One of my favorite hikes in Missouri follows the winding Meramec River through Al Foster Memorial Trail in Wildwood.

It's an easy, flat gravel path along the original route of the Pacific Railroad built in 1854. There's something about the way the light and the river current mix that makes the water look both serene and tumultuous -- shades of green and brown, all shifting within a mile or so.

I like to walk across a short bridge that leads to a scenic view. On one side is the wide and mighty river. On the other side, a streamlet breaks away and flows underneath the bridge.

Last week, this distributary stopped me in my tracks. Half of the stream looked sandy brown and half was light green. I don't know if it was the way the sunlight hit the water or the swirling sediment underneath that created this illusion. I've walked this path a hundred times, but I had never seen the water look quite like this. It was the kind of natural beauty that makes you linger.

A tangible object can look so different depending on where we are standing, and when, I thought.

The river hadn't changed. My perspective had.

I was taking this walk a few days after visiting my family over the Easter holiday weekend. Now that our daughter attends college in Texas, I'm more inclined to take quick trips rather than waiting for a longer vacation.

Also, when my father got cancer a couple of years ago, my perspective on time shifted. The years that stretched out ahead of us suddenly seemed shorter. He's cancer-free now, but his life has changed dramatically: He went from substitute teaching full-time to being stuck at home and dependent on my mom. The trauma of his illness turned his attitude darker and more pessimistic.

On our recent visit, he was lying on the bed when I walked in to greet him. I hugged him, and he cried briefly.

Growing up, I saw my father cry only once -- when the Challenger exploded. Now, he gets emotional more easily. He said he hadn't been feeling well. He can't accept that his body doesn't feel the same as it did before he got sick.

It's hard for me to accept the ways he's changed, too. He's so much more frail and needy. I want the pre-cancer version of him back just as much as he does.

I left home for college when I was 18, and except for a few months between jobs, I've never lived at home or even in the same city as my parents since. But I've always visited often, and my parents are lucky to have five of their adult children living nearby.

In contrast, my father left his parents, and his country, in his mid-20s and never went back. The distance between the life he left and the path he chose became too great to bridge.

Lately, my dad has started asking when we might come back "home."

I feel a stab of guilt when he asks; my husband and I have established careers in St. Louis, and our son still has another year of high school.

I'm old enough to have felt the truth in the expression that "time speeds up as we age." But can the same distance begin to feel longer? The 759 miles between our home in Missouri and my parents' place in Texas used to feel like a short two-hour plane ride or a 12-hour road trip. Far, but close enough.

Now, 759 miles means relying on siblings to update me on our parents' latest doctor's appointments. Or wondering how much more noticeable the tremors in my father's hands will be the next time I see him. I think of the distance in terms of things that are easier to say in person than over the phone.

My dad turns 79 this week.

The miles between us haven't changed. But his health and age have changed the way he sees them -- and the way I see them, as well.

Babies, toddlers and preschoolers learn primarily through play.

Social activity is critical for their social, emotional and intellectual development. During the pandemic, however, young children lost countless opportunities to play with other children.

Now, early childhood educators are trying to step into that gap.

The Mehlville School District in the St. Louis area began hosting special events last month for the youngest children in the district in an effort to promote social connections and reading.

Erin Amador, coordinator of the district's Parents as Teachers early childhood program, saw a need for young children to have more opportunities to learn how to connect with one another.

The district tried a pizza giveaway party in a park. They adopted the "Books and Bites" program, which offers families a chance to meet new people, play together and take home free books and a cooking kit to match the theme of the books. But only 10 families showed up for the first event.

Two weeks later, the district tried again. The books included stories about diverse characters and a frozen pizza to take home.

Again, about 10 families attended.

Amador said she wondered if families were ready to socialize with others or if they had the time and energy for these kinds of events. Children under 5 years old are still too young to be vaccinated for COVID-19, and some parents still feel nervous about the risks of attending in-person events.

Still, she wanted the district to try again.

Early childhood educators promoted their third event to the families they visit in their homes, and also sent home flyers through the elementary schools.

This time, 100 families showed up.

"It was amazing," Amador said. Parents told her how much they'd missed being with other families and watching their kids play together.

The district's efforts are part of a larger initiative called BeTogetherSTL. The St. Louis County Children's Service Fund awarded a $175,000 grant to the LUME Institute, a St. Louis nonprofit focused on early childhood education, to launch the program.

Steve Zwolak, CEO of LUME and executive director of the University City Children's Center, said the goal of the initiative is to create family-friendly events to promote loving parent and child interactions.

Pandemic isolation took a social and emotional toll on the youngest children and their parents, Zwolak said. Some young children returned to day care centers and preschools with more aggressive behavior and less ability to self-regulate.

"How do we learn to play together again?" he asked.

Bonding and connecting with others is a critical way to improve mental health, he said. The BeTogetherSTL program offers a mix of in-person and virtual events, including concerts, book giveaways, online parent discussion groups and a "Hanging With Mr. Z" video series. In the 8- to 10-minute videos, he tackles topics such as "helping children go from rage to assertion" and talking about difficult current events.

He hopes the programming will help strengthen families by developing these protective factors: helping parents develop their own resilience, creating more social support for families, fostering family engagement and teaching about child development.

"I absolutely see lingering effects of the pandemic every day," he said. For children, healing from the trauma of the pandemic requires developing secure attachments. Improving mental health also requires strengthening attachment and relationships.

There are lessons for other communities in Mehlville's slow start with its program. Offering multiple options in various locations and addressing parental concerns are key to increasing participation.

Amador says she saw the benefits of repeatedly trying to foster these connections in her own district.

"You could tell we had families who hadn't played together in years," she said.

She described the look of excitement on young kids' faces when they arrived at the playground filled with other children at the third "Books and Bites" event.

Some of them would hesitate and look back at their parents, unsure of whether to join, she said. After seeing a nod and smile of approval from a parent, they would race onto the playground.

"Their smiles, the energy of the whole day felt so good," Amador said.

Parents came up to her and said they had forgotten how much they missed moments like this.

"I missed talking to people at the park," they said. "I missed seeing my child play."

Culture wars make for awfully strange bedfellows.

Look no further than one of the largest school districts in Missouri: the Rockwood School District in suburban St. Louis, which serves more than 20,000 students.

Residents angered by the district's COVID-19 protocols during the height of the pandemic -- as well as those upset by efforts at diversity and inclusion, and those nursing other right-wing grievances -- backed two candidates in the recent Rockwood school board race. It's a common move across the country, aimed at wielding greater influence in local schools.

Both candidates won.

One of them now goes by Jessica Clark.

Before her recent transformation into a champion of conservative causes, she was known online as Jessica Laurent. She promoted her "sugaring" lifestyle, in which a younger person seeks a relationship with an older, wealthier individual with the expectation of gifts and financial support.

Her brand was no big secret during the campaign; all her social media content remained online. But after winning a seat on the school board, one of her first moves was to scrub her "sugar baby" lifestyle videos from the internet.

When I called to ask what prompted this move, she said, "I'm done talking about the campaign." When I said this wasn't a question about the campaign, she hung up.

Of course, nothing is ever truly erased from the internet. Another person had recorded at least one of the original videos, and it's back on YouTube.

In this video, Jessica Laurent offers a virtual four-week "Sugar Boot Camp" for prospective sugar babies. She begins her pitch charismatically: "What the (expletive) is up, ladies. So, it's me, Jessica Laurent, St. Louis' one and only sugar lifestyle coach." She informs her viewers about an upcoming not-to-be-missed Sugar Ball: "(S)ugaring can be a little scary and a little intimidating. But you're talking to the lady who walked into the first Sugar Ball single and walked out with a CEO. And six months later, happily ever after, livin' the dream."

For all the recent conservative rhetoric about "grooming," Laurent Clark's supporters were fine with her recent past, judging from their comments on a post in which she explained this unorthodox business endeavor.

"The idea of 'sugaring' was a play on words and a brilliant way to attract the women who needed me the most," she explained on her Facebook campaign page. "They came thinking they were getting one thing, Sike! (sic)"

Sure, Jessica.

Her other social media posts included captions like "I'm yo husband's favorite so sit to (sic) basic ass down (lipstick kiss emoji)" from May 2, 2020, and a TikTok post with the hashtag "hoe is life." (Hoe is a slang term for a promiscuous person.) Senate hopeful Eric Schmitt follows her on Instagram, which also showcased her sexy lingerie photos.

Granted, Republicans may have had a different reaction if a candidate with progressive political views had the exact same road-to-empowerment personal story.

Imagine the pearl-clutching.

While her lifestyle choices and former business model may seem questionable for a school board member, some of her public statements about education are far more concerning.

In a video, she refers to the teachers union as "terrorists." Labeling members of a district's largest employee group, who are directly responsible for students' success, as terrorists shows remarkably poor judgment.

Parents of LGBTQ students were terrified by the posts and public comments she has made about them. On election day, Laurent Clark shared a meme of a "woke" Black teacher screaming at a kindergartner, "I said we gay today!"

Rockwood parent Matthew Wind said he is mostly concerned about her lack of qualifications, her brief tenure in the district and her motives for running.

As far as the sugar baby thing, he said it bothers him even if there's a lucrative market for it.

"I think it's a complete antithesis to why schools exist and what they want to do," he said. The point of an education is to acquire skills and learning that lead to an independent life. Snagging a sugar daddy or sugar mama offers the semblance of stability through complete dependence on another person, he explained.

Wind said he wants students to know: "Your worth is more than your body or your appearance or how you can make someone with money feel. Your worth can be so much more than that."

He thinks someone who recently built her brand around how to lure and profit from intimate relationships is a poor example for the district's kids.

Once upon a time, conservatives may have agreed with him.

Now, it's just a little sugar between friends.