I’m sad that The Children’s Museum is moving from their long-term home in West Hartford at the end of the week.

I’ll remember the location fondly as one of the only physical spaces to survive from my early childhood until my kids’ early childhoods nearly forty years later.

Mom was passionate about scientific education in Connecticut.

Before she started her thirty-year-long career at the UCONN Health Center, she was a stay-at-home mom and devoted member of The Children’s Museum where she often took me, my brothers, and our pre-school classmates.

Mom passed away from pancreatic cancer before either of my kids were born, but I feel connected to her when I visit the museum knowing it’s where she’d take them if she could.

I can almost feel Mom lingering in the halls.

The Children’s Museum encourages lingering; it’s not the sort of place one rushes through in a single sweep.

It’s built for observation, with an observatory-like planetarium at its core (Connecticut’s largest planetarium, which will be missed).

Their benches are aged by more than weather; they’ve soldiered generations of kids leaping off of them trying to fly like the just-released butterflies they observed.

Countless diapers have been changed on those benches by stay-at-home parents like Mom, forty years ago, and like me, today.

My appreciation for The Children’s Museum rose to a new level once my first child arrived in 2019.

The museum’s a true friend for stay-at-home parents. At times it’s been a place of reflection and escape while at other times it’s been one of community and celebration.

It’s a different vibe sitting quietly in the darkness of Turtle Town at 2 PM on a Tuesday while the aquariums distract your one-year-old for long enough to offer you your first moment of peace for the day, versus showing up on a Saturday to join the crowd meeting both Mr. Peanut AND the Weinermobile.

That’s just one of the distance-friendly activities The Children’s Museum scheduled after Covid hit and none of us first-time parents knew what to do.

My daughter and I watched their live-streamed butterfly releases online in the spring and, by late summer, felt confident enough to observe a few in person.

Their masked and time-ticketed Halloween party was the highlight of our fall.

I’ll forever cherish the videos of my daughter leaping between exhibits dressed as a two-year-old Peter Pan, and our blurry selfie in front of Conny, the life-size sperm whale replica featured prominently in the museum’s front yard.

I’m really glad the town of West Hartford is preserving Conny at a park across the street so we can continue visiting him when we’re in town.

For those who’ve never had the pleasure of stepping inside a sperm whale, Conny’s interior is a hollowed-out cavern sculpted to fully convey the massiveness of the majestic creature.

It delighted me, just last week, when my 18-month-old son stepped inside and immediately screamed to hear his voice echo, just as I did at his age (and last week too).

Conny evokes awe; he wasn’t put there as a trophy. He was built during the 1970s save-the-whale movement and remains a powerful statement considering Connecticut’s whaling-industry past.

That remarkable exhibit is just one of the immeasurable ways that The Children’s Museum has enriched the lives of our youngest citizens for over forty years.

I wish The Children’s Museum the best of luck at finding a permanent location and look forward to joining them at their temporary home when it opens this fall – even if I’m still a little sad.