Document text
Her ears set firm at a 45-degree angle as she peered around the back bumper of a car parked along the curb. The doe took a step out and froze, as drivers headed in each direction came to a stop on the busy side street. Satisfied the threat had been averted, she calmly, but decidedly, crossed the street with that elegant gait that deer seem to share with ballroom dancers who are moving into set-position at the center of the floor. At the doe’s heels came the reason for her initial apprehension: A fawn, still at that stage where the Bambi spots are showing, bounce-stepped behind its mother … oblivious to the fuss, but no doubt marking it as a lesson it’d likely have ingrained before too long. Call it a teachable moment. As I waited for the pair to pass, different shades across the emotional spectrum made their presence known. It was such a tender tableau between mother and child that the spirit couldn’t help but be lifted. Then, however, the reality of the dangers faced by urban deer leveled things off — how fawns and yearlings had to learn about the presence of creatures human and mechanical in this strange, strange world that could alter their safety with an unexpected or aggressive movement or sound. Deer are no stranger to our neighborhood, where there are suitable hiding spots beneath hedges and trees to rest in the middle of a hot day. A certain bush-filled corner on a yearly basis has given new mothers a place to secure their children as they feed themselves, always within earshot lest an intruder approach. We have no way of knowing for certain, but we sense that these fawns ultimately return as parents of their own, and repeat the lessons to their children. At least, we want to think that way — although we know life is not a Disney cartoon. (If it were a Disney cartoon, then the mother wouldn’t make it out of the first reel alive. … So, best not to go there.) We’ve seen the same teaching process this spring at the upper duck pond in Lithia Park — as larger-than-usual broods of mallards and wood ducks have learned about maneuvering the water’s edges, venturing out bravely on their own ... only to come scurrying into a cluster of siblings at the slightest peep from their mother. Despite the treacherous landscape, there is an apparent simplicity to what these creatures have to learn. What to eat, when to sleep, where they’ll be safe, who to be wary of, wandering only so far away from the calming presence. There are advantages, however, to a life so simply regimented. They’ll never have computers or cellphones by the time they can first venture away from home, opening their worlds to places they never thought they’d go. Heck, they’ll never consider that the world around them is larger and scarier than even what they’ve been shown. They’ll never be cyber-bullied, or tempted by drugs, or evacuated from a classroom as a schoolmate’s tantrum grows out of control. They’ll never learn the words to a song called “Lockdown, Lockdown” … sung to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” When we read that Medford teachers had to use legal, allowable physical restraints on students 53 times during the recently ended school year, we’re right to catch our breath and wonder — and to be glad that our most-troubled children aren’t subjected to the kind of electric-shock “aversion therapy” still legally practiced in a school for developmentally challenged kids in Massachusetts. As a boy in Massachusetts, I was given the label of the age — a “difficult child” — and taken from my fellow third-graders to spend a week in a room with the others in “special class.” We spent a few days watching a cocoon turn into a butterfly and were told to write about what we’d seen. I wrote, “We watched a cocoon turn into a butterfly” … whereupon the “special class” teacher sent me back. More than 50 years later, the memory of being singled out — of doing something “wrong” — lingers. There is no magic button, no special pill to remedy how we grow, how we mature, how we learn. Medford is hardly alone (locally or nationally) in trying to determine the best course of action to ease the suffering of their charges battling such things as “disruptive mood disregulation disorder” … and, just as importantly, those children impacted by their classmate’s experience. We cannot all be teachers. We cannot all be parents. And while we were all children … one of time’s cruelest gifts is that the lessons we learned as kids often no longer apply because our youngest are exposed to a world that we could never imagine. We can’t see it through their eyes. We can teach them what to eat, when to sleep, where they’ll be safe, who to be wary of, and hope they’ll wander only so far away from a calming presence. As I continued up the street, I glanced down the alley where the fawn bounced along its way behind its teacher, and a different emotion came over me. It felt a bit like envy. Mail Tribune senior designer Robert Galvin can be reached at [email protected].