School Days, School Days

Posted on August 31, 2009 by Steph

School days, school days
Dear old golden rule days,
Reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmetic,
Taught to the tune of a hickory stick
You were my queen in calico
I was your bashful, barefoot beau.
You wrote on my slate, “I Love You So”
When we were a couple of kids

From “School Days” by Will Cobb and Gus Edwards
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Days_(1907_song)

I was singing this song all weekend, in a cheerful sort of way. June loves it, refers to it as “A Couple of Kids” and always wants me to sing it again when she hears it. It’s almost completely outdated, of course. Though Noah started third grade today and June goes back to preschool next week, she won’t be going in calico and we didn’t send him off to school barefoot. Reading and ‘riting and ‘rithmatic are still in the third-grade curriculum, of course, but I don’t think hickory sticks are part of the Montgomery County Public Schools disciplinary policy. (If they were we’d be looking into private schools or homeschooling.)

We attended the Open House at Noah’s school on Friday, meeting his morning teacher, Señor S, and his afternoon teacher, Ms. M. Noah hasn’t had a male teacher since he was in daycare and I’ve often thought it would be nice for him to have an adult male he sees on a daily basis. (His grandfathers and uncle all live out of state.) Ms. M seems very friendly, too. She informed us of an upcoming field trip to an environmental center and let us know that the third grade eats lunch at 10:45 (!) and recommended we send an afternoon snack along with lunch. Both Señor S and Ms. M are experienced teachers but new to the school, so we hope that doesn’t cause any bumps along the way. I don’t think it should.

“Meeting my teachers was more fun last year,” Noah complained as we were leaving the second classroom. I reminded him that last year he was very nervous about starting second grade (some older kids had told him that all the second grade teachers were mean) so meeting the teachers and seeing his friends probably put his mind at ease and made him feel happy. He’s not nervous this year and neither are we. (Two years ago Beth and I were on eggshells when Noah was starting first grade because of his rough kindergarten year.) This year, going back to school is just plain anticlimactic. It’s so routine that Noah doesn’t even remember the anxiety that was eating him up this time last year. “Really?” he said when I mentioned it. He’s most excited about being one of the big kids, in the upper half of the school.

After the Open House, we headed over to Sasha’s house for the pool party. The kids splashed in the pool, the adults sat and talked and everyone ate. It was nice to see so many of Noah’s friends’ parents we hadn’t seen in a while. People updated each other on their summers and commiserated about the difficulty of packing lunches that our children probably won’t touch anyway because who eats lunch at 10:45?

The pool is above ground, all one depth and too deep for June. I knew this so I arrived in my suit so I could take her in despite the cool, overcast weather. After a while she was shivering and blue-lipped, so I took her out and wrapped her up in a towel, over her loud protests. She was consoled by the presence of watermelon and macaroni and cheese and cheese puffs and cupcakes with blue frosting and sprinkles. As more and more guests arrived bearing food, I realized with a sinking feeling that the party must have been a potluck. I hadn’t looked at the invitation recently and we’d shown up empty-handed. I apologized to Sasha’s folks, who good-naturedly pointed out there was no shortage of food.

There were a lot of kids in the pool and the roughhousing got out of control on several occasions. I noticed Noah hanging back when it did. One of the moms who spent a lot of time volunteering in his class last year noticed, too, and said he was one of the gentler boys in his class. At first I found it an odd remark because he does like to run around and crash into things and he often plays too roughly with June and back in kindergarten he had a reputation as an unruly, hard-to-control kid. But while he likes physical play and one-on-one wrestling with his friends, he’s often uncomfortable when things get wild in large groups of kids. He’s never really liked to run in a pack like so many boys do, unless there’s a controlling narrative (as at his pirate party). Anyway, it was interesting to get another perspective on him, especially from a mom I barely know.

On Saturday afternoon, we had Sasha over for a long play date. He came over at 2:00 and we took him with us when we went out to dinner at Plato’s Dinner in College Park (http://www.platosdiner.com/) and dropped him off at his house at 7:15. A couple weeks ago, Noah had an even longer play date with Elias. As summer vacation dwindled, we tried to squeeze in as much unstructured playtime as we could.

That evening Noah read the Spanish storybook he’d checked out of the library two weeks ago and that I’d asked him to read before school started. I’d resolved to have him read in Spanish this summer. He only ended up reading three picture books, all of them in the past month, but something’s better than nothing. If his Spanish is rusty, it will come back soon enough. And speaking of summer accomplishments, here are the ones I envisioned back in June:

Will he teach himself how to play the piano, memorize his times tables, read all thirteen Series of Unfortunate Events books, break his record for how many times he can dribble a rubber ball? Will he go a whole day or even a few hours without bickering with his sister?

Well, he hasn’t played the keyboard in a long time, he has the times tables almost but not quite down, he’s in the middle of Book 9 (The Carnivorous Carnival), he has doubled his dribbling record. I don’t think the kids ever went a few hours without quarrelling, but that might have been too much to ask because they played together this summer more than they ever had before. I’m satisfied with his summer, and I hope he is, too. He took a lot of scooter rides, became more confident in the water, built a robot and spent countless hours playing with his little sister.

It was difficult getting him out the door in time to catch the bus this morning, harder than I thought it would be. He was in day camp most of the summer after all. The last one ended only two weeks ago. But for whatever reason he needed a lot of prompting to finish his breakfast, brush his teeth and get dressed. As he approached the gate, he goofed around, pretending the canvas grocery bag loaded with the required composition books, tissues, hand sanitizer, scissors, glue, pencils, crayons and markers was heavier than it really was and that he could barely carry it. He was cheerful and full of nervous energy. Beth took him to the bus stop while June and I watched from the porch. I took her inside after a few minutes, though, because it was a chilly morning and she was clad only in a short-sleeved pajama top and underpants.

I started to run a bath for June and went around the house collecting diaper covers, towels and other laundry to put down the chute, trying to get into the swing of a regular Monday morning. When I heard the bus pull up, we ran back to the porch. We were just in time to see Noah board the bus and ride off to his first day of the second half of elementary school.

The Free and the Brave

Posted on July 5, 2009 by Steph

On Saturday our nation celebrated two hundred and thirty three years of independence. I think for parents of small children, independence is always on the horizon. We marvel as our babies take their first steps or step off to kindergarten, but we are always focused on what comes next and the freedom we will receive when the child sleeps through the night or weans or potty trains or spends a few hours a week away from home. Independence for them means freedom for us, however bittersweet some of the milestones may be.

Beth had the day before the Fourth of July off work because it was a federal holiday. Noah had drama camp and if we could have found a sitter for June we might have had the rare freedom of a few hours alone together. Alas, it was not to be. Still, when Beth took Noah to camp, she offered to take June along and then they went to the playground so I had a nice block of time to myself. Not as exciting as a date, but pleasant nonetheless. After puttering around the house a bit and doing some work for Sara, I settled in under the silver maple in the back yard with a book (the collection of haunted house stories I received for my birthday back in May). I finished a story I’d started approximately two weeks before and read another in its entirety. It felt luxurious to finish a short story the same day I started it.

That afternoon we all went to pick Noah up at camp. It was the last day of the one-week session so there was a performance for parents, which consisted of skits of fables. Noah was in “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” He was a sheep. I was amused to find I could actually pick his “baaing” out from the general din. As we left, we ran into some counselors from previous years, who are now working with the ten-to-thirteen-year old group. They greeted Noah with enthusiasm and asked when he’d be in their group, which actually puts on real plays. Two years, we said. Noah’s been going to drama camp since he was just short of six (he started in the spring break camp). It’s hard to imagine him in the middle of the three age groups. June will be five and old enough for drama camp herself that year! I imagined both of them in camp at the same time. The mind boggles.

After camp was over and before our pizza dinner, we went over to the fountain. The fountain, a circular mosaic with jets of different heights (low at the edges, high in the middle) is a popular gathering place in downtown Silver Spring. In the summer, there are almost always some kids splashing around in it. On a hot day or on weekends, it can get quite crowded. Noah will dash into the fountain with abandon, though he avoids the biggest jets. June has been hesitant about even getting close enough to get wet this year. She was actually more daring last year. I think she might be old enough to process potential threats in more detail now, so while she’s still a daredevil on the swings, for instance, she finds herself scared of things that she used to enjoy, as my stepfather found out recently when he hung her upside down. We’d been at the fountain on Wednesday morning with a friend from music class and his mom and younger brother. June had gone in enough to get her bottom damp. I wondered how she’d be this afternoon. At first, she said she didn’t want to go in, but then she ventured closer. She stuck to the perimeter of the fountain, taking her foot in and out of the water, and experimenting with blocking the flow of water by stepping down on it. Every now and then it shot up, soaking her, but she kept going back, taking her own exploratory steps toward independence.

As the kids played in the fountain, Beth showed me printouts of cars. Our fifteen-year old car was starting to show its age after 126,000 miles. There have been a series of problems, but the latest, multiple oil leaks, would have cost $2,000 to fix, so we were in the market for a new (to us) car. Beth wondered out loud if the car we buy now would be the last practical family car before the Mustang convertible she imagines herself driving once the kids are grown. Probably not, she mused, as we are buying used and ten years is the best we can expect. The second to last, maybe, she said. I said she could have the Mustang if we could move to the beach. She said she’d drive it around Rehoboth and hot women would flock to her. But she’d turn them away, I said. Of course, she added. Sometimes fantasy is its own kind of freedom.

The next day was the Fourth. We marched in Takoma Park’s parade, with the contingent from June’s nursery school. Last year Noah and the Bumblebee’s older sister held up the banner for the whole parade route, but this year he opted to ride his scooter instead. At home, just before we left, we deliberated—stroller for June or tricycle? The stroller would be faster and easiser to control, but she loves her trike and it lets her do at least some of the work of propelling herself (there’s a stick in the back a parent can push). We decided to ask her. “My bike!” she exclaimed, and so it was. When we got to the staging area where kids and parents were decorating their wheels with crepe paper and balloons, we saw that the Ant has the exact pink, purple and yellow trike June has. We got it at an independent toy store in downtown Takoma (http://www.takoma.com/archives/copy/2006/08/guiltFreeTP.html); I wondered if they did, too. I wrapped red, white and blue paper around the trike’s long handle and tied on a red balloon and a blue one, each sprinkled with white stars. And even though it did not match the color scheme, I also put on two pink ones, because June asked me to. As we worked and waited to get started, we chatted with other parents and said hi to the Squash Bug, resplendent in her pink nursery school t-shirt.

Finally it was time to go. As we marched, the Butterfly ran ahead of the banner and dropped behind, fluttering about like a real butterfly. For a while, he defected to daycare just behind us—they had a bubble machine. It was a long route, but June pedaled most of the way. Several families with kids who had been in Noah’s nursery school class, plus other friends, yelled to us from the sidewalk and waved as we marched through the streets of Takoma.

After we passed the judging stand and the parade was over, we stopped at an ice cream truck and indulged. (In our family Easter and Christmas are the two days of the year you can have candy in the morning and the Fourth of July is the one day you can have ice cream before lunch.) On the way home, we let Noah scoot ahead of us, as long as he stopped and waited for us at intersections. This is our normal rule, but because of the crowds, it meant often we could not see him. It was unnerving, but we have been trying to give him a longer leash recently. He goes on scooter rides by himself up and down our block and we have left him home alone for short periods of time (sometimes over a half hour).

We were all full from ice cream when we got home and tired, too, so we skipped lunch and June and I went to our bedroom for a nap while Beth and Noah went to get his hair cut and pick up a few groceries for our Fourth of July picnic dinner of veggie hot dogs, baked beans, corn on the cob, green bean and potato salad and watermelon. They were longer in getting home than I thought they would be, but when they arrived Noah ran inside, yelling that they’d bought a car. It’s a 2005 red Ford Focus with a roof rack. It looks like a mix of every other car Beth has ever driven during our relationship, all of which have been blue or red Ford or Subaru station wagons. This car is number four, so I guess the Mustang will be number six.

Today was the last day of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (http://www.festival.si.edu/) and we hadn’t been yet so we decided to go, even though it made for a busy weekend. Sasha called Noah this morning and asked for an afternoon play date. We wouldn’t be home, so we invited him to come along with us. Once June had napped, we all got in the new car and drove into the city. (Normally we’d take the Metro, but it’s been very slow due to the ongoing investigation of the tragic accident last month.)

All I wanted from this experience, I told Beth, was to listen to some pretty music, eat some interesting food, and take our annual picture of me and the kids by the Washington Monument. Every year the festival features three cultures. We entered the mall at Wales and I was immediately drawn to tent where a trio of Welsh musicians was playing. Noah and Sasha wanted to explore, however, so Beth went with them and June and I stayed at the tent, listening to a love song, a sea chanty, a song about a miner’s strike and some instrumental pieces. June was engaged for about fifteen minutes, and then she decided climbing up and down the bleachers was more fun than listening to music. Our section was not crowded, so I let her go. “Look how high I am!” she called to me from the top bleacher.

When Beth and the boys came back, we snapped the picture and sought food. It turns out the last forty-five minutes of the festival on its closing day is not the best time to try new cuisines. Almost everything was sold out. Beth got a small plate of Welsh cheeses and I got some fried plantains at the Central American food tent, but we were actually forced to go to the permanent food pavilion to get a hot dog and potato chips for Sasha and fries, cookies and ice cream for everyone else. It was not our most nutritionally sound dinner ever.

On the way back to the car, Beth, Noah and Sasha ducked into the Marketplace tent. They were the very last people allowed in. June and I straggled a few steps behind and were cut off by the guard after they entered the tent. A little while later, Noah came out with a cd of corridos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrido) and Sasha had an African shaker made from a gourd. We drove home, tired out from a weekend of celebrating. We were celebrating America’s birthday of course, but also June’s bravery in the fountain and Noah’s independence as he gracefully scooted through crowds and away from us, and all the small displays of gradually increasing independence we and our fellow parents see every day while we are raising children. Now it was time for the free and the brave to go home and go to bed.

A Prologue to Summer

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Steph

Noah started his summer vacation on Tuesday afternoon with a time-out. Sasha had a pool party to celebrate the last day of school, so Noah took the bus home with him. School was a half-day so the kids spent most of the afternoon swimming and playing in the yard. Parents and siblings were invited to come have a dip at 3:30, but the day was overcast and cool so I decided to skip that part. June and I showed up at 4:00 to collect Noah. No-one was in the pool when we arrived, but there were several kids chasing each other around the yard with water balloons and soakers. Noah came running around the corner and sprayed me.

“Noah, don’t!” I said, but he didn’t have time to stop himself. Well, that’s what I told myself at the time. Later I had to wonder. Because after explaining to him I didn’t want to get wet, I went to get his backpack and dry clothes from Sasha’s mom, returned to the yard and took a water balloon to the shoulder.

“That’s it, Noah! You’re having a time-out when we get home,” I told him and I marched him out of Sasha’s yard.

This wasn’t exactly how I wanted to start his summer break. I feel so ambivalent about summer since becoming the mother of a school-age child. On the one hand, for most of my life up until the point when Noah stopped attending day care at the age of four, summer was my favorite season. When I was kid and later an academic, it meant school was out. Summer meant free time or a peaceful period to research and prepare my classes for the coming semester. Vacations happen in the summer. More specifically our week at the beach, which for me is like Christmas, my birthday and every other holiday of the year all rolled up into one, happens in the summer. But now summer, at least most of the summer, means less free time, more responsibility, more demands on me. But every year I harbor the hope that this year it will be different. I will have a better attitude. I will help Noah use his downtime in a constructive, creative and enriching way. Noah will not whine, “Mommy, what should I do?” the instant his computer and television time for the day is over. He and June will not fight constantly or need me to do different things at the same time all day long.

So… That might happen, I suppose. It’s kind of early to say. We’re only on day three right now. Here’s how we did on day one:

Because I know how to show an eight-year-old boy a good time, the first thing we did on his first full day off was to go to the post office. I’d been meaning to squeeze in a trip the previous morning on the way to Circle Time at the library, but I had other errands and it occurred to me that whenever we go to the post office, June asks if we can stop at the nearby playground but we’re almost always in a rush to go somewhere else so we rarely do. So I mentally blocked off most of the morning for post office and playground. It’s been rainy, though, so I took the precaution of telling June we’d go to the playground if it wasn’t raining. As we were leaving I went outside to check the weather and found it was drizzling. I mentioned this to June, as I started to help her into her raincoat and she ran out onto the porch yelling, “It’s not raining!” Then she burst into tears. Clearly, she really wanted to go to the playground. I told her we still might be able to go.

After the post office, we ducked into Everyday Gourmet. I got a latte and the kids got chocolate milk and juice and split a cranberry scone nearly the length of June’s head. Thus fortified, we ventured back into the rain. It was just misting, really, so we headed down the hill to the playground. I’d brought a towel to dry off the equipment and I thought we’d play briefly and then head home. Well, somehow we ended up staying almost an hour– until it started to rain in earnest. By then the towel was sodden, from having performed double duty on some of the slides and the motorcycle seats and the butterfly-on-a-spring. Even so, the seat of Noah’s sweatpants were soaked and June’s pants were all over mud. The kids had so much fun and played so well together, though, I couldn’t bring myself to make them leave. June loved riding in the motorcycle sidecar and urged Noah to make it rock faster and faster. Then he showed her the path through the underbrush where he has always liked to explore and hide and it was as if he’d shown her a secret treasure, which in a way, I suppose he did. I sat on a bench and watched them roll rocks down the hill, remembering nursing a tiny June on that very bench three summers ago and wondering where the time went.

When I finally said it was time to go, they were ready. We got home in time to watch Big Comfy Couch (which is not one of my favorite kids’ shows) and Between the Lions (which is). After lunch I was more than ready to nap with June. She and I were both sick and I hadn’t been sleeping well for several days because of it. I read a little to Noah (we started the first book in the Series of Unfortunate Events that day—I read part and he reads part) and then I went to lie down. He decided to play with a ball outside, which normally I’d be happy about—it’s an outdoor activity and he was getting some exercise dribbling and kicking it around. The only problem was he was doing it right outside our bedroom window. Soon June was awake. I left her and told Noah to move to the front yard and came back to help her go back to sleep, but it was too late. No more nap for June and no nap for me. I almost cried. But I pulled myself together instead. I quizzed Noah on his sevens times tables and made peanut butter and jelly cookies (June helped mix). I watched more television with the kids and worked a little. I made corn chowder for dinner. Noah was out of computer and television time by the time I was cooking so I suggested he help me make dinner. Much to my surprise he agreed. He assembled the ingredients on the counter and then read me the instructions. Along the way, I explained why I was doing what I was doing, why I don’t peel the potatoes, why I use more garlic and less onion than the recipe calls for, etc. It was fun to cook with him, even though he didn’t want to get very hands on. While I was cooking I noticed June lying on the kitchen floor, her eyes almost closed. The interrupted nap and her cold had taken their toll. I scooped her up and laid her down on my bed. I read her a story and told her to rest while I went back to cooking. Sure enough, when I peeked in on her a few minutes later she was asleep. The first day of Noah’s summer break had wiped her out.

The next two days were similar, with some variations. Yesterday June and I were both feeling a lot better. In the morning we took a long puddle-stomping walk for our morning outing. June got a more comprehensive nap and Noah completed the first page in his summer math workbook and helped me make zucchini tostadas. (This time in addition to reading the recipe to me, he grated cheese.) In the evening, he helped Beth weed the sunflowers.

This morning June’s summer playgroup met for the first time. All the returning Leaves except one attended. (Since the lantern launch, we found out that the Dragonfly and probably one more of her classmates won’t be returning.) We also got to meet one of the new Leaves. June didn’t actually play with any of her school chums but she seemed happy to see them and play near them. The Caterpillar’s moms brought his newly adopted one-month old brother and everyone clustered around the tiny, sleeping child. Noah splashed in the creek and tried to build a dam with the Praying Mantis’s older brother and some other big kids who gravitated toward the water. In the afternoon, Noah and I worked on the eights times table and for dinner we went to Roscoe’s, Takoma Park’s new eatery. I was delighted to discover it’s not illegal to make good pizza in the suburbs after all. In between all this, the kids fought– a lot– but they also played a lot of games of hide-and-seek and catch-the-bubble (he blow bubbles and she chases them). They are still working on how to spend the all day with each other.

Right now Noah is experimenting with the keyboard we ordered for him when he expressed an interest in learning to play the piano. (We agreed to pay for half and he’s paying for the rest with birthday money from my dad and savings.) It arrived today. I hope it will give him hours of fun and learning this summer.

I still can’t believe second grade is over, and not for lack of ceremony at school. During the second to last week of school I attended not one, but two end-of-the-year programs for him, one in Spanish and one in English. Noah danced, sang and recited a poem. When it came time to read the postcard he’d written from his imaginary trip to Egypt (the end product of a social studies research project) he announced, “I chose this one because it’s the only one I finished and didn’t lose.” He reported this fact in a characteristically cheerful tone. Some things about him will never change, I suppose, but his teachers were both fond of him and pleased with academic performance this year. His standardized test results came back and he did exceptionally well. We also got his math placement for next year. He will be the accelerated math class, doing fourth and fifth grade math. Since he did third and fourth grade math this year, this was no surprise.

In the midst of Noah’s end of school activities, we had to ferry him to the doctor a few times. At his month-late eight-year pediatrician visit I asked to have his iron levels checked because he was looking pale to me and he was low on iron once as an infant. The iron test came back fine, but they did some routine tests on his blood and his white blood cell count was low, about a third what it should have been. It took two doctor’s visits to get another sample of blood because his veins can be hard to find, but finally a repeat test came back normal. Apparently the white blood cell tests can be a bit fluky. I trust the second test more than the first, one, though, because he didn’t seem like a kid with a compromised immune system. We were all sick a lot this past winter, except for Noah. In fact, June was sick the day we went in for the first test, but not Noah. And the vaccination he got the day of the first test didn’t faze his system either. The boy has an iron constitution. And good luck, too. While he was waiting for the bus on the last day of school, he found a four-leaf clover after just a few minutes of searching. (My sister and I spent hours looking for those when we were kids and I don’t think we ever found one.)

Three and a half days of Noah’s summer vacation have already slipped away. Will he teach himself how to play the piano, memorize his times tables, read all thirteen Series of Unfortunate Events books, break his record for how many times he can dribble a rubber ball? Quite possibly. Will he go a whole day or even a few hours without bickering with his sister? Well, that might be hoping for too much. But he’s home and he’s healthy and that seems like plenty right now.

Goodbye, Bugs! Hello, Leaves!

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Steph

About a week before the last day of school, June started observing mournfully from time to time, “I’m not going to be a Bug any more.” Then we’d tell her how when school starts up again in September she will be a Leaf, how fun the Leaves teacher is, how her friends will be in her class, her old teacher will come visit, etc. The only comment she had about the change was “Not good!” I understand, I really do. Change can be hard for any of us and how much harder must it seem when the nine-month school year that just ended represents almost a quarter of her life and when she’s leaving the sweet and gentle Andrea, her first teacher, her whole idea of what a teacher is? (She rarely calls Andrea by name—she’s just “my teacher.”) I also know she’s going to be just fine in Leaves. Noah had Lesley when he was in Tracks (she teaches both the 3/4s class and the 4/5s class) and she’s a warm, creative teacher with a deep, intuitive understanding of children. Noah adored her.

The last day of school was Thursday and it was my turn to co-op. After it was over, I told Beth it was as if we got the first and last days of the school year reversed. All the clingy, weepy behavior we saw from other children in the first weeks and months of the school year June displayed on the last day. She’s been highly emotional and prone to tantrums all week, but in general June’s public persona is quite different from the personality we see at home. She’s usually calm and happy at school and while she does like to play with me, when I have a co-oping job to do she accepts that and plays independently or with other kids.

When we arrived Andrea had set up an obstacle course in Imagination Station and the children were running and hopping through it. June joined it. Eventually, though, some kids drifted off to other activities and a few others got the idea that the cones, domes and hula hoops could be put to other uses. June was aghast and started crying and trying to pull these objects away from other children so she could put them back where she thought they belonged. Andrea skillfully negotiated a compromise whereby most of the domes would stay on the course and the boy who wanted to line them up elsewhere could have a few for that purpose. When it was time to clean up, Andrea praised all the children for their efforts and told them they were acting like Leaves.

During Circle Time I slipped off to the kitchen to prepare snack. I could hear Andrea instructing the kids on how to sit as the Leaves do at Circle Time (along the perimeter of the rug instead of all over it). Then she talked to them about the Leaves class and how and all of them except the Grasshopper, who is moving to Seattle this summer, would be getting new symbols and returning as Leaves. “I will miss the Purple School,” the Grasshopper said. Then they sang the song they sing each morning, “Here We Are Together.” I thought about how it was the last time they would be all together as a class and that’s when I started to get choked up. June’s not the only one who is sad to see the Bugs class end.

I didn’t have long to wax nostalgic, however. I had the dishwasher to unload and the table to set and the water pitcher to fill and hummus and baby carrots to get into serving bowls and apricots to slice and place cards to put on the table. I discovered most of the glasses had been left dirty in the sink and I needed to hand wash them. I finished up just as the kids were filing into the room.

I didn’t really have time to think about where I was setting the cards and by coincidence all the three of the children with co-oping moms ended up at the same table, which meant they couldn’t all sit with their mothers. I sat at the other table. June didn’t like that so she came over and sat on my lap. I thought about it briefly and decided it was best to let her. After snack, June played happily with play dough and made rock gardens with pebbles and sticks and fabric flowers while I loaded the dishwasher. Every now and then she would run over to show me her creations. As time wore on, though, she wanted me to hold her and she also wanted to go outside and she got increasingly vocal about these desires. Andrea suggested she go watch the slide show of photographs of her class running on the computer in the hallway. There were a few other kids sitting down watching it already and I joined them.

While we were getting raincoats and boots and backpacks on to go out on the playground, June, who was standing next to me, started to scream. “What happened?” I asked. I hadn’t seen because I’d been helping another child. In perfect unison about a half dozen kids chorused, “So-and-So hit June!” I separated June and the other child, but in the rush of getting everyone out the door, I failed to talk them both through the incident as we’re supposed to.

Out on the playground, June stomped in the big puddle on the sand pit tarp with several other children. Then she went to the water table and gave a doll a bath. There were a few property disputes involving dolls and sponges but the Dragonfly’s mom and I managed to negotiate them pretty well, considering both of our daughters were involved, which can make it tougher.

All of a sudden, June realized she was soaking wet. She’d been wet for some time; her boots had filled with water while she was splashing in the puddle and her leggings were sodden halfway up her thighs. But now it was unbearable. I took off her boots and emptied the water onto the ground. I stripped off her socks and put them in my raincoat pocket. I slipped the crocs she’d been wearing inside onto her bare feet but almost immediately they were wet and sandy, too, so I spent most of the rest of the outdoor playtime carrying my weeping daughter around the playground. She was wet! She was sandy! She couldn’t take it anymore! I expected that dismissal would be emotional, but I was so preoccupied with managing June and with figuring out how to load the stroller with all the things we were bringing home—the bunny she insisted on bringing to school that day, her boots, her spare clothes, her journal, her paper and wood lantern, etc.—that I didn’t have much time to dwell on the fact that we were leaving our last Bugs Class.

At home, I removed her leggings and replaced them with sweatpants and dry socks. I made her grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch and we watched Between the Lions, read some books and she went peacefully off to nap.

Beth got home from a business trip that evening and one of the first things June wanted to know was if she was still a Bug or not. Beth told her that when she put her lantern in the water the next night, she’d be a Leaf. The Lantern Launch is a cherished end-of-the-year tradition at the Purple School. All the children make lanterns and float them on Constitution Gardens Lake (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_Gardens) after a series of speeches by teachers and parents and after the teachers receive their class gifts and the children receive their goodbye gifts from the teachers.

Most years the Lantern Launch goes on rain or shine, and it’s kind of a running joke among parents that it always rains. It certainly did the year Noah attended the Purple School. We spent more time huddled under a tarp than outside it and even so, everyone got drenched. So, I was shocked (and pleased) when I checked my email around noon on Friday and found the Launch had been postponed due to unseasonably cold and seasonably soggy weather conditions.

That evening, we decided to attend the carnival at Noah’s school we’d thought we’d have to skip instead. It was being held inside due to the rain and it was crowded and hot and loud, but the kids had fun. Sasha found us almost immediately and he and Noah disappeared into the crowd holding hands to go explore the games. June got a teddy bear tattoo on her arm, won finger puppet for tossing a ball into a hoop floating in water and went on the bouncy castle (two times) with the Praying Mantis, whose brother is in kindergarten at Noah’s school. Everyone ate pizza and the kids got Starbursts and a good time was had by all.

Late Saturday afternoon we headed out for Constitution Gardens. We found our group and spread out our tarp with the rest of the families and picnicked on crackers and cheese and watermelon. Kids ran around and splashed at the water’s edge. I watched a pack of kids from the Tracks class dash over the bridge, swerving like a flock of birds, and I thought about how much more of a group mentality five years olds have than three year olds do. I tried to imagine June and her classmates two years from now, graduating from preschool. It’s hard to fathom, but I know that day will come and probably sooner than I think.

When it was time for the Bugs to receive their gifts from Andrea, June hung back, clinging to my leg. I think the idea of going up to Andrea with a big crowd looking on and clapping was intimidating, and I wondered if I would have to go with her, but I said, “Go on,” and she did. She looked delighted when Andrea gave her the little birdhouse with her hornworm symbol on it and she clutched the little book of monthly poems Andrea had recited to them every day at dismissal and the photo CD with pictures of all the children. (We’ve been reading the poem book and watching the photo CD over and over.) She allowed Andrea to hug her briefly, then ran away as fast as her little legs would carry her.

During the presentations for the older classes, the Bugs families converged to eat a goodbye cake for the Grasshopper, decorated with a guitar, because he loves music. I went back to the speeches during the Tracks class presentation and saw the children receive seedling evergreen trees. Lesley read a poem about how we plant the ship when we plant the tree and then said the Tracks were embarking on the great journey of education and she was glad to have taken the first few steps with them.

The launch is always beautiful. The colorful paper lanterns float on the water with its reflection of the Washington Monument; the children’s faces are intent on pushing their little crafts out onto the water and pulling them back with the attached string. In the invitation, Lesley explained that the lanterns symbolize how we launch our children out into the world, and then pull them safely back in.

When the bottom of June’s lantern touched the water, she asked Beth, “Am I a Leaf?” and Beth said she was.

Goodbye, Bugs! Hello, Leaves!

Bon voyage, Grasshopper and family.

Dandelions Gold

Posted on April 18, 2009 by Steph

We should not mind so small a flower—
Except it quiet bring
Our little garden that we lost
Back to the lawn again.

So spicy her carnations nod—
So drunken reel her Bees—
So silver steal a hundred flutes
From out a hundred trees—

That whoso sees this little flower
By Faith may clear behold
The Bobolinks around the throne
And Dandelions Gold.

By Emily Dickinson

“holy mother, now you smile on your love, your world is born anew, children run naked in the field spotted with dandelions”

From “Kaddish,” by Allen Ginsburg

Spring is losing its tentative edge. We’ve had a lot of rain recently and finally some warmer temperatures. The dogwood in our front yard is blooming and the neighbor’s azaleas are just starting to show some pink. The sunflowers and zinnias we planted in pots two weeks ago and brought in on cold nights are sending leaves up through the dirt. The cucumbers and beans are not doing as well. Beth thinks I didn’t aerate the soil well enough when I planted them, but the good news is we started so early there’s time to start over with new seeds. Beth just put lettuce and spinach in the ground today and she’s been industrious about tearing down and uprooting the vines that tend to take over the edge of our back yard.

In addition to things we’ve planted on purpose and the weeds we are trying to eradicate, we have our volunteers, plants we didn’t plant but which aren’t exactly unwelcome either. There’s a stand of daffodils that’s come up in the back yard two years running and is now finished blooming. I suspect a squirrel transplanted the bulbs from someone else’s yard. Last year I meant to move them to the front yard where more people can see them but I forgot to mark the spot and lost track of where they’d been after the greens had been mowed down. This year we have a yellow fish on a stick to let us know where the daffodils are, once it’s safe to dig up the bulbs. And of course, we have dandelions. Their little golden heads are popping up all over. We have a dandelion-neutral gardening policy. We don’t plant them, of course, but we don’t try to get rid of them either and I’ve been known to let the kids blow the seeds across the yard. I think that’s a basic childhood right.

As I walked to Noah’s school yesterday morning, I noticed the trees along the creek are all covered with their new, delicate leaves. They look like tall women in pale green dresses. I am not tutoring on Friday mornings any more. I gave it up as a lost cause after no one came to three sessions in a row. I decided my time would be better spent in Noah’s classroom, so I asked Señora C if she could use a hand and she said come on over. When I arrived at the classroom at 9:30, she looked frustrated. She’d been planning to have me make a lot of photocopies, she told me, but the copier was broken again. This reminded me that Noah’s afternoon teacher had mentioned the photocopier is constantly breaking down and I’d promised her I’d email the principal about it and express my concern but I had not yet done so. I filed that thought away for later. Señora C set me to work punching holes in handouts and putting them in a binder. She told the students who were finished their work to turn it and go to play in centers and she told everyone else to keep working. About a quarter of the class, including Noah, stayed seated or lying on the carpet filling out worksheets and the rest of them wandered over to play different math and science games with each other.

Señora C asked if I could tackle an organization project. There were piles of handouts all over a long table against the wall and half-filled cardboard boxes on and under the table. I tried to grasp the system but as I went through the contents of each box I couldn’t figure out the theme and what else what might go in the boxes. I was afraid of making it harder rather than easier for her to find what she wanted so after a while, I begged off.

She handed me an instruction sheet for the children’s science homework for the weekend and asked me to go to the office and see if they would let me use the administrative copier. I took it downstairs and asked. The answer was no, but the secretary said the machine was being repaired right then and should be working in an hour or so. I brought the message back. Señora C glanced at the clock. It was 9:50. I was leaving at 11:00. It didn’t look good. She vented a little about how frustrating the copier problem is. I completely understand how she feels. If I’d had this problem when I was teaching it would have driven me crazy, never knowing when I could give homework. I noticed the computer on the table and asked if she had access to a printer and she said yes. Then handout was pretty short so I offered to type it for her. Her version of Word was so old I needed to ask how to do the accents and tildes, but it didn’t take me long. She instructed me to send enough copies for her morning class to the printer in the library. I had no idea we might be doing anything illicit until I returned and she asked if anyone saw me take the copies from the printer. I said no one seemed to notice. She grinned and said, “Send the rest,” so I did.

After I distributed the homework papers, I circulated through the classroom watching the kids at the various centers. There was a grocery store where children bought empty food boxes with play money. The clerk had to make change. Two boys and a girl were playing a game with multiplication and division problems on flashcards. They were all lightning fast, especially Noah’s friend Sean. They were giving their answers in English and I asked if they were supposed to be doing this in Spanish. They switched over and it didn’t seem to slow them down at all. Noah was over at a table full of test tubes filled with different colored liquids. One child held a sheet of paper that said what each was. She had to make a pair that were similar in some way then the others had to guess both what the liquids were and why there were similar. The kids kept joking and laughing between guesses but every now and then the hilarity would get out of control. While I was over there I had to break up some roughhousing between Noah and Sasha twice (and Señora C did it once while I wasn’t there). As I made my way through the classroom I watched and praised, asked how the games were played, made suggestions about how to use the fraction flashcards, reminded kids to speak in Spanish, and opined that surely Señora C must have a rule against telling classmates to “shut up.”

“We say it all the time,” the girl responded.

“Well, only the girls,” said another.

It was an enlightening morning. I’m sorry Señora C (and all the teachers) have to deal with the balky copier, but overall the kids seemed engaged and happy. I didn’t know they were so likely to lapse into English, but I suppose that’s natural during the more unstructured center time. I told Señora C I’d be back in two weeks. As I left I touched Noah on the shoulder and said, “Me voy” (ìI’m leaving.î)

“Awww,” he said. That alone would have made it worth coming.

This morning we were all out in the back yard. Beth was weeding, I was mowing and the kids were playing with the hose and sprinkler. Or rather, Noah was. June was so busy getting adults to change her into her bathing suit and then back into her clothes that there really wasn’t much time for water play. I think what Noah was doing looked like fun to her, but when she’d actually try it she’d get cold and want back into her dry clothes. So back and forth she went. One of the times I was indulging her, she brought me her suit and a swim diaper. I sat down on the grass next to the mower and helped her undress. For a moment I looked at her little naked body, winter-pale in the strong sunshine, and I thought of that line from “Kaddish”: “children run naked in fields spotted with dandelions.” It’s a beautiful image in an otherwise bleak poem.

Maybe I’m like the volunteer daffodils in the back yard. I just needed to transplant myself to a different place where I could be of more use. Or maybe I’m like a dandelion, a bit of gold that bloomed where it fell and watches the children dashing wildly around it.

When She Got Three

Posted on March 27, 2009 by Steph

June turned three on Monday. It was a long-awaited milestone. For months, June had been telling us what would happen “when I get three.” (Because she pronounces it “free,” it often sounded like she was planning a jailbreak.) Most notably, she was going to “get bigger and bigger and bigger.” We tried to break it to her gently that while she’s growing every day she wasn’t likely to be noticeably larger on her birthday. The day was agonizingly slow in arriving. Every now and then she would observe with a sigh, “I’m still two.”

Round One: Saturday and Sunday

Eventually, the big day was only two days away. At lunch on Saturday June asked, “Who is coming to celebrate my birthday?” It was understandable she was confused about the plans because they were complicated.

“Ya Ya and Aunt Carole will be here this afternoon and tomorrow we’ll have cake and presents with them. And then on Monday it will be your birthday and you’ll have more presents. And then on Thursday, Grandmom will be here and you’ll have more cake and presents,” I told her.

June beamed. This was sounding good.

Beth’s mom and her Aunt Carole arrived as promised shortly after June’s nap. We went to Pottery Barn (http://www.potterybarn.com/index.cfm?page=viewall&cm_pla=Brand&cm_ven=Google&cm_ite=pottery+barn&cm_cat=Search&bnrid=3360101) to look at a cabinet Ya Ya had seen in a catalog and was considering purchasing. Then we were off to our favorite vegetarian Chinese restaurant (http://www.thevegetablegarden.com/) for dinner. June was the only one in our party who wanted chopsticks. After a few unsuccessful attempts to pick her noodles up with them she settled on holding the chopsticks with one hand and pressing the noodles to it with the other hand as she guided them to her mouth. Noah proclaimed the effort “very good for her age.”

Sunday morning everyone went to the farmers’ market to shop and listen to Banjo Man and we picked up a Max and Ruby movie and The Very Hungry Caterpillar at the video store as a special treat for June. After a lunch of leftover Chinese and a nap, June went to the playground accompanied by Ya Ya and Carole. There they ran into the Praying Mantis and her mother and grandparents. We had Mexican takeout for dinner — Noah printed out place cards in fancy script for the meal — and then June opened her presents from Carole and Ya Ya. She got a glittery green t-shirt from Oglebay Park and a big pink doll stroller. I had a feeling she’d like it because when she was over at the Dragonfly’s house in January she spent quite a long time pushing a teddy bear around in her friend’s doll stroller. Well, she loves, loves, loves this toy. Her rag doll and Purple Bear have been traveling all over the house in it. They go to coffeehouses, and the post office and quite frequently, to the hospital. (They are prone to breaking their legs.) We’ve also taken the doll and the bear outside for a walk through the yard and down the block. The stroller even came to the corner to meet Noah’s bus on Monday and Tuesday. You get the picture.

After presents came the cake. Per June’s instructions, it was a vanilla cake with green frosting and cherries and a numeral three candle on top. June had been asking to see the candle several times a day for the past few days. When June saw Beth carry the cake out, she gasped with pleasure. But then she stopped and said, “But I didn’t get bigger.” Apparently, she did not feel sufficiently big for cake. She soon forgot this obstacle, however, and after everyone had sung “Happy Birthday” in Spanish and English, as the birthday girl requested, we all dug in.

Round Two: Monday

On the morning of June’s actual birthday, Ya Ya and Carole arrived at our house from their hotel at 7:35, all set to walk over to Noah’s school where he gave them a tour and introduced them to his morning and afternoon teachers. Back home, I gave June a bath and we had a pretty normal day. Just for the day I let June wear the still too-big size 7 red sneakers we bought for her awhile back when Noah needed a pair. (They’ve been in the closet for weeks and she’s been coveting them.) We took our weekly Monday morning stroll to Starbucks where we picked up some chocolate muffins to take home for an after-dinner birthday treat. (We’d frozen the remains of the cake to save for my mom’s visit and I felt like some kind of baked good was called for on the real anniversary of her birth.) We watched Sesame Street, and read and napped and played outside. I made buttered noodles with cheese and carrots for the kids’ dinner and Beth and I had pasta with spinach, chickpeas and garlic sauce. June opened her presents from us and from Auntie Sara after dinner (all except the remote-control water bug Noah picked out for her–it had yet to arrive). I think the first issue of her Ladybug magazine subscription (http://www.cricketmag.com/ProductDetail.asp?pid=5) was probably the biggest hit of the evening. We read it cover to cover twice. When Noah said to June, “You’re three!” she insisted she was still two. “If you’re waiting for a growth spurt, Juney, you’re going to be two a long time,” he predicted.

Interlude: Tuesday and Wednesday

On our way to the library Tuesday morning I explained to June that when Ms. Karen asked if there were any birthdays this week, I’d say yes and everyone would sing “Happy Birthday” to her. “Ms. Karen will sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me?” June exclaimed in astonishment, as if she doesn’t see this happen to other children nearly every Tuesday.

Ms. Karen did not disappoint. “Are there any birthdays this week?” she asked. I raised my hand, pointed down to June’s head and held up three fingers. “She’s three!” Ms. Karen said. “I’ve known her since she was very little. Three! That’s a big one.” June was grinning. Ms. Karen was talking about her in front of the whole Circle Time crowd! Then said crowd — probably at least seventy-five kids, parents and nannies– sang “Happy Birthday” to her. Two of June’s Purple School classmates and at least six kids from past and present sessions of music class were there. A pair of twins from music class came over with their nanny after Circle Time was over and, with some prodding from the nanny, offered more birthday greetings. Then we left with a Frog and Toad book and a Sandra Boynton board book. It was a highly satisfactory outing.

Tuesday night I presented June with some new (to her) pajamas. Most of hers are getting small, so I’d paid a visit to the magic box of hand-me-downs earlier this week and washed two pairs of stripy pajamas for her. I changed her into the blue, orange and white pair. Beth made a big deal out of how big June was getting and how she now needed some new pajamas. June wanted to see if they were “good for jumping on the bed.” She tried it. They were very good for jumping on the bed indeed. As we snuggled in her bed, before she fell asleep she told me, “I’m big like you, Mommy.”

Wednesday morning, June’s music teacher was sick and class was cancelled. We went to the playground instead. As we got ready to go, I caught June admiring her new numeral three t-shirt in the mirror. When I asked her if she’d like to walk there or ride in the stroller, she said she’d walk, “because I’m big.” At the playground she wanted to try the big kid swings. I usually steer her away from these, especially when there are bucket swings available, but I decided to say yes this time. I pushed her very slowly as she held tightly to the chains with her mittened hands. When she’d had enough, without any warning whatsoever, she leapt off, landing gracefully on the wood chips.

Later that morning June and I boarded a bus and went to the co-op in search of allergen-free treats to bring to school for her birthday celebration at school the next day. There are a lot of allergies in June’s class (eggs, dairy, and corn are the big ones) so this was no easy task. Finding something wasn’t the problem; there were plenty of vegan treats at the co-op. I kept picking up cookies and slices of cake in the bakery aisle and thinking, “Ooh, this looks good,” but there was never enough of any one item for everyone and I had a feeling that bringing in more than one flavor of something could be an invitation to discord. So we headed over to the boxed cookies aisle and picked up some vegan chocolate alphabet cookies. We also rounded up twelve lollipops as party favors to go in backpacks and headed home.

That evening, Beth was studying the ingredients on the box and said, “Steph, I hate to break this to you but there’s corn flour in these cookies.” I had completely forgotten about corn! So, we had to resort to popsicles, which were already in the freezer and made from 100% fruit juice, even though Thursday was supposed to be rainy and in the 40s, not really the kind of weather that makes people long for popsicles.

Round 3: Thursday

The morning was cold and rainy, as predicted. June and I set off for school. Her bright yellow backpack, full of popsicles and lollipops, swung from the stroller handles. It was my day to co-op, so I’d be there all morning. Beth was planning to swing by for circle and snack time, to participate in the festivities. (In the meanwhile, she stayed home to do a little housecleaning in preparation for my mother’s arrival later in the day.)

At school, I had parking lot duty and then I helped three of June’s classmates with their journals. (The child draws a picture and the co-oper transcribes what he or she says about it.) Beth arrived around 9:35. “Beth’s here!” June squealed when she came into the classroom. At circle time there was such an abundance of maternal laps, June didn’t know where to sit. She started in my lap, ran over to Beth’s for a while, and then she returned to me. After everyone speculated about what the Ant, who was out of town, might be doing that day, and before the teacher read The Night Kitchen, everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to June. I watched her smile and I thought — this just never gets old for her.

While the kids ate a snack of baby carrots, pretzel rods and strawberries, I slipped the lollipops into their backpacks and set to work slicing the popsicles in half. The box was contained seven grape popsicles and seven cherry ones. I figured if there were fourteen of each every child could have his or her first choice of flavor even if they all wanted the same one. No one seemed to find popsicles an inappropriate treat. Between the eleven kids and five adults, we came close to polishing off the whole box. Beth left at 10:25. The kids spent the rest of the school day at the play dough table and on the playground. As I was getting June into her stroller, the Cricket’s mom came by to inquire how June’s birthday celebrations had gone and then she sang “Happy Birthday” to her.

My mother arrived late in the afternoon. As I finished making beans and rice and quesadillas for dinner, she played with the kids. June was taking her doll to the store to buy a balloon (in the stroller of course). Noah was the sales clerk who sold her the smiley face “Happy Birthday” balloon that’s been floating around the house since Sunday.

After dinner, June opened her final round of presents (except for the remote-control bug that’s still missing in action). Along with some clothes, Mom and Jim got her a personalized CD. Noah has a similar one they got him a few years ago. Your child’s name is sprinkled liberally throughout each song. He got it out to play it recently and June was transfixed. “The CD is talking to Noah!” she exclaimed. Later she asked me to play it again while he was at school. She seemed a bit disappointed when it played. I think she was hoping that in his absence it would address her. Now she had her very own CD. We put it on and when a female voice said, “It’s a great day, June!” before starting to sing the first song, she cried, “It’s talking to me!” Then when male vocalist began the second song she said, “Now the man is talking to me.” Later in the CD there’s a song with animal sounds. “The duck is talking to me!” reported an astonished June. Let’s just say she’s very, very happy with this CD.

After presents, we watched a DVD and ate defrosted birthday cake. In bed, June had some trouble getting to sleep. Over and over her arm stretched up, trying to reach the balloon string, which was now tied to her bed frame. She has had a wonderful week getting three. I don’t think she wants to let go. But she’s got plans for next year. This morning she told me that on her fourth birthday, she wants to bring chocolate chip cookies to school.

Two Mornings, or Something Worthwhile

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Steph

“I’m ready to go,” June announced for about the twentieth time yesterday morning. It was her first day back at school after an almost three-week-long break and she was raring to go. I glanced at my watch. It was 8:30, still a bit on the early side. Then inspiration struck.

“Do you want to walk?” I asked her.

“Yes!” she said in satisfied tone.

It was a bright, sunny morning after two days of miserable weather– steady rain and temperatures in the mid to high thirties. Now the air was cold, but dry. Everything looked clean and shiny. The sun sparkled on the wrinkly skins of ice that covered the puddles.

I hadn’t let June walk to school in a long while. I’d gotten tired of her pulling her hand out of mine and running away from me. But this morning June walked along with me, slipping her mittened hand into mine when we crossed the street or walked along the stretches of road that have no sidewalks.

We arrived at the school at 8:55. A few children had reverted to the teary goodbyes we saw so frequently in September, but not June. (I would have been surprised if she had, since she never cried in September either.) I helped her hang up her coat and backpack and washed her hands. Then I took her into the playroom where a group of children was building a castle out of blocks. I kissed the top of her head, said goodbye and left.

I walked home at a brisk pace, planning my much-anticipated time alone. I had just under two hours to myself. I spent about half of it reading and printing health newsletter articles for Sara and the rest reading other people’s blogs and watching the dvd with the comic-book style animated short film that came bundled with the Stephen King short story collection Beth got me for Christmas (http://www.simonsays.com/specials/stephen-king-nishere/?wsref=3&num=605&v_ref=). Then it was time to go back to school.

When June was dismissed from the front porch, she ran to me with a huge grin. I swept her up into my arms and asked her “How was your day?”

“Good,” she said. “I played with blocks.”

“It looks like you played in the sand pit, too,” I said. The long underwear bottoms she was wearing under her rainbow-striped jumper were soaked and encrusted with sand from the knees down. I surmised she’d been kneeling in damp sand for much of her playground time. There was evidence of painting on the toe of her sneaker, too. (I’d find quite a bit more when we got home and I took off her coat.) Blocks, paint, sand: all ingredients of a good morning. It must have been a tiring one, too. She fell asleep in the stroller on the way home.

This morning June wanted to walk to school again. We couldn’t, though, because I was going to Noah’s school to tutor. I wouldn’t be going back home while she was at school and we’d need the stroller for the walk home. (June’s usually pretty worn out by the 11:30 pickup.) On my way out of the parking lot, I talked to the Caterpillar’s mom. We’ve been trying to find a weekend evening when the Caterpillar and his moms can come over for a pizza dinner. It looks like we might not have mutual free time until February.

I am making one of my sporadic efforts to be more social. It doesn’t come naturally to me, but it’s a new year and a good time to stretch myself.

Tutoring has been difficult to get off the ground as well. I went to Noah’s school three times this past fall to tutor parents with limited English. Two out of three times no one showed up. I’d decided ahead of time this would be the last time if I didn’t get any takers today. I could look for tutoring opportunities elsewhere or volunteer in Noah’s classroom. I knew he’d like having me there, but I was more interested in actually teaching than in assisting his teacher with photocopying and other clerical tasks. The frustrating thing was that on the one day people did come, back in November, all three of them seemed enthusiastic and motivated and I felt like we’d even established a tentative rapport.

After that meeting one of them asked if I was an evangelist because I was wearing a skirt and had no jewelry on. I said no and the others conferred among themselves in Spanish, obviously trying to figure out the strange gringa. They decided I was “una persona sencilla. A ella no le gusta las vanidades.” (“…a simple person. She doesn’t like vanities.”) When I told my sister this story, she laughed and said their assessment of me was “remarkably accurate.”

I hurried down the path by the creek to Noah’s school. The meeting was scheduled for 9:15. In my backpack I had a bilingual children’s book I wanted to use in my lesson, a list of English vocabulary words from the book and a schedule of future sessions so I wouldn’t have to keep calling everyone on the phone. (My phone Spanish is painfully bad.) I also had a book (The Reader) for myself in case no one came. Once at the school I checked the cheery conference room with the big skylight where my group was supposed to meet. It was empty. I waited a bit, then dropped by the volunteer coordinator’s office and asked her to direct anyone looking for me to conference room. She let me know that one of the three women who had come before had a job interview and couldn’t come today.

The volunteer coordinator dropped by after fifteen minutes to check on me. I’d emailed her earlier in the week to say I wouldn’t be coming any more if no one came today. She urged me not to give up and offered to help publicize the group if I’d keep coming. I agreed somewhat reluctantly. I wasn’t sure there was a point.

I stayed in the conference room until 9:40, reading my book. Then I put on my coat, shouldered my pack full of teaching materials and left, feeling downhearted. On my way out of the school, much to my surprise, I ran into Sofía*, one of my students. She didn’t say why she was late, but she did have a message from the last woman, who was home with a sick child.

I thought briefly about the Caterpillar’s busy moms and how life gets in the way and sometimes you just have to keep trying to make something happen.

We headed back to the conference room. I’d asked everyone to bring an article from a newspaper or magazine to share. Sofía had a review of a Mary Cassat exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (http://www.nmwa.org/). She said she picked it because liked the accompanying pictures. It was short but advanced for her so we spent forty-five minutes going through it sentence by sentence. She read aloud and I helped her with pronunciation and gave her a summary of each paragraph after she finished it, partly in English, partly in Spanish. She was struggling but determined and clearly surprised that Cassat had received negative reviews during her lifetime. (The one about Cassat’s babies being ugly really seemed to get her goat.) I listened carefully to decide where she most needed help. The silent e trips her up almost every time, but after I’d explained it a few times she did manage to correct herself once.

When we’d finished reading the article we tried chatting in English for a while and finally we turned to the children’s book. Sofía seemed relieved to have something easier than the Cassat review to read. First we went over the vocabulary list and then I read the book to her. She stopped me a few times with questions. I asked her to bring a children’s book next time and encouraged her to read to her daughters at home in English and in Spanish. She said her English wasn’t good enough yet, but that she was improving. I gave her the tutoring schedule, every other Friday morning from now until the end of May.

As we left the room, Sofía tapped me on the shoulder and asked if we could meet once a week instead of every other week. I said I couldn’t. These sessions aren’t the kind of teaching I’m trained for and they leave me almost as worn out as June is when she gets home from school and I do need my alone time, but I was still happy she asked. It made the hour and fifteen minutes we’d spent together seem like something worthwhile.

*Not her real name.

Vuela, Vuela, Mariposa

Posted on October 10, 2008 by Steph

“Did your butterfly hatch?” Beth asked Noah on Tuesday evening. She’d gotten back from a nursery school fundraising meeting just in time to say goodnight to the kids.

“No,” he said and reported that the chrysalis had fallen off the branch and onto the floor of the cage. Señora C had warned him that when that happens sometimes the butterfly dies inside or emerges maimed.

The whole second grade at Noah’s school has been raising Painted Lady butterflies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painted_Lady). They arrived at the school as caterpillars, built their chrysalises and in some cases, had already emerged as butterflies. Noah’s been singing the songs for the butterfly release ceremony at home for weeks. I particularly like the lyrical “Vuela, Vuela, Mariposa” (“Fly, Fly Butterfly”), but he’s partial to “Soy Insecto,” (I’m an Insect”) which is sung to the tune of “Alouette,”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alouette_(song)).

The next day when Noah came home from school, I asked about the butterfly again in as casual a tone as I could manage. It hadn’t hatched. Noah wondered if it might come out without a head or wings. We decided it could not live without a head, but it might live, but never fly, without wings. I briefly imagined asking Señora C if he could bring his injured butterfly home if it was alive but could not be released with the others at the butterfly celebration on Friday. Then I remembered the cats. Better to leave it to Señora C’s mercy than theirs.

I wondered why I cared so much about the butterfly. Of course, I’m protective of Noah and I didn’t want him to be disappointed if everyone else’s butterfly hatched and his didn’t, but he didn’t seem all that anxious about it himself and his teacher had done a good job gently preparing him. Maybe it reminded me of those seeds he planted in kindergarten when he was having such a rough year. They never sprouted, even after Señora A let him plant new ones. I don’t want to go back there. Everything is going well in Ms. G’s class. Noah is always talking about it and he even said once it was “non-stop fun.” He doesn’t talk as much about Señora C’s class. For the first few weeks of school he was convinced she was just pretending to be nice and at any minute she might turn mean. (We have the second-graders who told him last year that all the second-grade teachers were mean to thank for this.) Then, eventually, he seemed to forget about her impending meanness. He stopped talking about it anyway.

My main concern for Noah in her class is the trouble he’s having focusing on the “problema del día,” a word problem they are supposed to solve when they first come into the classroom. He usually doesn’t finish it. He says he gets distracted thinking about other things or looking at the air vents in the ceiling and then time’s up. Early in the year, Señora C wanted to keep him in at recess to finish them but she must have changed her mind about that because she never did it. I’m unsettled about the problema del día. I’m not sure how important it is to her. She’s never contacted us about it. I guess we’ll find out at the annual parent-teacher conferences in November if I don’t email her about it first. I’m also not sure why Noah is having such trouble with it in the first place. He loved the problema del día in Señorita M’s class last year. Beth thinks it might be because he has Spanish in the morning this year and last year it was in the afternoon when he was already in the swing of school. He’s a morning person, though, so I’d almost expect the opposite, for him to flag as the day goes on.

Whatever the reason, we see similar behavior at home when he’s doing his homework. I remember writing last year that Noah always did his math homework in a snap while he could drag out the language arts assignments almost indefinitely. This year it’s the opposite. He can still take his own sweet time with his English homework, but often he gets through it pretty quickly. That’s almost never true of his math. Señora C sends home six to ten pages of homework on Fridays. It’s due the following Thursday. Most weeks we try to get Noah to finish the whole packet over the weekend because it takes him so long we’re afraid to leave it until the weeknights. Sometimes it eats up the whole day.

You may have heard parents complain that their kids get too much homework, that it has no instructional value and cuts into family time. This isn’t that blog entry. I believe in homework and while I’m not sure he needs quite so much, I don’t think it’s too hard. He’s doing third-grade math this year and I think he could probably do even more advanced math. One recent weekend when he was supposed to be doing his homework, Beth discovered he’d put it aside in order to practice what he calls “hourglassing” numbers. It’s a method of averaging he invented. He calls it that because of the symbol he puts between the numbers that looks like an hourglass. Instead of adding the numbers together and dividing by two, he divides the numbers by two and then adds them together. The result is the same, of course. But he doesn’t even know he’s invented a new way to average because they haven’t gotten to averaging (or division) at school yet. Meanwhile, Beth observed, as he was doing this, time was slipping through the hourglass and his actual homework remained undone.

Noah had Thursday off school for Yom Kippur, so I knew we wouldn’t find out about his butterfly until the day of the celebration. I was planning to go. I wanted to see him and his classmates recite and sing their bilingual butterfly poems and songs and I wanted to see his friends’ butterflies released, but I was a little sad that his probably would not be among them.

There’s a concrete amphitheater with two sides on the playground. Students sat on the long side and parents and siblings on the short side perpendicular to it. There was a bustle of activity as volunteers passed out lyric sheets to students and parents alike while teachers brought out the mesh cages that held the captive butterflies and their temporary habitats. Students walked around showing the audience a long poster board with butterfly photographs on it. Finally, the celebration began. The teachers quizzed the students on butterfly trivia in English and Spanish. I learned a few things I didn’t know. Caterpillars have six eyes, for instance, while butterflies have only two. Also, caterpillars’ bodies have six segments, three of which become the chrysalis and three of which become the butterfly.

The poems and songs came next. A teacher accompanied the children on the guitar. When they got to “Soy Insecto,” I realized that despite the fact that at least one hundred children were singing, I could hear Noah’s voice clearly singing: “Cabeza, thorax, abdomen/Abdomen, abdomen/Oh oh oh oh.”

Then the teachers released the butterflies. It wasn’t the dramatic explosion of wings into the sky I’d imagined. Once the lids were unzipped from the cylindrical cages, a few butterflies fluttered cautiously out, then a few more, while others stayed in the cages. The teachers lifted them gently out and shook them into the sky. I tried to get a picture but they were small and fast and I was too far away. It was exciting enough for the kids though. Every time a butterfly emerged there were shrieks from the bleachers.

Eventually, the kids were allowed out of their seats and Noah came over to see June and me. “Where’s your butterfly?” I asked, after we’d chatted a bit.

He motioned to the sky. “Up there,” he said.

“It hatched!”

He nodded. It occurred to me to wonder if Señora C had emptied Noah’s butterfly’s chrysalis on the sly. All the class’s butterflies were in the same cage so there was no way to tell which one was which once they hatched. But if she’d been planning to do that all along, why would she have even told him it might not live? I decided to believe the butterfly was with all the rest of them flying above the playground or resting on the pavement.

Ms. G was passing out popsicles and we all got one. (This was the highlight of the butterfly ceremony as far June was concerned.) I asked Ms. G if she had any more instruction planned (it was twenty five minutes before the end of the school day) and she said no, that children whose parents had come were free to leave with them.

So we left school early. Noah wanted to pretend we were robbers plotting to steal all the school’s computers. I said we could, but I wanted to ask him about some real things first. Okay, he said.

“Do you remember at the beginning of the year when you were worried Señora C would be mean?”

“Uh huh.”

“Do you think she’s mean now?”

“Not really.” He hastened to add that those second-graders had told him that just one of the second-grade teachers was mean and he didn’t know which one it was but now he knew it wasn’t one of his teachers. This was revisionist history, but it seemed important to him to save face for his misperception, so I didn’t question it.

“How about the problema del día?” I asked. “Are you finishing it most of the time?”

“Weeeell….” He paused. “I finished it today!” he concluded brightly.

“Great,” I said, deciding to leave it at that.

“We’re robbers now, okay?” Noah said, tired of this boring reality-based talk. And in a way, it felt like we were robbers, cheating fate by swapping a mean teacher for a nice one and a dead butterfly for a live one.

All Dressed Up, But Where to Go?

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Steph

“Why are you dressed up all fancy?” Noah asked me as we headed out the door to wait for his bus. Apparently, a denim skirt and a white turtleneck qualify as fancy at our house. Okay, maybe it was the tights. Tights have practically become a Thanksgiving and Christmas-only wardrobe item since I stopped teaching.

“I’m going to your school today,” I told him. I’d volunteered to tutor parents with limited English at Noah’s school and today was my first day. Communication from the school had been spotty so I wasn’t sure if there was going to be any training first or if I was supposed to jump right in. I’d packed some lined paper, two sharpened pencils and two sections of The Washington Post in case there were no materials to use. I thought I’d ask Alba* which article she was interested in reading and either have her read aloud or I’d read to her while she followed along, depending on her level of proficiency. Then I’d ask her to write a little about the article if she could.

After I dropped June off at school I walked down the path along the creek to Noah’s school. I signed in at the office, put a Volunteer sticker on my shirt and asked for directions to the Family Room.

It was a small room with chairs, a sofa and a table laden with food—grapes, bread, some covered dishes. There were a half dozen Latina women and several kids all talking in Spanish. One woman was feeding a baby grapes but no one else was eating.

“Is Alba here?” I asked in English. All the women shook their heads. I sat down in the only empty chair. Conversation resumed. I could follow it a little. One woman was afraid the baby would choke on the grapes but the women feeding her said she’d be fine. A few people wondered where Alba was anyway. Mostly, though, I was lost.

After a while I noticed one woman was helping another fill out a form. They were trying to figure out whether the unrelated persons who lived with her were part of her household or not. This must be Ms. B, the volunteer co-ordinator, I thought. When they’d finished with the form, I introduced myself in halting Spanish and said I was waiting for Alba.

Ms. B didn’t seem surprised that she wasn’t there. She suggested we switch over to English, said she’d assign me another parent and took my contact information again. She asked if a teenage boy would be okay. I said sure. I used to teach college freshman and I actually miss teenagers. She mentioned he was close to illiterate in Spanish and English. I said that was fine. It would be completely out of my experience, as the ESL students I’ve taught have for the most part been well educated in their native languages and advanced enough in English to have graduated out of ESL classes. But, in for a dime, in for a dollar, I thought. I have a lot of reasons for volunteering. I miss teaching terribly, but I’m not sure if it’s the pure act of teaching I miss or just the luxury of discussing my favorite books and my favorite ideas about them with well-prepared, enthusiastic undergraduates. I’d like to know. It might help me decide what to do with my life.

Ms. B thought for a while and reconsidered. She wasn’t sure how motivated the boy was and she wanted to assign me someone who would actually show up. She said she’d get in touch with me. I took advantage of having a face-to-face meeting to ask a few questions. Would I be working on reading and writing, or just conversation? A mix. Was there a quiet place we could work? Yes. Would the school provide any materials? No. She suggested I look for something on the Internet. That wasn’t the answer I was hoping for, but I was glad to know anyway. I decided when she assigned me someone I’d try to find out what the person’s level of literacy was ahead of time. The newspaper could be too hard. Finally, she asked if I spoke Spanish. Apparently she’d forgotten we started the conversation in Spanish. “Un poco,” I said, and left it at that. She invited me to stay and eat–it was a meeting of the Padres Latinos club I’d walked in on—but I thanked her and declined.

I left the school a little let down. I’d been nervous and keyed up about doing something so new for me and it was disappointing not to get started.

I’m at a profound loss about what comes next for me once June’s in kindergarten. I know I’m not cut out to be a full-time stay-at-home mom for the long term. I miss the mental stimulation of work. Plus, I don’t make friends easily and I find staying home lonely and isolating. Sara and I recently discussed the possibility of ramping up my work for her in a few years. Sometimes it seems like the perfect thing. I’m good at the work, she pays me generously and because she’s my sister she’s very understanding of my home situation and my need for flexibility. On the other hand, sometimes I think I’d really like colleagues again, and a reason to leave the house that didn’t involve taking June to the library, Kindermusik or school.

While I was waiting outside June’s school waiting to pick her up, the Dragonfly’s mom struck up a conversation with me. She wanted to talk, of all things, about the pros and cons of working versus staying home. She works part-time and is thinking of quitting to stay home full-time. I said I might be a little atypical since I didn’t decide to quit my job to stay home with the kids. I lost my job and, after an unsuccessful two-year long job search, decided to quit looking for a few years and just stay home. Okay, I left out the part about my job search. It’s not that unusual for academics to look for work that long and fail to find any, but most people don’t know that and I’m painfully aware of how it sounds if you don’t.

What it kept coming down to, for the Dragonfly’s mom, was “Is it easier?” Again, I waffled. I do think the logistics of our family life are easier with me at home, especially now that we have two kids, but it’s hard in other ways. “You get frazzled,” she said, indicating she understood being with small kids almost 24/7 could be tiring.

I nodded. “And I miss office life, having colleagues, people to talk to…” I said.

“Adults,” she said. I nodded.

I didn’t give her any advice. How could I? I know what it’s like for a family to balance a full-time job, a part-time job and an infant. (Beth worked part-time from the time Noah was four months until he was thirteen months, while I taught full-time.) I know what it’s like to juggle two full-time careers and a toddler, and then later a preschooler. I know what it’s like to be pregnant and home with a preschooler. I know what it’s like to be home with two kids. But I don’t know what it’s like to be her. I don’t know her children’s temperaments, her husband’s role in the family, her hopes, her needs or her dreams.

Our lives can be so opaque. I was talking to my mom recently about how it’s ironic that Beth’s the one working now since I liked my job more than she did or does, and how Beth would like more time with the kids and how I’d some time away from them and a chance to do more outside my role as mother and how we’re both a bit dissatisfied with the way things stand.

My mom said she thought I liked staying home. I do like some things about it, I said, and I do. But I was surprised she didn’t seem to know how restless and sad I feel sometimes. I thought it showed. Then again maybe it doesn’t. I’ve worked at that. Part of the reason I started writing this blog in the first place was to help myself see the good things in my life at home, the little moments of domestic life that show how it is between the four of us. My New Year’s resolution for several years running has been to avoid self-pity, to focus on what I have and not on what I lost when I lost the academic career I trained for and loved.

I did get some things in return. I can’t say what without sounding sappy but if you’ve been reading, I hope you know.

This afternoon, June and I picked lettuce for salads. She loves picking things in the garden and sometimes brings me lettuce leaves when we’re outside and tells me they’re for dinner. I tried to help her rip the leaves off gently and not uproot the plants, but every now and then she’d hand me a lettuce plant, roots and all. I didn’t scold her. The garden will be finished soon anyway.

As I washed the lettuce, June asked me. “Are we in our house?” I said we were. “Are we fine?” Again, I said we were.

Do I like this life? Is it easier? Am I fine?

Often. Maybe. Yes.

*Not her real name.

Introducing the Hornworm

Posted on September 4, 2008 by Steph

[Show as slideshow]

“She had a choice of cricket or squash bug,” Taylor’s mom was telling me, admitting she’d hoped her daughter would choose the cricket for her symbol at the Purple School. The 2s class is called the Bugs class and all the children are identified on their attendance cards, on their backpack tags, on their placemats and on their artwork by their bugs as well as by their names. It helps the pre-literate set identify their own (and others’) possessions.

“At least I know what a cricket is. I had to Google squash bug (http://www.vegedge.umn.edu/vegpest/cucs/squabug.htm),” she continued.

I laughed. When June chose the hornworm (http://yardener.com/YardenersPlantProblemSolver/DealingWithPestInsects/PestInsectsInTheVegetableGarden/Hornworms) over the dragonfly during her teacher’s home visit the day before I’d looked up the hornworm, too. And, I, too, had been rooting for the better-known dragonfly.

“Is it an agricultural pest?” I asked. It is, feeding on (you guessed it) squash. The hornworm is a pest, too. The southern hornworm eats tobacco crops; the northern hornworm destroys tomatoes.

Maybe that’s appropriate. Early this summer before we had any ripe tomatoes in the garden, June picked a green one and brought it to me. I scolded her, mildly, I thought, but she’s been talking about it ever since. “I picked a ‘mato and Mommy was pretty bad,” she says. She has even gone so far as to scold me for picking ripe tomatoes.

I said I hoped the hornworm’s predilection for tobacco was not prophetic. The mother of Preston, the Bumblebee, said maybe since the hornworm destroys tobacco crops that June would grow up to be an anti-smoking activist.

The Squash Bug’s mom said that her own mother had been afraid that cockroaches and dung beetles would be among the selections.

We were all sitting around the Bumblebee family’s dining room table eating crackers and apple slices on a rainy Friday morning in late August. The last meeting of June’s summer playgroup had been moved inside (and graciously hosted by the Bumblebee, his mom and older sister, the Red Fox of last year’s 4s class). Considering it was the first time the Bugs had played together with toys, I thought it went very well. The Bumblebee’s mom kept bringing out new things to keep the kids engaged and to minimize conflicts and while we did hear occasional cries of “Mine! Mine!” (though never from the boy to whom the toys actually belonged), the kids got along pretty well.

I decided to transition from snack to our exit, since it was past eleven and I wanted to get June home before she conked out on me.

“See you at school next week,” the other moms called out as we left. Even though I knew school started in six days, it still sounded startling.

The six days passed. Although June spent most of her teacher’s home visit hiding from her, she was quite chatty about it for a few days afterward. “My teacher says it’s a banana phone,” became a refrain around here. (Andrea said June’s yellow toy phone looked like a banana.) Sometimes June would ask me what her teacher was doing right now. She knows Noah has teachers and was quite pleased to have one of her own, though I don’t think she was clear on exactly what a teacher does, other than come visit you at home and comment on your toys.

I was also pretty sure she didn’t have much idea what goes on at school, so two nights before her first day, I consulted the schedule Andrea gave us and I briefed her. June listened carefully as I told her she would play in a room full of toys and then the teacher would read a story and then everyone would have a snack and then they would play with play dough and paint. June’s eyes lit up at the mention of paint. Finally, I said, they would play on the playground. June wiggled with happiness. “Can I play on the playground now?” she asked. Patience is not her strong suit.

Yesterday, the day before school started, I ran through the schedule with her again a few times, hoping it would sink in and when events occurred in the order I laid out for her, she would feel a sense of predictability. Each time I did it, she was excited about a different activity. Once when I mentioned the teacher reading a story, she said, “To me?” in a delighted tone.

“To everyone,” I said.

That morning we ran into the mom of one of Noah’s nursery school classmates and his little brother, the Squirrel of this year’s 4s class, at the Co-op. The mom asked how I thought June would do on her first day. I said I wasn’t sure. She can be shy when she first meets people and she’s with me almost all the time so that initial separation could be rough. On the other hand, she does fine on the rare occasion we leave her with a sitter and she’s been to the babysitting room at the Y a few times and she liked it there by the second or third time. I wasn’t too worried. When Noah was her age he’d been in daycare for a year so a few hours a week apart didn’t seem as anxiety provoking to me as it seems to some of the parents of first children I’ve talked to at playgroup. Still, I was hoping she wouldn’t cry when I left. Parents are allowed to stay as long as they want on the first day and I thought snack might be the ideal time to go, since she likes to eat and she’d be content with a plate of food in front of her. However, that meant staying forty-five minutes. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to stay that long.

When I mentioned to her that after we arrived I would stay for a while then leave and come back to get her later, she said “Okay,” sounding completely unconcerned. I wondered if it would be that easy.

Finally the big day came. When June wandered into the bathroom around 6:45, looking sleepy and tousle-headed, Beth lifted her up and asked if she was excited about going to school today. June’s not a big talker when she first wakes up so she didn’t reply, but she did give Beth a big smile.

After breakfast I gave June a quick bath, taking care to get all the plum pulp out of her hair, and got her dressed. Noah admired her dress and we took some pictures in the front yard. Beth and Noah went to the bus stop and June and I sat on the front porch stairs and I read her Curious George Learns the Alphabet until it was almost time to go. Then we popped back inside so I could change her into a disposable diaper. She hadn’t removed her backpack, which she’d put on for the photo shoot and didn’t want to take it off for the diaper change. Then she didn’t want to get into the stroller. I promised her she could walk the last block and wear the backpack then. She was agreeable.

She was quiet on the walk to school, but when I told her it was time to get out of the stroller and walk, she was straining to get out before I could undo the buckles. We arrived at 8:55, just when the doors of the school were supposed to open, but almost everyone was there and the kids seemed pretty settled into playing with Duplos and the dollhouse and other toys. I helped June wash her hands and then Andrea showed her how to slide her attendance card into the chart. June gravitated to the bin of plastic sea animals and we played with them until she asked me to read her a book. I found a bookshelf full of books about the ocean (their first themed unit I guessed). I read her several of them.

I decided to go to the bathroom as a trial separation and then leave afterward if June didn’t seem too upset instead of waiting for snack time. There were only six kids attending school today. (The other six have the school to themselves tomorrow.) Of those six, three had co-oping moms, so there were only three kids who needed to separate from their parents today. I’d watched the Squash Bug’s mom leave without incident. The other departure I missed. Maybe it happened while I was in the bathroom. When I came back, June seemed fine so I told her I was going home and that I’d be back later to pick her up. June didn’t cry but she threw her arms around me wordlessly. Andrea came over, handed her the hot pink stuffed pig she’d brought from home and asked if she’d like to see the goodbye chair. This is a chair by the window where the children can stand and watch their parents walk down the sidewalk. June said, “Yeah,” and Andrea took her over there. As I waved from outside, June looked mildly concerned, but she wasn’t crying.

I walked home, arriving at 9:35, and I went to the backyard. I read a short story while lying under the silver maple. I watered and weeded in the garden. I went inside and read the online health newsletters I clip for Sara. I wrote a little and in no time it seemed, it was 11:15, and time to head back to the school.

As we waited in the parking lot for the kids to emerge from the playground, a couple moms talked about how they cried when they left their children. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even think about how I wasn’t crying. I wondered if there was something wrong with me. Later Beth assured me it’s just that we know she’s ready and she’s going to have a great time at school so it’s a happy occasion for all of us.

Andrea led the children to the front porch stairs. I expected more of them to bolt when they saw their waiting parents, but they (mostly) sat as directed and listened to Andrea read a poem about a bug. June watched me but stayed on the stairs. The poem had hand motions and some of the kids, June not among them, did the motions with Andrea. Then she dismissed them one by one. When Andrea called her name, June went to me. I swung her up into my arms and she gave me a very tight hug and then she laid her head on my shoulder. I asked her if she had a good time. “Yeah,” she said and then she asked for a pacifier.

Andrea said June was quiet for a little while after I left but that “it didn’t last.” She said June was chatty and seemed to be enjoying herself. One of the co-oping moms mentioned June especially enjoyed running up and down the hill in the playground. I know that hill well. June loved playing there when Noah had after school drama at the Purple School last winter.

On the way home, June told me about her day. The teacher read The Deep Blue Sea, one of the same books I’d read to her before I left. She ate grapes and “cracker animals” for snack. She played with yellow play dough and painted with green paint. I was surprised there was no evidence of this paint on her dress. She said she was hungry and thirsty. At home she devoured a plate of buttered noodles and another plum, even though usually lunch is her least favorite meal. After lunch, I took her to the bedroom and read her a story. And by 12:30, the hornworm was fast asleep.

Late in the afternoon, as I cooked dinner, she asked, “Can I go to the Purple School now?”

All For The Love Of You

A Chronicle of Suburban Lesbian Family Life

Category Archives: School

School Days, School Days

The Free and the Brave

A Prologue to Summer

Goodbye, Bugs! Hello, Leaves!

Dandelions Gold

When She Got Three

Two Mornings, or Something Worthwhile

Vuela, Vuela, Mariposa

All Dressed Up, But Where to Go?

Introducing the Hornworm