Take me back to the water’s edge
Lay me down on that riverbed
Take me down to the water’s edge
Hold me under for the longest human breath

From “The Water’s Edge” by k.d. lang and Joe Pisapia

I. Eight Lanterns

“Aren’t you even a little bit sad?” I asked June as we walked to school on Wednesday, her very last day of preschool.

“Nope,” she said. And, truly, she did not look even the least bit sad. It was water play day and she was excited by the novelty of going to school in her bathing suit and curious to see what everyone else’s bathing suit would look like. She was in the moment, not at all bagged down by grown-up nostalgia.

The parking lot was covered with the kids’ art portfolios and their paper lanterns for the Lantern Launch. The lanterns are beautiful this year, painted with landscapes and saturated with color.

We walked inside, past the Cottontail Rabbit, who was presenting Lesley with a big potted plant with yellow flowers. In the main classroom the Field Mouse’s mom asked me, “Are you co-oping?”

“No, just lingering,” I answered.

“Don’t look at her,” Lesley advised. “She’s crying.”

I was not crying, but I might have if I’d stayed much longer so after telling June goodbye and talking a little to the Ghost Crab and the Field Cricket about their water day plans (which involved spraying the whole school with water, according to the Cricket), I left.

I had June’s lantern and her portfolio of artwork with me. Once I got home I laid them on the dining room table, but I avoided looking at anything too carefully. I wasn’t ready. I exercised and tried to work, but it was hard to concentrate. I’d hoped to complete a set of abstracts to send off to Sara since I did not anticipate having much time to work on Thursday or Friday and the early part of the weekend would be busy, what with the Lantern Launch on Friday evening and June’s first t-ball practice on Saturday morning. But I only got about half of the remaining work on the set done.

I headed out the door a few minutes early. I wanted to get some pictures of the kids sitting on the steps before anyone was dismissed. So I got there, talked to a few people—‘This is so sad” the Cricket’s mom said—snapped some pictures of the kids, picked up yet more art projects, spare clothes, June’s journal, handwriting workbook, a DVD of her class singing “Carnival of the Tracks” and other miscellaneous things to take home. And then we left. A block away from school June announced, “I need to go potty.”

This actually happens fairly frequently and it usually drives me crazy but that day I didn’t mind turning around and walking back into the school. The Painted Turtle’s mom was presenting Lesley with an umbrella the Turtle had decorated with ribbons hanging from the spokes inside. Each ribbon had a name of a classmate or teacher and small picture representing something about that person. (June’s picture was of food, because she always eats so much at snack.) The Turtle’s mom offered us a ride home and I wasn’t about to say no, as the temperature was 96 degrees and rising.

Before Quiet Time, June wanted to hear a story from her journal about a cat jumping over a fence. I read it to her and she wanted to know if she could take the journal into her room to look at the pictures during Quiet Time. I said sure. I don’t think she looked at it long, though, because when I peeked in on her ten minutes later, she was asleep.

Noah came home around 4:20, crying because he’d gotten a lower than expected grade on his probability game (it was a C). I was taken aback because he usually doesn’t seem to care much about grades and he’s gotten Cs before in this program (though mostly at the beginning of the year, before he had his bearings). I tried to talk him through it but he was unresponsive. Finally I said, “Everything seems worse when it’s hot” and I took him back to my bedroom and turned on the air conditioner. I carried a sleeping June in, too, and started to read from her journal to wake her. Noah listened, too.

It took a while for June to wake up, but by the time I got to the last entry, dictated on Monday, she was wide awake. Here’s how it goes:

“I’m thinking it to be a tornado. The tornado is blowing up all the houses in the whole universe. And the houses—it was even blowing up the aliens in outer space houses. That’s a really strong tornado. And the tornado has earrings. That’s a funny tornado. This is an earring and this is an earring. And a frog didn’t get blown away into the pond and drown. I’m done.”

Both kids laughed and laughed and June said, “Read it again,” So I did and together in the cool air I didn’t cry and Noah didn’t cry and June didn’t cry.

But we’re done. June has two weeks of summer camp at preschool (one next week and one in July) but she’s never going back to the Purple School as a student again. We arrived at the school as a three-person family, needing just a year of preschool for Noah, who we pulled out of the university-affiliated daycare he’d attended for three years when I lost my teaching job. June was on the way, though. I’d been pregnant with her for a month on Noah’s first day of school. When she was born (six weeks early) in March, Lesley made us a baby quilt June slept under for years. Between both kids attending school and after school programs and summer camps there, the school has been a part of our lives for June’s whole life.

So Wednesday night, we had marinated eggplant sandwiches (for the grown-ups) and grape juice (for everyone) to celebrate our time at the Purple School. And Friday afternoon I lined up all the kids’ lanterns– winter solstice lanterns and end-of-year lanterns– on the lawn so I could see what four years at the Purple School looked like. They look beautiful: colorful and diverse and sparkly and a little fragile (June’s first winter solstice lantern got singed when she didn’t hold it upright) and increasingly complex, just like our kids. And by our kids, of course, I mean not just Noah and June but the dozens of classmates they had when they were two and three and four and five.

II. To The Water’s Edge

Between the end of school on Wednesday afternoon and the Lantern Launch on Friday evening, June had a play date with the Ghost Crab and another one with the Ground Beetle and attended the Bobcat’s birthday party so she hadn’t exactly had the chance to get lonesome for her classmates. So for her, at least initially, the Lantern Launch was just another event in the busy social round of this week.

For me, it was more meaningful. I kept thinking of our first Launch, when Noah was five and June was two months old and it poured rain and we huddled under our separate tarps to eat and the preschoolers got restless and emerged to run around in the rain and got soaked. Noah was the Painted Turtle that year. June declined the opportunity to inherit his track, but she did choose one (the Great Blue Heron) from the same team. They were both Water’s Edge kids. In recognition of that I wore the vest I wore to his Lantern Launch (my wedding vest actually) over a long green dress. The vest is blue and green and has various animals on it, one of them a sea turtle. I also wore a pewter necklace with a mother and baby stork. They look a lot like herons. When she saw me dressed June said, “You look beautiful,” and insisted on choosing her own necklace from my necklace basket. She selected an amber bear because she thought it looked like a flower.

For the whole car ride down to Constitution Gardens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Gardens), June alternated between asking “Are we there yet?” and complaining about the fact that I’d packed crackers for our picnic dinner when I always pack crackers and she’s getting tired of crackers.

Finally we arrived and spread out the blanket. Before I had the food unpacked, June asked, “Can I have some crackers?”

Becky came over and sat with us, and the Mallard Duck’s family was nearby so we had good company while we ate and waited for the festivities to start. June did not eat much because she kept running off to play with her friends. I didn’t try to stop her. There are a lot of summer birthdays in her class so no doubt she will see most of them again in large groups but the opportunities for them to be all together as a class are numbered.

There were speeches and a lot of presents. Families with four years’ attendance or two years’ service on the board received birdhouses (we got one last year because it was Beth’s second year on the board and there was a one bird house per family limit so we didn’t get one this year). The teachers got gifts from each class, and each class got presents from the teachers. Each student in June’s class received a booklet of their greeting and goodbye poems, which changed every month, a DVD of pictures of the children, and a little oak tree. June loves to plant things (and is always begging to plant the seeds she finds outside or in her food which is why we have three cantaloupe vines in the garden right now). So she was thrilled with the tree. “It’s my very own oak tree!” she exclaimed and she carried it around most of the rest of the evening. June’s class also performed their song “Carnival of the Tracks.”

Then it was time to launch the lanterns. We walked over the bridge to the little island. There were herons (black-crowned herons I think) and a duck with five ducklings and a bunch of geese with one gosling in the water. The water itself was a vivid green; the hundred plus degree weather had done wonders for the algae.

The launch is simplicity itself. We lit the candle inside June’s lantern and set it on the water. Along with all her classmates and the kids in the other classes, she pushed it away from the shore and pulled it back with the string and watched the slight current bob it around until she got tired, pulled it out and handed it to me. I held the wet wooden bottom of the lantern, looking at the glowing candle inside and the colorful paper walls outside. I could not bring myself to blow it out, to be done. Finally Beth leaned over and said, “Is that still lit?” and she blew it out.

We stayed a little while longer, so we could talk to people and June could climb trees. She climbed one tree, in fact, while holding her oak sapling in her hand because she wanted to show the little tree what it would look like when it got bigger. We did not linger, however, because it was close to the kids’ bedtime already and we had a half hour drive home. Shortly after we put the kids to bed, June came padding out of her room. “Some day I want to go back to my school and say goodbye to my teachers,” she said. And this time she did look sad. It’s finally real for her, I thought.

“You’re going back Monday, for camp,” I told her and she went back to bed. But right then, I wanted to be back at the water’s edge, holding my breath, making time stand still.

On Tuesday morning, June had a play date with the Ground Beetle. It was originally supposed to be a playground picnic with both moms present, but I accidentally scheduled a furnace tune-up at the same time, so the Beetle’s mom volunteered to pick June up and watch the girls at the playground herself. And then early in the morning it started to pour rain, so the play date ended up moving to the Beetle’s house. As a result, I had a longish chunk of time to myself, about five hours.

I exercised, worked on some abstracts, had a lovely lunch with the Mallard Duck’s mother at Capital Cheesecake (http://www.capitalcitycheesecakes.com/), worked some more and even snuck in a couple of short stories from my Twain collection. It was a nice day, a little like my birthday if less decadent, but definitely more balanced than my days usually feel.

June goes to school for fifteen hours a week and that sounds like a lot of free time, especially for someone who works only a couple hours a week most weeks. But between walking June to and from school, co-oping every other Friday, school holidays and sick days, it’s never actually that long. And I’m an introvert, someone who requires a lot of alone time to re-charge. In my six years as a stay-at-home mom, I’ve never really felt I had enough of that, though it gets better every year, as the kids have gotten more independent and June has spent more and more time at school.

That’s why summer makes me nervous every year, all those weeks and weeks (ten and a half for Noah, eleven and half for June) of largely unstructured time. In reality, I usually find it goes more quickly than I think it will and in the end I’m left with memories of splashing in the creek, eating popsicles on the porch, and spending hours lying under the silver maple tree and reading to them, and I try to forget all the times they whined about being bored and drove me to distraction with their bickering.

Noah came home while June was still napping. He found me on the porch, marking up a study about plant-based adaptogens and he slumped into a wicker rocking chair. “I have a lot of math homework,” he announced. And as much as my pleasantly solitary day had made me think of the downsides of summer vacation, I immediately saw the upside. He’s worked so hard this year and he really needs a break. His teacher said in a recent e-mail that he seems to have “checked out.”

It’s not time for that yet. He has two and a half weeks of school left and has to complete work on a puppet show about coral reef animals, finish researching and participate in a debate on universal health care, teach the class a lesson about thunderstorms and who knows what else? Just this week he finished a major math project, designing a board game based on the principles of probability. Does it make you tired just reading all this? The kid needs to ride his scooter and build his solar-powered car and make all the robots in his Lego robot kit manual and play on the computer. He’s not going to as many day camps as he usually does this summer, just three weeks of drama camp at Round House (http://www.roundhousetheatre.org/education-outreach/summer-programs-2011/), and I think that’s fine. He needs the downtime.

June has a week and a half of school left. Like Noah she, too, has three weeks of camp, two at her preschool, and a week of drama camp at the rec center. Her first week of camp coincides with Noah’s last week of school, so it will be a few weeks before the kids are both home all day, but Friday was my last day of co-oping at her school, so it’s starting to feel like the end of preschool is just around the corner.

I don’t even know what to say about this. She was two years old, tiny and shy when she first walked through the doors of the brightly painted bungalow and into the realm of two of the warmest, most capable, and creative preschool teachers you could imagine. She will walk out those doors a taller, more confident five year old. While we won’t leave behind the friendships we forged there with teachers and parents and children, we won’t be in day to day contact with most of them any more either and that makes me sad, as much as I want to move on to the next stage of our lives, the two-kids-in-elementary-school phase (which will only last a year because Noah will be in middle school the year after that, but let’s not think about that right now). Thank goodness for the school’s summer camps, which children up to age ten can attend. These and the after-school programs the school used to run have kept Noah in touch with Lesley in the five years since he left the school and that relationship had been a real blessing for him. She gets him a deep way most people don’t.

Co-oping on Friday felt surprisingly normal. Somehow I managed not to dwell on it being the last time. June had a play date with the Painted Turtle that morning before school started, another playground picnic. This one didn’t get rained out, but since I needed to be at school at 11:50 and the kids didn’t need to be there until noon and they wanted to climb the boulder “one more time,” the Turtle’s mom agreed to stay with them while I headed up to school.

Early in the school day as the kids were playing in the main classroom, I did ask Andrea if the kids could be divided up for music class in a way so that June was in the first group because I had housekeeping duty and the housekeeper goes in with the first music group. I wanted to see June with Becky, not for the last time because Becky will be back next week and then June’s going to be in her music camp in July and I will probably take her to a couple of Becky’s drop-in classes this summer and Becky has a daughter of babysitting age, but, yes, for the last time on a co-oping day. June’s known Becky even longer than Lesley and Andrea, having been enrolled in her Kindermusik class for several sessions when she was two and three, and she and Becky are quite fond of each other.

This year the Tracks class has been studying The Carnival of the Animals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carnival_of_the_Animals) and as an end of year project, they are making a Carnival of the Tracks movie. Each child got to choose an instrument that he or she thought represented his or her symbol. June choose the sand blocks to represent the Great Blue Heron. Sand blocks, for those of you unfamiliar with children’s music classes, are little plastic rectangles covered with sandpaper you can rub together. June said the sound reminded her of a bird’s feet on a rock. The Tracks also learned a song, with hand motions. Filming starts next week.

I think the closest I got to getting choked up was at the end of music when Becky started to sing, “Everybody Wave and Sing Goodbye,” because how could it not make me think about the bigger goodbyes on the horizon? Saying goodbye to all this is so hard. I don’t know how the teachers do it every year.

But then I was back out in the classroom, threading yarn through blunt needles and tying knots in it for a sewing project and the kids went through their yarn and required more so quickly that I didn’t have a chance to think much. It was the same while they were out on the playground and I was trying to scrub blueberry stains off the kitchen floor with only moderate success. (The snack of yogurt, granola and frozen blueberries the Toad’s dad brought was a big hit.)

At dismissal, Andrea and Lesley hugged me, and they were both teary. On the walk home I asked June, “Do you ever feel sad about preschool ending soon?”

“No,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

“I do,” I said, so she’d know it was okay if she does feel sad later. It could be a week and a half is just too far in the future to bother her, but I don’t think that’s it. I think she’s just ready to move on. She’s eager to be bigger and older and kindergarten is what comes next, so that’s what she wants. That’s a good thing, but I can’t help but indulge in a few lingering backward glances before it really is time to wave and say goodbye.

I do not as a rule get very nostalgic at my kids’ milestones. I am happy to see them learn and grow, and yes, get older and more independent. True, I was sad when they self-weaned and June’s recent no-singing-at-bedtime dictate was hard for me. And I get just a wee bit sad when someone I know has a baby and I go through those bags of tiny baby clothes to make up a gift of hand-me-downs. Okay, maybe I’m more sentimental than I thought. But in any case, this week was something else.

On Tuesday Beth registered June for kindergarten and then two days later we took her to her elementary school for kindergarten orientation. On Friday, Noah had his first school dance. Yes, you read that right. And no I haven’t failed to update his headshot caption– he’s still in fourth grade. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Beth went over to June’s elementary school Tuesday to fill out some paperwork in preparation for the orientation on Thursday. That morning June and I ran some errands of the bank and post office variety. We took a bus to downtown Takoma and as it was a rainy day, the windows were all fogged up. June kneeled in her seat and used her index finger to draw stick figures on the glass. I remembered being a kid and doing that on the school bus windows and suddenly I could imagine her on a school bus, something that I have tried in the past and been utterly unable to do. As Beth wondered recently, how could we let her get on a school but by herself when she’s so small? Andrea, one of the teachers at June’s preschool answered that although small, “she is a big presence, brave and ready to go!!” And so she is.

She was more than ready for the orientation on Thursday morning. Beth drove Noah to school and came back to get June and me and pretty much the instant she pulled into the driveway, June was out the door like a shot, leaving me inside to grab my keys. At preschool on Monday, three Purple School alumni came to talk to the Tracks class about kindergarten. One of them made June a bit nervous talking about the green-yellow-red behavior charts I remember so well from Noah’s kindergarten year. I think she started to feel like this kindergarten thing was serious business. Since then she’d been veering between nervousness and excitement when she spoke of kindergarten.

All the incoming kindergarteners visit a kindergarten classroom (emptied of its students who have two days off school). They get to meet the teachers who conduct evaluations. The first thing they did was to snap a picture of June in front of a blue background for their records. (We got a copy, too.) She had an uncertain little Mona Lisa smile in it.

Then, along with several other kids, she drew and pointed to letters and played with puzzles and Legos while the teachers watched. One of the puzzles was a rainbow puzzle, which I think they were using for color identification. Finally she had a snack of animal crackers and apple juice and received a gift bag, decorated by a current kindergarten student, and full of crayons and alphabet cards. While our kids went around the stations, we chatted with the mom of one of Noah’s friends, who also has kids five years apart. Beth said she thought this would be easier the second time around but it wasn’t and Naomi agreed and said it was kind of sad, and one of the teachers said the baby is always the hardest. Still, instead of looking back, we looked ahead, discussing magnet middle school options for our older kids and the admissions process we will have ahead of us next year when Noah and Maxine are in fifth grade.

I kept looking over at June as she moved from table to table. She seemed serious and intent on what she was doing. When we left, she was happy and said the activities “took my mind off being nervous.”

Friday afternoon I was co-oping at June’s school and two of her classmates, the White-Tailed Deer and the Field Cricket had been to orientation at the same school and wanted to compare notes. The Deer had brought her gift bag to show everyone. June admired the drawings on the outside, which she decided were more skillfully executed than the one she had received. The Black Bear left school after an hour for his appointment and then came back an hour later. I tried to imagine the four of them going to school together. It wasn’t hard. Beth and I are also hoping that the Toad, who lives out of boundary and is in the lottery for the immersion program, gets in, because she’s one of June’s best friends. Because we live right on the boundary line the Toad actually lives closer to us than any of the other in-boundary kids and she would use our bus stop. Beth said recently she’d feel better about putting June on the bus that first day if she could board it with a friend.

Friday evening was the Spring Fling at Noah’s school. Unlike his first elementary school, his current one has dances. I find the concept of a dance for third to fifth graders kind of puzzling and I think Noah did, too. He skipped the fall dance because he was not sure what would happen there and he had decided to skip this one, too, but at the last minute he changed his mind. He said kids at school had been talking about it and they said the last one was fun so he decided to try it.

I never went to dances as a kid, except at camp, where they were mandatory. The idea of unscripted socialization with that many people was intimidating and as a teen I had the idea that any potentially romantic situation that did not arise spontaneously was shallow. I bet you’re sorry you didn’t know me then. I would have been so much fun at parties, you know, if I had gone to any of them. Beth wasn’t much interested in dances either, although she did go to her prom.

We were both glad Noah decided to go because social situations like that can be hard for him and we were proud of him for giving it a try. Beth said on the drive over he was full of nervous chatter. And he instructed her not to be late to pick him up. She could be early, but not late.

Beth came home and we played Sequence and Concentration with June. I think she enjoyed having both of us to herself for a little while. That rarely happens. Then Beth left to get Noah. He was wound up and happy about the dance. He danced (by himself, but that’s what he said almost everyone was doing). He bought a glow bracelet and had his photo taken in the photo booth. He said it was fun. I asked if he would go again and he said yes. One of the mothers of his classmates reported that her daughter said that the girls and boys stayed in separate groups, but when I asked him later, Noah said he talked to two girls. And of course, he talked to boys, too.

Later that night when I turned out the light in the bathroom, I saw his bracelet glowing green on the counter. After I climbed into bed, I said to Beth, “We are old.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

Old enough to have our younger child on the verge of elementary school, old enough to have our older child attending dances. But they are brave and ready to go. And I think we are, too.

I want to tell you of the most amazing thing I know.
You’ve got to stand back now and watch it go.
It’s compact, stream-lined, built to last
Shiny and green and so incredibly fast.
It’s a Speed Turtle. Whoa-ho!
It’s a Speed Turtle. Oh, no!
Man alive, it’s in overdrive.
Go little turtle, go, go…

And when that maniac gets going,
Well, hang onto your hat—
It can tear across the road in just
Three hours flat!

From “Speed Turtle” by Sandra Boynton, performed by Brian Wilson
http://www.sandraboynton.com/sboynton/boyntonmusic.html

When Noah was in preschool his symbol was the Painted Turtle. As the years have passed we’ve realized it was the most appropriate animal for him because Noah is slow. Not in the sense of lacking intelligence, of course, but he thinks things through and considers all the angles before he takes action. Sometimes this is a good thing, when careful attention to detail is needed. But when we just want him to brush his teeth already, it’s not. The educational psychologist he saw last summer told us he was a “slow processor.” It wasn’t news, except that there’s a name for it.

This was one of my concerns about enrolling Noah in the Center for the Highly Gifted. I wondered how he would handle the increased workload when the much too easy homework he was assigned in third grade sometimes dragged on all evening. But being bored actually slows him down further and it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss, so we took the plunge.

It’s been wonderful in many ways. He fits in socially much better at the Center and he’s happier. That alone would be worth the price of admission but the work does is more interesting and suited to his abilities. That makes the fact that he’s doing it all the time somewhat easier to bear. It is a lot of work, though, so we never make plans for weeknights and we don’t go out of town on weekends. And I spend a lot of time and mental energy helping him keep track of his assignments and reminding him to get back to work when he reverts to his natural state of woolgathering.

The ends of marking periods are particularly difficult. The Center’s curriculum is focused on long-term projects and the four biggest ones come due at the end of each quarter. First quarter was the Crow Indian project, second quarter was contemporary Germany and third quarter has been an in-depth author study. Over the course of two months Noah read four novels and a non-fiction book by the adventure writer Gary Paulsen. He completed a poster about literary devices in Paulsen’s work, another one on character development, setting and turning points in one of the novels, a persuasive essay about why Paulsen should be included in his school’s curriculum, a biographical sketch, and a bibliography. The last element to be completed was a Power Point presentation that gave an overview of what he’d learned about Paulsen.

Of course, at the same time, there are his recurrent short-term assignments in spelling, vocabulary and current events, and medium-term projects like an interview he recently had to conduct with an immigrant and a project to research and build models demonstrating green design in housing. (His math homework, in geometry and pre-algebra makes me think I don’t have too many years left of being able to help him with math.)

So, my point is, he’s been very busy recently. He does have some downtime built into his schedule. He reads for pleasure from the time he wakes until he has to start getting ready for school at 7:15, I read to him at least three times a week (we’re almost finished Harriet the Spy) and Friday afternoons and evenings are a no-homework zone, no matter how much he has to do. And I’m looking forward to the mid-week break he’ll get on Thursday when he has a day off school. There’s always a day off between marking periods and tomorrow is, thank heavens, the last day of the third quarter. About a week ago I posted on Facebook, “Steph’s son comes home every day with news of some previously undisclosed part of one of the approximately one gazillion long-term projects he is completing. She cannot wait, seriously cannot wait, for the third quarter to be over.”

And now it almost is. Noah’s teacher says that the big project for the fourth quarter will be have more in-school and less at-home work that the other three. This will be nice, if the work actually gets done at school. I think we need to remind his teacher of the extra attention Noah needs to stay on track. Sometimes he can only figure something out by talking it out, and he has a tendency to get sidetracked by the smallest obstacles. If no one is watching him, he may just stop working. For instance, he might lose all his pencils and rather than ask a classmate or the teacher to borrow one, he will become completely derailed.

It was like that last night. Here are a series of exasperated Facebook posts I made about his attempts to complete his homework:

5:24 p.m.
Steph’s son obviously cannot do any homework right now because someone on the bus said the math problems assigned were not the ones he thought were assigned and the girl he called to settle the question has not returned his call. Also, the purple colored pencil he needs to illustrate his poem is missing. And the one from the other set of colored pencils is not the exact right shade of purple…

5:56 pm.
And obviously crayons are out of the question. And even more obviously he can’t start on the math problems he’s sure are assigned because he doesn’t know how much room to leave for the problems that are in question.

7:03 p.m.
It just keeps getting better! Right after he got off the phone with the girl who called with the assignment, he said, “Oh, I have to study for the quiz, too. But I don’t know what it’s on.” He thought the best solution was not to study.
“Why didn’t you ask her while you had her on the phone?” I asked.
“Well, I doubt she would know,” he said.

(A note here about the girl in question: She’s been in Noah’s class every year since kindergarten. She’s whip-smart and very capable. I’m sure she knew.)

9:08 p.m.
In the end he illustrated the poem, did the math, studied for the quiz, came up with a spelling list (they make their own) and caught up on my blog while he was at it. All’s well that ends well.

And here’s his poem, which I just love:

Pencil.
Orange
paint P
ink eraser
black lead,
Bearing TICONDE-
ROGA until
it meets its
only predator,
the pencil
sharpener.
Does it miss
its friends
still in their
boxes? Nobo
dy knows.

It’s a shape poem, in the shape of a pencil. He drew an eraser on bottom of the column of text and a pencil point at the top. The background consists of scribbles in different colors.

Noah turned in the last elements of his author study project and presented his Power Point slides today. He has a field trip tomorrow and other than math and percussion practice, he has no homework due until Friday. We’re going out to dinner this week, not once, but twice as there’s a fundraiser for his school on Wednesday and another one for June’s school on Thursday, both at our favorite Mexican restaurant. After school on Friday we’ll go down to the Tidal Basin and see the cherry blossoms, which are in bloom right now.

Well, I don’t know why
That turtle keeps pushing the pace now…
Every minute of the day is like
Some kind of race now.
Some kind! Of race!
With a gotta-get-there attitude
That never fails
It blazes right past
Every one of us snails!

I love the surprise ending to this song. Of course the turtle seems fast if the observers are snails. It reminds me that everything is relative and Noah is who he is, my smart, slow, beautiful Painted Turtle. But I have to admit I’m glad there was no Snail symbol at the Purple School.

“What’s False Spring?” Violet asked, sitting down between her brother and the sweatered scout.

“Anyone who’s not a cakesniffer knows what False Spring is, “ Carmelita said in a scornful voice. “It’s when the weather gets unusually warm before getting very cold again. We celebrate it with a fancy dance where we spin around and around the Spring Pole…. When the dance is over we chose the best Snow Scout and crown her False Spring Queen. This time it’s me. In fact, it’s always me.”

From The Slippery Slope, by Lemony Snicket

We had a little false spring of our own the past few days, although it did not involve dancing around a Spring Pole or crowning a spoiled girl False Spring Queen. Highs reached the 70s on Wednesday and Thursday and then on Friday the temperature reached a record-breaking 77 degrees. The big dirty piles of snow at the edges of parking lots are shrinking and crocuses are popping up here and there. It’s enough to make you think spring might be around the corner, even though today has been cooler, with highs in the 50s, and by Tuesday, it might even snow again.

The other notable thing about those three oddly warm days was that Beth was out of town, conducting a training in New Jersey. By Friday I was pretty worn out from the solo parenting, despite having had an almost unprecedented six-hour chunk of kid-free time on Thursday when the Cottontail Rabbit invited June over for a morning play date that ended with her mother taking them both to school. I ran some errands (library and post office), got myself a cheese and egg sandwich and a caramel macchiato at Starbucks, caught up on newsletter clipping for Sara, exercised and read a few Flannery O’Connor short stories (I am making my way, slowly, through her Complete Stories) but when it was over I was surprised at how fast it went and how little I had to show for the time. The solitude was nice, though, even if the stress of getting Noah to finish his literary devices poster that evening nearly wiped out any inner peace I may have gained from it.

Friday was quite different. There was no kid-free time because it was my day to co-op at June’s school. On Thursday night, I wrote what we needed to take with us first on the trip to Noah’s bus stop and then on the trip to June’s school on the whiteboard on our refrigerator: “I. Noah’s backpack w/ lunch + POSTER! II. June’s backpack + SNACK! + COFFEE! If you read this blog regularly, you know I don’t use capital letters and exclamation points with abandon, but I certainly didn’t want to forget the poster, and I was the snack parent at June’s school and I didn’t think I was getting through the day without some caffeine.

I successfully got the kids out the door by 8:20 for the second day running. Unlike Thursday when June was skipping and running ahead of us, so excited about her play date she was unable to walk (Noah and I were also slowed down by his heavy percussion kit we were taking turns pulling along), June lagged behind us. She was actually sulking from an argument with Noah, but I don’t want to go into that. Nevertheless, we arrived at his bus stop by 8:50 and then she and I headed over to the community center to wait for her drama class to start at 9:30. I’d brought along some books to read and crayons and paper for her. She drew a princess and a dragon on one piece of paper and a snake on the other. I snuck in a few pages of the Post while she drew.

In drama class the teacher read them A Birthday for Frances and they made some props and acted out the birthday scene from it. They also practiced their dance routine to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins. When it was over we walked back home, pausing to admire some purple crocuses on the college campus near our house, had lunch and headed back out to go to school. About halfway to school, June removed her Cookie Monster sweatshirt to reveal the t-shirt underneath and then skipped the rest of the way to school with the sun on her bare arms.

I was continuously occupied from our arrival at 11:45 to about 1:15, escorting kids from their cars, through the parking lot and up to the porch and then preparing the snack of whole-wheat mini-bagels with cream cheese and strawberry jam and carrot sticks and cleaning up from it. Then I played with the kids who had finished their handwriting practice, mostly watching them make letters with straight and curved pieces of wood designed for this purpose and reading to them, for about a pleasant half hour until it was time for the second group to go into music class. I went in with them.

Becky, the music teacher, had opened a door that leads from the music room to the porch so a breeze came in through the screen door. The warm air seemed to drive the kids a little crazy and they had trouble concentrating on the lesson. “When will we go outside?” one of them wanted to know. Usually the kids really like music and I’ve never heard any of them say that before.

By 2:20, they were out on the playground ten minutes early and everyone was running around. Everyone was a little wilder than usual, but the defining moment of the outside playtime came early when June came running to me with her hand on her knee and crying loudly. There was an outraged quality to her crying so I thought when she calmed down she would have an accusation to make against one of her classmates. I sat on a tree stump holding her and waiting for her to quiet down. Other parents often comment to me about how fast June bounces back from injuries at school (it’s not always that way at home) so I was surprised at how long the crying went on. I suggested we go inside and remove her skirt and tights so I could see if she was bleeding.

Once we’d done this I could see what was wrong and why it wasn’t getting better. There was a big splinter stuck in her right knee. I carried June to Lesley, who was speaking to a classroom observer, and interrupted their conversation. Lesley took June over to the sink, washed her knee with soap and water and suggested I get Andrea from the playground. Now with Lesley needing to get back to the observer and one co-oper on housekeeping duty inside and one teacher about to come inside, that left only one co-oper out on the playground with fifteen energetic four and five year olds. That meant I needed to replace Andrea on the playground and leave June. I hated to do it and felt as if I was abandoning her.

It seemed like a long time before Andrea came back out (I had time to remind children that we don’t throw sand at our friends and we certainly don’t throw rocks at them) and when she did, she didn’t have June with her. She reported that she couldn’t get the splinter out because June was too upset and Andrea was afraid June was gong to hyperventilate. I’d have to get her dressed and try it myself at home. I wasn’t looking forward to that, as Beth is the designated splinter mommy, but I came in and helped June get back into her clothes. Andrea had put a Band Aid on the wound and given June a cold pack to numb the pain. Soon she was running around on the playground again as if she did not have a big hunk of wood stuck in her flesh.

June was in good spirits on the walk home. She wanted to pretend to be a mother chicken and baby chick, so I had to cluck and flap my wings for much of the way home. She had her nap and I was just waking her when Noah came home, so she listened to me read to him and then they watched television. Dinner was take-out pizza. When we’d finished eating it was time to tackle the splinter.

Lesley had suggested a warm bath might help loosen it, and had actually given June the impression it might just float out on its own, so she spent the first five minutes or so of her bath staring at her knee, waiting for the splinter to float out. I gently tried to break the news to her that if it didn’t come out in the bath, I would have to try to get it out. She didn’t like this idea, but once she was tired of playing in the bath I lifted her up to the bathroom counter and patted her knee dry. I brushed my finger lightly across the splinter to see if it was still protruding. I thought it was, though it was hard to tell what with the squirming and the screaming.

“I need you to be brave,” I told June, as I got out the tweezers.

“No!” she yelled.

Well, I tried. I thought I almost had it a few times, but she was trying to push my hands away and her tears were falling directly on my hands as I worked and finally I just gave up. I didn’t feel good about it, though, because I was worried that the wound would close overnight with the splinter inside it.

We watched a couple episodes of Angelina Ballerina until it was bedtime, and then as the kids were in the bathroom brushing their teeth, I heard the front door open. Beth was home! June started to tell her about the splinter almost at once, and so it was that after a four and a half hour drive, practically the first thing Beth had to do was to pluck a splinter from June’s knee as I held her hands down and June wailed in protest. It took a few tries, but she got the damn thing out. I was elated and June was pretty happy, too, once she stopped sniffling.

Later Beth and I talked in bed a long time, about her trip and my co-oping adventures and the honor roll certificate Noah received for getting all As and Bs in the second quarter and everything she’d missed during those three long, strange, unseasonable days she’d been gone. I’ll miss the spring-like weather, but having her back is more than an even swap.