AN ESSAY
Four Gardens of Reflection
Children
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Look, I married a teacher--an elementary teacher at that. One can hardly be more deliberate in bringing the influence of children into your life. I liked the joy she got out of working with children. But there is more to it than that.
Our entire society has everything at stake in the way it raises and educates its children because, like every generation before them, they will inherit everything we leave behind, including responsibility for our democratic system, our environment, and whatever fragile prospects we have created for peace in our time. There will be great leaders among our children as they mature. There always are. But there is also plenty of evidence that we are not doing all of them justice. We find inequities in our school systems, a large percentage of children living in poverty, too much child abuse, and too many children raising other children.
In 1990, we underwent licensing to become foster parents. Four girls have come into our lives for differing lengths of time, with differing levels of success, and with different challenges arising from different circumstances. Two of them we adopted. The youngest of all of them just turned 15; the oldest is now 28. We have learned from them, as they have learned from us. We have learned the ways in which the system chews up the hopes of children who are not fortunate enough to receive the protection of caring parents, and the difference it makes when they do. We have learned that children removed from their natural homes need, like any other children, to be nurtured, held, and loved. They need firm guidance, even when they say they don't want it. They really do, and they will respect it, if not now, later.
Our involvement with these children is not something I ever anticipated when I was a young adult. I had never given it much thought, and because I had never experienced it, would have had no idea what it meant to be a foster child or to be adopted. But there are millions of such children in the U.S. today, and our society will be judged in due course on the ways in which we have treated the least of them, and on whether we were there to protect and encourage them when it really mattered. It is our job to restore their natural faith when it has been sorely tested.
| Introduction | The Arts | Community | Nature |