Tuesday, December 09, 2003

It was a very long time ago that I was in kindergarten, and I don't remember much about it. My guess is that I excelled at naps and snacks, for which I have always had a natural talent.

Life, of course, is unfair. In childhood, naps and snacks are encouraged but in adult life they are discouraged, as lots of husbands could tell you. It seems a waste of good early training, but nobody listens to me, perhaps because I'm yawning with my head in the fridge.

In kindergarten, kids don't yet know the ways of the world. All they know is that adults are very large and other kids always have more interesting sandwiches than they do, and thus curiosity and social consciousness are born amid the peanut butter and jelly and the looming presence of the teacher.

Last week I returned to kindergarten at the invitation of my daughter Allison. It seems only yesterday that Allison was in kindergarten herself, and we were making her unsatisfactory snacks, but in fact it was a great many yesterdays ago. Allison graduated from college in May.

In trying to settle on her life's direction, and suspecting she might like to teach but not wanting to get a master's degree if she turned out to have no passion for teaching, she took a job as a part-time kindergarten assistant to see if she likes the profession. It turns out she does.

Allison seems to like living at home again, too -- especially the free laundry -- and this is a new chapter for all of us. For two years, my wife and I had the proverbial empty nest. We had a grand old time, partying and hanging off the chandeliers in our wanton abandon. Actually, that's a little exaggeration, meant to put a brave face on it. In reality, we just paid bills, did chores and thought of the kids.

I arrived at her class during "quiet time," which is apparently a relative term in kindergarten, meaning less uproarious than usual. The children were still eating their lunch, and I noticed they had a better class of sandwiches than I had at their age. Then I gratefully remembered that just because I was back in kindergarten didn't mean I had to have sandwich envy all over again.

Allison was temporarily in charge of the class and she introduced me as her father. I would be reading them a book, she said.

Before I came, the class had picked the book I was to read. Allison wanted me to read "The Polar Express," a beautifully illustrated Christmas tale that was a personal favorite of hers when she was little. But the children chose "Curious George Visits the Library" by H.A. and Margret Rey.

I was secretly pleased. The Curious George books were a favorite of mine in my old parental reading days and here was a chance to meet again the Man in the Yellow Hat, surely one of the most enigmatic characters in all literature.

The Man in the Yellow Hat, for those not familiar with the series, is a cowboy character who has a monkey, the aforementioned Curious George. The monkey is a sort of child proxy, who does all sorts of good-naturedly naughty things that real kids can't do. In this book, he manages to reduce the library to chaos amid much adult shushing.

Why a cowboy who dresses in yellow (not just his hat) should live with a monkey is not explained, but clearly the Man in the Yellow Hat is a Curious Dude in his own right.

When I was showing the pictures in the book, one boy observed that the Man in the Yellow Hat was wearing tights, which might explain a lot, but, in fact, I think they were leggings or boots.

In this age of television, I was amazed that an old guy simply reading and turning the pages of a book could seem exciting enough to hold their interest, but they were, well, curious.

I was accepted for what I was -- Miss Henry's Dad, the Man With No Hat. Why, from their perspective, perhaps I had a monkey at home. In kindergarten, all things are possible and imagination picks up where reality leaves off.

My visit passed quickly and soon it was time to say goodbye. In the book, Curious George had destroyed the library, helped put it back together and had been given a library card.

The one little girl I knew best, the one who had grown big in a twinkling of an eye, said to the class: "Do you think that my Dad looks like me?" One kid said, "Naw, you're a girl." Another said, "And you don't have a mustache."

True, all true. But those differences hardly seemed to matter on this day as the past melded with the present. I was back in kindergarten, back in the realm of boundless imagination. Here, the stylish cowboy guardian of a monkey (with or without tights) made all the sense in the world because the world was a more magical place.

After a nap, I think I will read "The Polar Express" to Allison for old time's sake and new.

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