The Oregonian June 15, 2006
My turn – Building up a child’s world can nurture the parent, too
As with so many other decisions in parenting, it started out being all about our daughter. A place opened up for Franny in the lower elementary class at the Montessori School of Beaverton. We love the Montessori method of teaching and knew it would be a great place for her, and so we decided to make the move to a new school. That was four years ago, and as I said, it was all about Franny.
As the year began, we focused on the details of helping our daughter adjust. How is the teacher? Who are her classmates? Is she learning what she’s supposed to know?
There are meetings and phone calls with teachers and staff about details of Franny’s school day. We learn new names and faces. Soon the new faces become familiar, and we exchange waves and smiles as I drop my daughter off with a kiss in the morning.
And then, one day I am driving students to the ballet for a field trip, meeting other moms. During play dates to help our children become friends, the moms linger at the door, chatting at the drop off and pick up, getting to know one another –while doing this for their children.
The big fundraiser, an auction to benefit the school brings us together more and more. We work on projects for the auction, discussing the task at hand as well as problems at home, details of the job and the worries of parenting. We fold and stuff, type and copy, we laugh and smile, exchanging names and stories. The mothers of the little ones and bigger ones together, then moving on again into the rest of our day.
The projects grow, and we spend hours in the classroom working with the kids, drawing, sewing, watching the wonder in children’s faces. The next time you run into a mom in the parking lot, you tell her how special it was to work with her child. We linger at the end of the day to talk with teachers, to discuss our children and we share our lives a little, our cares, a hug.
It is always about the kids, but the tasks find us meeting in the park, in our kitchens, sharing a cup of chai before sitting down to sew the quilt. We take walks to discuss what’s going on with the children and find ourselves discussing the husbands, the siblings, life. We sign up at the auction for events that benefit the school and find ourselves in conversation on kayaking trips, cooking together and eating together, meeting to knit and staying to chat.
Gatherings that start as fundraising parties end as friend-making parties. Friends from different cultures, backgrounds, religions, brought together because of our children.
Eventually, though, the children grow up, and it’s time to graduate. Franny is so eager, her eyes shining with excitement, imagining life beyond her little school, these classmates she knows, these teachers she has always had. She is impatient for each day to pass, impatient for the next step.
I am not so eager, not so impatient –for in working every day to build a world for my child, I have built a world for myself.
Every bond that has buoyed my child has kept me afloat, every hand that has helped my daughter has reached out to me, every heart that has warmed toward Franny has opened to me. No, I am not so eager to move on, to leave this community, built for my child, but now, a home for me.
Ellen Hall Saunders lives in Cedar Mill with her husband and two children, ages 16 and 12. She is a writer, chef, volunteer and student of homeopathy.
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