A Child

It seems I've always been around children. Older sister. Babysitter. Teacher. Aunt. Mother. Grandmother. And while I've a terrible time recalling names and dates, details and feelings from my own childhood are as accessible as the penny in my pocket— sitting on the front stoop beneath the shade of the sycamore rocking my Tiny Tears; hopping over sidewalk cracks on the way to my friend Denise's house; watching for my father from the little window in the sunroom; and on the happy days when I stayed at my Godparents' house, standing at the bus stop on the corner of 14th Street, waiting for my Uncle to emerge from the big green bus that carried him away from the glass factory where he worked.  My mother and aunt didn't work outside the home, but they worked, and I played, imagined, watched and waited beneath their watchful eyes. There were new babies, new homes, new schools (and new worries), but wherever I went, I felt safe and loved. I read books and made up songs and poems; I picked small blue flowers with fragile stems that grew between the cracks in the Brooklyn sidewalk and yellow dandelions that dotted the lawn in New Jersey.

When I was older, I asked my mother why the world had suddenly turned so bleak and sad. In addition to a spate of relatives dying, weekly current events were a painful reminder that the world had become an imperfect place.

The world hasn't changed, my mother said. There's always been sickness and war, and people we love dying. But the veil of childhood protects us. The world hasn't changed, but you've grown older. The veil has been lifted. 

I thought about it and realized my mother was right. While I was busy playing with Tiny Tears, Chatty Cathy or Patty Play Pal, while I hopped over numbered squares with Denise, or looked through picture books and wrote poems and songs, my mother and father prayed for peace and mourned the loved ones missing from their lives. The world hadn't changed— there was just so much I hadn't known.

My mother's response shaped my commitment to children and the firm belief that every child, whether in my home or my classroom, should feel safe and loved. Security gives us wings, I gradually realized.  For me the veil of childhood was lifted gently by early good-byes to sycamore trees and sidewalk cracks— by old friends sorely missed and new friends who were not always kind—  by current event articles cut from newspapers and pasted on looseleaf beneath the tender, watchful eyes of parents who loved me.

A new school year is beginning and I am confident that most teachers will strive, as I always did, to create secure spaces for their students to learn. Security gives us wings and every child deserves to fly—

something a child in a cage, separated from his or her family, can never do.