Dear Seth,

You started this year off at the tail end of 4,  a big bundle of emotions.  You had the desire to be a “big boy”, but hyper moments and raw energy kept getting in the way.  As the year progressed I have watched the infant in you wane as the child in you waxes.  The manic play and first time ever moments are giving way to the known, the refined the real – less blocks, more Legos.  You no longer accept what I give you with enthusiasm, you seek out what you want with purpose.

This school year has been characterized by very specific play cycles that seem to illustrate your progress toward little boy hood.  We started the year at the height of your dragon fixation.  Autumn was all about dragons.  I drew outline after outline for you.  You filled in the colors with wild energy, spinning tales as you drew and describing the characteristics of each dragon the instant the thought came into your head.

By Thanksgiving you were close to the end of the dragon run, and laying the groundwork for the great  “store room”.  You became mildly obsessed with the book Friendship Valley by Wolo which features an escape from a forest fire and a re settlement in a fertile valley.  Part of the story is that the creatures who re settle there create a store room and store food for the winter.  The concept of the store room served for many an intense hour of construction play.  You would build elaborate store room islands complete with boats, fairy guards and endless types of food.  One of the staples of store room construction was your hoard of ornamental corn kernels.  I loved the way we made restaurants and served corn kernels nestled in acorn caps to the fairies.  And how we categorized and organized endless piles of wooden food, seeds from the garden and fairy stones.  I thought that this play seemed sort of primal in a way, and felt naturally connected to the season.  I don’t want to forget it as the primal you slips away and the conscious you emerges.

By January you had the store room out of your system and had moved on to “farm”.  We came across an old mismatched set of farm and safari animals at a garage sale, along with more blocks to augment our supply.  I would have thought very little of the animals, but to you they were gold.  You set up elaborate farms with attached zoos.  Every time you came to my house you set up a new farm and worked on it during you entire stay.  Each type of animal had an appropriate environment structured for them.  We spent a lot of time delivering food and making sure the animals were fed.  Yellow blocks for the grass eaters, red blocks for the meat eaters, and blue blocks for the seafood eaters.  My favorite little touch was “crazy chicken”.  Crazy chicken was a particular rooster that would get loose and take joy rides in the green farm truck that delivered the hay.  It happened several times day.  A little foray into mania, a moment of wild abandon, a bit of the old you that was a welcomed diversion from the intense focus of the farm.

In February we moved to the new house.  That week you started to draw.  Hither to then your drawings had been abstracted with some sense of outline, but mostly blocks of color.  As soon as we moved they became drawings.  You were drawing your own dragons, hedge hogs, beavers, people, space events, and all of it with defined and recognizable form.  This shift in drawing was profound, because with it your energy changed.  As soon as you could really draw, everything in your life became more deliberate, considered and planned.  No longer is your modus operandi to run about man handling things and people till you figure out what you want to do.  You already know what you want to do.  You have purpose and you operate against it.  I am less in love with the new you, but I must say it is easier on me.  I don’t have to figure out your craziness and help you cope.  I am now able to follow along with some semblance of coherent understanding.

I find myself  letting go of your infancy at an alarming rate.  Every time you come back you are more and more grown up.  Your words are calculated, you are aware of media and violence and you are fascinated by gaming.  Part of you has changed, but I still see your marks of joy, your enthusiasm and your imagination. My role now is different,  I find myself teaching less and sheparding more.  I can’t stand in your way, I have to let you grow up into the man you are destined to be.  I have to do this gracefully and compassionately – Wish me luck, but above all wish me patience!

Love + Mommy

Today was our last official day of Mountain School at the little red school house.  In honor of this transition I thought I would document some of my favorite preschool phenomena, starting with community paintings.  I love the way the children gather around a shared canvas.  This is such a great way to start out the collaborative path of learning.  My own childhood and education were singular, there was little in the way of group projects.  I don’t want this for Seth.  I want him to enjoy a lifetime of social connection and exponential productivity.  There is so much joy to be found in collaborating with others, it is a fundamental part of being human.

Seth has brought beets that he grew in his own garden all three years we have been at Mountain School.  In those years life was a bit transitory, but we managed to plant beets where ever we were.  Planting beets twice a year helps us hold on to the importance of the growing cycle, and keeps us rooted in what is real.  I guess most of all, it’s  the continuity of one plant.  There is one plant that, come hell or global warming, Seth knows how to grow to sustain himself.

Mountain School above all is about stewardship.  A. rescued this snail from the beet greens.  She must have carried it around for 20 minutes, showing it to friends and faithfully caring for it.  Eventually she let it go in the garden where it could munch on our flowering kale.  It struck me that a child like A. who is usually spearheading the more human-centered activities would take the time to engage with this snail.  It’s not so unusual in the larger context of our school.  The philosophy is so rich in natural experience and observation, that even for the most “social” of children this act of stewardship was undertaken with the least bit of pretense.    She picked up the snail and took care of it because when you go to Mountain School that is what you do – without a second thought.

This year’s auction was an undisputed success.  The decorations team did a great  job.  Everyone contributed loads of fabulous ideas.  The end result was relatively easy to accomplish, and was nothing short of magical!

THANK YOU

Aimee

Julie

Jamie

Melissa

Dorice

THE LIVE AUCTION!

THE PARTY!

Many of the class and individual projects were amazing.  Vilma’s hand made redwood bench was spectacular.  Thanks to the Franks the 4/5s chair was embellished with some wonderful illustrations.  Teacher Marie’s quilts were wildly popular.  I may be biased, but I think Seth’s square rocked!

This costume rack is genius!  I mean what kid doesn’t want access to any costume 24/7, and with a banana slug on the rack to boot!  The birdhouse replica of the school was quite sweet, and made me feel a little sad that this is our last year ~ sigh…

I think this quote by our school founder Betty Peck pretty much sums it up…

Today Seth was the cooking boy and we brought sunflower seeds.  I originally had the idea to bring this snack when we still had sunflowers in the garden to bring  to class.  However, the sunflower snack was postponed and the idea seemed academic upon revival today.  Not to mention that after tasting the seeds out of the oven Seth asked me if we could bring some different seeds for him to eat.  All this did not bode well, but the snack was a huge success.  The kids seemed to like eating the little seeds, playing with the seed heads and they even ate the sunflower sprouts.  Here is what we brought:

Pre hulled sunflower seeds, baked at 325 for 8 minutes on baking trays.  We served them in paper baking cups.

Sprouted sunflower seeds, sunflower seeds in a few inches of dirt.  Ours only had 5 days to gestate, but this was good because the seeds were still on the sprouts and enhanced the effect.

Sunflower seed heads.  We saved these big heads from the summer garden.  We let them dry fully inside so that the birds would not eat them.

We augmented with the last of the tomatoes that the kids harvested in the garden.  These were not part of the official snack, but they are so pretty I can’t not include a picture!

The point at which I had just about lost my patience with the suburbs was about the same time I reached for “Last Child in the Woods” by Richard Louv.  Starting to read the book and listening to Richard Louv speak could not have happened at a better time.

When we moved from the mountains to the suburbs I thought it would be fine.  I figured we would continue our routine of outdoor adventures; they would just be a little farther from our home.  Well, by the time Seth goes for three days of Mountain school, and mobile time with dad he is fairly adventured out.  When he spends time here at the house with me all he wants to do is relax, play and stay out of the car!

In the mean time I am suffering from severe nature deficit disorder (I only get to go to Mountain school one day a week .  When we lived in the mountains all I had to do was walk out the door for a healing breath of fresh air.  The solace of  forest and field was was readily available all the time.  In Mountain View (there is no view of mountains from our house) I walk out the door and am instantly bombarded with the roar of three different highways.  Not to mention the distinct traffic noise from the busy street that borders our fence.  The sky is smoggy, and although this lot is almost an acre of space, and there are some amazing old oaks and other trees in the yard, there is little sense of wilderness.

Since I am unable to get out and adventure with Seth as much as I’d like, I’ve had to find a compromise.  I had to find an outdoor destination in the yard that could pinch hit as “wilderness”.  We have several outdoor destinations in our yard, the first and most obvious being the “kid ghetto”.  This is the area of the yard that houses the play structure, sand box, playhouse and dirt pile, all littered in plastic toys and vehicles, in various states of decay.  The kids love it, but it looks like Target meets the dump covered in sidewalk chalk.  The second destination is the vegetable garden.  This is a magical place, but it is also a working place, a place where Seth is a caretaker, and like it or not is surrounded by thinking and “structure”.  There are several tween places that we use but don’t necessarily inhabit, like the fairy garden or the tree forts (adults are not allowed in the overgrown shrubs that serve as “base”).  However, there is one wild place in the yard that fit the bill to a t, that place is the Fairy Kitchen.

The Fairy Kitchen was aptly named by Lily.  After our egg hunt last spring Lily spent at least an hour playing by herself on a patch of Bermuda grass, a little spit of quazi lawn wedged between some Lamb’s Tongue and an abandoned rock garden.  Lily plopped down in perhaps the most interesting spot in the yard and started playing house.  When Geoff asked her what she was doing she explained that she was in “the Fairy Kitchen”.

Since it’s naming, the Fairy Kitchen has been a place, but not a destination.  I realized I had to change this, so I took an active role in playing there myself.  I set out little metal “kitchen” objects and began to set up house.  Seth soon caught on, and now we have Fairy Kitchen fever!  We go out there at least once a day.  At first it was me suggesting we spend time there, but now Seth initiates visits himself.  He seems to sense when I get fussy or distracted in the house and marches us out to the Fairy Kitchen.  If we are there and I am preoccupied with something else, he makes me stay in the kitchen and work it out.  He obviously senses that the Fairy Kitchen is a meditative place for me and that he should see to it that I self medicate wither I like it or not.

The thing I like about the Fairy Kitchen is that it always leads to something exciting.  After we both putz around in the kitchen for a while we get good ideas.  99% of the time the ideas are outdoor related.  It is almost as if spending time in the Fairy Kitchen is a “practice” of sorts.  Something that we do to connect to nature, gather our wits and focus on one another.  Rearing a child seems to involve lots of daily practice that fosters patience and reveals joy.  I’m sure it’s the same for Seth, because growing up is not an easy job.  My memories of growing up were always difficult between 4 walls and blissful without.

Richard Louv says that nature is a gift that if given to a child may allow the child to do something profound for the world in return.  It occurred to me early on in our Fairy Kitchen explorations that a gift of nature was given to me.  I was often left with my Grandmother Marge who lived on the loveliest hillside on the Stanford Campus.  My memories of these visits are full of wonder and magic.  She let me play anywhere I wanted in the meandering gardens.  She taught me how to suck nectar from the Vinca blossoms,  pick geranium flowers, entice a sleeping cat into play and differentiate between jays.  Grandma Marge was even kind enough to let me play house in her amazing succulent garden that lined the borders of the stairs to her front door.  She taught me how to pick just one leaf at a time and replant it somewhere else to make a new plant – such a simple action, but such a profound gift.

I’m sure I have returned her gift to the world at large, and will continue to do so for my entire life.  However, my job right now is to give the gift of intimacy with nature to my son.  We are spending time in The Fairy Kitchen to center ourselves, “checking in” with the earth every day.  Stopping and taking the time to make sense of our intentions for the day, the week and the rest of our lives.

Seth and I were unable to see each other on the actual Harvest Moon, but we started our own harvest on Monday afternoon.  We hitched a ride with Martina to our class field trip at Rodoni Farm Pumpkin Patch in Santa Cruz County.  This year Aydin and Seth were all about “the haul”.  They set about piling as many pumpkins as possible into their wagon.  Needless to say we purchased an entirely different set of pumpkins that were selected for their edible qualities.  The boys found ornamental crook neck squash that looked like guns, and Seth was able to pay for those with a dollar from my wallet.  I’m not sure how he purchased the ammo.  I love the energy at the pumpkin patch, the sun is brilliant, the sky is clear and the pacific reflects the children’s joy a thousand times over.

On Tuesday Seth was eager to harvest at his own home.  Seth and his cousins had taken care of “harvesting” most of the pumpkins and squash from our garden (see below).  This fact did not deter Seth, he marched straight to the beans and got started with his harvest.  At a certain point in the late summer beans just become too much to keep up with.  Ours had definitely gone by, and Seth spent a good half hour picking the seeds from the pods and collecting them in a jar.  He told me we were going to save them for planting next year, however I saw them getting hauled around in a Playskool marine mammal rescue truck after dinner so we’ll see.  We were not the only creatures harvesting.  Lots of little birds were busy eating seeds from the sunflowers.  We had to take long breaks from harvesting to watch them chow down.

Our garden has graciously yielded so much his summer, we are truly thankful.  In all it’s glory we managed to miss all sorts of little treasures.  Tuesday was all about treasure hunting.  We found a few more peppers, a passel of little eggplants and basil galore.  I stayed up late on Tuesday night and made tons of pumpkin seed pesto to hold us till Christmas.  Our week of Mommy Seth Harvesting ended on a perfect note.  Daddy Jim picked Seth up on Wednesday and we all talked for a long time.  Jim harvested all the straggling tomatoes which he carted off in a bike helmet for cooking.  I said goodbye to my loved ones for a few days, and goodbye to this garden for the summer.  It is time to layer compost these beds, and let them dream the winter away till we meet again in the spring.

“Can I keep that picture forever? Cuz I lost those bugs.” – Lily

I used a recipe for lemon bread made with lemon verbena.  Seth added calendula petals to the batter and when you opened the cake you could see the petals baked in.  We put whipped cream cheese on as frosting and the petals stuck as the kids decorated their cakes.

Last Night was our preschool fund raiser. The theme was “A Night Under the Big Top”.  Props to all my crew Shiloh, Cathy, Melissa and Glen!  There was some debate about the impact of the “ring of fire”, but frankly I thought it rocked and really set the tone.  And don’t forget to check out the book case by the Pecks in the first photo.  Cathy’s dad made it, Cathy painted it and it sold for 700 bucks!

My individual contribution was the signs.  Either I am getting older or I’m simply out of practice, because after a few days of making signs I was exhausted.  Drawing and painting that much made me feel as if I had run a marathon (I don’t remember feeling this tired in college).  Needless to say, kicking back on the deck and drinking a beer with my carpool partner could not have been sweeter.

Cathy picked up a book of old circus posters from the library.  I really liked the graphic quality of this tiger.  However, my favorite process was mimicking the old fashioned wood block letters on the big signs.  The inspiration for the play structure came on Tuesday when Martina was sick and I took the boys to school.  The food sign worked out really well.  Almost as well as Chef Willie’s yummy treats.  Although I have to say my favorite was the caramel corn – thanks Lori Rose!

This is Betty Peck and her husband.  Betty founded our school in the 1950’s.  I love the fact that they come to the auction every year.  She gave a lovely speech that said in short – the greatest gift is to see the seed that you planted blooming before your eyes.  Hanging around Betty makes me feel like a part of something much larger.  She has made such a profound impact on so many important people in my life.  I can’t thank her enough.

OK – I’m not done yet.  Aimee your chicken shirts rock!  Marie, Poppy and Tallulah really take one for the team pretty much everyday.  We can’t thank them enough for their patience and forbearance of beak.  Immortalizing them on a t shirt was a great idea and the execution was perfect.  Speaking of perfect, I have send one last nod your way on the kissing guinea pigs – well done!

And of course, the star of the party Hansen #3 Cutest Littlest Sister ever!  Forget the signs, look at those adorable chubby cheeks!  I hope we roped in the dough, because myself and many others sure put the love out there.