There's a lot to be said for recess.

Ask almost any kid and you will hear a list of why recess is a necessary part of the schoolday.  Ask any teacher, any teacher at all, and the list of recess' virtues will be at least as long as the one the kids offer.  Recess is the cleansing breath that sets the students and their teachers up for the concentration needed to survive hours in the classroom. And often, recess is the classroom.

Today I watched third graders during their noontime cleansing breath.  The usual people were doing the usual things.  There were the equipment kids with their monkey-like strength and coordianation, climbing, crawling and sliding in antfarm like industry.  Football players punted, passed, caught and charged the field, running from one end of the sunny grass to the other, goodnatured and competitive at the same time.  Foursquare tournaments were heated, while the chatters lounged, giggling and singing at the picnic table under the shade trees.  Everything looked pretty normal, nothing new.

Except in the soccer game.  The same kids tend to play the same things day after day, but today there was a larger number playing soccer than usual.  Among the kids who drifted into the game was the alpha female of the third grade.  Dee is a born leader and has been directing the girls in her grade since the first day of first grade.  Adults have to remember they are the adults when talking to Dee; it is easy to let her take over.  Dee is usually setting one girl against another in the great Be Dee's Best Friend contest, with the winner catching a little bit of reflected light from Her Dee-ness and the losers cast into the dark misery of The Rejected.  Today Dee was in the soccer game, her social skills taking second place to her soccer skills, and her soccer skills were no where near as developed as the other kids on the field.

In the group of kids dribbling, passing, and kicking goals with practiced teamwork, Dee was out of her element.  She ran with the group, demanding, "Give me the ball!  Give me the ball!" but the players just kept playing to win, ignoring her screams.

And the lesson I took away from recess today isn't the one you might think.  I did smile at the sight of Queen Dee, issuing orders and being ignored by her subjects, I think most people who have experienced her imperious ways would smile.  What I really feel for Queen Dee, however, is a new respect.  The girl who has mastered the social order was taking on a challenge.  Giving up that power, that social facility she holds so easily, Dee stayed in the game and played on a field where she was the unskilled but endeavoring player.  At the bell she got into line without a cranky word or disgruntled expression on her face, just the same as the other kids who aren't the most skilled players on the field, but just play to have fun with other kids.

That Queen Dee is a powerful girl, all right.

On a drive across town today I saw something that penetrated  the fog of bored preoccupation that had settled in my brain.  The road was filled with people dashing around with as much speed as the crowded condition and traffic lights would allow and paying attention to the road was necessary, but not interesting.

The busy street is lined with busy parking lots fronting busy businesses, but one stretch is green and serene, its lush lawn and white drive surrounded by a graceful iron fence and wide gates that somehow welcome more than they discourage entrance.  Parked in the lot of this beautiful place today was a huge ungainly motorhome bearing signs, huge red letters shouting to passing drivers.  Inside the building on wheels, it was promised, one could have the state of their health assessed at no cost.  This was the New Life Health Fair, one day only. no appointment necessary. 

The event and its location made such an incongruous pair that I laughed out loud, surprising my young passengers.  When I showed them what had so amazed me they laughed too.

The New Life Health Fair, with its van full of medical soothsayers, was set up in the manicured lot of the Pinelawn Cemetary.

Last night, with about a million things to do, I played hooky.

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Dinner went uncooked for a while, children were spared that firm hand on the back that gently steers them to their homework, I shut my eyes to responsibility in general, and I walked out the door and into the dark.

Stepping out of my shoes, I walked in the cool grass, just to feel the blades on my feet one more time this year.  Soft and overlong, the lawn needs a final mowing before it goes dormant in the coming cold.  Insects calling to each other, patiently putting out a final wistful invitation, made the only sounds I could hear.  Lights from the football field near my house shone over the roof and illuminated the higher cover of the huge maple tree, soon to turn color and then to become leafless, but where I walked it was too dark to see the odd stick or stone that made me wince and think that I don’t go barefoot often enough; I’ve gone soft in a life that requires footwear..

And after a bit I came back in through the front door into the brightly lit living room. There was a hilarious show on television; its laugh track was hysterically gasping for air between loud explosions of mirth.  The perennial game of Spider on the laptop was heading towards another near-win.  Backpacks were intact, no homework in sight.  Dinner still unstarted and people getting hungrier by the minute.   Back in the house, I did the most pressing business first.

I picked up a pair of binoculars and headed back out the door.  The football lights couldn’t obscure the stars in the clear dark sky and I focused on a particularly bright one nearly directly overhead.  The binoculars brought other stars, unseen because of the surface light, into view.  The sky was peppered with points of light, all shining reliably whether they are seen or not.  My eyes were drawn to two stars that I hadn’t seen before, just to the right of the bright star that had first caught my attention.  The stars formed a pair, close together and nearly the same size and brightness.  Looking at them I realized that although they look the same, they are so far away from each other that the light reaching my eyes from one was very likely many thousands of years older than from the other.  And that seemed to explain a lot about life, I thought.  Things can look like one thing, but be so different that the distance between them has to be measured in light-years.

And that seemed to be a good thought to carry into the house with me as I went back to family responsibility.

And this is what the day felt like.

I've been in the same line of work for a long time, if you consider mothering a line of work.  If you don't think it's a line of work, I'm pretty sure that you aren't a mother, and that you don't know what you're talking about.  It is a line of hard work, and while I knew it was a line that would start at one point and extend infinitely, without an endpoint, I thought there might be a big change in the line as it traveled forward in time.

I am so often wrong about things, it's a wonder I bother thinking at all.

This week while mothering one of my children, all of whom tower over me and are capable individuals, I was back in the earliest days of motherhood, when it was really the very most basic needs that had to be attended to.  There were so many things I couldn't really know about;  the infant could not tell me what was needed.  I felt such helplessness and never considered the option of not trying to figure out and do that unknown thing that would bring peace to the baby who was in distress.

And I was back to that point this week.   I sat for hours, silently cradling a child without really being able to do anything but offer the comfort of my arms.  I warmed up liquids to soothe and to nourish.  No bottles of milk, but cups of sweetened tea to comfort and homemade soup to nourish.  I washed clothes and cleaned up after the messes of living.  I stayed close at hand, ready to respond to any sound of distress or the more distressing sound of extended silence.  The child could not feel alone, she was an unfamiliar place to find herself in after waking up from a dream.

So, many years after the first time I held a child in my arms and felt at a loss as to how to care for this astonishing wonder of a being, I was back in the same boat.  Knowing the territory better than I did back then, but having the same feeling of wishing that an owner's manual came with the job.  Without it, all I could do was basic maintenance, and I hoped it was enough.

And as was true years ago, the basics cover what is really needed after all.

So after the cradling and heating restorative liquids and worry and very nearly breaking a plate (this will be explained in a future post), all is fine.

Things work themselves out or we work ourselves out of them working us.  It just takes time

I am so often wrong about things, it's a wonder I bother thinking at all.