(Author’s Note: While this blog is for thoughts on various subjects of interest, its main purpose is to tell the story about turning my dream school concept into real brick and mortar. This school project is deeply motivated by the continued absence in our City of New York Brooklyn and Queens , in our family neighborhoods of Bay Ridge and Rockaway, any institutions of learning which would have worked well for our son, and would work well for those like him. Our son was forever severely mentally hurt by his first four years of schooling, by being caught between compulsory attendance law and no school in New York understanding and working with his unique synthesis of gifts and disabilities. And still today, there is no school which would do well by him. I want to start a school in which those like him will thrive. These Preludes are vignettes on the history of how I’ve gotten to this point in my dream.)
At the time, my parents could afford only a small three room ground floor apartment in that part of Brooklyn where Bay Ridge becomes Bensonhurst. They gave me the bedroom while they used the living room for a bedroom and for its original purpose. Like good parents of the day, the mid-1950’s, they furnished my room with the proper accoutrements for being a solid young scholar, including a rather large wooden student desk. And there I would sit night after school night plying the student trade in arithmetic, sight reading, spelling and, yes, penmanship.
The elementary school in which I was placed was Downtown Brooklyn. Among the reasons for placing me in St. Angela Hall Academy (which, by the way, closed many years ago) was that it was the only Catholic school they could find with bus service. Bus service was a necessity as both were working, both had a commute which enabled neither to drive me to school, and they thought I was too young to walk to any of the parish schools in the area. So, I, too, had a commute, of more than an hour each way.
As it turned out my mother, the nurse, had the shortest commute, but the longest hours; so, she arrived well after my father and I. My father, the high school English teacher, got out of school when I did, but arrived home later than I since his commute was longer. That meant I got home first. And having that privilege allowed me to have a quick snack and to get out of the house to meet friends before either parent was able to rope me into my desk chair to do my homework. However, I did have to eventually come in for supper, and that’s when I got caught! Right after supper it was homework time. Supper was usually about six and I started homework about six-thirty or so. By close to ten, I was sleeping on my books. My first grade teacher loved homework and so she indulged her love with a passion. Finally, with not everything completed either my mother or my father would wake me up, close the books for me and tell me to get ready for bed, which I dutifully did, climbing into bed as quickly as possible. But then…
The soft, white bed sheet and dark blue blanket rested comfortably on me, as I stared at the off-white ceiling of my room. I was concentrating on hearing whatever my mother and father had on the television; incredibly there was no sleep in my eyes or desire to be asleep in my mind, although I lay easy in bed.
As much as I strained to hear, I couldn’t make any sense of any sound visiting my wide-awake ears since the kitchen lay between my bedroom and the living room where the family television sat as the focal point. Years later living in the second floor apartment of my grandmother’s house, my bedroom immediately next to the living room, I would know everything about what was gong on on the television. But, then, at six years old, the apartment floor plan put me out of range.
I ‘d be focusing on the television sounds when I would hear the hard shoe, even cadence of my father’s steps growing louder until he was in the room looking down at me. His face had an annoyed appearance. He explained to me something about needing to go to sleep so I could easily get up for school the next day. Frankly I hadn’t an idea of what all this fuss was about. Still, he said he had to do something to “get me tired”.
He requested I sit up and on the side of the bed, which I did. He handed me a book to read with pages pre-selected. He said that sometimes reading that late at night makes people sleepy, so he said I should try it out, which I did. On completing the selection, I was returned to my bed covers.
He left, but there still was no sleep in my eyes or desire to be asleep in my mind, although I remained easy in bed. Eventually sleep would catch me. I suspect it must have been somewhere after eleven-thirty since I would discover much later that my folks had the habit of shutting the television off just after the local news and I remember there being silence from the television as I slipped off to slumber.
My father was a stubborn person, at times, given to repeating an activity even if the objectives weren’t being met. And so, night after school night he would have me read a chosen selection. But, night after school night I would finish and remain awake.
But, also, morning after school morning, I would hear through a drowsy mist my mother’s voice calling my name over and over and saying many, many times that it was time to get up for school. Eventually, the mist would clear enough for me to nearly fall out of bed. Like a cat, somehow, I always landed on my feet. But, I must admit, the bus ride most mornings was spent asleep.
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