by David Hunter
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The warm noonday sun and cool breeze play on my face and exposed arms. The Spring air nearly vibrates with honeybees and the flitting wings of shimmering white cabbage butterflies in this glorious and expansive lawn filled with flowering clover and radiant dandelions. It could be more accurately defined as an expansive field of clover and dandelions, interspersed with blades of grass.
Nearby is the considerably smaller blacktop for hop-scotch and a single basketball hoop, enjoyed daily by the girls and boys in higher grades than mine – absolutely forbidden to we who dwell in the lower realm of kindergarten.
I'm lazily content watching the bees, children playing, and billowing structures of cotton candy filling the sky. Hearing the occasional sound of cars on the bordering street I'm reminded that this piece of heaven, wondrous and magical as it may be, is of this world.
A sister who is one year older than I is somewhere in the building, the eldest in a far away school which I'll one day know as my own. Whatever schools my future holds, none will ever be as dear to my heart as this.
My younger brother and sister are at home with mom. We are given to understand that soon another sibling will be joining us. My brother and I hope it's a boy, my three sisters, quite naturally, want a girl.
I see my teacher who we all love and who loves all of us, leaning against a brick wall of the horseshoe-shaped building, watching us as we play. She seems to revel as much as we in the warmth of the sun accompanied by a steady, cool breeze.
The snows of winter receded, finally, into a beautiful Spring. The Rocky Mountains can be seen at a distance, gradually shrinking - then disappearing from view into the northern and southern extremities of my vision. The foothills expose verdant green under the soft glow of yet snow-capped peaks that alternately glisten, then nearly disappear, as threatening clouds enshroud them.
The richly unique smell that portends a coming rainstorm carries with it the promise of plenty of puddles of water to be alternately avoided, then jumped directly into, as my sister and I splash one another on our way home.
Today our teacher gathered us around her on the floor for what was an exciting step in this first week of our kindergarten adventure. She taught us our first school song on an upright piano, situated against the play kitchen in a corner of the classroom:
Abraham Lincoln is kind and good,
His honor and love for many.
To help us remember this president,
We put his face on our penny!
It's a melodic, wondrous song. I'm sure that I'll remember and treasure this song - my first song of school - all the days of my life. How thrilling it is to sing without care, such youthful joy!
Inlaid in the middle of the floor are large tiles in a circle with the letters of the alphabet. Daily we walk around that circle to play various games. The idea, no doubt, is for us to actually learn the alphabet. I'm pretty sure none of us do, at least not the first time we walked the circle, singing as we moved from letter to letter.
Snack time is a favorite part of the morning for all of us. We always drink milk with crackers. Then we retrieve small rugs from our assigned cubby holes to lay on the floor for a nap.
Nobody wants to take a nap. Playing and singing our new song is much more to our liking. But once laying down and at rest it isn't long before the stealth arrival of sleep steals playtime from us without conscious consent, graciously compensating with the dreams of children that are instantly forgotten upon awakening.