cultivating our garden

Maybe today offered a taste of summer where you live, too. Yesterday morning I dressed my children in heavy jackets; today we ate dinner on the back deck in bare feet. Like a first day of health after a bout of sickness, we stepped into the sunshine and didn't look back. It was as if winter had never happened.

The swiss chard and kale seedlings moved into the garden beds yesterday. I was reluctant to send them out of our kitchen and into the big wide world full of nasty bugs and bad weather, but today they looked well settled. Gabriel and I have developed a seed-planting routine over the past couple of weekends that we employed as we filled in bare spots in the dirt among the radish seedlings. He tells a story about how they are having a sleepover with all their seed friends, and we make their beds for them, then cover them up and tuck them in by patting down the dirt.

Over the weekend Mike and I came to the end of our agonizing about another green shoot in residence around here. We decided to enroll Frances in the private school I told you all about. After consulting with some older and wiser dear ones, thinking about what my dad would say, considering Frances' response to the school, Mike's lengthy visit, contemplating the meaning of education, and quite a few sleepless nights, we both knew that it was the right thing to do.

A week ago, I realized how troubled I was to think that we were the sort of people who send their kids to a fancy private school. What sort of person is that, exactly? Oh, I had some inchoate notions of indifference to the poor, opting out of a valuable community experience, celebrating privilege and flaunting consumption, pulling into a parking lot full of gleaming SUVs. Alignment with the world's evil forces, I guess. Then it struck me: what exactly do all those vague associations and prejudices of mine have to do with Frances, and her experience in the classroom? My vanity was seriously getting in the way.

Happily, this place doesn't resemble my fantasy of 'fancy private school' in the least. It is a beautiful school that employs a holistic and at the same time rigorous approach to educating children. And they gave us a very generous aid package, making something I assumed would be impossible a very definite possibility. Sometime Friday evening, I knew deep down that this was an opportunity that would be wrong to pass up - a place in which Frances might truly flourish.

So here's the thing: over the same weekend that we arrived at the school decision, a small group of dedicated people braved awful weather and made the Annapolis Elementary School new school food garden work party a great success. There were new raised beds alongside the blacktop today. The students started seeds in their classrooms last week. It is just terrific. And we weren't there.

There was so much to do at home, you see. (Plus the last time I volunteered with Gabriel in tow, he cried whenever I left his side and eventually threw up in the middle of the school cafeteria.)

But as I stood at the computer in the kitchen, reading the PTA president's email describing the work party, a quiet incoming tide of sadness started to lap at my feet. It wasn't regret, but rather the glamor-less adult realization that opening a new door nearly always means shutting an old one. I am so excited for Frances to experience the new educational environment that is waiting for her next year, and I am so sad that she won't be a part of her school anymore with its kids from the projects, its view of the harbor, its new garden.

Heather recently commented that she appreciated the honesty here, even when I can't offer a happy ending. Tonight's reflections are a mixed bag. So much of this blog is dedicated, at least in part, to making sense of how I am drawn to home and children. The delicate adjustments that go into finding a sustaining balance between outward and inward orientations in the world - what we give up and what we are given. Could it be that I need to loosen my grip on the sense I have of myself as a person who heads up community garden organizing efforts?* And if I give that up, what might fill the cleared space? We didn't go the school garden work party, and that makes me sad. That said, I'm pretty sure we were where we were supposed to be - home. Just as I'm sad to leave Annapolis Elementary, and also sure that The Key School will be a much better place for Frances to grow and learn.

My children will be children but once, and this is my chance to mother them through it. I miss my old identity(ies), but I'm growing more attached to a new one that is emerging of late. Who knew cultivating my garden would be a response to that mysterious yet persistent call that beckons to our most true and really real self: come out! I know I'll have to say goodbye to hosting seed sleepovers before too long, at which point I'll figure something else out. Hopefully the community garden will still have me.

 

*Don't worry - it's still me - I'm already trying to put together a weekly neighborhood yoga practice for the summer. Local friends, please talk to me if you're interested!