HeadStart. For those of you who are not from the US, HeadStart is a program paid for by the Federal government whose purpose is to supply some sort of preschool experience , once a week from September until the beginning of May, for children aged 5 and under who come from low-income households. The program provides a nutritious lunch, parent classes and activities, and home visits.

HeadStart has a satellite office in the town where I work. I lost them for a little while this year because they moved from the facility they were in to a church on the outskirts of town and didn’t make a public announcement. (What with funding cuts, they had to choose between the rent and the quality of the lunch. The church offered them facility rates at cost.) I found them again when looking to offer them a freebie admission to an author visit. Today I visited them; in two weeks, they’ll be visiting the Library.

My job was to read to the children, one of my most favorite things to do in the world. I was, incidentally, modeling behavior for the parents, many of whom read in a monotone. The HeadStart director knows I’m very animated when I tell or read stories. They had a good time, I had a good time.

Afterward, the children ate lunch with a couple of aides, and I was invited to join the parents. The director asked me to talk a little about why it’s important to read to children, so I gave them a précis on the studies neurologists have done on brain development and verbal stimulation. They didn’t know anything about that, and why should they? No one had told them before. Then it was their turn to tell stories, and my turn to learn.

These parents know how long it takes to have a child placed in foster care cut loose from his parents’ legal custody: 18 months. It takes a while to get a child placed in foster care as well. They learn this through the experiences of the children in the group, and those of their neighbor children. A 4-year-old in the group had been in foster care for almost 18 months, and the parents in the group are holding their breath because the foster parents want to adopt him. He’s in foster care because his parents left him alone with his 8-year-old brother and 6-year-old sister for days and days while they partied. The older children set fire to the house by placing a doll on a burner of the gas stove and turning up the flame. The mother is in flight from the law on four felony counts of child abuse.

How long is 18 months in the life of a 4-year-old? Forever.

These parents know how to sign their children up for CHIP, the children’s state insurance program, but they don’t know whether they can afford medical care for themselves, because the jobs they can get don’t have health insurance. They don’t always know where their next month’s rent is coming from either. They try to keep their problems from the children, but the children understand that there’s something wrong. How different from my worries!

While I was washing my hands before lunch, I had another little epiphany: these children will be marked as underprivileged from the get-go. Because they’re ill-cared for? Not most of them, no. Because they’re stupid or rude? No. Because of their limited vocabulary and their negative image of themselves? Well, maybe, but that’s one of the reasons I’m there: reading aloud gives children rich language and more positive words.

No, they won’t even have to open their mouths. They will be marked by their smell. They were all clean. But as I washed my hands I sniffed the sharp smell of generic soap. I also detected the vague aroma of naphtha and inexpensive fabric softener, the mark of thrift store clothing. The children they meet when they go into public kindergarten, the great leveler, will sort themselves by smell. The children whose families smell like aloe and cinnamon will hang out with the children whose families smell like strawberry and lilac. The children who smell like knock-off anti-bacterial soap and mothballs will need something extra to bring to the table. Some of them will have it: I saw charm and intelligence. Some of them won’t.

HeadStart? These kids won’t even have an equal start, but at least they and their parents have more tools than they would have had without it.