Calendar reminder for 20 years from now: invite Avivit, Nurit and Tomer, the kindergarten teachers, to the little redhead’s naval officers’ graduation ceremony/wedding/graduation.
Because there’s some annoying injustice in the fact that, of all people, the educators who are perhaps the most significant in our lives get forgotten at life’s beautiful moments. To the ceremonies of our adulthood we’ll invite the admired homeroom teacher from high school, the head of the mechina or the youth-movement coordinator, but we usually won’t invite the beloved kindergarten teacher from the Tiltan kindergarten.
Last week my three-year-old redhead innocently told me:
Daddy, I love Avivit, Tomer and Nurit so much! They put on pretty shows for us in kindergarten and it makes us giggle!
Just like that, out of nowhere, from a sweet memory floating around in her head.
Completely genuine.
And I thought to myself what a shame that she probably won’t remember it. Or more precisely: won’t remember it consciously. But in fact every single cell in the little one’s body will remember her good experiences at the daycare. The security, the smiles, walking barefoot in the sand, the boundaries, the warm hugs, the mid-morning snack with olive oil and za’atar. At these ages maybe they don’t teach us about Zionism and history, math and English, or hold deep conversations about the meaning of life, but what she learns in kindergarten is a hundred times more important:
Trust in people
A sense of security
Boundaries
A first experience of personal relationships
Learning from a significant adult
Joy.
These are the ages when our attitude toward the world takes shape:
Is the world a jungle where the strong survive, or a place of trust between human beings.
And my daughter learned from Avivit, Nurit and Tomer that the world is a place of hugs and trust.
I told them so in person, I wrote a calendar reminder for twenty years from now, and in my view, in these days of kindergarten and school year-end, we must remember to say, face to face, to those responsible for one of the most important periods in our children’s lives, how much we appreciate, love and thank them.
