Preschool and PBS

(My brother and) I may have been indoctrinated--and more heavily in certain periods than others--with Christian Fundamentalist Conservative Right-Wing thought growing up, but we were never brainwashed.  I credit that to having attended a hippie preschool, where creativity reigned and children played.  Mom had the foresight to find us a loving educational community where parents were involved in the co-op.  I still have very fond memories of playing and reading and napping and crafting.  I remember my friends and their parents as faces soaking up the sun, and my own mom was there too.

In elementary school, we were homeschooled, but our brains remained active and imaginative, curious and creative.  We watched PBS shows and Nature shows and Mister Rogers.  We learned to value kindness and connectedness rather than cruelty and competitiveness.  We watched Huell Howser explore "California's Gold" and adventured with "Reading Rainbow."  We tuned in to "This Old House" on Saturday mornings and were captive audiences to ballet and opera performances those same evenings.  We never stopped learning, and learning and living were one joint enterprise.

In later years--my high school years, mainly--we would become staunchly Republican and Fundamentally Christian.  I adopted the lingo and mindset of those communities, but I never lost my inner soul.  In college, I chose my Christian friends based on their dedication to faith and doctrine, but outside of Christian settings, my friends were liberals.  Those friends were not hard to find--I lived in the honors dorm at USC and studied music.  I was somehow "cool" and "chill" enough to not be avoided by the brilliant and talented students in those programs, despite being a "strong Christian."

I now know that, deep down, you will always be what you were meant to be, especially if your formative years allowed you to be your true self.

In that sense, Mom parented as she was meant to parent, in the days before fear and anxiety took over and brought her over to the more structured curriculum of the Religious Right, and for that golden "age of innocence," I am grateful.