Like all working parents, Marice and I (mostly Marice)
struggled to arrange childcare for Rachel and Ethan before they were old enough
for kindergarten.
We relied mostly on playschools and mom’s-day-out programs
run by local churches. By and large, they were clean, well-run safe havens for
our kids. And my son and daughter loved the games, lessons and interaction with
other kids. It was a win-win.
Marice worried about the religious indoctrination the nice
Christian ladies who ran the schools might try to instill in our impressionable
Jewish kids. But with few exceptions (First Baptist Grapevine, you know who you
are), they mostly stuck to basic playschool curricula. Both kids knew the alphabet
and could count to 100 by the time they got to regular school.
There was some consternation when Ethan came home one day
singing “Jesus Loves Me.” But that turned out to be the only religious lesson
that stuck with him. Besides, I told a worried Marice, it’s a pretty catchy
tune.
For the record, both my kids when to Hebrew School at their
synagogue, seemingly unscathed by their close encounters with Christian doctrine.
And later, both performed brilliantly, Rachel at her Bat Mitzvah and Ethan at
his Bar Mitzvah.
One of the benefits of the playschool experience was that
the kids came home every Christmas with homemade ornaments featuring their
school photograph. By the looks of them, the teachers did most of the creative
work, leaving the glitter, glue and beads to the kids.
Here are a few of them. We have almost a score scattered all
over the tree. Marice thinks I’m nuts for keeping them all these years, but how
on God’s earth can I throw away such precious relics of a time gone by?
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