- A Great Place to Visit
I met my friend Miki for coffee at Adelaide’s the other afternoon and, as is always true when we get together, we talked about kids and school and teaching. Though we are a generation apart in age and are opposites in many respects, our attitudes and thoughts about education are close to identical.
Miki and I were colleagues for years at Ocean Park School. I was on the interview team that hired her and later she and I often felt we were ‘joined at the hip’ as we worked long and hard to establish the multigrade concept for all classes at the school. I became acquainted with her sister and her nephews and her dad; her daughter, Dorothy, was in my 1st/2nd/3rd grade class. And now that I’m retired, Miki and I get together now and then to laugh and talk and catch up with each other.
This time when we met, the conversation turned to that wonderful facility little children have of being totally ego-centric. It doesn’t occur to them that everyone else isn’t exactly like they are. As another friend of mine pointed out recently, she had no idea when she was growing up that her family was poor.
“I just didn’t realize that store-bought clothes were out of the question,” she told me not long ago. “I thought that my mom and grandma made our dresses because they liked to. They always seemed to have so much fun when they got together on a sewing project.”
But my favorite all-time story of “Life from a Kid’s Point of View” actually involves Miki. When she and her sister were very young, their parents lived in an isolated area of Southern California – “out in the boonies,” as Miki says. “We didn’t see a lot of other people except when we went into town for supplies. That was my reality; I’m sure it never occurred to me that there was another way to live.”
What also never occurred to Miki was that it might be strange that her father had a hook in place of his right hand. She knew from early on that he had been in an accident when he was a teenager and the hook was the result.
“But I don’t think that had sunk in. I remember clearly the trip to town when it actually registered with me that the other men I saw had two hands. I must have been about three or four – old enough so that I still have a clear memory of how surprised I was. Up to then I thought all women had two hands and all men had a hand and a hook!”
I remember her dad and that hook, too. He could do “anything and everything” with it, as Miki said. “If your marshmallow or your hot dog fell off the stick into the campfire, he could get it out before it burned up. He could get a nail started with ‘his bare hook’ and he seldom needed pliers. He could open those crimped tops off pop bottles without a bottle opener.” Clearly, he was Miki’s hero.
Whenever I see a young family going through a hard time and wonder about how it might affect the kids, I remember Miki’s story. Besides being remarkably resilient, kids do see the world differently than adults do. Thank goodness!
Too true! A kid’s reality does seem to them like what’s normal. I suppose this can be both good and bad. But sticking to the amusing side of things….your post reminded me of two similar stories. My friend Merrily grew up only bathing on Saturdays. It wasn’t until she got to college that she found out others bathed daily. The other is a story I heard on “This American Life” — it was about a girl whose mother served chicken for dinner EVERY NIGHT! Again, it wasn’t until she got to college that she found out there were other options. She just thought dinner=chicken. But Miki’s story takes the cake! Thanks for sharing that.
I didn’t realize tht we were so poor until I took an Econ. course in college. Remember it giving what a family of however many had to make to surive. Well, we weren’t even in the bottom half of that amount..and we all survived.
Hand me down clothes started with one of my sisters, worked their way thru two or three, then to cousins and if any wear was left to me.
I always liked Easter because most years I did get a new dress.
Since we worked by the month on a farm food was never an issue. Relate to “farmer Nyel” and his agricultural bent because of years of gardening etc.etc.
Thank god for children’s perceptions. When I was in 5th grade, Lincoln School, Alameda, famous for also educating Sydney Stevens, I had a best friend who lived out on Bay Farm Island, home to some houses, not many, and lots of truck farms. Bay Farm Island kids were the only ones who got school buses, which meant that my friend couldn’t come over to my house after school because how would she get home? One day she gave me specific directions, and I rushed home, changed into jeans and rode my bike out to her house way out to where the expanded Oakland Airport is now.
When I showed up at the house, the last one on that road, my friend’s mother took her aside and scolded her for giving me directions — the mother didn’t want any of my friend’s schoolmates to know where they lived, or, to be more precise, how they lived. They were a family of 6 which expanded to 8 soon after my initial visit when twins were born. It was a two room house — one room served for living, dining and kitchen and the remaining room was The bedroom, with (I think) 3 bunk beds.
My reaction was How cozy! All the family together–great! Nearly 20 years later, when I was living in Culver City, I found that a neighbor had lived next door to that house long before my friend lived there. The neighbor said it had been built by an artist–stucco walls where he had pressed decorated tiles into the wet stucco at random. Low tiled roof. I found it absolutely charming.
I was enchanted by that cozy little house. I don’t think my mother ever saw it, but my father drove my friend home several times, later on, and never ever uttered a disparaging word about it.