Daile's beautiful baby boy
My arms were full of groceries as I rushed out of the supermarket when I heard a tentative voice call out to me.
I swung around to see a young woman entering the store with a young baby secured tightly in her grocery cart.
"Daile!" I said.
She flashed a beaming smile and in that instant I was transported to 1994.
I remember Daile with her carefully braided hair, the graceful bowing of her violin and her soft spoken nature. I had known her from her first grade to fifth grade and had seen her coaxed ever so gradually out of her shell.
After her fifth grade (and extended day) graduation, her family and I had kept in touch.
Years later I stood with other mothers taking picture of her and her friends before they went to prom.
Today Daile has finished college and is a young working mother herself.
She is a picture of happiness.
Tired happiness, she tells me, as she now tries to mentally check boxes and juggle priorities as an adult.
I could hear the pride and confidence in her voice as she tells me about life.
I interrupt her mid sentence to say: "Daile, when did you get to be all grown up?"
She laughed and and said, "I wish we could get together soon..."
As we went our separate ways I could not help but feel proud to have been a part of her growing up years.
I believe that somehow, the positive experiences she will provide for her son will be in part, due to the kind of environment we contributed to her childhood.
For myself it is moments like that-- encounters with former children in my school-age care program-- that I realize that the twelve years that I devoted to my work there, was meaningful.
It is also just another validation that those school-age care relationships can and will last a lifetime if you treat the children in your program with respect and genuine care.
-Chesca Silva
