The Red Balloon: A Love Story

June 9, 2015.  After fifteen years and three extraordinarily wonderful Manhattan schools, and finally the ultimate goal - COLLEGE! - my 19 year old son and I walk down the well-remembered stairs of The Red Balloon, an Upper West Side preschool bordered by Riverside Drive and 125th St., on a sentimental journey to the scene of his introduction to Welcome to School – Your Daily Reality for the Next 20 Years. Here he spent three of the most important years of his formative cognitive life – a developmental phase whose importance can hardly be overestimated. 

The Red Balloon!  We saw it, and we fell in love. The huge, well-equipped gym, with its tricycles, kick-balls, trike-carousel, and above all, plenty of floor space for energetic little bodies to race around in! The loaded shelves of the picture book library, the comfy reading sofa! The warm, contented smiles of the teachers and the children! The tempting aromas issuing from the kitchen twice a day, both at breakfast and lunch! The wading pool and the outdoor play deck!  And oh, those wonderful toys and activities! Who would have imagined that all this happy hubbub of Legos, painting, jigsaw puzzles, and so much more was going to teach my unsuspecting tot the essential skills that would form the foundation for his ongoing success as a student?  Not he. Not I.  All my son and I saw on the day we first toured the school, his small hand clutched in my own, was that this was the one.

We enter the bright, cheery foyer with its cubbies and children’s artwork, marveling as we recall how my son once had to stand on tiptoe to reach his winter jacket on a cubby hook that is now on a level with his waistband. It is nap time; the classrooms are closed, and the children doze on their cots. Within minutes, familiar faces of teachers appear. Saundra, who had not known we’d be coming to visit, comes out to see who’s there. Her mouth drops open, she spreads out her arms, embraces my son and calls us both by name.  Norma Brockmann, the director of the school, is delighted that we took her up on her invitation to come by.  She emerges from her office, calling to Orange Room teacher Judy to come and see who’s here.  Judy bustles out, beaming, gives us each a big hug, and starts singing the song from the Arthur cartoon that they used to sing together every day – the one that drove me crazy, because after school my son would sing it all the way home, too. Chris, Anne and Monique pop their heads out to see what’s going on, recognize us at once, come out for quick hugs, and return to the classrooms to supervise the napping children.

Everyone launches into “Do you remember…?”  Norma reels off the names of my son’s classmates and where they went on to elementary school without a single mistake.  Some of them are still in touch with her.  Some are still in touch with my son and are part of his current social circle.  How many of us have friendships that go back to our preschool days?  My son gets excited while recalling an art project he did involving poster paint and a bunch of marbles, and wonders whether the annual apple-picking expedition, his favorite outing, is still a tradition.  It is.  I tell him that I still have the art project he did with the paint and the marbles, tucked away in my Memory Box on the top shelf of the closet, and he is astonished. "No way! Will you show me when we get home?"  I watch his animated face and the glow of satisfaction on his teachers’ faces as he boasts of his freshman year G.P.A. – 3.7, not too shabby! – and I think, “How did we ever get so lucky as to be a part of this school? No – a part of this family.”

For it is a family.  It was in this magical microcosm of a Manhattan melting pot that my son discovered that he is part of the Family of Man, and that we human beings all have so much more in common than we have differences that would keep us apart.  Here he was loved; here he was nurtured; here he was cherished as an equal among his contemporaries, all of them small pilgrims to Grownupland.

My son and I wander to the gym.  The room is as vast as ever, but the equipment looks disproportionately small next to his lanky form.  I look around, remembering his fourth birthday party, and how excited we were when we learned we could rent the gym on the weekend.  It was, as he emphatically told me afterward, "the best birthday party ever!"  He went home from that party loaded with gifts, but the real gifts we got were the intangibles.  Smiles. Laughter. Friendship. Memories.

The Red Balloon gave us so much. It gave my son social skills that have lasted him all his life.  It was here that he heard, “You may not always like everybody here every minute of every day, but everybody here is your friend.”  He learned to be polite – “Yes, I hear you, sweetie, but I can hear you much better when you say please.”  He learned to share.  He learned to relax when taking a test, because the only thing that’s important is to do your best and not worry about being perfect; as a result, he did exceedingly well when he did find himself in a testing situation. He learned to negotiate – “I’ll trade you this Lego portcullis for that set of Lego racing wheels.”  He learned that “No means no” and he learned that sometimes the way life works is that “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.”  And we ultimately learned that, thanks to his background of carefully structured classroom instruction that made him stand out as a potential elementary school student and to Norma’s advocacy and savvy about the kindergarten admissions process, he had his pick of some of the finest schools on the Upper West Side when it was time to leave the nest and try his wings at Big Kids’ School.

Most of all, The Red Balloon gave me a lovable, happy child whose natural intellectual growth had been tenderly cultivated by wise and loving hands, and who was ready in every way to go on to kindergarten with confidence in his self-worth and his abilities. The Red Balloon provided the fertile soil in which my son’s intellectual curiosity took root, and thanks to Norma and her outstanding staff of teachers, my son continues to bloom and to reach for the sky. We are so grateful, and I truly believe my son could not have gotten off to a better start in life than he did by attending this uniquely wonderful preschool.