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:::by amanda:::

One of my favorite books when I was a little girl was The Changeling by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. (Out of print and hard to find--I have a falling-apart paperback I'd be willing to mail to the first person who asks me for it.) It's about two girls named Martha and Ivy who become best friends. They spend their time immersed in fantasy worlds, acting out plays they make up in their heads and creating magic rituals (an old chopstick is a magic wand, a glass doorknob in a base of modeling clay is a crystal ball). One of my favorite rituals is what they call "The Magic of New People" ("Baby Magic" is the name of a baby lotion, so that wouldn't do.) They sit Ivy's baby sister Josie in the middle of a circle and let her hold the chopstick--I mean, wand--while they walk around her, chanting. (And the magic ends up working, by the way.)

My favorite time of my work week is my baby story time. For some reason, all my co-workers detest working with these littlest ones, but I love it. I realized recently that we spend a lot of our time in a circle, either walking around or sitting down. And we chant or sing rhymes. The Magic of New People? You bet. But what is it for?

The more I work with children, the more I realize how simple it all is. A lot of things will help you be a good parent, and you need to read all those books that will teach you 101 facts about babies and what makes them tick. But when it comes down to it, love is really the most important thing. You don't have to give your child expensive toys or send them to private school or take them on exciting vacations to prove that you love them. All you have to do is love them and accept them unconditionally. (I used to think unconditional love came naturally to parents, but I'm realizing that isn't always the case.)

That's what the baby story time is all about. You're a new person. You're special. Your mom loves you, and everybody else in this room is crazy about you, too. Do you see how we all smile when you smile or how our heads swivel to look at you when you cry? We come here once a week to sing these silly rhymes because we're trying to teach you about the world, to show you a piece of this life you're bursting into, taking it slowly. You won't remember these times when you're older, but that's part of the magic--some of it will stay buried deep within you. And we've all had times when we thought we were on our last reserves when our brains or our hearts shoved some last bit of humanity in our throats so that we choked on it and it forced us to draw another breath and keep on living. We're trying to create these reserves for you.

So part of it is
Twinkle, twinkle little star
What a wonderful child you are
But it ends up being much more than that in the long run, I think.

<< 2002-05-03 @ 11:47 a.m. >>