pre-school
Photo by Billy
We are looking for a part-time preschool for William for the fall, so I visit a Montessori classroom on the north-side of town. It’s a pretty old house with leaky taps and real art on the wall. The director meets with me and talks about the process of transition for toddlers: the teacher actually comes to your house before the school year starts; she brings a material from the classroom, something your toddler might touch, and leaves a photograph of herself….
I observe from a tiny chair and kids move past me, carrying trays of their own work. They are all but one, white children. The teacher is sitting on the floor, talking in the quietest voice. The kids steal quick glances at me. One girl brings me a cup of water, a thimble full really, and then backs bashfully away. I know this is the Montessori way, still I can’t help but be charmed.
The next afternoon I visit a different preschool on our south side of town. It’s closer, less expensive, although not terribly so. It’s housed in a pretty old building with new flower beds in front and a shady playground out back. When I ask about the program, the director tells me the times (7:30-6:30) and shows me around. At this school, there are nearly only black children, darker than William, the same color as me. I sit in a small chair and they come in close. It is near the end of the day. The teacher is gone for the day and the teaching assistant stands by the window. The cluster of two year olds crowd around me. They ask my name and lay books in my lap. “I like your hair,” one little girls says. She has white beads strung along her many braids. She shakes her head and the beads collide making a shimmering sound. I can’t help but be charmed.
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Filed under writing | Comment (1)solomon sound
Photos by Billy
Solomon Sound seemed even farther away with my boy, William: the high thatched rooftops, the slender bees in the coconut trees; the persistent breeze and the sharp, strange sound of those plain looking birds in the very early morning.
I’m very fortunate to have traveled to many faraway places; the intermittent discomfort of being completely out of place, of studying a strange plate of food in front of your fingers, seems nearly familiar to me, comforting.
But William has not been anywhere, really. He has not seen geckos looking like figurines and then flitting past so fast you can hardly believe your eyes. He has not heard the music of a million words spoken and none familiar to your ear. For William, Grandma’s house is a foreign country…
And at the same time, every experience in world is the same for him: strange, wondrous, his own.
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buenos dias
videos by billy
William at a beach somewhere south of Cancun.
Floating down a canal between switchgrass, wishing my mother a happy retirement from afar
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Filed under writing | Comment (0)bon voyage
William readying himself for our trip south of the border
Photo by Billy
Preparing for a big trip, I find myself the ever hopeful packer. It starts with energetic sketches of clothes lined up like they would never be in my closet…two tops for every bottom, two pairs of shoes maximum no matter how long I will be away. In my plans, I get the most from each item and prune away the unnecessary like limp phrases in a short story.
During the regular week, I pull my school clothes together at the last possible moment. And in the rush of morning minutes, I often run out the door with my sweater buttoned crookedly or lint in my hair. It’s no wonder that even after stringent travel preparations, my clothes always turn out differently in the suitcase: invariable rumpled, too noisy, or too plain. It’s so much harder in real life for me to edit properly, to get everything to fit together in just the right way.
But then too, there’s the slim possibility of poetry in the imperfect, the mismatched, the out of place.
check out another mother’s musings here.
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William in a life jacket, just to be on the safe side
