Friends Forever

I've been going to the same dentist practice for about 25 years, and although the office location, personnel, and technology have changed over the years, it never fails that I run into someone I know in the waiting room. Such was the case this afternoon when the cold wind swept me into the lobby after a 20 minute walk from school.

"Tracey!" I heard my name and looked to the receptionist who was not looking at me. "Is it you?"

A guy and his teenaged son were the only other patients in the waiting room, and I recognized them right away. I started my teaching career with Colin and his son was a student at our school until last year. Colin stood up and gave me a great big hug.

"You're all checked in!" the receptionist told me, and I plopped down next to my friend and loosened my scarf. It had been a long time since I'd seen him. Colin took the administrative track early on in our careers, and now he was a well-respected principal at an elementary school on the north side. I looked at him and shook my head. Despite the years with their inevitable hardships and tragedies, he still had the same gap-toothed grin of the silly trickster he was.

I flashed back to my phone ringing on a Saturday morning in the mid-90s. "Hello?" I answered.

"This is Governor George Allen calling for the teacher of the house. Is she home?"

I was confused and literally speechless until laughter broke the silence. "It's Colin!" he said. "I have a question about school."

Today we chatted amiably but aimlessly. It's hard to fill in years of gaps in five minutes in a waiting room, so we talked about school construction and his older son's college classes. All too soon they called my name. I stood and turned to Colin, but before I could say anything too mushy he spoke first.

"Give her a big shot in the gums!" he called to the hygienist.

I giggled and followed her to the back.

"Do you know that guy?" she asked with concern.

"Yep!" I told her.

Cold Hearted

From a distance they looked like black pepper scattered across the blue sky.

"Look at all those birds," I said to Heidi. "I wonder what they are. Crows?" I frowned.

The number was right, nearly a hundred, but as we grew closer the way they soared did not seem crow-like in the least.

"Oh my lord!" I cried, sighting the neat white stars of their wing tips. "They're vultures!"

And indeed, it was a fine kettle of Turkey Vultures with nothing dead in sight. Seems they were simply enjoying the frigid updraft.

Preparing for the Next Four Years

Despite the bitter cold and dusting of snow, the roads were not too bad this afternoon, even by our southern sensibility, and so we headed down to the National Mall, hoping that we might find it a little less populated than usual on a Saturday afternoon. And there were considerably fewer folks out and about, but it was still a bit of a challenge to find a parking space, mostly because of all the flat bed trucks delivering and setting up their cargo:

row upon row upon row of porta-johns.

Feasts

At Thanksgiving there is turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy, of course, but we also have roasted butternut squash, a Brazilian-inspired spinach, yellow turnips, scalloped oysters, and roasted brussels sprouts.

At Christmas it's roast beef and mashed potatoes, but also popovers, asparagus, salad, and a vegan option for the non-carnivores.

On New Year's Day we eat ham, black-eyed peas, and greens, but we add pan-fried chicken, rice, and corn, and this year a little red-eye gravy to spice things up.

And finally, on the twelfth day of Christmas, the Epiphany, which is also my dad's birthday we eat his favorite meal in memory of him: chicken, white gravy, mashed potatoes, and biscuits.

These traditions are both festive and comforting. They connect the celebrations of today with those of yesterday, and draw us close. Tomorrow we will take the tree down and put away the sparkles and lights until next year, and in the coming weeks, as the days slowly lengthen, our meals will become lighter.

But tonight?

There will be gravy.

Hopes Up

"See you Monday!" one of my colleagues called cheerfully as he left this afternoon.

I shook my head confused. "What!?"

He rolled his eyes. "The snow?"

I'm not sure how I forgot about the forecast for a dusting, but this guy's from Pennsylvania! Maybe he had some inside info. "Oh!" I smiled. "Is that your prediction?"

"No," he shrugged. "I was just joking."

Dang!

Saying Hello to a Good Buy

We were shopping over the weekend when Heidi picked up a bright red stool. "Could you use this in your classroom?" she asked.

My eyes lit up. It was candy apple red and strong, but lightweight. Flashy and portable, it was just the thing I had been looking for to move quickly from table to table, sit at eye-level with the kids, and start or join a conversation about their writing. AND the price was right! Ten bucks later I was whistling down the sidewalk of the strip mall and twirling my new little seat.

Well! My stool was an immediate sensation when I brought it into school today. Perhaps my own enthusiasm, as I darted through the room plopping it down with a smile next to this student or that, was part of its popularity, but in any case, my presence was very sought after today, and I had many fantastic discussions about the essays my students are preparing.

In the Early Morning Rain

We were all a little groggy this morning when school reconvened after a nice winter's break. It was still dark outside at 8 am and rain splattered against the windows as I greeted my first reading class of the new year.

"Can we just read?" they asked sleepily.

"Sure," I agreed. "I'll come talk to each of you about the book you've chosen." And so I made my way quietly around the room.

"What are you reading?" I whispered to one girl.

"From Norvelt to Now Here," she whispered back.

"Is that a new one in the Norvelt series?" I asked, thinking of the Newbury-award winner by Jack Gantos, Dead End in Norvelt and its sequel From Norvelt to Nowhere. "I haven't heard of it," I frowned.

"I don't think so," she said, yawning. "It's in paperback." She lifted the book to show me.

I laughed as I read the title:

FROM  NORVELT
TO NOWHERE

"I think you broke that last word up in the wrong place!"

She still didn't get it, and so I wrote both "nowhere" and "now here" on the board.

"Ohhhhh," she said and shrugged. "I think it sounds better the other way."