seat-of-the-pants as an organized enterprise, but Z felt safe and solid and fully recognized there, lighting up whenever we made the turn onto Eighty-fourth Street, and it quickly became his, and our, second home. Play-dates and picnics and outings followed, and little by little an entire community swung into view. I was parked there already when BJ hired me as an assistant.
Besides the hard work of taking good care of the swelling gaggle of kids, BJ was trying to manage her embryonic small business, juggling a blizzard of part-time schedules and the cash that flowed in and out daily. Tuition was based on an evolving, dynamic, and idiosyncratic hourly rate—unwritten, uneven, and unclear—that seemed to spring spontaneously and fully-formed from the head of BJ. My first payday was a marvel: BJ pulled her large shoulder bag from the top of the fridge as I was getting ready to leave and rummaged through the bills, emerging with a handful of crumpled up twenties that she handed over to me. “See if that’s right,” she said. I couldn’t remember what we’d agreed on, but it felt OK, so I said sure.
BJ’s Kids had a row of easels against one wall, a cozy reading corner with lots of books and pillows, a dress-up area stocked with hats and flowing scarves, colorful clothes and costumes, brief cases, hand-bags, cow-poke boots, capes, hats of all kinds, and milk cartons filled with specific items to create a make-believe hospital, pizza restaurant, shoe store, bakery, fire house, and more. It was home-like, hidden and impenetrable—a place to explore and experiment. And beyond this, there was clay, water, sand, and art materials set up and available in a corner near the sinks, a large collage table on wheels with a series of bins containing bits of cloth, shells, buttons, bottle caps, and corks. For Zayd, BJ’s Kids was an infinite treasure-trove of discovery and surprise, and it was also the honey pot, a place to feast and fatten. The joy began each morning in the biggest collection of wooden unit blocks ever assembled—Build! Build! Build!—where Zayd moved in a matter of months from horizontal runways to vertical towers to bridges to archways to entire fantastical worlds complete with characters and action.
We earned some early childhood notoriety through what seemed to us a harmless enough innovation: we had a large juice and snack table near the sink that we kept stocked and available from the moment children arrived in the morning until the last one left in the afternoon. The table had little cups surrounding pitchers of juice that kids could pour for themselves whenever they liked—with all the attendant spills and stickiness—and paper plates and napkins for the taking, as well as larger plastic serving dishes with sliced apples, celery and carrot sticks, oranges and bananas, cheese and crackers constantly replenished by staff throughout the day. “Disgusting,” said the director of a sister preschool. “You will have roaches and mice everywhere!” “This is bad practice,” advised another. “The kids will eat all day and never learn the importance of meal time.” None of this had occurred to us, and none of it made immediate sense, but we were a bit off-balance and unsure at the start. When a neighbor and friend—a therapist and a feminist whose practice focused on eating disorders—encouraged us to persevere, arguing that the main thing everyone needed to learn in relation to food was self-regulation, and that the operating question should always be, “Are you hungry?” the snack-on-demand table became a quirky signature we embraced.
This fit with a larger idea that guided BJ’s Kids from top to bottom, beginning to end: kids need to be free to develop from the inside out, not the other way around.
We created a dazzling collection of good, solid children’s literature by African American, Native American, Latino and Hispanic, Asian and European American authors; books that mirrored for
Besides the hard work of taking good care of the swelling gaggle of kids, BJ was trying to manage her embryonic small business, juggling a blizzard of part-time schedules and the cash that flowed in and out daily. Tuition was based on an evolving, dynamic, and idiosyncratic hourly rate—unwritten, uneven, and unclear—that seemed to spring spontaneously and fully-formed from the head of BJ. My first payday was a marvel: BJ pulled her large shoulder bag from the top of the fridge as I was getting ready to leave and rummaged through the bills, emerging with a handful of crumpled up twenties that she handed over to me. “See if that’s right,” she said. I couldn’t remember what we’d agreed on, but it felt OK, so I said sure.
BJ’s Kids had a row of easels against one wall, a cozy reading corner with lots of books and pillows, a dress-up area stocked with hats and flowing scarves, colorful clothes and costumes, brief cases, hand-bags, cow-poke boots, capes, hats of all kinds, and milk cartons filled with specific items to create a make-believe hospital, pizza restaurant, shoe store, bakery, fire house, and more. It was home-like, hidden and impenetrable—a place to explore and experiment. And beyond this, there was clay, water, sand, and art materials set up and available in a corner near the sinks, a large collage table on wheels with a series of bins containing bits of cloth, shells, buttons, bottle caps, and corks. For Zayd, BJ’s Kids was an infinite treasure-trove of discovery and surprise, and it was also the honey pot, a place to feast and fatten. The joy began each morning in the biggest collection of wooden unit blocks ever assembled—Build! Build! Build!—where Zayd moved in a matter of months from horizontal runways to vertical towers to bridges to archways to entire fantastical worlds complete with characters and action.
We earned some early childhood notoriety through what seemed to us a harmless enough innovation: we had a large juice and snack table near the sink that we kept stocked and available from the moment children arrived in the morning until the last one left in the afternoon. The table had little cups surrounding pitchers of juice that kids could pour for themselves whenever they liked—with all the attendant spills and stickiness—and paper plates and napkins for the taking, as well as larger plastic serving dishes with sliced apples, celery and carrot sticks, oranges and bananas, cheese and crackers constantly replenished by staff throughout the day. “Disgusting,” said the director of a sister preschool. “You will have roaches and mice everywhere!” “This is bad practice,” advised another. “The kids will eat all day and never learn the importance of meal time.” None of this had occurred to us, and none of it made immediate sense, but we were a bit off-balance and unsure at the start. When a neighbor and friend—a therapist and a feminist whose practice focused on eating disorders—encouraged us to persevere, arguing that the main thing everyone needed to learn in relation to food was self-regulation, and that the operating question should always be, “Are you hungry?” the snack-on-demand table became a quirky signature we embraced.
This fit with a larger idea that guided BJ’s Kids from top to bottom, beginning to end: kids need to be free to develop from the inside out, not the other way around.
We created a dazzling collection of good, solid children’s literature by African American, Native American, Latino and Hispanic, Asian and European American authors; books that mirrored for
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