Bear with me this week. It began with Phase II of a root canal in which Dr. Teeny-Tiny drilled so deep I now have a hole in my shoe. (I've said that to 3 people now, and so far no one has laughed. It's funny, right?) This bunny-stomping pain in the left side of my face has colored my perception of everything, tinging all memories and events blood red and burning them around the edges like a pirate's map.
We had a wonderful visit with Lo and her whole family, Mom, OFD and Aunt Marilyn. I have lots of pictures to share, but today I'll only show this one because it leads nicely into what I'm going to spend most of this blog riffing on, and no, it's not my dental x-rays.
Here is Aunt Marilyn, whispering words of congratulations and good luck to Sabina on her new adventure:
This fall, Sabina is going to high school. Yes, high school. The kind that meets in a building that is not my house. The answer to the next question is because she wants to. She wants it so much that she did not ask, she did not nag, and her only method of conveying her desire was in that persistent, wordless way that she must have gotten from her father.
She is excited. I'm excited, too, and a little relieved, to be honest. My pack zips shut more easily, and I have a rebound back ache from the lightening of my load.
I'm also scared, remembering words and phrases from my own high school experience: not hyperbola, declension, tragic flaw and the Parable of the Cave. That was the fun stuff. I'm talking about words like Trust fund. Monogram. Freshman Initiation (where's your beanie, Frosh?). I'm talking about being absolutely phobic of out-of-uniform day, because it forced me out of the financial ambiguity provided by the black watch plaid skirt, white blouse and forest green knee socks. Those things I had, but when it came to the right kind of lime green wide wale corduroy pants and the turtleneck with little hearts on it, I was sunk. If I'd known where those people shopped, my parents would certainly have bought me a heart turtle neck. It would have become my out-of-uniform day uniform, and in a class of 88 kids, this would not have gone unnoticed. And that would have been worse.
Perhaps the saddest thing about my high school experience was that I didn't have that bad a time. I had friends, I did well academically, and I was more or less okay being in the socio-economic fourth quintile. It wasn't as if the kids brought their parents W-2 forms to school and compared: it just came up in little moments, like on those out-of-uniform days. Or in the circular drop-off lane, where you saw what everyone else's parents were driving. And once at a birthday party at the home of a girl whose Lakefront Milwaukee home was the little pied a terre, when I knocked over a crystal wine glass full of sparkling cider and it broke. Her mother answered my frantic apology and offer to pay for it with, "You couldn't possibly."
It wasn't until I went to college that I learned most people don't own second homes on Sanibel Island, most kids have dads (and moms) who go to work every day and not just once a week in an "advisory" capacity, and that ski vacations in Aspen are something enjoyed by a very small percentage of an already very small percentage. I didn't even realize that although I wasn't in the latter small percentage, I was definitely in the former.
It was (and is) a Good School. I was well-educated, got lots of individual attention, and went on to other Good Schools. I know where to put the apostrophe, and I know my latter from my former (see previous paragraph). When I went to college, the workload transition was seamless. And yet I cannot drive past my high school--even though it has moved and the old buildings now house something else entirely--without breaking into a sweat. As for going to one of my reunions, ever? I couldn't possibly.
But back to the dwarves.
Sabina is not going to my old high school, and though my nightmares often suggest otherwise, I do not have to go back to my old high school. In fact, I'd like to think my old high school isn't even my old high school anymore. I do know that Initiation and the blue and gold Freshman beanies have fallen by the wayside. And I hope the students no longer shout from the bleachers, when losing a basketball game, That's all right, that's okay. You'll be working for us someday.