kung Fu— but you learn something new every day.

The three returning students, two of whom are about to take their gold belt test, demonstrated their skills. Then everyone practiced some poses and moves. The teacher was a stern sort of character; two students had to sit out part of class for being too wiggly in the case of one girl, or for putting his hands in his pockets then rolling his eyes when asked to remove them in the case of one of the older boys. (That boy was out for the rest of class.) It might not have been a good class for Noah when he was six and wiggly, but June excels at paying close attention and following directions. The teacher noticed this and said she was “a wise little one.” She’s also strong and flexible, so soon the teacher was saying she was “a natural” and asking if she’d ever taken a martial art before. I said no, but that she’s had yoga. And ballet, though I didn’t think to mention that at the time. I think both those activities probably helped her get off to a good start.

They had to try an exercise next, squatting like a frog and then lifting their feet off the floor and balancing on their palms. One of the experienced students managed twenty seconds in this pose. Some kids couldn’t do it at all. (I doubt I could.) June’s bare feet cleared the floor for a few seconds. Later she said that was her favorite part. They did some somersaults and practiced bowing again and class was over. June was quite satisfied with her first day of Kung Fu.

She has more to anticipate, however. After-school science starts next week. The theme is forensics. She is very excited to learn how to solve crimes and as always, I’m excited for her as she tries something new. I love to see her finding her voice and finding her strength.

Leap Year

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Steph

Yesterday morning, after snuggling between Beth and me in bed for a while, June wanted me to read Are You My Mother? to her. I said I needed to use the bathroom first. When I came back, June was reading it to Beth. I thought she might tire after a page or two and hand it to me to finish, but she read the whole book. All sixty-four pages as she pointed out repeatedly, until she flipped to the last page, saw it was an illustration and scrupulously amended her count to sixty-three pages. Her reading was fluent at times, halting at others. She got tripped up on predictable words like “could” and “right.” It is never so clear that English pronunciation makes no sense at all as when you have a new reader.

So I guess it’s official. June’s a reader now. (And she’s not content with picture books either. She’s been trying to read Pippi Longstocking for the past few weeks, at the rate of about a page a day, and with questionable comprehension.)

She’s also a writer. Over the course of the school year she’s had the same homework assignment many times: Draw a picture of something that starts with a given letter and write a sentence about it. Then a few weeks ago, Señora T upped the ante. The new assignment was: Draw something that starts with the letter Q and write two or more sentences about it. Well, June latched right onto the “or more” part. She wrote: “El quetzal es un pajaro. El quetzal puede volar. El quetzal es muchos colores.” (“The quetzal is a bird. The quetzal can fly. The quetzal is many colors.”) Then pointed out she’d written three sentences and in case I hadn’t noticed, she informed me, “Three is more than two.” About a week later she got the same assignment for the letter Z and three sentences about carrots followed. On the back of booklet of coloring pages about parts of a snowman, she wrote the following impromptu composition, which was not assigned: “El invierno es divertido. mi mama no le gusta el nieve. mi otro mama si le gusta el nieve.” (“Winter is fun. my mom doesn’t like the snow. my other mom does like the snow.”) She drew a picture of the three of us in the snow, Beth and June smiling, me frowning. For this she received a star next to the smiley face that denotes completed work. The star is for extra effort. But my favorite piece of recent writing is her essay on ancient Egypt. This wasn’t schoolwork– she did it at home, after I read her a book on the topic. If you click on the photo it will enlarge.

Some years are almost magic when you’re raising kids. The year from one to two is a favorite of mine. At the beginning, you have a baby who maybe knows a few words and doesn’t walk and at the end you have a running, jumping, climbing chatterbox. When Noah was around two one of the teachers at his day care asked another if he spoke in sentences yet and his teacher answered, “He speaks in paragraphs.” Both of my kids have been pretty much like that. The kindergarten year is another notable one. This is what my kids do that year: they start going to school full time, they acquire a life that’s separate from me, they learn to speak Spanish, and they learn to read in English and Spanish. The Spanish immersion program at June’s school is full-day in kindergarten (it switches to half-day in first grade) so she is not receiving any formal instruction in reading in English, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Being taught to read in another language seemed to flip the switch for her just as it did for Noah, in both cases right before their sixth birthdays. Kindergarten is a year of leaps.

June’s learning things outside of school, too. Basketball is over, and June never became one of the more skilled players on her team, which finished the season with a 0-8 record. But she did improve and as competitive as she is sometimes, she seems satisfied with that. She made her only basket of the season in practice last Friday night and she was stoked. (And I missed it because I glanced away while talking to another mom!) Her yoga teacher is full of praise for how “focused” and “serious” she is and June can do a pretty impressive split now. She’s recently taught herself how to pump on the swings and doesn’t even need a starting push any more.

I knew she could do this because Beth took June to the playground over the weekend and she mentioned it, but I got to see it firsthand yesterday. We stopped at the playground for about twenty minutes on our way home from yoga. I went to sit on a bench and started digging through the papers in her backpack while she went down the slides. Then I glanced up and saw her on the swing, sailing through air, her legs in their pink leggings pointed toward the sky. I hadn’t even noticed her get on the swing.

She can also jump rope. They were doing a jump-roping fundraiser for the American Heart Association at her school and they focused on it for a few weeks in gym class leading up to it, and while she still gets tangled up in the rope, she gets more and more jumps completed in between the tangles. And now it’s one of her favorite things to do right before she gets on the school bus in the morning or after school.

Noah is teaching her to multiply, with half decent results. She clearly understands the concept even if her execution of it is shaky. She’s also learning to tell jokes that make sense. On the way to basketball practice every Friday evening for the last eight weeks, we got a ride with her coach Mike and there were usually at least three Pandas in the minivan. They usually told jokes all the way there. Here is June’s new favorite, which she learned from Maggie:

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Interrupting Cow
Interrupting Cow Wh…
MOO!

June turned her calendar page to March this morning, even though she knew it was still February. She’s gotten into the habit of crossing off the days but often she gets impatient and crosses off a day before it’s actually over. That’s my girl, always looking ahead, always taking the next leap forward.

Fly Like an Eagle

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Steph

I’ve been spending a lot of time in schools recently, two high schools, two middle schools and two elementary schools in the past nine days. I’m writing a grant for two D.C. public charter schools and I needed to visit their campuses to interview the principals. Then we got the news about Noah’s middle school applications: one thick envelope and one thin. He got into the humanities magnet but not the math and science magnet, so that simplifies our choices. We attended a meeting for admitted students on Thursday evening. And then as she does every Friday and Saturday, June had basketball practice at one elementary school and a game at her own school. In between, we attended a girls’ high school basketball game, a field trip for the Purple Pandas.

Writing these grants has been a real learning experience, both in terms of re-learning how to write grants and in learning about charter schools. (The grants not actually finished, but I’m waiting for feedback between drafts.) I’m not an education specialist, but I have been impressed and moved by the dedication of the school officials with whom I spoke and with their sense of urgency about closing the achievement gap. The middle school serves a majority low-income Latino population, with a high proportion of English language learners. The high school is largely African-American and poor, too. They’ve made impressive gains in recent years in test scores and in the case of the high school, in college acceptance rates. They are applying for grants to pay stipends to the teachers who currently volunteer to stay after school to tutor kids and to increase the number of college campuses the high school students can visit. I really want them to win, but I know they are up against many probably equally deserving schools and there’s only so much grant money to go around.

Both schools are part of the Chávez network, named for Cesar Chávez. Their mascot is an eagle, an homage to the symbol of the United Farm Workers. By a strange co-incidence, the mascot of Noah’s middle school is also an eagle. It was a strange thread tying these campuses together. The cafeteria of the charter high school is called The Eagle Café; there were posters of eagles in a couple of the magnet middle school classrooms. Everywhere I went, I was seeing eagles. Halfway through the tour of Noah’s new school, I started humming, “Fly Like an Eagle.”

Of course, there are significant differences between the schools. The charter schools are open enrollment; that’s part of their mission. The magnet Humanities program has a competitive admission process and an advanced curriculum. There was some diversity among the admitted students at Noah’s school. I saw kids of all races, but it was definitely a majority white crowd.

Do I feel some white liberal guilt about this? Yeah, I do, because Noah’s school sounds like it will be such a wonderful place for him to learn and grow over the next three years. At one point during the orientation, Beth leaned over and whispered to me, “I want to go here.” I knew what she meant. In their English class at the beginning of sixth grade they will be reading Watership Down, The Hobbit, and Animal Farm (I lost track of the reading list after that). In seventh grade, they study and perform Shakespeare. (There’s a stage built into the classroom for this express purpose.) They learn to use a university library for research in the seventh grade. They design car bumpers and pretend to be a forensic unit investigating a food poisoning case in science class. They take a media class every year. One of the sixth-grade projects is to make an animated film of a Greek myth (using Garage Band, a favorite program of Noah’s) for the soundtrack. In eighth grade, they take a five-day field trip to New York City for the purpose of making documentary films, which are shown at the end of the year at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring. Now tell the truth, don’t you want to go there, too?

As we left the school, Beth asked Noah, “Are you ready to be an eagle?” He responded with the shriek of a bird of prey. I suspect it was a yes.

The next night we were at the high school both kids will most likely attend. It’s our home school and both the math/science and humanities magnets are housed there, so no matter where their interests take them, they will probably end up there. Mike, June’s basketball coach, had gotten the idea that seeing a basketball game might improve the girls’ game. (The Purple Pandas have lost all six of their games so far, but their morale remains high, thanks to Mike’s sensitive and positive coaching.) The Pandas wore their team shirts and sat together, watching the game pretty intently for five and six year olds. At half time, they were invited down to the court to exchange high-fives with the home team. This was the highlight of the game for a lot of them. They kept asking, “When will it be half time? When will we do the high fives?” There were cheerleaders at the game and Beth and I wondered if June would be more interested in their uniforms and routines than the game, especially when we saw the enormous bows that had in their hair for some reason. June definitely took notice, but as we walked back to the car, she was running up the sidewalk as fast as she could, darting to the left and weaving to the right, pretending to be a big girl, running across a basketball court, heading straight for the basket.

I want them to fly like eagles, all of them, on basketball courts and athletic fields, in classrooms and on stages and in science labs, the kids who enter middle school years beyond grade-level work and those who enter years behind and those who are smack dab in the middle. Is that so much to ask?

Better Than That

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Steph

This morning, shortly before 9 a.m., I got a sheet of notebook paper and wrote “Noah’s Favorite Thing: a To-Do List!” across the top. This was a bit of teasing on my part. He does not particularly like it when I make to-do lists for him, but it was the last day of a three-day weekend and I wanted to make sure he got all his homework and chores done so we didn’t have any unpleasant surprises at bedtime or tomorrow morning. The kids always get a day off between the quarters so teachers can prepare report cards. Between Martin Luther King Day always being on a Monday and New Year’s Day falling on a Monday this year, it’s as if our school system has just given up on Mondays this month.

I didn’t really mind an extra day home with the kids, though. I’d worked several hours on Saturday and Sunday so I didn’t have anything urgent to do, and thanks to a well-timed play date with Riana (formerly known as the Ghost Crab), I was going to have the morning alone with Noah, which is a rare treat. Accordingly, the first two items on his list read:

Read—Extra!
Go to Starbucks w/ Mommy (Shhh)

I didn’t want June to be jealous and I thought if we brought her home a treat she wouldn’t mind finding out that we’d gone without her after the fact. We set out right after Riana’s mom picked up June. It was a soggy sort of day. We got an inch of ice and snow on Friday night and this was our first day since then with temperatures above 40 degrees, so everything was wet. Water dripped from downspouts and little pieces of ice and snow fell from tree branches and rooftops as we walked. The sidewalks were clear but we both wore boots for splashing in puddles.

As we walked Noah told me about his day with Sasha yesterday. They’d had a marathon play date that started at 1:30 with two hours of sledding near the creek, progressed to Sasha’s house for a snack of banana, flatbread and chocolate tea, and then moved to our house where they spent hours playing B’loons Tower Defense V. Sasha stayed for dinner (Beth made baked ziti) and then they played more B’loons until Beth drove Sasha home at 7:20. Mostly what Noah wanted to tell me about was the sledding, how they had pretended they were bobsledding in the Olympics, and how they’d invented some new Olympic sports, how the best sledding trail, the one that’s “really fast and dangerous” didn’t have enough snow for sledding so they had to content themselves with the other one, which was also pretty muddy, and how the more liquid mud splashed up when their sleds went over it and how when that happened they sometimes “caught some air.” He was joyful recalling all this.

Once we got to Starbucks Noah asked hopefully if he could get a 16-ounce vanilla steamer instead of his normal 12-ounce one. I was feeling indulgent, plus it was extra milk in addition to extra sugar, so I said yes. He got a blueberry strudel muffin to go with it. I was restrained and had a latte with no sugar or syrup or pastry. We sat at the bar and watched a man in a cherry picker try to repair a light in the shopping center parking lot. (It was such a dark morning they were still lit.) Noah thought it looked like a mythical being with a long neck. He still says things like that, and when he does it seems hard to believe he will be in middle school next year. But he will– we find out in a couple weeks whether or not he got into either of the magnets where he applied. I told him when he’s in middle and high school he will appreciate getting this day off more than ever because he will just have finished taking midterms. Then I explained midterms and he said after all that he might want more than a one-day break. I tried to imagine him taking midterms and glanced down at my coffee cup and then the days when I used to push him in the stroller to the Starbucks in Dupont Circle and feed him the foam off my lattes did not seem very far away, even if he does stand as taller than my chin now.

When we got home we read for over an hour from Forge, a historical novel about an escaped slave who fights with the American soldiers at Valley Forge. It’s the sequel to Chains, which Noah read for school this year. The protagonist is fifteen — many of the soldiers in the book are teenage boys and the drummer boys are even younger. I knew this about the American Revolution, of course, but it strikes you differently when you have a ten-year-old boy, a drummer no less. I have to say I am happy he does his drumming in our study or at school, and no one shoots at him while he does it.

We quit reading just before June was due back home so he could vacuum the living and dining room floors I’d cleared of toys before June covered them up again. June actually returned before he’d finished. She’d already had lunch at Riana’s house, so I escorted her to her room for an early Quiet Time before her afternoon play date with Merichel.

When June came out of her room forty minutes later she had a stack of Dora books she wanted me to read to her and even though Dora is not my idea of quality children’s literature, the idea of cuddling up in bed and having some one-on-one time with my younger child in between her many social engagements seemed appealing. Before I read to her I reminded Noah of the items left on his list (homework, percussion practice, typing practice) and I made him lunch. I fixed him some leftover ziti with butter and grated parmesan and a bowl of applesauce with cinnamon sprinkled on top.

“Ziti with parmesan and butter. What could be better than that?” Noah said with satisfaction as I placed his lunch in front of him.

“A castle with princesses and ponies,” June piped up.

You’re going to eat princesses and ponies for lunch?” I said in mock surprise and soon she was over at the toy castle, pretending to be a dragon munching on the royals. But I was thinking silently that I know something much better than noodles or princesses: a morning with my firstborn as he stands on the threshold of midterms and whatever else middle school has to offer.

Soon It Will Be Christmas Day

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Steph

I’ve had an unusual amount of work in the past few weeks: I’ve written a booklet about ten herbs, a brochure for a calcium supplement and right now I’m in the middle of another brochure about a digestive aide. Plus, I edited a short academic paper. We also had a houseguest, a college friend who was in town to sing in a concert (the Bill of Rights set to music!) and we had a brief but fun visit with him. So it would have been easier to skip the Holiday Sing at June’s school on Friday morning, but I went anyway. Part of how I justify working part-time at home is that it makes me available for this sort of thing, so it seems I ought to go in the busy weeks as well as the not so busy ones. Plus I love this event. I went every year Noah attended this school.

The first year I went it was not really what I was expecting. No real information was sent home other than the date and time. I knew Noah had been practicing songs in music class for a few weeks so I expected all the kids to get up on stage or bleachers or something, though I wasn’t sure how so many kids would fit because the whole school is there in two shifts and some kids go twice, as I will explain. But in fact only the fourth and fifth graders perform in a visible way. Back in Noah’s day it used to be the choir, but sadly, the choir fell victim to an expanding school population with no money for an extra music teacher, and it is no more.

The program now starts with the advanced strings and wind sections of the school band. Then all the kids in the fourth and fifth grade are divided into three groups of a few classes each and they either play the recorder or sing for the rest of the first half of the program. Meanwhile the younger kids sit on the floor facing the stage while parents sit on folding chairs at the back of the room. In the second half of the program, the younger kids on the floor sing the songs they’ve practiced in music class along with the older kids up on stage. (In a way it’s nice because it’s more inclusive than the old way of doing it, but knowing how important being in the band is to Noah, I’m sad the more talented singers at June’s school don’t have that creative outlet any more.)

The room was festive. There was a fifteen-foot high inflatable Santa with a spinning present on one hand on one side of the stage and a Nutcracker on the other side. Paper snowflakes decorated the walls near the stage and more hung from the ceiling of the stage. I caught sight of June as her class filed in but she didn’t see me. Her blonde pigtails and red Nordic pattern sweater made her easy to find in the crowd. (It was the same sweater Noah wore to the Holiday Sing when he was in kindergarten. Don’t ask me why I remember. I just do and the idea of having June wear it appealed to me. It was surprisingly easy to convince her. I just suggested it and she said yes.)

There were Kwanzaa songs and Christmas songs and Hanukah songs. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” was the crowd favorite, but I walked home with “Feliz Navidad” and “In the Window,” a very pretty Hanukah song in my head. Also this one, which the kids didn’t sing: “War is over/If you want it/War is over now” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Xmas_(War_Is_Over)) because as strange as it seems, the war in Iraq is over, our part in it anyway. This is more a solemn than a joyous thing to contemplate, but it’s a good thing nonetheless.

When the songs were over, the kids on the floor were allowed to get up and turn around and wave at their parents. June saw me and beamed and I smiled and waved back and then slipped out of the room to hurry back to home and work.

The next day was Saturday. I worked a little and June had her last ballet class (they danced to some songs from The Nutcracker) and she and Talia and Gabriella followed it up with a free tap/jazz class because the first ballet class of the year had been cancelled and the students were allowed to make up the missed class by attending another one. Afterward all three ballerinas went to lunch at Eggspectations (http://www.eggspectations.com/usa/index.html) with assorted parents and siblings to celebrate the end of class.

That night Beth and I went to a birthday party for Lesley. It was a surprise party, made surprising, I think, by the fact that she’d already had a party two weeks earlier. (We went to that one, too.) When a preschool teacher as beloved as Lesley turns fifty, people go all out. One party is not enough. The parties were thrown by different people, with different guest lists, so we got to see a lot of people, including several parents from Noah’s class we hadn’t seen years and Becky, the nursery school music teacher, whom we miss a lot. It was a fun evening.

Sunday I worked some more and in the afternoon we went to see The Nutcracker at Onley Theatre (http://www.olneytheatre.org/). Before the show I bought June a little nutcracker figure (given that she broke, not one, but two Nutcracker snow globes last year it seemed like a better bet than another snow globe). June tested how wide each nutcracker could open its mouth before settling on one in a white and gold outfit. She angled for a second souvenir (a book with a CD) and I considered it, but it was a bit pricy. The sales clerk warned her to be careful with the little wooden doll because it was really a decoration and not a toy.

The theater space was medium-sized and kind of rustic, with wooden beams decorated with evergreen garlands and big ribbons. We piled up all our coats on June’s seat so she’d been tall enough to see, and it worked, but only because there was a child in front on her and a child in front of that child. June perched on her elevated seat and watched the first act with close attention. She applauded a lot and every so often put her arms up in the air in the same poses as the ballerinas. Noah paid close attention and applauded a lot, too. It was a nice production, somewhat more elaborate than the one we saw last year, though not a really fancy one. (I do hope to splurge on a top-notch one some day. My kids have never seen a version where all the children coming running out from under the giant mother’s skirts in the second act. That was my favorite part when I was a kid.)

At intermission, Beth and June went to the bathroom while I went in search of snacks, since June said she was hungry. By the time we found each other she only had time to eat a few of the pretzels I bought before it was time to go back to the theater, so she was still hungry. She was also tired and kind of antsy by this point. The people in front of us had re-grouped so three out of the four seats in front of us had adults in them and June’s view was now blocked. Rather than ask Noah to take an obstructed view, I moved June onto my lap, which meant I needed to crane my neck to see around her. Sometimes she sat up straight, sometimes she slumped against me, sometimes she stood in front of my seat, a few times she slid to the floor and sat there. I think she actually paid better attention last year when she was four, but this might have been a longer production. She was watching when Clara appears back in her living room at the very end. “It was all a dream,” June announced loudly. She seemed happy to have figured this out on her own. (I’d read her the synopsis of the first act before it started, but the lights went down before I could finish reading the synopsis of the second act so she was on her own piecing together the action.)

As we walked back to overflow parking lot, the kids argued over the remaining pretzels and Beth said anyone who continued arguing would not get anything at Starbucks, and lo there was peace. The sword had already broken off June’s nutcracker, but we decided this was appropriate because the nutcracker gets broken in the ballet, too. Also, Beth promised to glue it back together once we got home.

We came home. Noah and I bagged three bags of leaves I’d raked earlier and Beth made Vietnamese spring rolls for dinner. We ate in front of the television, something we hardly ever do, so we could watch The Year Without a Santa Claus before it was time to put our sleepy daughter to bed.

The new week has started and I am knee-deep in things to do, but I am wondering if I can somehow manage to make gingerbread cookie dough to take to my mom’s house to bake there. It will be a hectic week, but soon it will be Christmas day and I want to arrive with something sweet for the many relatives who will be there.

The Middle Years

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Steph

Round 1

The big middle school gym was crowded with parents and kids on the first Monday in October. The folding chairs filled up before we arrived so Beth, Noah and I were sitting on the bleachers. From there we had a good view of the room. Over and over again one of us would see someone we knew, from Noah’s old elementary school or from his new one, or even from his preschool. It seemed as if half the fifth-graders we know were applying, or thinking of applying to the middle school magnet for math, science and computer science. After brief remarks from the program coordinator and presentations by three teachers, the kids filed out into classrooms to hear current students of the school talk about it and to do a chemistry experiment. (“They said we should apply because it’s awesome,” Noah reported. He also said they used hydrogen peroxide in the experiment, that test tube got hot and steam came out of it.) Meanwhile we stayed behind while the program coordinator took questions from anxious parents about the application process and gave us the grim statistics about how many kids apply for spots in the sixth-grade class (650) and how many are admitted (135). You don’t need to be the math whiz Noah is to know that those are not good odds.

But he’s applying anyway because the school sounds like a good fit for him and it has made such a difference to him, being in the Highly Gifted Center. Not only do the students at this middle school take advanced classes, but there are all kinds of academic clubs and competitions they can enter. They even publish their own scientific journal. This may have been the detail that most endeared me to the program.

Noah is also applying to the Humanities magnet. I often think of him as being more gifted in math and science, maybe because those strengths seem more impressive to me, as a word-oriented person, but he’s very strong in language as well. He’s in a sixth and seventh-grade math group this year but an eighth-grade spelling and vocabulary group. So I think he’d be at home at the Humanities magnet as well. I was hoping the odds might be better over there, but I’ve since learned the numbers are pretty similar (500 apply; 100 are admitted). Noah’s home middle school, the one he can attend by default, is part of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (http://www.ibo.org/myp/), which gives students opportunities for accelerated work. So no matter what happens we have good options. All month we’ve been learning about the programs so we can prioritize our choices (if we have any) this winter when admissions decisions are announced.

The admission process will require several application essays from Noah, due in early November. (This is a new and intimidating development–when he applied to the HGC, parents were the ones to write the essay. There’s an also optional parent essay for middle school. I am, of course, writing one.) Then we have to ask his fourth and fifth-grade teachers for recommendations and he has to take a morning’s worth of tests in early December. We already know his 504 plan will not be in effect by the time of the admissions testing, which means he will not be eligible for extra time. Even though I was put off by the hypercompetitive parents at the information session who were asking about the appeals process before testing had even occurred, I have the fact that there is one in the back of my mind, assuming his plan is in place in February when we find out whether he has been accepted, rejected or waitlisted at the two magnets.

Interlude

On Columbus Day the kids went to school and Beth had the day off. A lot of families in the area have that same situation, so the schools schedule Open Houses for that day. We visited Noah’s class in the morning and June’s in the afternoon. It was fun to see June making patterns with colored wooden tiles, playing a bilingual version of Twenty Questions and painting an underwater scene at the easel because now it’s easier to imagine her there. The vibe in her class is low key and relaxed, in a nice way.

Noah’s class was neither low key nor relaxed but also in a good way. Beth and I were there for a pre-algebra lesson and I don’t know when I’ve seen a group of kids so fired up about math. The discussion was mostly student-led, with Ms. W jumping in to clarify a point when needed. Two students took turns up at the Promethean board (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_whiteboard), asking for students’ answers to equations. They would write all the answers up on the board and then the class would decide which one was right. (Sometimes they would flip the screen back to a previous day’s discussion to refresh their memories.) Students then explained how they got their answers and, if they were wrong answers, where they had gone wrong. In different pedagogical hands, this could be a humiliating practice but it was anything but. The kids all seemed engaged and thoughtful as they went through their logic and Ms. W praised them as much for realizing a mistake as for correct answers. And the kids were just amazing. The ones leading discussion were very poised and they were all supportive of each other. One particularly unique strategy for solving a problem drew gasps of admiration from the class at large.

Next they played a co-operative math game, and then moved in a long discussion of V-patterns. Ms. W was leading this discussion but she let it meander, following the students’ questions and theories much longer than I think any of my elementary school teachers would have. At the beginning of the discussion, Noah gave a Power Point presentation he’d made at home, in order to illustrate a point about V-patterns from a previous discussion. Noah was the only one to present that day because he’d been at instrumental music while the other kids presented. Apparently he was also the only one to make a Power Point, but he loves to do that, so I wasn’t surprised.

The following weekend, amidst much moaning about how he didn’t have time to do anything fun, Noah wrote two of his four application essays. The instructions say, “No help should be provided,” so I haven’t read them. The self-restraint this is taking is tremendous because I often read his written assignments and give him feedback. It’s what I’m trained to do after all. We did decide it was okay to listen to him brainstorm ideas, so both Beth and I did that. Writing is a social process for Noah—he often can’t put pencil to paper (or fingers to keyboard) without talking through his ideas first.

Round 2

Our second Open House, at Noah’s home middle school, was the next week. Because it’s not a magnet and draws students from a smaller pool, the crowd was not as big, but we still saw a lot of kids and parents we knew there, including several of Noah’s best friends from his old elementary school. That’s because several Spanish and French immersion elementary schools feed into this school. Noah wouldn’t be eligible for that program, having left the immersion program at the end of third grade. However, he could take accelerated math and English classes and resume his study of Spanish (or start French if he prefers) and choose from a number of very interesting electives (including theater and film-making). The IB curriculum is integrated into all classes and at the teacher presentations it sounded as if the science curriculum is very creative, including a mock forensic investigation unit. In eighth grade students can opt to complete a “passion project” about any area of interest. There were examples of these—written reports, posters, models, films, Power Point presentations, etc–on display in the library.

We got home from the Open House past Noah’s bed time and hurried him off to bed, but I asked him before I left his room, based on the two Open Houses, which school he would prefer. The math and science magnet, he said. When I asked why, he said so writing the essays would not have been for nothing. I don’t think he actually got as good an overview of the school as he did at the first Open House because the kids’ tour consisted entirely of visiting elective classrooms and didn’t give them much of a sense of academic classes. Also, because not all kids went to each elective presentation he missed the one I think he’d love most (film-making). My own feeling, and Beth’s, was that it would be a fine school for him, but we, too, preferred the magnet.

Round 3

Finally, a week later and over three weeks after we started, we attended our last Open House at the Humanities magnet. That same morning we had a meeting at Noah’s school to discuss his 504 plan with the principal, his teacher Ms. W, the school psychologist and a school counselor who had done a classroom observation of Noah. The upshot of the meeting was that we need some additional documentation because the report we’d submitted consisted only of our observations and that of the educational psychologist who did the evaluation and not teachers’ observations. Ms. W will have to fill out some forms and the school psychologist will have to evaluate them before we can proceed. The next meeting won’t be for another month. The delay was a little disappointing because I think Noah could use the accommodations now, but I was encouraged that Ms. W did say she thought Noah could benefit from extra time on tests. She characterized his writing as “Spartan” and “minimalist,” which made me realize he hasn’t had too many essays to write at home this year so she’s mainly seen his in-class writing, which does tend to be short and often fails to elaborate his main points. One thing that made me smile was when Ms. W mentioned how before she really got to know Noah, she was puzzled by his long silences before he speaks, even when he’s had his hand in the air. It’s the kind of thing that demonstrates the slow speed at which his gears turn, even, maybe especially, when he has something really interesting to say. I’m hoping her assessments will help and that we just need to go through some bureaucratic hoops to get him some accommodations, but of course, there’s no guarantee.

Last night we went to our last middle school presentation. A lot of the information was about the application process, which is identical to the one at the math, science and computer magnet program so I found myself restless on the top row of the bleachers. I had a good view of the room from up there, though, and as usual spotted quite a few people we know. I also had a little square of carrot cake to eat because there was a bake sale beforehand. My occasional boredom was not so much a reflection on the program as on the order in which we heard the presentations and the fact that unlike at the other two schools, we didn’t hear from any teachers.

The humanities program does sound impressive, though. It focuses on reading, writing, World Studies and Media Production, which includes learning about television, film, radio and graphic design. Students take a lot of field trips to D.C. area museums. They write a ten-page research paper in the seventh grade, which they research in a University library, and take a five-day trip to New York in the eighth grade. Just like at the other magnet, the acceptance rate is 20%. Five hundred kids apply; one hundred are admitted.

While we listened to this information, Noah got to tour a television studio but he didn’t have too much to say about it when the session was over. He did mention that the eighth-graders seemed so enthusiastic he wondered if they’d been bribed. I think he’s tired of writing essays and visiting schools, too. He said he still like the math, science and computer magnet best, but he couldn’t say why. It was past his bedtime, so we didn’t press him.

As of now, the essays (both his and mine) just need a little editing and then we can mail off our part of the application and then we’ll be done until the testing in December. It’s overwhelming but also exciting to have all these opportunities to plan and hope and dream a bit about what his middle years will be like.

Y aquel barquito navegó

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Steph

Había una vez un barquito chiquitito,
Había una vez un barquito chiquitito,
que no sabia, que no podía, que no podía navegar
pasaron un, dos, tres,
cuatro , cinco, seis semanas,
pasaron un, dos, tres,
cuatro, cinco, seis semanas,
y aquel barquito y aquel barquito y aquel barquito navegó.

From “El barquito chiquito,” Spanish children’s song
http://www.123teachme.com/learn_spanish/node/6424

A little over a week ago the kids had off school on Rosh Hashannah and June and I went to the library for Spanish Circle Time. We hadn’t been in several weeks and I found myself hoping the leader would play “El barquito chiquitito.” It’s one of my favorites in her rotation. The lyrics go something like this, without the repetition: Once upon a time there was a little boat that didn’t know how, that couldn’t sail. One, two, three, four, five, six weeks passed and that little boat sailed.

When they sing it the kids pair off and sit on the floor facing each other with the soles of their shoes touching. They hold hands and lean forward and back, mimicking the motion of rowing a boat. Whenever Maggie was at the library she and June used to row the boat together. It’s adorable to watch, really, but that isn’t why I like the song. I find the simplicity of this little tale of mastery moving. Occasionally I would even tear up, watching June and one of her best friends pretending to row and I’d think about how much of childhood consists of this: you don’t know how to do it, time passes and then you do.

The Spanish immersion program is like that. Noah walked into his kindergarten classroom knowing about ten words of Spanish he’d learned from Sesame Street and a couple months later he was chattering away in Spanish, not like a native speaker, but comfortably and fluidly. Because June is more of a perfectionist I thought she might appreciate a little more preparation so I taught her the numbers up to twenty and most of her colors over the summer, but that and a few phrases like “Buenos dias” was all she knew when school started.

It’s been six weeks and she knows a lot more than that now. She doesn’t speak in Spanish yet, but she sings the songs they are learning every day at home. And believe me, she really can put a lot of dramatic flair into “La araña pequeñita” (“The Itsy Bitsty Spider”). She’s learned to roll her Rs and she’s always announcing, apropos of nothing, “I know the Spanish word for watermelon,” or something like that.

“What is it?” is the proper response.

“La sandía,” she will tell you, triumphantly.

This was a big week at school for two reasons. June was star of the day on Monday and Tuesday and Señora T started assigning homework. Star of the day is a rotating position that involves being interviewed by classmates on the first day and being drawn by everyone in the class on the second day. The pictures are collated together into a book that goes on the class bookshelf.

On Monday, as she does every Monday, June wore an outfit I’d chosen for her to school. (We call it “Mommy day.”) This week it was olive green cargo pants and an orange sweatshirt, both hand-me-downs from Noah. “I am so glad no one is going to draw me in these clothes,” she exclaimed and told us that tomorrow she would wear something that was “not boring.” Not boring turned out to be pink tights, a pink, blue and yellow plaid skirt, a white turtleneck and over it a tie-dyed red, pink and white t-shirt with a heart made of jewel-like beads at the center. She complained a little that evening that some of her classmates had paid insufficient attention to the design of the skirt, “One of them just drew Xs!” but overall, she seemed satisfied with the experience.

Right before she started getting homework assignments, a big pile of schoolwork came home with June. I was glad to see what she’d been doing since she often focuses more on the social aspect of her day when I ask her about it. I do like hearing that, but I also wanted to know what she’s learning. There was a lot of coloring, and tracing and handwriting exercises, connect-the-dots, matching capital letters to lowercase ones and copying words.

One sheet was a coloring page of animals they had been given oral instructions on how to color. She’d accidentally colored the duck red and orange instead of yellow and she was distressed to see an X and the word “amarillo” (“yellow”) next to it, even though there was a smiley face on the top of the page. (They all have smiley faces.) She explained to me that they were supposed to color the bird red and she didn’t see the bird at first and thought the duck was the bird and by the time she realized her mistake and tried to color over it she was so flustered she picked up the orange crayon. The blow-by-blow retelling of this error was full of emotion and drama, even though I doubt the teacher made any fuss at all. June does not like to make mistakes. I worry a little about how that will play out for her later in life.

The homework assignments she got this week were similar. On Monday she had to color all the items on the page that could be purple. On Tuesday, she had to count items in a row and circle the correct number. Wednesday she had to write out several lines of capital and lower case Is. Thursday she had to circle the largest animal in each row and drawn an X through the smallest one. Another advantage of the immersion program, aside from the big one of learning another language, is that it provides a constant challenge when the kindergarten curriculum is not as rigorous as June could handle. I remember appreciating that with Noah, too. Even though it’s on the easy side, or perhaps because of it, June loves doing her homework. In fact, she was inventing imaginary homework for herself before Señora T started assigning any. Now she races to the dining room table as soon as she gets home from school and gets right down to it. It never takes more than fifteen minutes.

On Tuesday, June brought home a golden tiger paw. Now this will require a little explanation. The tiger is the mascot of June’s school and tiger paws (little paper outlines of a paw print) are awarded as recognition of good behavior. Individual students get them and the class as whole can get them, too. June’s very well behaved in public settings, so she’s been racking up the tiger paws. (The mother of one of her classmates confided in me that her son was jealously keeping track of how many she has.) The golden tiger paw marks her tenth tiger paw. When she gets to twenty, she can pick a prize from a collection of small toys. I honestly wish there was not so much emphasis on rewarding behavior that comes easily to her but it is making her happy. She was pleased as punch about the golden tiger paw.

Wednesday was Walk to School Day. You are supposed to wear red, walk to a playground near June’s school and then from there, the kids form a little parade, with signs promoting walking and they proceed to school. When I first described the event to June last week she was uninterested. Then I remembered to mention there are snacks and she was all over it. She doesn’t actually have a lot of red clothes, but we found hand-me-down long-sleeve t-shirt that’s mostly white with red and blue sleeves and she paired it with a denim skirt and red socks and decided it was red enough. We walked with a first-grade girl from her bus stop and her mother, down the wooded path by the creek. June wondered if we’d see any of her preschool friends there. And sure enough, soon after we arrived we saw Maggie and her older brother. She and June greeted each other from afar and were headed to each other when at the exact same moment they each caught sight of other friends, from their own classes. There was just a moment’s hesitation and they both pivoted to their new friends. “But you’ve know each other since you were two!” I wanted to say. “Don’t throw each other over for some Janie-come-lately.” But at least it was mutual and there were no hurt feelings.

While June’s been at school counting and coloring and soaking up Spanish vocabulary, I’ve been home, trying to learn how to work again. This has been harder than I anticipated. The first week I found it really difficult to concentrate for more than a couple hours at a time and I wondered if my attention span had fallen victim to six years of staying home with kids, during which I rarely had even that much time to focus on any one thing. That got better by the second week, but what I really seem to have lost are my time management skills. I’m working ten to twelve hours a week for Sara, on average, and a little more for other clients and most weeks it seems to be all I can manage. If there are no holidays or half-days (and we’ve had two of the former and one of the latter already), I’m kid-free from 8:30 to 3:10, five days a week. That’s thirty-three hours and twenty minutes. Where is it all going? I am riding the exercise bike more than I used to, and keeping the house marginally cleaner, and reading more, too. But it still doesn’t add up. I think I failed to account for the fact that things I used to do with June around (dishes, laundry, errands) still have to happen so it’s not really thirty-three extra hours a week. And because I don’t drive, simple errands can take a long time. I suddenly feel differently about a trip to the post office or the bank taking up a big chunk of the morning because instead of wanting to kill time, I want to save it. Still, I try to walk rather than take the bus when I can, because I am no longer walking June to and from school and I can use the exercise. I’m hoping I will get more efficient eventually because I have a new client for whom I’m going to edit a series of short articles in October and November and perhaps beyond, so I’m hoping to be able to fit in more working hours.

At least I’m not alone. There are two other parents (one mom and one dad) who wait at June’s bus stop and who are also back to work part-time after years of staying home and they seem to be having similar issues. There’s bound to be period of adjustment. Overall, though, it’s good to be working. I like the quiet house, the time to write and think, the challenge of learning new things and new ways to communicate them.

June’s and my boats have launched. We couldn’t, we didn’t know how to sail. Now we do.

Simple Gifts

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Steph

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right

“Simple Gifts” by Elder Joseph Brackett

It took me a couple weeks of emailing people to find a new date for June’s rain-delayed back-to-school party that worked for almost everyone we had invited, but eventually we settled on Saturday afternoon. It was not clear that the weather was going to co-operate, however. The party that had been postponed by Hurricane Irene was now being threatened by the torrential rain associated with Tropical Storm Lee. All week it rained (a small section of our basement flooded on Thursday and I spent much of the day mopping up water and laundering towels) but then early Friday afternoon the sun broke through the clouds. Sunlight can be so startling and invigorating when you see it for the first time in several days. I remember that from my college days in Northern Ohio. I took Noah out on the porch to read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince after school and as I read I enjoyed the sun that fell on my forearm and one bare foot.

There was a chance of showers on Saturday, but the morning was sunny and as it progressed, it seemed less and less compelling to try to clean the house to party standards, which was a good thing because there was almost no chance of me actually achieving that if we had to move the event from the playground to the house. I would have moved it to the messy house if I’d needed to, though. We weren’t canceling again.

As we walked to the playground, twice I thought I felt a drop of rain. I did not mention it to anyone. It seemed like bad luck. As we draped the tablecloth over the table and set out the cake, juice, plates, forks and cups, I noticed part of the sky clouding over. We were finished well before party time and sat, waiting, watching the sky and the paths to the playground for approaching guests, hoping the guests would come before the rain.

Everyone who RSVPed came, and it didn’t rain. That’s really all I need to say to let you know the party was a success. All through the preparations I had visions of the sky opening up and onto the cake and the lyrics to “MacArthur Park” ran relentlessly through my head. But they came. First Malachi and his mother, then Maggie (formerly known as the White-Tailed Deer) and her mother, and then Dominik (formerly known as the Field Cricket) and his mother and toddler sister—they all came. The kids played in the creek and on the playground equipment and ate cake and drank juice and played some more. Maggie’s mom led the kids in a couple rounds of “Mother May I?”

The grownups talked, about kindergarten of course, but also about our older kids. The mom with a third-grader wanted to ask me about the application procedure for the Highly Gifted Center, and both of us with fifth-graders talked to the middle school teacher about middle school options. It was hot and humid, but it was good to be out in the sun anyway and it was good to be seeing friends whose kids we’ve known since they were babies or two or three years old as we celebrate their entry into elementary school. Noah went home on his own shortly after the cake (he’d been moody all afternoon) but Beth and June stayed at the playground to play after the party was over and the guests had all gone home.

As June might say, we won the party.

Sunday was the Takoma Park Folk Festival, a long-standing annual affair held on the second Sunday of September inside and on the playing fields of a local middle school. It was also the tenth anniversary of September 11, so the theme of the festival was “Peace and Reconciliation.”

We arrived around 11:15 and decided to buy lunch and take it to the stage where our chosen twelve o’ clock band was playing. We knew it would take a long while to assess our culinary options, stand in line and purchase food. The two orders of falafel and veggies, one order of lo mein with eggroll, one plate of freshly cooked potato chips, one lemonade, two limeades and a mango smoothie was more than we could carry in one trip, too, so we had to ferry the food to the field in shifts. Finally we were settled on our blanket listening to the eleven o’ clock band finish up. Noah was listening more carefully than I was, but from what he reported it sounded like they might be 9/11 conspiracy theorists. I decided to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather and the delicious food, rather than try to make out the lyrics.

Soon I saw Lesley walking toward us. During the second half of the food run, Beth had dropped by the Purple School table to visit a friend who had a lunchtime shift, found Lesley there and directed her to our blanket. Lesley was full of hugs for everyone and questions about the first two weeks of school for both kids. Noah was chatty but June was a bit cool toward her (she was just the same way with Andrea when the Bugs class ended—I think she needs to detach in order to make transitions) but Lesley finally coaxed a little smile and a thumbs-up from June when she persisted with questions about school.

The noon hour band was Dirty River (http://www.dirtyriver.com/) a bluegrass band Noah had chosen. We were staying for three hours (Noah had a 3:30 play date with the twin brothers who seem to be his best friends at his new school) so the kids got to pick one hour’s entertainment each and Beth and I picked jointly picked the last one. Noah liked the band and asked if he could buy their CD. Beth and I pooled the money we had left after our frozen custard/Italian ice dessert and managed to scrape up the required funds. He took the money and went to buy the CD by himself, walking with the slight swagger he has whenever he’s feeling especially grown-up. But halfway through the set, he said he wished he hadn’t bought the CD because he didn’t like the band that much after all. He’d been the same way the day before, alternately complaining about being bored at June’s party and seeming happy and engaged, joining in their games and rough-housing with Malachi. He’s been like this more and more lately. Is it a tween thing?

Next up was the “Family Dance.” This was June’s pick and I must admit I was somewhat horrified at the idea of public dancing but kids push you out of your comfort zone all the time. This session was inside the school, in a gym. Beth and Noah settled into the bleachers to watch while June and I hit the dance floor. Once I realized this was going to be the kind of dancing with specific instructions and not free form, I was much more comfortable. It actually ended up being kind of fun. There were line dances and circle dances. June liked the “Highland Gates” dance in which some people stand in a circle and hold their hands up high so people inside can “run in and out the windows.” I glanced up more than once and saw Noah clapping to the tune of “The Rattlin’ Bog,” that old summer camp favorite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnv9GB8xvrw&feature=related). June was worn out before the hour was up so we went to sit with Beth and Noah and watch for a while. That was how we got to see the spiral of people curl and uncurl to the tune of “Simple Gifts.” It was like watching a living knot come untied, a very cool effect, and achieved with so few commands from the leader it was like a visual demonstration of the beauty of simplicity.

Our last session was Magpie (http://www.magpiemusic.com/biography.htm). Back in college, Beth and I used to listen to a Magpie cassette of songs about work and labor activism. We both thought it would be fun to see them in person. The kids were somewhat less enthusiastic about being in a room full of earnest, graying Takoma Park residents listening to earnest, graying musicians. Noah kept leaning over to check my watch. June was antsy until she fell asleep on my lap. She’s been doing pretty well going without her nap the past couple weeks, but she does occasionally crash on weekend afternoons. I enjoyed the set, though I came out of it realizing I am more cynical about politics and human nature than I was when I was twenty.

When Magpie finished, I woke June as gently as I could and carried her out of the school and we all got in the car to drive Noah to the twins’ house. Beth and I had busy late afternoons and evenings planned. She had to finish grocery shopping and cook dinner and clean the kitchen and the bathroom. I had six chapters of a book on copywriting to read in preparation for an assignment this week. I was pleased with our weekend, though, and with the simple gifts of a sunny afternoon in the park with old friends embarking on a new adventure, a surprise visit from a beloved teacher, music and dance and family time.

I don’t know what the ultimate lesson of September 11 was, but if it had anything to do with appreciating the simple things you have and holding close to those you cherish, it was a good way to commemorate the day.

The Tree They Come Home To

Posted on August 30, 2011 by Steph

“If you are a gardener and find me,” said the little bunny, “I will be a bird and fly away from you.”

“If you become a bird and fly away from me,” said his mother, “I will be a tree that you come home to.”

From The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown

Wednesday
We got the good news on Wednesday afternoon. We had just returned from a Tracks reunion play date—two-thirds of the kids in June’s nursery school class attended—and the post card was in the mail. It was from Señora T, June’s kindergarten teacher, saying she was looking forward to meeting her and giving us her room number and the date of the first day of school (as if we needed reminding).

Señora T was the teacher we wanted for June, the one we thought was the best fit for her personality. We weren’t even sure if she was still teaching kindergarten in the immersion program because the program has just been cut from three classes to two in the kindergarten year and the school had been close-lipped about which of the original three teachers were remaining.

So I was happy to get the card. I read it to June, who was sitting in the sky chair on the porch, and she grinned. She especially liked the smiley face sticker affixed to the bottom.

The week before school started was an emotional one for me. Noah was at drama camp so it was just June and me. Although we’ve been in different configurations from week to week all summer, this still feels like the most normal arrangement after all these years of Beth and Noah off at work or school or camp and June and me at home. As June and I went about our routine, one moment I’d be melancholy, thinking it was our last regular Monday morning latte/vanilla milk date (until I remembered that Labor Day is coming up pretty soon and that in fact there are quite a few Monday holidays in the school year). And then I would be giddy with delight at the thought of all the time I would have (free time, time to work) very, very soon. Just last week Sara and I came to an agreement that I would be working for her for at least ten hours a week for the duration of the school year. I was eager to get started, being ready for the mental stimulation, not to mention the added family income, which will come with more regular part-time work.

Over the course of the week, June and I went on errands, waded in the creek, visited four different playgrounds and had play dates with the Ghost Crab and the Eastern Fence Lizard and met up with Tara and Lucas from 04-05-2008 (www.040508.blogspot.com).

Thursday
The play date with the Ghost Crab took place on Thursday morning mostly at the playground attached to her (the Crab’s) new elementary school. I was watching the Crab’s toddler sister as well so their mom could have a little peace and quiet with her husband and their newborn. There’s a lot of climbing equipment at this playground, a rock walls and monkey bars, and the three girls kept me busy spotting them. When it started to drizzle we moved under the one of the bigger structures and the girls pretended to be camping. There was a lot of sitting around and pretending to cook and eat wood chips, served in the girls’ shoes. Later when the rain let up, they dug paths in the wood chips all over the playground, in loops that led back to the campsite. Once the pace of their play had slowed and I no longer needed to make sure no-one was about to fall on her head, I started thinking about the fact that in just a few days the Crab would be inside the school that’s probably been just a background to her games for years and June would be at her different school. Suddenly it felt like hanging out with high school friends, just days before everyone is off to college and everything changes between you forever, though I doubt June or the Crab had any similar musings.

Later that day we met Tara, a blogging friend of mine, and her very cute nineteen-month old son. The idea had been to play in the fountain in downtown Silver Spring, but it had rained earlier in the day and the fountain was fenced off so it turned into having dinner at Noodles & Company and then going to watch the fountain (just watching was entertaining enough for a toddler. He could not stop walking around it, pointing at it and shrieking). Tara and I have been reading each other’s blogs for years, so it was fun to meet her at last and she even gave us a loaf of carrot-cranberry bread.

In between these two social gatherings we met with the educational psychologist who evaluated Noah earlier this month. The tests she had him complete were meant to measure his intelligence and his processing speed and the yawning chasm between them. She gave him a diagnosis of ADHD Not Otherwise Specified, which means he does not exactly fit into any of the recognized subcategories of ADHD, but that he has some of the symptoms and would benefit from the kind of accommodations kids with ADHD get (extra time on tests, etc.). There was nothing the least bit surprising about this. It was pretty close to what I predicted, that he either wouldn’t have it or have borderline case. Still, it might be enough to get a 504 plan for him that will help him meet his academic potential in fifth grade and into middle school. So it’s good news, mostly, but it’s never easy to have a new label put on your child. It made me feel a little heavy-hearted.

Friday
The Open Houses at the kids’ schools were on Friday, at the same time, so I took June to hers and Beth took Noah to his. As soon as we found out June had Señora T I sent out emails to the parents of her three nursery school classmates who are attending her school as well as to the mother of another boy we know who will be in kindergarten there. (Malachi is the younger brother of Maxine, who used to be one of Noah’s best buddies in kindergarten and first grade and with whom he’s still friendly). I wanted to find out who was in her class. June is closest to the White-Tailed Deer, so it was disappointing when I got the first answer from her dad, saying she was in the other class. Later I found out that the Black Bear and the Field Cricket are in the other class, too. Only Malachi is in class with June and while she has played with him on a few occasions, she doesn’t know him as well as any of the kids from her preschool. I felt sad that she was basically going to be alone on the first day, without anyone she knew well.

I know she’ll make new friends quickly, though. She makes friends at one-week camps and she made a friend as we walked to the Open House. Another kindergarten girl walking with her family came up to her as we strolled along the creekside path to her school and when the grownups consulted we found out they were in the same class. A few sentences into their acquaintance the girl had decided to invite June to her birthday party. (Whether she’s actually having a birthday soon was unclear.) June can also see her old friends at recess and given the small size of the immersion program, doubtless they will all be in each other’s classes at some point.

June had been debating for a few days whether to say “Hola” or “Buenas tardes” when she met Señora T, but when the moment came her shyness got the better of her and she could not speak at all. I showed her around the room. We looked at all the toys (animals, blocks, art supplies, a play kitchen and a puppet theater). She was especially interested in the big plastic animals until a bossy girl told her the giraffes were hers and June could only have elephants. June would not have taken this from any of her preschool classmates, but she mutely accepted the elephants. I gently led her away from the animals and we located her table (she’s at la mesa azul, or the blue table), her coat hook and her attendance card. Once we’d seen everything there was to see and I’d picked up a packet of information and signed a paper saying she’d be taking the bus home, we left the classroom.

There had been a sign on the door when we entered the building indicating there was a tour of the school for kindergarteners and other new students at 2:30 but no one seemed to have any idea where the tours started. Finally I was told to go to the multi-purpose room (the combination cafeteria, gymnasium and auditorium) to wait. I signed up for the PTA and we mingled. We saw the families of the White-Tailed Deer, Black Bear and Field Cricket, all of whom felt sorry that June got separated from her tribe. The Field Cricket’s mom asked if we’d try to get her switched and I said no. While I think the short-term transition would be easier for her with ready-made friends in class, in the long run, I’d rather have her with a teacher who’s a good match for her. So we waited and waited and waited and the tour never started, or we missed it somehow (if we did a lot of other people did, too). By three, June was tugging at my clothes and asking to go home. (I’d woken her from her nap to take her to the Open House and she was tired. She was also a little overwhelmed. She’d been clinging to me the whole time we were there, which is not like her at all.) So I took her to see the art room, which I thought would be of particular interest to her, and we left.

As we walked home I was struggling with the question of what to do about the Back to School party we had scheduled for the following afternoon. We’d invited the four incoming kindergarteners we knew and their families. But two families couldn’t come and Hurricane Irene was scheduled to blow through our area on that very day. By some predictions, there might be only light rain by that time of day and we did have a picnic shelter reserved. But by others, there could be driving rain and high winds. It was the last business day before the party and I had to decide whether or not to try to cancel the reservation and get a refund. I didn’t think they’d give me one, as a week’s notice is officially required. Around four, I decided to call and ask. If they said no, we’d make a decision in the morning. But much to my surprise I was transferred to the Assistant Director of the Rec Center, who authorized a full refund, given the unusual circumstances. So I broke the news to June. There would be no party until some time after school started.

From all reports, Noah’s Open House went well. The teacher, Ms.W, seemed nice. The classroom was stocked with interesting puzzles and books. A lot of his friends are in class with him. Despite this cheering account, I felt unsettled all day. The disorganization of the Open House upset me because I didn’t want June to think of school as a place where people say things will happen and then they don’t. First I didn’t know whether or not we were having a party the next day and then I didn’t know when I’d reschedule it. I didn’t even know if school was going to start on Monday. Our notoriously unreliable power company (http://www.pepco.com/home/) had been announcing people should expect “multi-day outages” before the storm even started and if that happened, the beginning of school would likely be delayed. Even though I had felt nostalgic all week for June’s and my weekdays together, I didn’t want school put off. I had told Sara I’d start work Monday. And I also didn’t want the emotional upheaval of waiting for this big change to be prolonged.

Saturday
Saturday morning after June’s play date with the Lizard, we all drove down to June’s school so we could show her where the bus will drop her off and so Noah could give her a tour of his favorite spots on the playground. He wanted to do a more thorough job but the rain was starting to come down harder and we hurried away.

Around four o’ clock on Saturday, the starting time of the cancelled party, I went out onto the porch to sit and watch the rain. It was cool and raining moderately hard and the tree branches were waving slightly in the wind, not inviting weather for a picnic, even under a shelter, but it didn’t look like a hurricane yet.

The wind and rain continued all afternoon and evening. Around nine o’clock the lights started to flicker, but the power didn’t go out until two-thirty a.m. when I woke to a loud pop. I knew from the greater darkness of the room that the streetlights were out and I got up and peeked into the kids’ room and sure enough their digital clock had gone blank. Before going back to bed, I watched the trees in the back yard and the neighbors’ yards tossing violently from the bathroom window. There was a savage beauty to it I might have appreciated more if I had not been afraid that our power would not be back for days. (When Noah was two, we lost power for four or five days after Hurricane Isabel.)

Sunday
By Sunday morning it was all but over. There were some downed branches in our yard but no damage to our property. It rained in the morning, but a regular sort of rain and the afternoon was clear and sunny. Beth did a little grocery shopping but not too much because we didn’t know when we’d have refrigeration. I cleaned and napped and played a board game with June and read. Beth suggested we go for walk around the neighborhood to see what it looked like post-hurricane. It was a good idea, but for some reason, no one took her up on it. My mood had plummeted. “The rest of my life was supposed to start tomorrow,” I told Beth.

“The rest of your life will come,” she said. “It might just be delayed a day or two.”

But it wasn’t. Beth had been checking the county’s public school system web page all day for updates but it wasn’t until 9:45 p.m., long after we’d put the kids to bed thinking they wouldn’t have school the next day that we found out both of their schools had power and would be open. And at 10:30, just after I’d fallen asleep, the fan in our room kicked into gear. The power was back. (We were very lucky to get our power back so soon. Some of our neighbors are still without power, three days after the storm.)

Monday
Monday morning was a bit of a rush because we hadn’t fully prepared, but we got out the door in time. June was happy and excited; Noah was sometimes gloomy about vacation ending and sometimes full of a manic good cheer. At the bus stop June balked just a little in the line. I thought for a second she was going to bolt back to us, but she boarded the bus and soon we could see her smiling through the window in the second row. And the bus drove away; my baby was flying away from me. I only cried a little.

Given the list of things I wanted to do, six hours and forty-five minutes actually seemed too short. Up to now whenever I have gotten a substantial block of time it was so rare I felt I needed to squeeze in every last thing, It was hard to comprehend I had four more days just like it left in the week. So I caught up on email, Facebook and blogs after thirty-six hours offline. I did housework (hanging up the laundry on the line instead of using the dryer as I have just resolved to do at least once a week), I had coffee by myself and ran errands and read on the porch and exercised and worked a bit, too (though I have to admit, not much).

And that afternoon, my bunny flew back to the tree. She practically leapt off the bus steps into my arms. She was full of information. She drew a picture at school. Señora T taught them their colors but she already knew most of them. She answered a question about what could be rojo (red). She was in green on the green/yellow/red behavior chart all day. (There was one boy who was in yellow twice but nobody was in red.) She saw all of her nursery school friends on the playground but she mostly played by herself. She liked the monkey bars. She ate all of her lunch. She enquired if Noah had Quiet Time when he was in kindergarten and I said no. (I was glad she brought it up because I am hoping to phase out her nap. I think it might help her sleep better at night.) Instead of napping, she watched an hour of television and then Noah came home.

He had a letter from his teacher cut into tiny puzzle pieces. He had to reassemble it and write a reply for homework. He wrote about how a teacher should teach not just information but tactics and strategies of critical thinking. Without all the shadows, capital letters and other fancy formatting it would seem like a very serious letter. And it is, but it also shows his fun side.

While Noah wrote, June was busy eating like a house on fire: crackers with cream cheese, chips and cheese, yogurt with blueberries and granola. Apparently kindergarten makes you very hungry. I served veggie burgers and fries for dinner, because June loves fries, and we went out for ice cream to celebrate a successful beginning to a new school year and whole new phase of our lives.

When we got home I rushed June through her bath and bedtime preparations because it was almost eight and she hadn’t napped. She was asleep within two minutes of lying down. I know because I was still on the bed with her. Noah finished his letter and soon he was in bed, too, complaining a bit about having to go to bed at 8:45 again.

I am looking forward to them flying off every morning so I can begin figuring out who I am aside from Mommy, but I am also glad to be the tree they come home to.