Walkers

Jejak PandaSelamat Datang Di Blog Kesayangan Anda Dan Selamat Membaca
bandarq terbaikI was going to start this first post of the year by complaining about this or that educational proposal. And there certainly are plenty of goings-on to critique, but then I thought that, rather than set a negative tone by beginning the year tilting at educational windmills, I would try to begin on a positive note. So here goes.

I was saying to my wife the other day that I really don’t like summer, and I don’t know why I ever pretended I did. It is too hot and too humid. I burn in the sun in a matter of minutes. There’s too little structure for me. I like fall, and I’ve always liked fall. I like the sunny days without humidity and excessive heat. I like the cool nights with a window open and the air conditioner off. I love to jog down the street and watch the sunlight fall through the golden leaves of a slowly turning maple tree. I love to feel a slight chill in the air and to need a sweater. I love the smell of wood smoke. And I love school. I always loved school.

I have wonderful memories from kindergarten and first grade when I walked to school with a pack of neighborhood kids that slowly increased in size the further along we marched and the closer we got to school grounds. My neighbors Gary and Walter and I would start out together. Walter was Gary’s older brother, and he received fifty cents a week from my grandmother for walking with me to and from school each day. I would walk six houses to Gary and Walter’s and then we would proceed up Fenway Drive, picking up Walter’s best friend Michael, who would run across the street to meet us, then David on the corner at the top of the hill, and finally Reggie and Joyce at the intersection. Joyce was our only female walker. From there we would cut through a neighbor’s yard, running alongside his garage, and we’d pop out in his side yard where he had an apple tree we sometimes stole apples from. Most of our neighborhood was post-WW II construction, and the area had been covered in orchards before the war. Many of us had fruit-bearing trees in our yards, mostly apple, but I had a pear tree and two plum trees in my yard, and my grandmother and aunt spent the fall baking apple pies and pear torts. We always cut through that one neighbor’s yard because his house fronted a T-intersection, and we would walk along the intersecting street to where it met School Street. From there we turned right and marched onto the grounds of Ridge Hill School, which had been built in 1969, the year I was born.

I know my memories are idyllic, and I know that my experience with this walking pack of boys wasn’t always so bucolic and idealized. We argued and fought. I hated Walter’s friend Michael, and resented that Walter, who was usually good to Gary and me, could degenerate into a bully around Michael. And we were yelled at and chased on more than one occasion by the neighbor whose yard we cut through, but mostly I have good memories of the time, and wish I had been able to continue to walk to school after we moved out of the New Haven area when I was seven.

This fall my daughter has begun preschool and my son has begun first grade. We live two houses down from his school and have a crushed stone sidewalk in front of our house. He’s a walker like I was, though he doesn’t have a pack of neighborhood kids to join. Most of our neighbors are older, grandparents now, and the few little kids who live in the area take the bus or are dropped off by car by parents who can’t or won’t enjoy the walk I cherish. School doesn’t begin for my son till nine, and he wakes up around 6:30, so while the weather remains warm and pleasant we are spending our mornings exploring the neighborhood.

My son turned six earlier in the week, and he received several new books on dinosaurs, fossils, and wildlife. He usually tells people he wants to be a scientist, an archaeologist, or a paleontologist. He was reading one of his new books this morning and asked if we could go look for fossils later. I reminded him that this would have to take place in the late afternoon or early evening since we all had school. He was a little disappointed by this, so I put down my paper and we put on our shoes and headed outside. It was eight and we had close to an hour to ourselves, so we walked up to a field behind a neighbor’s house where there used to be a pig farm. Cormac and I scoured the ground looking for fossils. We found lots of cool rocks, some charred wood, old scraps of pottery and porcelain, and three small bone chips, the spongy remains of the marrow calcified into a hard, porous substance. He was delighted; he had a treasure for show-and-tell. We hurried home to change into dry shoes, wash our hands, and then walk down to school. We were early enough for Cormac’s teacher to find him an old butter tub to put his treasures in, and I left him there at his seat waiting eagerly for the time when he would be able to show his finds to his new friends.

I walked home slowly along our sidewalk, beneath the old maple and oak trees that line our street. It was foggy rather than sunny, and I walked a little slow, reluctant to get home and break my reverie. I enjoyed the oddly pleasant mix of early morning autumn air—dampness and leaf-smell intermingling with diesel exhaust from the school buses—and then got into my car and drove to the university.