Why We Build for the Centuries

 

I recall an essay written by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anna Quindlen from more than a dozen years ago, and it stuck with me, because she likened the tedious act of putting a new roof on her family’s old Pennsylvania barn to the work of raising a child. 

Quindlen describes the sturdy slate roof  — one crafted to last at least a hundred years —  and how that building process is as seemingly as enormous, painstaking,  endless, and as quickly receding as the work of raising children.  

As the parent of now-high schoolers including two juniors, I find myself remarking about how fast the years have gone and how I am becoming wistful with the realization that the lives we know right now, with all of our children under our roof, will soon change, and change forever. And again Quindlen’s roof metaphor: “One slate laid upon another, and another, and in the end, if you have done the job with care and diligence, you have built a person, reasonably resistant to rain. More than that, you have helped build the future.” 

 

While they can never take the place of parents, the work of teachers and schools is of the same quality: the daily, incremental lessons that require persistence and patience, and how they add up to help create young adults. I agree with Quindlen when she says, “If we stop to think about what we do, really do, we are building for the centuries. We are building character, and tradition, and values, which meander like a river into the distance and out of our sight.”

As we approach the winter holidays, let me say again what a privilege it is to work alongside our faculty and our parents in that never-ending process of people-building.  Enjoy the coming break, and we’ll see you in 2017!

Newsweek: New Roof, Old House, 2000. http://www.newsweek.com/new-roof-old-house-160591