At kindergarten Meet the Teacher night last week, my daughter’s English teacher told us, “I don’t go overboard with homework for the students. Just one page of literacy and one page of math each night.”

There are so many things about that sentence. First, you see how I had to specify “English” teacher? My daughter is in a dual-language program, so she has an English teacher for half of the day and a Spanish teacher for the other half. One day she starts with Ms. Z, and does Literacy and Math in the morning, and then switches to Senora L and does Social Studies and something else in the afternoon. The next day she starts with Senora L for Social Studies and whatever else in the morning, and then has Ms. Z for Literacy and Math in the afternoon.

I’m not criticizing the program – I agreed to the program. My ex-husband was all about the program and how it boosts test scores and confidence and a million other things, and I was on the fence but I agreed. There’s that voice – that nudging voice that says you’re a bad parent if you deny your child any perceived opportunity to excel, to capitalize on any little advantage. It’s the same reason I agreed to soccer for my son, even though he spends most of his time waving to me from the field while the ball whizzes past him. Maybe it’ll help him learn discipline and being part of a team. At least it will hopefully help him learn how not to get kicked in the balls. There is so much pressure on parents to make these judgment calls that will supposedly affect our children’s lives forever, and sometimes I wonder if it’s the same as the proverbial “permanent record”. Does it really all matter in the end? The pressure we put on ourselves? The pressure we put on them?

Because there is also a weight on my daughter’s shoulders when she enters her classroom. At five, she’s a student. We weren’t students at five. We were kids. We played in centers, which kids now start doing before they’re even three. My student has two pages of homework every night – every other night in Spanish. She struggles through it. As a child, I read at five because I loved it. As a student, my daughter worries that she writes her name “ugly”.. Handwriting shouldn’t be a damn issue when you’re five.

And teachers shouldn’t have to make it such an issue. Elementary school teachers work in an incredibly pressured environment. Their livelihood now depends on measurable goals, and I wish more emphasis could be placed on the immeasurable importance of a child being comfortable in the company of others and beginning to acquire a love of learning. That’s what the teachers I know signed up for, but they’ve ended up charged with teaching to reach test scores rather than real achievement.

A few years ago, when my son was my daughter’s age, I volunteered to chaperone his class on a pond study at the park near his school. I decided to meet them at the park, and I got there a good 45 minutes early because I was so paranoid about being late (I’m still afraid of being tardy). I futzed around with my phone and watched a grizzled old guy in his seventies pull a truck up to the other side of the pond and start unloading equipment. Not knowing where I was supposed to be situated at the pond, I decided he looked like the right person to ask, and made my way over to him. Maybe he worked for the park.

By the time I got to the man, I loved him. I had to walk the length of the pond to get to him, so I’d watched him methodically unload nets and buckets and a big water table. He had on khaki work pants and boots and a white t-shirt and suspenders and a flannel. He was wearing what I can only describe as a science hat. I know that will mean something different to everyone who reads this. I want it to. Picture your own park-science-pond guy. I walked up to him.

“Hi,” I said, extending my hand, “my name’s Desh. I’m looking for the Woodside field trip.”

He did that thing that men do where they wipe their brow with the back of their hand and dry their palm on their pants before they shake your hand. It’s something men of my dad’s generation do.

“Dave Klotzle,” he said, giving me a solid handshake. “I run the pond study with the kids.”

“So I’m in the right place,” I said.

“If you don’t mind getting dirty,” he responded, and winked.

“I planned on it,” I said.

We started talking. Dave had been working with schools doing the pond studies and nature walks for years. He loved getting the kids to think about the entire world around them, to see ecosystems and how life was intertwined, to think from the treetops to the roots to the mud of the pond, to recognize the beauty and the fragility of nature. He gave me some tips for working with the kids.

“Let them know it’s okay to get dirty. Root around in the water. The good stuff is worth looking for. Nature’s not something to be afraid of. These kids are always sitting inside on their tablets instead of out in the woods and the dirt and they don’t know that it’s for playing.

Some of it’s cultural. You have parents that don’t want their kids outside because they don’t have papers. Those kids are missing out. Kids need to smell nature and hear it and touch it. You can’t read about the woods and the water. You’ve got to be there.

These kids have been run to ground with anti-bacterial spray. They think mess is the enemy. Life’s a mess, nature’s a mess. I try to teach them about a good mess and a bad mess. I want them to love the muck of a pond. I want them to hate the sight of a soda bottle left in the grass. These kids need to learn it’s their planet and they’re responsible for it.”

And then they arrived en masse, marching up the hill giggling and pushing and singing, this crew of six-year-olds. Dave introduced himself as Mr. Klotzle and ran down the rules, which basically involved not falling in the pond and not crushing any water dwellers. He commanded an audience as he talked about life in a pond and everything that grew there. The kids sat silently and listened in that slightly open-mouthed way that kids have when their full attention is caught. Ironically, the act of learning intently makes them look a little less than intelligent. And then we got down to business.

Mr. Klotzle was right. These kids did not want to get messy at first. They didn’t like the pond, and they didn’t like mud, and they didn’t want to touch anything that moved.

So I did. I got muddy double time. I filled the net and I kneeled down in the muck and I found a snail thing and a minnow and some kind of something, and before I knew it they were digging in. They took each interesting catch over to Mr. Klotzle’s water table for collection, and he presided over it like King of the Little Pond People, with occasional barks to quit running, or stop bringing so many rocks, or please cut it out with the mud throwing. In the end I watched every kid succumb to fascination with the messiness and magic of life coming out of that pond.

When everyone reluctantly turned in their nets and cleaned their hands (and arms, and faces), Mr. Klotzle went over all of the specimens the kids had gathered. He explained how they all co-existed and contributed to the pond and to each other. He took a textbook chapter worth of information and he made it real. I watched the light in the kids’ eyes and the light bulbs over their heads.

I thanked Mr. Klotzle and gave him a huge hug when the day was over.

“You reminded me why I loved school,” I said.

“Every time I do this I’m reminded why I love my job,” he said, smiling.

We lost Mr. Klotzle the summer after that trip. I am so grateful that those kids and I had that day with them.

Those kids.

Because that’s who Mr. Klotzle taught. Kids. He didn’t teach students. He didn’t teach for tests. He taught kids, so they could learn. I wish that more teachers had the luxury of teaching the way he did, with love and luck and time and ease. Without pressure. Because you don’t just learn with your head. You learn with your hands. You learn with your heart. Mr. Klotzle knew that.

This is a cutting from a plant that was given to my mother when around the time she was pregnant with me (have I mentioned she has a green hand?). I believe it’s a Chinese Evergreen. I’ve had this for over ten years. It’s incredible that I haven’t killed it, as that’s my plant MO. I have, however, never gotten this lady past eight leaves.

I moved her to Mahopac and repotted her and gave her a view of the lake. I also gave her a very different view of me.

I think she likes it here. She boasted five leaves upon arrival – now she has 40, including three new stalks. She’s beautiful.

I cannot take credit for my children. They’re in a league of their own. So this is the first thing I feel I’ve ever cultivated. I can only hope she’s some version of the growth I’ve experienced as well.

The third house on the left on Lillian, combined with the beginning of fall, is giving me flashbacks. We closed on my former house in Peekskill ten years ago yesterday.

The third house is new construction. I used to watch the owner stand in the lot, and I fancied that he was imagining what could exist there. Over the winter and spring I watched the construction of a big, beautiful blue home with white shutters, and I hate it.

I have watched them begin to make the house a home. I watched them figure out how to configure the parking of cars – three in a row at the end of the driveway? One in front of the garage? They aren’t parking in the garage. Maybe it’s full of things they have yet to unpack.

I watched them leave the garbage and recycling bins out on the correct days. I still don’t know the correct days, and I’ve been here over a year. If I could, I would tell them that everyone just leaves the bins by the street. We don’t like to clutter up our houses with bins, and there are stone walls and bushes that line the streets. The bins can blend in nicely.

I watched the woman walk the tiny dog in the yard – a “drop-kick dog”, as my dad would say. I want to tell her that the winding, hilly road along the lake is beautiful and the houses all vary, making the neighborhood an amazing walk. But she looks closed up and very ‘80’s and I’m not sure if she’s a stop-to-chat neighbor.

I watched three potted marigolds line up on one side of the steps leading up to the front door. They are on the right side, opposite the garage, which for some reason throws the house off kilter to me. They should be on the left.

I have watched various lights turned on at night, illuminating different areas of the house. Last night the upstairs light was on, with the blinds closed on the window, finally giving the house some sense of privacy. Finally, some sense of a decision being made about the way life was being lived inside the house.

Because I have watched the house begin, but I have not felt it become. And in that way it feels exactly like Kissam to me.

We walked into Kissam with only the blinds on the windows, which is appropriate, as we had no clue what we were starting. I remember the feel of it, the emptiness despite things being put away, the feeling that persisted after months that I was house-sitting, that I was living a life that wasn’t mine.

And in a way I was. Kissam was a place where I hid my sanity and my salvation in crawl spaces and closets, pretending that everything was fine, working on life from hour to hour, not knowing how I would make it through. The house was cold, it was empty. My things were there but I was not. I couldn’t be alone there, but I constantly was, on those “sick days” that I called in to work and spent the day calling everyone I knew seeking a lifeline.

The third house on the left is Kissam. I can see through the bare windows to its skeleton, I can count the bones, I can tell it has no guts. I hope that there are things in the garage that can pull it through, the pictures and the pillows, the curtains, the contentment. I hope they can fill the crawl spaces.

I am grateful for the fall. I know that spring is the time of beginnings, but, perhaps because school was the only way out of my house, fall always seemed more like a beginning to me. I love the deep blue that the sky only achieves in October, and I love colorful canopies above that transition to blankets below of leaves. I love football bleachers and freshman years and transition. And I hate all of these things as well. Perhaps what I love is promise – of growth, of getting rid of the trappings that no longer suit us and starting over. As much as I love the beauty of the falling leaves, I also find beauty in the concept of leaving.

I am grateful for The Fall, my fall. I dropped my basket in the fall and didn’t pick it up again until the dead of winter. I watched nature shed her clothes one season and I, too, shed everything I was until all that was left was a shell. And when I couldn’t get rid of the shell I began to rebuild her. And having emptied out a whole lot of ugly, I was left to reshape what remained, and I found that even the ugly was still me, and was salvageable. I’m still picking the aspects that I want to keep, but every fall reminds me that I’m fortunate enough to have that opportunity.