Monday, December 20, 2010

Dylan's Class on Gay Moms

Dear friends/family,

I wanted to share a story that Ms Colleen, Dylan's kindergarten teacher, told me on Friday, their last day of school, at the very end of the day when the kids had run off to play in the snow and she had me alone for a minute.

Now I love Ms Colleen, and Dylan does too.  She is kindly, older, short and a bit plump, quiet but heart of love, full of integrity, a wide, pale face with softly red-dyed hair, Irish complexion and heritage.  When I do drop-off or pick-up at the playground every day, she is usually too busy managing kids to talk.  You can tell she knows her profession inside and out and loves her charges.

Colleen says that she'd wanted to tell me a story that had happened earlier that same week, Wednesday or Thursday.  She is always telling her assistant teacher, she says, to let the kids work it out, to give them a chance, let them talk it through.  So one kid, Aidan (the most-likely-to-get-in-trouble tough boy who loves football and war games, sensitive but often overly energetic) tells Piper (a girl), that he wants to marry her.  Colleen says that that's old news, he's said that to her and about her again and again, he's had a crush for a long time.  So Piper says "No, I don't want to marry you, I want to marry a reindeer."

And some kids say, "You can't marry a reindeer, it has to be a person."

And Piper says, "Well okay, I'll marry Camilla," who is one of her best friends (and female).

Then Aidan says, "You can't marry another girl, you have to marry a boy." And then Colleen says that all the kids in the class turned as one and said that that wasn't true, that she could marry a girl, that look:  Dylan had two moms.

Calvin, shaggily blond and blue-eyed, perky as ever, adds, "Yes it's true; I've been to their house on a playdate and I've seen them."

And Nico, who Colleen says has been reading for two years now (rare especially at Waldorf), adds, "And it's been legal in some states for a while."  I doubt Dylan or any of the other kids understood quite what that meant, but it was lovely for me to hear.

Colleen was obviously so proud that they came, as a group, to that conclusion, and that Dylan herself wasn't put on the spot.  It was a good story for me to hear on the last day of school.

XOXO,

Yvonne