Morning Dew, Afternoon Light

My 8th grader and I went to the big public school enrollment fair the other day. He cracks me up.

"Let's just go in there, grab the applications, and get out of there, okay?"

Once inside a massive hall, the noise was overpowering. Parents and kids pushed toward tables manned by volunteers. The first person I saw was the principal of his brother's high school, a man with a perpetual smile -- an optimist.

I don't recall any of the principals of my schools ever being optimists. They seemed more like prison guards.

My kid hung back while I exchanged pleasantries with the smiling principal; he hung back again when I greeted a bunch of kids wearing beanies from the school that is his top choice.

It's the school with the reputation (and record) of being the top academic high school in these parts.

He sat in the back row of a short question-and-answer session offered by that school. I asked if he had any questions; he said no. So I asked one, about the nature of the "personal essay" that is part of the application process.

I think it is odd that a B+, a B-, or a B all count as a 3.0 grade. When I was a professor at Stanford a few years ago, I used a pretty complicated mathematical scale to award different numbers for those letter grades.

But, to get into a high school, you could earn all A-'s and have a 4.0 GPA.

While we were driving home, he was studying the applications carefully, reading parts of them out-loud. This is an attention to detail that bodes well for him getting into the school of his choice.

That, plus the fact that he very rarely gets a "-" behind his A's.

***

Life in my house goes quickly from a noisy hub of chaos to a venue so quiet you could hear a pin drop. The strokes of the keys on this laptop compete with the ticking of a wall clock to remind me that I live alone, it is chilly outside, and we are in the midst of enduring the shortest days of our year.

The bottom of time.

The holidays now approach, a time of dread some years; occasionally also still of joy. I think that, for me at least, I must have been better at living in denial in order to enjoy the holidays in the past.

Given the recession, and the state of my own disarray, not to mention that of my profession, maybe this year I'll focus on celebrating small triumphs, like being able to push out this blog post.

Yay!

-30-