the way up

up the winding staircase

the growth up for a child
is not just incremental steps up a straight staircase,
each step upward small and equal,
each gain discrete and quantitative,
rather, landings appear after some number of steps,
places from which the view changes
and from which stairways differ somewhat on the way up,
a qualitative change, from time to time,
as the stairway spirals around again and again,


our six year-old granddaughter has just reached a new stage,
a new vantage point,
and she seems even more solid and grounded in who she is,
when her parents describe her I hear a new deference in them
to her sureness of self,
an increased awareness that what she chooses is right for her,
there’s an interest in how she will go when given a fork
and less need to guide the choice,






her three year-old sister is at an earlier landing,
just as impressive in where she is and how far she can go
yet earlier in that lifelong process of climbing into self and sureness,
her imagination whirls her off into elaborate play,
her head makes sense of counting and people,
her heart chooses joy and others more and more often,






the students I teach are in middle school
and the landings are higher
and increasingly beset by buffeting winds,



I hope all of us, wherever we are on the stairways,
remember the six year old within us
who learns every day that the going can get tough
and how to accept the frustration
and how to accept and reveal the burgeoning self
who will find a way if a way can be found,


I watch the six year-old untangle plastic lines and metal balls in a science toy,
she moves through near tears and finds the way to make it work again.
Later she tells me how after a challenge her brain feels better.

by Henry H. Walker
September 30, ’11