March 28, 2009
The spring rains have kept us indoors the last few days. These are days we love, though. Our rhythms shift, slowing down to accommodate the long needs of “chapter games”. The children play for hours, inventing, creating, storying, singing their way into their own becoming. We watch them play and can feel them growing, like the wheat berries planted in their small clay pots….spring gardens ready to take home after the Spring Festival. The wheat grass leaps up into the air and sunshine; the children’s imaginations are as fertile as the rich black forest soil. We watch raindrops making rivers down the windowpanes, and robins catching worms in the rain. Birds sing, the swollen creek sings, and indoors the song of the children growing is sweet.
March 18, 2009
Let me tell you a story of two young mothers, a lot like yourselves.
Susanna and I met each other through our children, Shanti and Loren. We were looking for like-minded families with whom we could share the fun, the work, the frustrations, the baby sitters. Some little bit of magic sparked, and were suddenly close friends. We raised our babies together, and when it was time to send them to school, we worked with a group of dedicated parents to create the Charlottesville Waldorf School. Babies and brothers came to our families, and our children went to school, played baseball, swam at the pond together. My best memory is meeting at the pond, day after day, summer after summer: we splashed in the water, sat in the shade life guarding, we talked, and brought out the picnic lunches. We even made little nap spots in the shade for the kids afternoon snooze. Shanti and my son Noah went to Senior Prom together.
Life ensued, Susanna went back to school for an MBA, our lives became too full and we saw each other only for special occasions. A few moths ago, Susanna called. I knew her work had taken her into World Health, specifically to Africa, and heard through the grapevine she was at the Curry School at UVA completing a doctorate in Education. She surprised me by telling me one of her classmates had given her my name because I was a local educator interested in the brain development of babies and young children. Our interests had once again aligned! As Susanna described her project to me, I began to see threads of her work and mine weaving together to create something remarkable.
This where, if you choose, you enter the story. read more »
