Category: Milestone Moments

Posted in Milestone Moments, School, Takes a Village

Tribute to a School

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

When you have a brand new baby
and your mom dies during your first-born’s first-week of kindergarten
you never forget the steady presence of
Ellen
and gratitude swells  your heart forever.

And when that same kindergartener moves to first grade,
you thank HIS lucky stars, it’s
Judy
because no matter how distracted he is
she will find a way to love him.

And when the classrooms change and
Jodi
becomes his teacher for the 4th year in a row
it’s no matter-
for with her, his thirst for learning is unquenchable.

And though, like most parents, you fear the demands of
David
you watch your son take charge
of himself and his work
with a glad heart
–and yours tugs when it’s time for him to leave this room;
though he, surprisingly, is
ready…

Ready and eager to move closer to the doors
that lead out of Marlboro Elementary School…

And there,
like a butterfly
transforms from a child to young man
with
confidence & VOICE
so that you hardly think on teachers anymore
because with their art & skill, the learning has become his.

Rachel & Tim
could be the names of any of the souls
who have traveled the months or years
or even a lifetime on the path of learning–
like the preschool faces of Timmy & Zoe and Ferne

And you can’t help but flash on all those
named and unnamed–
board members and budget voters and volunteers;
parents & friends; coaches & subs…
ALL those who have caressed his movement
along the learning way
like the tiny cilia moving an egg
toward its fullest
EXPRESSION~

Mr. H, a lifeline, since day one
and Charlene’s music & dancing, from age 2
and Lauren with her smile
and there’s Pedro & Pam
David Tasgal & Ann
Nurses Susan & Whitney
Cindy to Wendy to Trowell to Chris
Wayne to Tim
Connie to Craig to Francie
Johnnie and Kirsten
Joanne to Janie & Christine

and ALL
the precious classroom assistants
who made it possible for a kid who preferred blocks until age 7
to learn to read
in HIS own time
so that now we must rip the books from his hands
to remind him to eat and to do chores and to talk
when once—TALKING– was all he did!

And was it poor Judy? or Jodi?
who gave the month of March over
to reading and no other pursuit (including homework!)
so that the words he once put OUT
FINALLY began to POUR in

And soon his classroom became
Cape Cod & New York
Costa Rica & DC
and marches on Capitols
lining up for rallies
door to door for a President

Leading to this moment where we find him
STANDING TALL
READY to VAULT
through the
EXIT of “old” MES
under the careFULL gaze of Gail

And home he’ll come
one last time
through yellow doors
delivered safely
once by Laura, forever by Gail
and seamlessly on toward Jackie.

I know now that it takes
a VILLAGE
to raise a child.

I’m so glad
that I chose
YOURS!

In gratitude for Lloyd’s 12 years of education in Marlboro, Vermont with special mention to Paul Redmond at Meetinghouse School where it all began!

Posted in Milestone Moments

A Love Story Stretched Thin by Time

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

Kelly Salasin

It felt like I waited a lifetime for my son, though it was truly only a handful of years. Once my clock began ticking though, each minute without this child was achingly painful, and each month without conception was another grave disappointment. Then, two promising pregnancies were followed by the devastation of miscarriage.

When a child did take root in my belly, past the six-week mark, and then over the steep hurdle of the first trimester, I broke down in tears- finally allowing myself to believe, just a little bit, that I might get to be a mother.

I loved those months with a baby inside me, feet tucked up under my ribs- both of us competing for space. I remember lazy summer afternoons lying in bed waiting for him to “appear” on the stage of my belly, and my delight with each passing of an elbow or foot.

My labor came on fast and early one rainy August morning. The baby was breech- also a surprise- as we had planned to birth at home. I dilated the last couple of centimeters in the back of an ambulance as it climbed over the mountain to the nearest hospital. Once again I felt the fear that I might not get to be a mother after all.

By the time I was wheeled into the operating room, the baby was fully engaged, and they literally had to tug him out of me. I only saw him for a moment before they whisked him away to the examining table. Two hours passed before they would release me from recovery so that I might hold this long-awaited child who looked so familiar.

Later when the nurses offered to take him “so that I could get some rest”, I refused. I didn’t want to spend another moment apart from him, ever again. I held him in my arms as much as I could, and I was agonized to find that hospital protocol prevented him from spending the night in my bed because of the anesthesia I had received. I lay awake most of night gazing at him in the glass bassinet beside me.

On the third day, I resigned myself to letting the nurses take him for a bath so that I might have a shower myself. As the water poured over my empty belly, I began to cry. I felt like I had lost the sweet friend inside. I began to panic and had to very firmly remind myself that the baby that I had been waiting for was just down the hall.

My legs were still wobbly from the surgery, but I hurried back as fast as I could to be certain he was real. Only he wasn’t there. I waited a few moments and then called the nurses who told me that he was under the warming lights and would be back soon. The seconds without him passed like hours, and I rang the station again. “I need him now,” I said with a desperation that surprised me. “I’ve waited years for this baby, and I don’t want to wait anymore.”

The next afternoon, I left the cocoon of the hospital to bring this tiny being home. I spent those early weeks holding him almost every moment of every day. “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” my friends told me, but I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t stop gazing at this miracle.

Almost a decade has passed since that time, and the depth of that love affair has been spread thin by soccer games, and lost teeth, violin lessons, playdates, and a myriad of laundry and dishes and carpooling.

It’s extraordinary to look back at my journal from those early days and be reminded of how intensely I felt. And to remember how painful it was when I first realized that the gift of motherhood came with the price of countless goodbyes- beginning with the separation at birth and stretched out over a lifetime. If I love this child this too much, how will I ever be able to do it, I anguished.

That awareness is no longer a part of my day to day life, but every now and then it creeps back up on me and I’ll feel that old familiar tug on my heart. Last week was a big one. It had started out as just another school day: rushing out the door, trying my best not to holler at him for taking too long to tie his shoes or for forgetting all his things.

On the drive to school, I drilled him on his spelling words, and then spent our last moments together in the parking lot having him write out those words that had stumped him. Just then, two young girls stopped their play to stare into our car.

What are they looking at, I wondered? And then I knew. They stood there eyes unblinking as my son and I kissed goodbye, and they followed him with those eyes onto the playground and down the hill where he met his friends at the tether ball court. He never even noticed. But I did.

There it was, another tearing, another good-bye that I would have to face someday–another woman. There would be years perhaps before this one came upon us, but the tugging had begun, and it felt like a needle had pierced my heart.

Posted in Milestone Moments, Teens

The Little House & Me

Posted on by Kelly (of rituals)

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Do you know the story of The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton?  It’s a book published in the forties with a sweet little house on the cover and a big contented sun on the back. It’s been a lifetime favorite of mine.  (What more could a long-ago child want?)

The story begins like this:

Once upon a time there was a Little House way out in the country.  She was a pretty Little House and she was strong and well built.

Her-story continues as the Little House watches the seasons pass from her hill in the country and is soon surrounded by a village, and then a town, and finally—by a city–where she is so crowded in by buildings that she can no longer see the sun or the moon.

The Little House becomes shabby and misses the apple trees and daisies that once grew around her.  No one wants her anymore.

I pulled this thin paperback off my child’s crowded shelves with the others that he had grown too old to enjoy.  But rather than pack The Little House with the rest, I placed her on my writing table, sensing that her story and mine were somehow aligned.

Once upon a time, I was a little girl, pretty and strong, living in the country—of childhood.  There were daisies and apple trees and plenty of spaces to grow and imagine and thrive.  But as the seasons passed, thoughts moved in and troubles and worries crowded out the moon and the sun –and soon, I grew shabby too.

So shabby perhaps that my own father decides to travel during the week that I have planned to visit my family at their seaside home.

I sit on the porch of my own Little House in the mountains and sob, wondering how I have become so unworthy.  It’s true, that at 45, I am an old daughter, with chipped paint and crooked shutters, but so is my father, older and shabbier still.

My son finds me on the porch, and sits beside me in my grief, placing his hand on my shoulder.

After I finish sobbing, I tell him that he might be ready to have a girlfriend after all. (Just the day before, I read from a book on teens that young men aren’t comfortable enough with the intimacy required to be in a relationship.  In less than 24 hours, he’s proven that wrong.)

At 14, this same son, leans over my bent neck at the dinner table and kisses me before heading to the sink with dishes.  It’s an act of tenderness that ripples through my heart and sorrow. He hasn’t kissed me of his own accord in years—and never on the neck like a man might do.  I am both touched and shakened by his sweet and mature response to grief.  I begin to feel less shabby.

It is the great-great-grand daughter of the man who built the pretty Little House who comes to retrieve her from the crowded city.  She puts the Little House on wheels and takes her over the big roads and the little roads until they are back in the country.

So must I find my worth–not among my father’s crowded life–but in the wide open expanse of love that surrounds me when I move away from troubled thoughts.

As the Little House settled down on her new foundation, she smiled happily. The stars twinkled above her…A new moon was coming up… Once again she was lived in and taken care of.