Dear Families:

     The first time I became aware of magic was when as a little boy I planted in a Victory Garden a row of carrot seeds. World War II had just begun its horrors overseas, and the President of the United States in a radio address requested all city folk to find empty lots and plant vegetables for their families. Our grandma and mother dutifully brought my brother and me a few blocks away to this corner acre plot of hardpan foot trodden dirt on which the neighbors were already busy digging and planting.

     Grandma chose a flat strip and strung out a section we could claim as ours. At the innocent age of six, I knew nothing about growing vegetables. As far as I knew they all came out of the bins from the grocery store, so I was somewhat dumbfounded when I was instructed to take a stick and scratch a deep line into the dead Bronx dirt and then bury one at a time these dried up little carrot seeds. After pouring some water from a bucket over this little graveyard, my Polish grandma said with a strong voice: “Now we wait for the carrots to come.”

    “Come from where?” I asked truly puzzled, for I could not make the connection between those tiny gray dead things I had just buried and the wonderful sweet orange carrots I knew so well on my dinner plates.

    “You planted seeds, “she replied, “and seeds have magic in them! Just you wait and see.”

    After waiting some weeks of nothingness, suddenly one Saturday morning when I looked I was astonished to find all these feathery green sprouts bursting out of the dirt of my garden. I remember wondering how could those dried up seeds take that brown dead dirt and change it into wondrous green sprouts. It must be magic, I thought, as grandma said. And then still a little later when I saw the luscious orange roots of real carrots pushing up beneath their feather-like fronds, my deep child soul whispered as once did C.S. Lewis: “The magic never ends!” 

    When I grew up and became a Montessori educator and got married and with my wife’s help became a father I held in my trembling hands our first born son – and looking into his eyes I tried to understand what had just been accomplished – and once again I heard that celestial voice whispering in a voice only angels could hear: “See, the magic never ends.”

     Over and over again as my many years of personal life continued till this very day, the persistent revelation of actual wonders upon wonders has made me become a poet who struggles to express to you this gospel of life’s constant rebirthing. Our school year is about over and yet this morning again as your children arrive for this day’s portion of learning, and I see them shining, shining – radiant with their young lives – so eager for the newness we their Montessori educators will be offering them – all of me cries out to you as you are driving away: “Wait awhile! Watch, watch what is happening here. The magic never ends! Don’t miss it.”

Peace,
Paul