A Child's Joy

The pool is covered.  The school bus picks up the neighborhood children.  My departure to Moscow is imminent. Nostalgia sets in.  As trees shed their dry leaves onto the vacant pool deck, I sit in a lounge chair sipping a cup of chamomile, already missing the sounds of cannonball splashes off the diving board, voices yelling, “Grandmom, look at me!” and the quiet tinkling of the fountain touching the pool’s surface like a gentle rain.  Thoughts of my daily pool duties -- vacuuming debris off the bottom, scooping it off the surface, and emptying the skimmers of leaves, crickets, and bloated frogs -- can’t compete.  

I glance over to the 3 steps that ease into the shallow end, picturing Luke.  The oldest of our grandchildren at “almost-four,” he has logged more time in the water than the other three.  Most of that time has been spent on the steps.  Content to play with Tiger, Buzz Lightyear, Woody, a couple of crocodiles and a Noah’s ark that sinks, he has refused to venture into less secure depths saying, “No, no, I don’t want to,” when a well- meaning parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle tired to dislodge him. . . until two weeks ago.

As his dad was leaning up against the bottom step talking to me, Luke nonchalantly took his feet off the same step, supported only by his “floaties,” announcing, “I’m swimming!”   As he followed Jason into the middle of the pool, holding onto a piece of his dad’s swim trunks for security, Luke looked back over his shoulder and smiled at me.  A smile, from deep within him, that burst out in a look of pure joy, so honest, so full of confidence, yet so precious and fragile.  He was trusting us with his joy, sure that we would share and return it, that we would honor the risk he had taken, the pride he felt.  And, of course, we did with cheering, clapping and uproarious celebration. 

 The sound of an engine brings me back to my cooling tea. The familiar school bus yellow filters through the trees then disappears from view, on its way to the first day of school.  I imagine children sporting their new backpacks, filled with colorful lunchboxes, pencils, crayons, spiral notebooks and the whole regiment of school supplies on the list at Wal-Mart.  Butterflies circle throughout the children’s stomachs, their delicate wings brushing against the fragile spaces. Spaces from which questions arise.  “Will I make friends?  What do I do at lunch? Will my teacher be nice?”  Spaces that need to be handled with the utmost care.        

As a teacher, I started each school year by unpacking my box labeled “Beginning of the year stuff.”  For the first couple of years, books about curricula topped the heap.  But opening the box now, a sign mounted on yellow construction paper greets me.  It contains a quote by Dr. Haim G. Ginott, author of Teacher and Child, a Book for Parents and Teachers, which became the centerpiece of the bulletin board beside my desk and the core of my teaching.
          "I have come to a frightening conclusion.  I am the decisive element in the classroom.  It is my personal approach that creates the climate.  It is my daily mood that makes the weather.  As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.  I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.  I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.  In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized."

 Were I still teaching today, I would add a picture beside it, the picture of Luke smiling.  It would remind me every day to hold each child’s spirit in my hands with the same reverence that I do Luke’s, his brother Nate, sister Anna and cousin Ruby.

There can be no more important job!