White Oak

While living in New Haven, Connecticut in the early 1970’s, my wife worked as a nursery school teacher at the Gesell Institute.

Arnold Gesell, along with his partner Francis Ilg, was one of the leading child development theorists of the twentieth century. They believed and wrote extensively that children went through stages. These books assured millions of American mothers in the 50’s that the torment that their child was going through was only a stage, and like most things it would pass.

By the time we were in New Haven, Dr. Gesell had died, but Dr. Ilg, his wonderful, motherly, heavyset, Norwegian Dame oversaw the institute. The nursery school the institute ran was full of vivacious, beautiful, Norwegian interns and a few regulars. It was always fun to poke my head into this vibrant, if not slightly crazy atmosphere of laughing, screaming children being comforted by beautiful young women. It always seemed like a truly fun place to work.

Over time, I got to know Dr. Ilg and others at the institute, but it was Dr. Ilg who influenced me or should I say, affected me the most.

Dr. Ilg was an extraordinarily insightful woman. People often referred to her as witch-like, as she would look right past the veneer that covered your soul, and look deep into the inner working of your being. Under the guise of the gentle, gracious, heavyset lady laid ferocious wisdom and insight.

If requested, she would lay the fundamentals of your being on the table, leaving them there for you to pick up piece by piece. I loved this. It went right to the heart of the matter and helped me realize where I stood in the world, which, as I am about to explain, was all but barely standing upright.

Her insight into people was invaluable with children who could not express themselves. She saw what troubled them without them verbalizing it and was able to provide a path to recovery.

One day at another of my famous lunches with people that I cared for, Dr. Ilg asked me to draw a tree. I remember this interchange very well as I told her I could not draw, and she responded it did not matter. For some reason I knew I was revealing myself to her and I was very fearful, but she insisted and I drew a straight heavyset trunk,  well embedded in the ground, but with very little accouterment or flourish.

It was as if I was a heavy set trunk of a person, well grounded but very, very boring. When I looked at my trunk, I again thought, “Who is this person?” It is not someone I knew very well. My tree looked like some linebacker from a football team rather than anything poetic, insightful or even delicate. Upon looking at my tree, Dr. Ilg described me in great detail. I was one of strong moral character and purpose, I was extremely well rooted and grounded, but I had enormous constraints upon my ability to flourish. These constraints would only lead to anger and resentment. She said I wanted greatly to expand, to spread my limbs and develop into something majestic. Oh how right she was!

Before we concluded our lunch, Dr. Ilg turned to me and asked, “If you could be any tree, what tree would you be?” Without a moment’s hesitation, I adamantly declared I wanted to be a White Oak.

With this she smiled, nodded, and turned to me looking me straight into my eyes and said, “Someday you will be.”