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May 28, 2006

A gift of time

By Michelle Martin

When school started this year, it seemed in some ways as if Frank was taking a step back.

When his old school closed, he moved from a small, full-day preschool class to a half-day program that ended at 11 a.m.—well before lunch according to my schedule.

When we enrolled him, we knew it wouldn’t be easy. With two working parents, albeit both with flexible schedules, the late-morning pick-up had a way of coming at just the wrong time: late enough to make it impossible to drop him off with his grandparents and make it to a lunch meeting, way too early to take him home and call it a half-day off from work.

Frank was confused, too, about why Caroline brought her lunch to school and stayed all day and he didn’t. He stepped away from his classmates at the beginning, overwhelmed by the number of students and the amount of activity.

But nine months later, I consider this year a gift.

He didn’t mind not having afternoon class; he confided to his teacher that he found the afternoons at his old school “boring” because the kids were expected to take naps.

Picking up Frank was inconvenient, yes. But the magic of seeing him smile when he emerged from the classroom door made up for all the times I had to tell colleagues I would have to reschedule something because of an important “meeting.”

We often would take the L downtown together—a practice that encouraged his fascination with trains, streets and maps. He seemed to prefer it in the beginning because when we were on the train, he could have my undivided attention, even more than when I drove to go get him.

That was a new thing for Frank, who was blessed with a big sister from the moment he came into the world. While Caroline was known to say, “But I don’t want a little brother!” in the months following his birth, Frank has never imagined a world without his sister, and he has never had the experience of being an only child.

But leaving school nearly four hours ahead of her gave him some of that one-and-only time—sometimes with mom, sometimes with dad, and sometimes with his grandma—that younger children rarely get.

That time also let me get to know Frank in a new way, when he didn’t have to raise his voice to be heard over anyone else. Even without needing to play the clown to draw attention to himself, I learned he has a silly sense of humor that revels in repeated jokes and purposeful mispronunciations.

His imagination turned the space under my desk and a few empty boxes into a hideout where he could draw and do puzzles when he had to spend time at work, and he made calendars and maps for my colleagues.

Frank also bloomed socially and academically, learning to read many words by studying first his CTA map, then maps of Chicago and the United States. He’s the only 5-year-old I know who knows where the number 77 Belmont bus ends its route and which stations allow transfers from one L line to another.

Next year, he won’t have time to ride the trains so much. He’s going to kindergarten and will once again be in school the whole day—this time, without an afternoon nap.

Come September, I’ll miss my time with him.


Michelle Martin is a Catholic New World staff writer.