I have to confess I haven’t been much in the mood to write these past two or three months. My creative energy appeared to have taken a sabbatical. It seems to have an independent nature like cats. It comes when it chooses and leaves as it wishes. It also manifests in many forms as I have discovered.
Knowing this didn’t stop me from speculating though. I wondered if planning a class reunion for my Luxembourg class of 1970-71 absorbed a significant amount of of time and energy? Could it also be the effort it takes to get up every morning at 06:00 to be ready for a day interacting with 280 third graders at the school where I’ve been working since February that sapped my creative energy?
I find that children bring out in me a desire to be attentive and focused in their presence. They are bursting with the power of life in the making. They are creations in little bodies reaching for the future. They give love and trust in ways that sometimes almost brings tears to my eyes. I spend my work days in a vortex of life affirming energy. It is wondrous, exhilarating and by the end of the day I am spent, not in a defeated way but in the way a distance runner feels relief and satisfaction when the race is finished and well run.
School is almost over. In a few days after the school goes silent for the summer I will be packing up my apartment and driving west for a two week immersion in the French language where I become the student. I will do my best to bring with me the openness to learn and the joy I experienced with the third graders I have been counseling.
Slowly though, I have now begun to understand why I haven’t been writing these past months. My Muse didn’t abandon me, my creative energy went into my interactions with these nine and ten-year-olds. Everyday when I walk into the courtyard of the school where I work, amid the cacophony of 860 third, fourth and fifth grade children I am challenged to find ways to connect with them, to be creative, to give something of myself to the future that they embody.
I walk around talking to the children. I carry with me a small plush rabbit. His name is Hoppy Oster. All the third grade knows Hoppy. The one day I forgot him they all wanted to know where he was. I told them he was very tired and needed a day of rest. I asked if they ever felt that way and this led to some interesting conversations. Hoppy is my translator and bridge to the world of third graders. He understands them and helps decipher what they are telling me.
After the children in the courtyard are collected by their teachers and led to their classrooms, there is a relative silence that falls on the school. Right after this pause comes an announcement asking everyone to face the American flag wherever they are in the school. A student then leads the school in The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. This always feels like a special moment in the beginning of the school day where everyone focuses on the same thing. It is a moment of unity and reassurance that we are part of something bigger than ourselves despite our differences and are committing ourselves to the promise of America: “liberty and justice for all.”
Working with these children has given me hope that America can live up to the idea that it can remain, “one nation indivisible” despite efforts by political leaders who would exploit our differences and fears to divide us for their financial and self-serving goals of power and ideological control.
This Memorial Day, like so many others, I am reminded of the cost of maintaining a democracy. So many Americans have given their lives so people in America and other places around the world can live their lives as they choose, worship as they wish, read and think freely and elect leaders to represent their needs. This is a day to remember how we are one nation under whoever and whatever is your God. We do not celebrate our differences on Memorial Day. We celebrate the lives of those before us who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, for all of us to be Americans.
When I talk with my third graders, I am constantly reminded why we must educate them to question tyranny, resist racism, learn the truths of the past, strengthen what is good about America and openly confront our flaws and failures of the past. If we don’t do that, if we let leaders censor the truth for their political gain, the dazzling potential for a positive future I see in my third graders will be lost and Memorial Day will just be a hollow holiday that forgets why it existed in the first place. This would make Hoppy very sad. How about you?
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I am posting the American Pledge of Allegiance for my foreign readers and those Americans who might not have heard it in along time.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
And to the republic for which it stands
One nation, under God,
Indivisible, with liberty and justice for all