Beyond Preschool

There was a time, not all that long ago, when I could claim I was the mother of three children under the age of 3. It was something of a badge of honor, a sort of twisted brag uttered in sheer exhaustion. Well, school ended this week, and I can no longer claim to be the mother of even one preschooler. I am now the mother of two 2^nd graders and a kindergartener.

The end of each school year marks a new milestone in the march toward growing up. I can clearly see, at the dawning of summer vacation, how my children have grown – in stature, knowledge, and ability – since the start of the school year. The conclusion of this year marks a particularly big change for our family, as we say so long to a place that has nurtured my children through their earliest classroom experiences.

Each school day for the past four and a half years, I have driven down a bumpy back road along the Gale River to deliver a child – or two, and for a short time all three together – to preschool. In the time my family has been at this school, the faces of the children and the parents and even some of the teachers have changed, the fields of the farm on which the school sits have been brought back to a life of growing food, and my kids have skipped and played and grown in this sacred little center of learning.

In four and a half years as a preschool mom, I have changed, too. In the beginning, I was the nervous, first-time-at-preschool parent, walking through the door with a 3-year-old grasping each hand. All the other kids, older than my son and daughter then, seemed to know the routine. All the other parents seemed unbothered by leaving their children here, in the small, bright classroom with the kid-sized chairs and tables, and going about their lives for the day, while I was a mess of nerves and emotion.

Soon, of course, we all learned the routine of preschool. And in what has become one of the things I most cherish about this place, we were welcomed into the family, a family that changes every year as the 5-year-olds move on to kindergarten, the younger children grow into the role of “big kid on (preschool) campus,” and new students arrive with their own nervous parents in tow.

Children seem to take these transitions – finishing another year of school, reaching the next birthday, learning some new skill – in stride. For parents, though, the waning of one phase of childhood into the waxing of the next can be a bit emotional. Each milestone our children reach marks the beginning of something new and, hopefully, good – but also the ending of something else. My littlest one was a baby when her siblings started preschool, and it is not easy for me to let go of this phase of my family’s growing up, even as I want nothing more than for my children to continue to learn and grow and be happy in their next steps.

This week, I made that journey to preschool for the last time as a parent of a preschooler. I’m sure we’ll come back for an occasional visit. But come fall, my daughter will head to the “big school” with her older brother and sister, who remember their preschool years fondly, but have moved on to other teachers, other friends, a bigger playground, school lunch, reading and adding and learning more all the time about the world around us.

It is strange knowing that I will not travel this road every morning and afternoon next year, not walk up those five wooden steps and through the door to greet the teachers and discover the fun morning activities of the day. This has been a happy place for each of my children, and I will forever be grateful that they started school here, with these teachers, these families, in this place.

On the first day of kindergarten at the end of summer, I will once again send my baby into a world that is unfamiliar, new, sometimes a little scary (sixth graders are considerably bigger than kindergarteners, and they share the hallways). Once again, she will navigate some of this new world on her own, but she’ll also have her big brother and sister to show her the ropes – at least during recess and school-wide activities – just as she did when she started preschool.

Someday, I’m guessing long before I’m ready for it, I’ll be able to claim I am the mother of three teenagers. But that’s too far down the road of life to think of now. Kids grow up too darn fast, as every parent knows, and it’s officially summer vacation. I’m heading out to play with my three grade schoolers. Summer, after all, is as fleeting as childhood.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the June 13, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

Beyond family ties

My friend Amy lost her mom this spring. I’ve known Amy since we were about 10 years old, zooming around the slopes of Cannon Mountain. And so I’d known her mother since then, too. Tina – or T, as we all call her – was a force in everything she did. She could organize a ski race, win a golf tournament, host a good party, zip through steep powder runs out west or firm and fast ones at home, and orchestrate a family outing to the beach without breaking a sweat.

Surrogate moms and sisters... Crested Butte, Colorado, circa 1998.

So we all figured that if anyone could beat cancer, it would be T. She put up a heck of a fight, but in the end, not even T’s tenacious determination was enough to overcome the constant assault on her body.

I am vastly lucky to have parents who have stood by my side when I’ve needed it and watched from afar when I didn’t. But I am also blessed to have grown up with this network of other parents, the parents of my oldest friends. These other moms and dads have been there throughout my childhood and beyond – to pick me up when I crashed on the ski slope or the sidewalk, or needed a hug or some sound advice on the rare occasion that my own folks weren’t immediately available.

T was one of these, a surrogate parent. Besides being the mother of one of my best forever friends, T was also one of my own mother’s best friends. The fabric of our families is woven together through many years and experiences. This week we will gather in Maine, by the rocky coast that T loved, to remember her together.

For all the good things there are about growing up, growing older, there remains the one dismal, terrifying fact that at some point, some of the people you love the most are going to die. And you will have to figure out how to carry on without them.

This hit home hard a couple of years ago when my normally healthy-as-a-horse father suddenly needed open-heart surgery to fix a faulty aortic valve. As the day of his surgery approached, I had to focus nearly constantly to swallow the panic rising in my throat, as I was forced to face the impossibility that my parents are not invincible, that someday I will be here and they will not.

Dad came through fine and has resumed his normal activities of skiing in the winter, golfing in the summer, and goofing around with the grandkids year-round. And so I have been able to push the panic into the far corners of my psyche, but it is still there.

I think for Amy and her family, that panic has been mercurial. First there was dread. Then hope, as different treatments seemed to hold the cancer at bay, if not altogether diminish it. And finally the gradual acceptance that we are all, eventually, helpless in the face of death.

When Amy called to tell me T had died, she sounded steady and calm. I, on the other hand, didn’t trust myself to say much, afraid the mere act of speaking would reduce me to blubbering. I was sad for my friend, who was as close to her mother as anyone I know, and for her family. That was part of it. But I could also feel my own panic rising as I imagined how Amy must feel, even after months of knowing this day was coming, to be without her mother.

So much of who we are is tied up in who our parents are. Who will we be when they are gone? Who will we call when we have a question about a recipe or that funny noise coming from the furnace or the name of that place we used to go every summer when we were kids? Who will remind us that we used to pick dandelions and climb trees and sport perpetually scraped knees just the way our children do now? Who will remember who we were before we grew up and became who we are?

Our parents’ story is our story, and the story of the generations before them, and the story of our own children. When our parents are gone, the story becomes ours to tell, to continue, to pass on. That sometimes seems like a great burden to bear, if only because we want to make sure we get it right.

Our stories extend beyond the boundaries of family ties, to the other people with whom we have shared experiences and memories. From childhood sleepovers and chilly ski races to wedding celebrations and shared margaritas, T is a part of so many of my memories. Now Amy’s children and mine are collecting their own experiences, shaping their own chapters to add to the collective memory.

And so, somehow, life goes on. The story continues.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.

Reclaiming wonder

Spring rains drove the earthworms above ground one morning last week. This nearly caused us to be late to school, as the kids exclaimed over the sheer number of worms in the driveway, studied their thin, squiggly tracks through the sandy surface, and gently relocated several of them to the gardens.

The worms, and why they were out of their worm tunnels, were the topic of conversation all the way to school that morning – and a reminder of how little it takes to inspire wonder in the hearts and minds of children.

As a natural question asker, I like to think that I’m always striving to learn, to ponder, to look for answers. But there is something magical about the wonder of a child that even a robust adult curiosity can’t match. Often, adults are content to know what we know. Or perhaps we are too busy thinking of work and home and family logistics to follow the wandering trail of wonder very far. Sometimes we are moving too fast to notice the small things, or we contemplate a question only briefly before becoming distracted by some more pressing matter.

Children, though, are endlessly curious. They will ask, “Why?” and, “How?” until they reach some satisfactory conclusion. For them, it is completely natural to spend hours figuring out how to shore up the building-of-the-day in the sandbox, or construct sandy canals on a seashore beach, adjusting plans as the waves move water in and out.

Children are more willing than adults to pause along a favorite hike and admire the pink lady slippers hidden in the shade beside the trail. They examine and admire ordinary rocks, noticing the textures and colors and shapes. They wonder about the moles that leave mounds in the front lawn, rather than finding them a simple nuisance. They thoughtfully watch ants moving about their dirt domains, bees buzzing in flowers, and caterpillars creeping along leaves.

Since my children have been old enough to crawl through the grass, then walk through the woods, I have found my own sense of childish wonder revived as we explore our small piece of the world. As they grow older, the kids’ questions become more detailed, and we look for the answers together, leafing through field guides about birds and trees and butterflies, or turning to the Internet to identify a flower, learn more about our resident garden toads, or find out what the fox really says.

From the chairlift in winter, we wonder what animal made the tracks in the freshly groomed snow below. As we wander through the awakening landscape of spring, we notice all sorts of leaves growing on the forest floor and wonder which wildflower will bloom first – and where trout lilies and bloodroot got their names. During summer days at the beach, we watch hermit crabs scamper through tidal pools and wonder about all the other creatures living beyond the shore, far out in the vast ocean.

Whether it is the first pea shoot growing through the garden dirt in the springtime, the 100^th woolly bear caterpillar migrating in the fall, or the back-and-forth calls of our neighborhood barred owls, each discovery is brimming with the promise of new things to learn, new wonders to discover.

Amidst my children’s easy enthusiasm at even ordinary sights and sounds, I am inspired to look more closely at the small details, to take note of the exact colors of the sunrise and the delicate shape of an individual snowflake, to crouch down in search of the Jack-in-the-pulpit growing secretly beneath the rose hedge, to welcome the first song of spring peepers and the return of butterflies to the garden. My inner child awakens to reclaim the wonder.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.