MadameBastet-firing-neurons
Yesterday a mobile marine 'lab' came to school so the kids could experience a little ocean life first-hand. It was amazing. First of all, I've never seen anything quite like it - a mobile tide pool! Ah but it wasn't the sea urchins, or hermit crabs or even the baby octopus that so lightened my mood on a rainy Monday. It was the screams and peals of joy eminating from my kids....they were soooooooooooooooooooo excited....just following them outside they could not contain themselves and bounced off the sidewalk like little rubber balls. They crowded around the 'lab' and their awe, their innocent wonder of it all was magically contagious. They were fearless! Whereas I shrunk back from the sliminess of a sea slug, they took their little fingers and brushed them across its gooey back...they gently put their hands in the water and let families of tiny hermit crabs tickle the insides of their palms. We made a boat out of a seashell for one crab and sent it on its way down the ocean....they gently fed purple sea urchins seaweed and oooohed and aaaaaahhed at the bigger crabs in the containers. Oh their joy was something to behold, something I hope I never forget.
As I stood behind them, basking in their pure, unadulterated happiness, I wondered. When does this insane happiness and innocence leave us? Is it beaten out of us by the daily rigors of school and ultimately life? Is it natural to leave us? Certainly we could not exist in a state of heightened excitement over everything, always. We become numb, we become bored, we become used to things. It just seems to happen so fast.
They are truly at a magical age - the world and everything in it is new, fresh, exciting. We came back into the classroom and I stood there by the sink, making sure everyone washed his or her hands with soap....and because of the rain they ate lunch inside the classroom.
I watched as they ate their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and I opened their bags of chips, and helped them with their drinks. The mobile tide pool was off to the ocean again, where all creatures, great and small, would be let back into the sea, into their natural environment. How wonderful. The children were blessed and able to experience new and different creatures, and they were kind and gentle.
I marveled at the ingenuity of such an idea - a mobile sea lab - and thought we never had anything like that when I was in school! They are lucky to be at a school that can afford to show them things like that. They are so lucky, in so many ways...but I am the luckiest one of all. For as cliched as it may sound, they have given me far, far, far more than I could ever give them. At this point in my life, when cynicism and pain seem poised to take over for good, life gave me a gift in these little people. And they will grow up, and good and bad things will happen to them, and they will have families of their own and they will never know how they saved a lost soul and led her to her bliss, finally.
2 comments:
Reminds me of a story a co-worker of mine once told me...
He and his wife have two kids, both of whom are adopted and originally hail from Korea. They know another couple who also have a son from Korea.
This other couple was getting kind of anxious as their boy was getting ready to start kindergarten. He was a smart kid, perfectly happy, et cetera, but they worried because he would be going to a school without much diversity and they thought there was a chance that the other kids might make fun of him because he looked different. But they wondered whether they should inform him that the other kids might be mean to him or whether that might just make him nervous unnecessarily.
Ultimately, they decided not to mention anything to him about any prejudice he might experience at school. Days go by, and he seems to be enjoying school just fine. Still they wonder. So one day they ask him, "Is everything at school okay?"
"Yep."
"Are the other kids nice?"
"Yeah, sure."
"Have the other kids said anything mean to you?"
"No."
"Have the other kids maybe said anything not very nice to you...maybe something about you being Korean?"
"Oh, no. I haven't told any of 'em yet!"
Somewhere along the line, we do lose a certain innocence.
I think we lose that happy innocence when other kids (and sometimes adults) beat it out of us with ridicule and mockery. We try to be 'cool' to avoid the mockery.
I remember a very definate time in school where that transition occured for me, and remember the incident that caused it.
It was like Adam & Eve eating from the tree, and their eyes being 'opened' to knowledge of good and bad. It was the day that I realized that being happy and myself, and kind and open would get me ridiculed. It had happened before but never clicked with me that all I had to do to avoid it was mask my feelings to some degree.
I'm still more childlike than a lot of people my age, but...it's a shame we lose any of that just for the security of a veil.
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