Connecting: How to Bond

It’s the end of summer. Kids gather to ring the last of ice cream carts and campfires, laze at the end of pond docks.

And mothers, like breaking up through the surface of it all, breathe deeply, expanding lungs again with the stuff of living. Emerging from the murky depths, we tread water for a bit, getting our bearings: what landmarks have been passed and which lie ahead, where has one been and where is one going?

The end of summer is that in-between time, the days of reorienting, before the next deep dive into daily living.

As a young lanky girl, freckles and milk-white legs, I oft spent those last of up-for-air days dangling my toes off the end of my grandparents’ weathered plank diving board. The bobbing light shimmering on the waters of the pond shyly beckoned my toes to come experience the cool wet. Bullfrogs, low and throaty, boastfully puffed of invitations accepted.

So I dangled and dipped and read away the heat-drenched days of fading summer. Yellowed, textured paper, with its inky lines of arches and spaces and places, transported me, fingers ready at corner edges to go higher up and deeper in. Only the gentle lap of the pond waters grounded me. These days felt right.

Come the cool relief of summers’ evenings, Grandma would stand on the back porch, arm slightly crooked to collect me.

The diving board creaked as I stood, marked my page, and carefully balanced my way back to pond’s edge. The carpet of grass softly gave way under ten toes and heel. Then I’d tuck my arm through Grandma’s waiting one, and together we’d slip down empty gravel roads, out past shadows lengthening across fields of twilight gold.

“What words today, dear?” she’d ask.

I would spill. Of characters and ideas, stories and places that had washed me far out across the pond to new lands.

Grandma, the soft jangling wrinkles of her upper arm brushing against my youth, would walk in and out of shadows, listening. Tthen string out her life stories to me adrift in the pages and books that summertime had given.

I was a person out in the waters of it all, connecting to a person, connecting to the world.

The fading mirage of those in-between-days now reorients me, as a mother and educator, towards what a real education is. Wes Callihan writes:

“This is the heart of a good education: a small but well-chosen library, a place to sit and study, some friends to do it with, and the time and tranquility to do it in. Read the best books and talk to them with like-minded friends. That’s been the essence of real education since antiquity…”

Grandma knew it intuitively. Those summer holidays, a respite from stiff desks and sterile texts, were days of real learning. A well-chosen book, a place to breathe in the words, another human being who collected and connected with learner, and the time and tranquility to do it all in. Safely attached and anchored to Grandma, I ventured forth in the quiet to wondrous worlds of knowledge.

For the foundational prerequisite for a course in real learning is real relationship: relationship with the world, its thoughts, and books, and then relationship with a person, a friend, who draws the learner close and shares the journey.

Relationship is the marrow of an education. Connected and collected, one can truly discover.

Simple yet profound, Grandma’s collection of me, the cord of relationship she plaited everyday, reflected a mother bonding with infant. For our need for attachment remains no matter how large our bodies grow.

How to develop a bond with child?

*Delight
Daily, she’d simply delight in me, touching me, (for she knew that to touch skin is to touch the soul), letting our eyes meet and then, smiling into who I was. Like a mother delighting in her newborn, she entered into my space not to teach me something, or change me, but simply to be together and enjoy me. I knew it, feeling her acceptance and affection deeply.

*Draw
As a mother holds out a finger for babe, Grandma offered me her arm, drawing me close, but she gave me even more to hold on to: the twinkle in her eyes, the love in her voice. Embraced physically and emotionally in her warmth, I held unto Grandma’s genuine interest as a lifeline no matter where learning and life took me.

*Dependence
Instead of prematurely pushing me out into the dark deeps of life and independence, Grandma generously offered an outstretched arm to me. She had time to give of herself to help me. Inviting dependence on herself fostered a closeness between us, that let me naturally grow into independent learning.

*Direct
Out there in the waters, Grandma was like a compass, directing and guiding me. As a mother draws a babe close and orients the young one to the surrounding environment, so Grandma would, like a guide, offer direction, to our days, to who I was, and to what the world was about. I wanted to stay close to my guide.

Getting my bearings in these summer days, I look back to those long ago days, and then to the landmarks we’ve passed in the last year. I can see that too often, unlike Grandma, I have not collected my children, like chicks under a wing, but managed them.

How often have my exchanges with my children focused on a task to accomplish, a subject to learn, or a behavior to change?

When is it just about delighting in, drawing close, inviting dependence as I offer to help, or about gentle direction as a caring guide in a big world?

When is it about simple relationship and companionship in tranquil, rich spaces?

The eminent Rachel Carson wrote, “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.”

In these up-for-air days, I’m finding my bearings again, charting my course: As a mother and educator, I am to consciously construct breakers out there on choppy waters, creating circles of quiet, tranquility, on the water’s surface so young ones may embark.

And then, to personally enter into that sacred space of quiet, collecting child and learner in a closely bonded, connected relationship.

No child should drift as an island.

I am swimming out now.

Lord, show me today how I make my life be about the big stuff: delighting in, drawing close, inviting dependence as I offer to help, or about gentle direction as a caring guide in a big world? To bond with others as You bond with us.

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