Gifts from Children

I’ve sung with a kindergarten class and 5^th grade class at a local school once a month for the past four months and yesterday was my last for the year. When the little ones spotted me in the hall, there was an outburst of affectionate “Hellos!” and one boy, having just come from outside, gave me a little leaf he had in his hand. At the end of a marvelous 45 minutes of singing, another boy held his arms out as I prepared to leave, inviting me for a hug.

On I went to the 5^th grade and taught them some 60’s protest songs, practiced our Table Rhythms on their desks and sang the two songs I taught the last time that Harry Belafonte had made famous. The last, Jamaica Farewell, was an appropriate goodbye song and I learned that they had recently gone on a field trip and spontaneously sang this all on their own. On the way out, a girl rushed out and handed me a piece of paper. 

It is hard to talk about this without appearing self-aggrandizing, but of course, it’s not about me. It’s about what I bring to a group of kids when I enter the room. Not only a wide variety of fabulous songs and stories and games, but the clear happiness I feel in their presence, mirroring back to them the spiritual uplift their bright, curious, quirky selves gives to me, the unspoken but deeply felt sense that I genuinely like them and am happy to be with them and understand them. “Behavior is the language of children” and I believe these little acts of gift-giving are their powerful way of saying “Thank you for not being another annoying adult always yelling at me or that other kind who says, “Dude, you’re cool!”

 

No Grammy or Oscar or Pulitzer will ever grace my mantelpiece, but hey, I have a little shriveled green leaf given to me spontaneously by a five-year old. That is more than enough.