They are always there, lingering benevolently around the edges of our children's lives. Quietly. Self-effacingly. With such passion for what they do and tender interest in children that we absent-mindedly take them for granted.

        If we paused with any real gratitude this week, their names must surely have come to our lips. If, in this holiday season we give gifts to people who have served us well, their names must be on our lists.

        The violin teacher who pours into our child a love for the feel of the bow in her hand, and an ear for the magic that can come from it.

        The basketball coach who can thrill to his fledgling team's first hint of a fast break and a split second later call out “good effort” as it dissolves into a projectile into the bleachers.

        The Boy Scout leader who honestly seems to relish noisy Wednesday night pack meets. The ballet teacher who patiently demonstrates a pas de chat as tiny, high-spirited dancers fling themselves recklessly across the wooden floor.

Efforts have effects
               Speech therapists who coax out phonemes. Sunday school teachers who put on pageants. Soccer coaches who stand in freezing downpours to teach 5-year-olds the game's fundamentals.

        For these people we are truly grateful. The power of their efforts can never be properly explained.

        One of the quirky things about children is that they seem to find themselves and their life's calling in the seemingly small and ordinary moments of their lives. We parents drill into them the importance of mathematics, hover over their after-school calculations, and one day they pick up a flute and the whole fractional system of half notes and quarter notes falls mysteriously into place.

        We nag endlessly about leafy greens and whole grains, and one day they nonchalantly stroll in from swim practice to announce, “Mom, can we have pasta tonight? The coach says we need carbs.”

        And, in some undeserved flash of brilliance, we sign them up for a preschool Spanish class and five years later, cacahuete rolls off their tongues and they have found a talent that will surely shape the rest of their lives.

        None of this is to overlook the vital role of classroom teachers. Their day-in, day-out influence and commitment can never be properly estimated. But so often we are far less conscious of these other teachers, these Friday-after-school-muses. These Bear Bryants of the peewee squad.

Lasting impact
               When we take time to think of them, we are nearly overcome with gratitude. How, we wonder, can we ever say thank you for caring for our children through half-hearted practices, wandering attention spans, forgotten sheet music, bad tempers, feigned injuries, indifferent attitudes and mismatched uniforms?

        And then, without saying a word, these Saturday saints show us that thank you's are not what they're after. They simply want to call forth something fine from our children. Our children. Children they don't have to care for, don't have to invest in, don't have to struggle with, whose neither failure nor success would ever be laid at their feet.

        But we know that when our boys and girls become men and women, the fingerprints of coaches and music teachers and tutors and therapists have been etched, forever, across young hearts and minds.

        E-mail kristaramsey@hotmail.com

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