EssayAFieldTrip

A Field Trip

Recently I accompanied my eighth-grade son’s field trip into Pittsburgh. The main focus, and first stop, was a visit to the Holocaust Museum. Since his class had been studying this disturbing and complex subject for the past nine weeks, he and his classmates were familiar with the terrain. My son had openly discussed many aspects of his studies with me, and thankfully I hadn’t ignored such a wonderful opportunity to connect with him. We were fortunate to have a holocaust survivor speak about his experience, a man named Sam Weintraub. To be in the same room with someone who had personally experienced such unimaginable living conditions as well as devastating loss brings an immediacy and relevance which I can only hope my son and his friends allowed themselves to respond to. It was with deep appreciation that I thanked Mr. Weintraub after his talk for having the courage and the confidence to share his story.

There were several other mothers who also chaperoned the field trip, although we spent most of our down time chatting since thirteen and fourteen-year-olds don’t require constant babysitting. Still, it was a chance for me to spend time with my eldest child, who will soon enough fly the nest. We walked to a nearby bagel/sandwich shop for lunch, and though I suspected I wouldn’t sit with him, I was amused when he informed me he was waiting for his “people”. I sat in the next booth with the moms and his teacher, periodically enjoying his company when he required additional money for more food.

After lunch we walked further down the street to a library and heard a talk about an organization called Ten Thousand Villages, which sells products made around the world under a Fair Trade tenet. It provides job opportunities to indigenous peoples, and especially women, from countries around the world. We were then taken across the street to their store, one of many in the U.S., where we had the chance to do some shopping. There were lovely products—I purchased a small, ornamental teapot from Nepal, two bird decorations from Indonesia, a necklace, and two finger puppets for my daughters for Christmas. My son bought a bag with tiny stick people, which I jokingly called his voodoo bag, and a potholder made from recycled newspaper. While the girls in his class shopped quietly and thoroughly, he and the boys discovered a miniature gong and so blessed the store with constant and loud resonant tones. Naturally the more they were told to stop, the more insistent the sounds became. Boys love to stir up trouble.

We boarded the bus and headed to St. Paul’s Cathedral, near the University of Pittsburgh. I had never been inside the church, despite the two and a half years I spent attending Pitt for graduate school, and I was impressed. It’s as grand as any old church in Europe that I’ve been fortunate to visit—Notre Dame and Le Sacre Coeur in Paris, or St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. We were given a tour, which I found immensely fascinating, although the kids balked from information overload. We were allowed to walk around the pulpit to admire the chair where the Bishop of the Pittsburgh Diocese sits, as well as the amazing marble sculptures. I was surprised to see a rendering of a mother pelican feeding her young. Our tour guide stated that the early church recognized pelicans as a symbol of Christ. This finally explained a strong spiritual dream I’d had several months ago in which I was in Ireland and witnessed horses dancing in a circle on the ocean, dolphins jumping in unison, and a group of pelicans landing on a rocky shoreline before me.

We boarded the bus one final time and I dispersed bags of pretzels and a ziplock full of Halloween candy to my son and his hungry friends. I settled into my seat with the other mothers but could feel the presence of my son, who had been nice to his ol’ mom on this trip. The day had been a gift to savor, a chance to expose young men and women to a more mature interaction with the world, to teach them compassion and discernment, traits that will serve them well in the future. As we ended the trip, a slight tinge of the bittersweet swept through me. Each day, a child takes one more step away from mom and dad. On this day, I was proud to stand behind my son as he moved one more step forward into his own future.