i enjoy fourth graders. they are controllable. unlike, say, being in charge of three kindergartners at a zoo, which is what i was doing four years ago. sound easy? let me paint a picture. everyone in the city chose that particular day to field trip to the zoo. picture BILLIONS of kids all wearing bright yellow, green or orange.
my child stayed right by my side. the other two, however, decided it would be great fun to explore on their own. the first child walked way ahead of us, going in whichever direction his heart desired. he is wearing a yellow shirt, remember, just like 4,396 other kids all his same height and build. my third compadre, he is the slow sort. he likes to stop and gaze at whatever catches his eye. so i spend my time yelling for the first yellow shirt to stop, the third yellow shirt to hurry up, and asking my own child, what on earth is wrong with these kids.
by the end, i think i had told these two stragglers more than once that i no longer cared if they made it home safely or not, that their job now was to keep up with me.
okay, so fourth graders at a ranch. way easy. piece of cake. loved it.
this is a house on a plantation where a worker slave lived. parents got the bed, children slept on the floor. it was small, smelly, and it lacked a flat screen and double-door fridge.
these are the chickens that run wild. they are prized for their eggs, not killed for their meat. they have a coop to sleep in at night so that coyotes and owls don't eat them.
this is a darling pig with fur that feels like straw. the kids just read "charlotte's web" so were very pleased to see such a fine example of pigdom.
each child was given a cloth diaper to wash with lye soap. my son, on the left, did a surprisingly good job. probably because there was no actual poop on it.
then they had to hang it with old-fashioned clothes pins on a line to dry.
my least favorite part of the field trip. there just HAD to be an alligator. a baby one. which, you know, means mom and dad are lurking nearby.
my most favorite part: the picnic tables were all full by the time we got ready to sit down so my son took his lunch and sat down in the field. within moments, all his cronies joined him. you might have to be a mother to understand what that feels like. but it feels pretty awesome.
the picture-taking part. where myself and other parents ruin their fun by asking that they smile repeatedly for the camera. with mixed results, as you can plainly see.
a most awesome tree deck.
the sweetest horse, who just ate all this attention up. she licked the boys faces, and here is seen trying to take a playful bite out of this child's shirt. and i swear she was doing it just for laughs. because we were all in near hysterics, and she kept doing it over and over with the most bored look on her face.
a beautiful blonde, getting her nose tickled by a teacher.
i love field trips. but moreover, i love it that my kids ask me to go with them on these jaunts. my fourth-grader may not say much to me when he's with his friends, but he will sneak glances at me to see if i'm watching him make someone laugh, or if someone says something a little daring. i'll wink, or raise my eyebrows, and he'll smile back at me. the kind of smile he tries to contain.
it's the subtle dance of mother and son, the ebb and flow. i'm with him, but i'm not. i'm invited, but i'm more or less ignored. we both know that later, alone, is when we will really talk about it all.
it's a quiet deal. it's a private deal. but it's a deal i would never pass up.
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