Change In Plans

This post is about Zola, our joyful, boisterous, and loving 8-year-old son.

India took this picture, and used it for the bio on Zola’s travel blog (http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/zolab/1/1217357520/tpod.html). I am embarrassed to say that his blog is definitely more interesting and better written than my own.

Zola was born in Cape Town, and lived there for the first year of his life. In Xhosa, his first name means “peaceful, calm, or tranquil,” which reflected wishful thinking on the part of his parents.

We moved back to New York City, and Zola lived on the Upper West Side, right across from Riverside Park. India was still working then, so Zola spent a lot of time with his nanny, Marilyn Torres, and her children. We all lived in the same building. I don’t know what Zola’s first memories are, but I will ask him. We have travelled back to South Africa every year since he was born, and usually stay for at least a couple of weeks. He seems to feel a connection to the country of his birth.

When Zola was three, he started attending the Weekday School at Riverside Church. Weekday was a wonderful environment: high ceilings and big windows looking out over the Hudson. The teachers and the other familes were diverse, and interesting, and very caring. He was wildly happy there for two years of nursery school. His favorite part of the day was riding up Riverside Drive to school with his Mom on the MTA bus. At every stop, more kids from Weekday School would get on, and it was a raucous, rolling kidfest each morning. We all loved Weekday.

For reasons that we thought made sense at the time, we moved out to rural New Jersey when Zola was four. India worked hard to get him into the best school we could find, which was a Montessori School in Mendham. Zola loved it, but as a family we never quite clicked with the Montessori School. (It did not help that his teacher had two giant posters in her classroom: one of President Bush and one of the New York Yankees). Many people swear by the Montessori method, but I never figured it out.

In New Jersey, Zola loved having a big yard, and his own room. He liked learning to ride a bike on the deserted dirt roads around our house, and having his own sand box and swing set. City kid that he is, though, he frequently asked, “Where are all the people?”

One of the constants in Zola’s life has been the camp up in the Beaverkill. He has been at camp with the same kids every summer since he was three. Even if they haven’t seen each other for months, as soon as the camp kids are together they always fall into a comfortable, physiaclly active play group. Usually, this means wrestling and whomping each other with pillows, which is perfect for eight year olds.

This was just a short chronology. In the next post, I will write about the last three years, and try to capture some of the essence of the kid. If I can, I will also try to find another photo.