Sarah Shun-lien Bynum - Likes

It is just as Kate hoped. The worn path, the bells tinkling on the gate. The huge fir trees dropping their needles one by one. A sweet mushroomy smell, gnomes stationed in the underbrush, the sound of a mandolin far up on the hill. Were here, were here, she says to her child, who isnt walking fast enough and needs to be pulled along by the hand. Through the gate they go, up the dappled path, beneath the firs, across the school parking lot and past the kettle-corn stand, into the heart of the Elves Faire.

Her child is named Ondine but answers only to Ruthie. Ruthies hand rests damply in hers, and together they watch two scrappy fairies race by, the swifter one waving a long string of raffle tickets. Dont you want to wear your wings? Kate asked that morning, but Ruthie wasnt in the mood. Sometimes they are in cahoots, sometimes not. Now they circle the great shady lawn, studying the activities. There is candle making, beekeeping, the weaving of Gods eyes. A sign in purple calligraphy says that King Arthur will be appearing at noon. Theres a tea garden, a bluegrass band, a man with a thin sandy beard and a hundred acorns pinned with bright ribbons to the folds of his tunic, boys thumping one another with jousting sticks. The ground is scattered with pine needles and hay. The lemonade cups are compostable. Everything is exactly as it should be, every small elvish detail attended to, but, as Kates heart fills with the pleasure of it all, she is made uneasy by the realization that she could have but did not secure this for her child, and therein lies a misjudgment, a possibly grave mistake.

They had not even applied to a Waldorf school! Kates associations at the time were vague but nervous-making: devil sticks, recorder playing, occasional illiteracy. She thought she remembered hearing about a boy who, at nine, could map the entire Mongol empire but was still sucking his fingers. That couldnt be good. Everybody has to go into a 7-Eleven at some point in life, operate in the ordinary universe. So she didnt even sign up for a tour. But no one ever told her about the whole fairy component. And now look at what Ruthie is missing. Magic. Nature. Flower wreaths, floating playsilks, an unpolluted, media-free experience of the world. The chance to spend her days binding books and acting out stories with wonderful wooden animals made in Germany.

Ruthie wants to take one home with her, a baby giraffe. Mysteriously, they have ended up in the sole spot at the Elves Faire where commerce occurs and credit cards are accepted. Ruthie is not even looking at the baby giraffe; with some nonchalance, she keeps it tucked under her arm as she touches all the other animals on the table.

A macaw! she cries softly to herself, reaching.

Kate finds a second baby giraffe, caught between a buffalo and a penguin. Although the creatures represent a wide range of the animal kingdom, they all appear to belong to the same dear, blunt-nosed family. The little giraffe is light in her hand, but when she turns it over to read the tiny price tag stuck to the bottom of its feet she puts it down immediately. Seventeen dollars! Enough to feed an entire fairy family for a month. Noahs Ark, looming in the middle of the table, now looks somewhat sinister. Two by two, two by two. It adds up.

How do the Waldorf parents manage? How do any parents manage? Kate hands over her Visa.

She says to Ruthie, This is a very special thing. Your one special thing from the Elves Faire, okay?

Okay, Ruthie says, looking for the first time at the animal that is now hers. She knows that her mother likes giraffes; at the zoo, she stands for five or ten minutes at the edge of the giraffe area, talking about their beautiful large eyes and their long lovely eyelashes. She picked the baby giraffe for her mother because its her favorite. Also because she knew that her mother would say yes, and she does not always say yesfor instance, when asked about My Little Pony. So Ruthie was being clever but also being kind. She was thinking of her mother while also thinking of herself. Besides, there are no My Little Ponies to be found at this fairshes looked. But a baby giraffe will need a mother to go with it. There is a bigger giraffe on the table, and maybe in five minutes Ruthie will ask if she can put it on her birthday list.

Mommy, Ruthie says, is my birthday before Christmas or after?

Well, it depends what you mean by before, Kate says unhelpfully.

Holding hands, they leave the elves marketplace and climb up the sloping lawn to the heavy old house at the top of the hill, with its low-pitched roof and stout columns and green-painted eaves. Kate guesses that this whole place was once the fresh-air retreat of a tubercular rich person, but now its a center of child-initiated learning.

Ruthies own school is housed in a flat prefab trailer-type structure tucked behind the large parking lot of a Korean church. Its lovely in its way, with a mass of morning-glory vines softening things up, and, in lieu of actual trees, a mural of woodland scenes painted along the outside wall. And parking is never a problem, which is a plus, since at other schools that can be a real issue at dropoff and pickup. At Wishing Well, the parents take turns wearing reflective vests and carrying walkie-talkies, just to manage the morning traffic inching along the schools driveway. Or theres the grim Goodbye Door at the Jewish Montessori, beyond the threshold of which the dropping-off parent is forbidden to pass. For philosophical reasons, of course, but anyone whos seen the line of cars double-parked outside the building on a weekday morning might suppose a more practical agendanamely, limited street parking does not allow for long farewells. To think that the Jewish Montessori was once the school Kate had set her heart on! She wouldnt have survived that awful departure, the sound of her own weeping as she turned off her emergency blinkers and made her slow way down the street.

But she had been enchanted by the Jewish Montessori, helplessly enchanted, not even minding (truth be told) the ghastly tales of the Door. Instantly she had loved the vaulted ceiling and the skylights, the Frida Kahlo prints hanging on the walls, the dainty Shabbat candlesticks, and the feeling of coolness and order that was everywhere. On the day of her visit, shed sat on a little canvas folding stool and watched in wonder as the children silently unfurled their small rugs around the room and then settled into their private, absorbing, intricate tasks. Shed felt her heart begin to slow, felt the relief of finally pressing the mute button on a chortling TV. How clearly she saw that she neednt have been burdened for all these years with her own harried and inefficient self, that her thoughts could have been more elegant, her neural pathways less congestedif only her parents had chosen differently for her. If only they had given her this!

But the school had not made the least impression on Ondine. Every Saturday morning for ten weeks, the two of them had shuffled up the steps with eighteen other applicants and undergone a lengthy, rigorous audition process disguised as a Mommy & Me class. Kate would break out in a light sweat straightaway. Ondine would show only occasional interest in spooning lima beans from a small wooden bowl to a slightly larger one. Remember, thats his job, Kate would whisper urgently as Ondine made a grab for another kids eyedropper. The parents were supposed to preserve the integrity of each childs work space, and all these odd little projectsthe beans, the soap shavings, the tongs and the muffin tin, even the puzzleswere supposed to be referred to as jobs.