Letter from the Director: Wherever there are children, there is a golden age Vol. 136, October 2024

By  Renée Tillotson

An unusual and unexpected gift recently appeared at the mailbox of the property with its small collection of homes where we raised our children. Our kids’ kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Vicky Lacks, was downsizing her belongings, so she left for us two huge albums of kindergarten photos – hoping that we might still live there. We don’t, but the current residents let us know about the albums’ arrival.

Please allow me to tell you about our kids’ magical childhood and community that those old albums brought back to life for me.

I had the opportunity to go to Santa Barbara last week and pick up the albums. As I opened the heavy pages, nostalgia hit me with a keen sensation in the pit of my throat. I began to reflect upon our family’s years on a property we shared with two other families and several older adults. In addition to our own three children, our business partners in the house next door had five children, ranging in age from a little older to a little younger than ours. And of those children, all eight had gone through Mrs. Lacks’ kindergarten, at the school directly across the street!

As I looked through the pages, I realized how the children had been blessed with one of those special teachers who grace our schools. I recalled one delightful event or project after another that enriched her students’ imagination, or introduced them to literature or to how things work in the world.

Here were photos of Shankar and Sandhya in different years, each standing on a school table playing the part of one of the Three Billy Goats Gruff traipsing over the “bridge”, with the “troll” shouting up from down below, “Who is walking on MY bridge?!?”

Now Sandhya is wearing a white doctor’s coat in another shot, practicing being a responsible adult in the grown-up world, which she has indeed grown up to be, although not in the medical field.

Here’s a photo of our little Govi (who now has a kindergarten-aged child himself!) wearing his Clifford the Big Red Dog ears on the day they were reading that book in Mrs. Lacks’ class. He was very proud to bring his big dad named Clifford to school with him that day!

Speaking of Cliff, he was a huge part of all eight kids’ enchanted childhood. Really, he’s always been a kid himself – in a 6’3” body and with a lot of skills to bring his imagination into reality. First of all, he found this property to begin with and dreamed what a great place it would be to raise youngsters. It consists of an acre and a quarter of what used to be an old farm.

When we first arrived, it was so overgrown with shoulder-high weeds, you couldn’t see the rusty junk cars that had to be towed away. Cliff and the father of the other family used their landscaping skills to clear the land, little by little. I recall Cliff asking little Sandhya and the neighbor girl what they thought the property should look like. They wanted grass to play on, and flowers and trees, and a playhouse. The dads made sure all of those happened.

We eventually had a huge green lawn for soccer or chase or Easter egg hunts. It was lined with beautiful trees and a rose garden on the side. We moms chipped in to grow a number of vegetable gardens over the years. Although we grew lots of peas and beans, they never made it to the kitchen table. Little Dawn and Sandhya would happily make their way down the rows, chomping up every pea pod or green bean in sight. And how could we scold them for eating such healthy food? We just had to laugh and make something else for dinner.

No matter how much landscaping and gardening we did, however, the kids always managed to find untended patches of land to claim as their own. The girls loved making mud pies and cakes, which they presented to us with green grass for sprinkles and yellow dandelions for decoration. Yum!

Their brothers loved to borrow their dads’ shovels and picks to create tunnels and underground dirt forts, laying old boards across the top. I never knew until I heard from the kids years later what an extensive underground hazard they had created. Of course, the magnitude of their excavations may have grown in their tales of childhood glory!

In any case, we moms and dads were WAY too busy to be helicopter parents – we were just doing our best to make a living in the old barn we had converted to office space for our landscape and erosion control company. I think we kind of relied upon the kids to watch over and, if need be, tattle on each other – hah! If nobody was crying or screaming, we figured everything was probably fine…. Unless they were too quiet for too long, and then we had to go check on what mischief they might be up to!

What a blessing it was for us all to have school located a hop, skip and a jump away. No driving! No carpools. By first grade, the kids could walk to school by themselves and come straight home to our offices in the barn to report in. They dropped off their school stuff at our house, grabbed a snack, and ran outside to play with everyone!

Early on, before some of them were even old enough to go to school, I remember a Saturday morning when Cliff gathered together all the kids old enough to walk and talk. He gave each of them a child-size tool belt with little hammers and measuring sticks, and he explained that they were going to help build a treehouse. Would they like that? “YAYYYYY!!!!” From that auspicious beginning, he built – with a bit of their help along the way – the most amazing treehouse complex I’ve ever seen or heard of.

The treehouse was outfitted with bunk beds, a little sink, and a video machine with a large stock of Little Rascals movies. If they got too loud during a treehouse overnight, we’d just call out our bedroom window for them to pipe down.

To leave the treehouse, the kids could use the stairs or the fireman’s pole attached to the side. They could play chase running across the shaky bridge that extended from one tree to another, then slide down a twisty slide to the ground. Their imagination games could turn the place into a pirate ship or a castle or a dangerous jungle.

Cliff later constructed right next to the treehouse a three story tower consisting of giant wooden cable spools. Below the tower was a sandpit covered with a ground-level trampoline. Was that ever fun! We moms didn’t need to worry about the trampoline as big safety risk since it was level to the ground with wood chips all around it.

Then as the kids grew older, they began hauling out pillows, cushions, and old mattresses to cover the trampoline. We parents didn’t know why or even really notice, since we we were still too busy earning our keep. Turns out, the older kids were jumping off the tower onto the padded trampoline down below! Oh geez. Still, nobody was screaming or getting hurt.

All the neighbor kids were coming to our property to play – since we had the coolest playground equipment in the world – so we never had to wonder where our kids were. And we evidently had an army of guardian angels invisibly keeping watch over all of them.

During the hot, final days of school when the teachers – like Mrs. Lacks – needed a special outdoor activity for their classes to let off steam, we’d invite them over to our place for games and treats. Eventually, younger son Govi began organizing his own school outings, and I’d look out my office window to see a whole class of kids filing past for an afternoon of fun. Our kids felt so proud to host their friends at our place!

All those memories came flooding back to me as I looked through the precious treasure trove of photos that Mrs. Lacks gifted us with. And although I started this letter thinking what a boon it was for the kids to grow up in such a close community, I finish the letter realizing how much fun and magic those children brought to our serious adult lives.

Wherever there are children, there is a golden age.