Today I left home at 6:30 to visit Joe at school. They were having an open house, so I spent the morning meeting most of his teachers. Joe joined me at lunchtime for Chipotle and a haircut. We walked around the grounds and talked and caught up and played a ridiculous game of ping-pong. We are both bad at ping-pong but we are an evenly matched kind of bad. He beat me 21-19, entirely because I cannot return his serves from the left side of the table.
You guys, it was so good to see him. I just wanted to feast my eyes on his face. This time I didn't cry when I left but I am definitely a little teary at the memory.
BUT ANYWAY. It is a great place. He is really happy there -- he misses us, but in a manageable way.
Here is a weird thought: in some ways, his entirely secular school seems more Catholic to me than our local Catholic high school. This is partly because of its diversity. It feels strange to me to be in an ethnic minority, but that's the way it is at his school. In the first class I visited there were 14 sets of parents represented. Only 4 of us appeared to be of European descent. It's also because of the value they place on curiosity and on learning as a lifelong unfolding -- not a set of hoops to jump through or boxes to tick off. Another issue is the socioeconomic climate. I am certain that there are plenty of wealthy families sending their kids there, but I asked him about how the vibe compared. At the local high school there's a troubling set of expectations: which subdivision you live in and which car you drive and where you go on vacation carry more weight than I wish they did. "It's nothing like that here," he said. "It's, like, the opposite of Gladlyville Catholic in that way."
The last time I mentioned the local Catholic high school I was grousing vaguely yet again -- that was really just about one teacher. They've given most of the advanced literature classes to a woman who seems to be lukewarm about literature. I wrote about her here. When she took attendance on the first day she said to my 17yo, "I haven't missed you," a pronouncement that sparked my ire last month. Most of the teachers there are trying hard to teach subjects they love. They are certainly not in it for the money. The trouble with a small school, though, is that it's hard to avoid the few bad teachers. And when you couple that with the money thing, and the political climate in which social justice is regarded with suspicion-- I don't really see us sending the younger kids there.
Today's trip was possible because Elwood agreed to cover everything at home: soccer + one-car kid-wrangling + Saturday housekeeping jobs. One of the few areas of friction in our marriage is that he doesn't do housecleaning. Today, though, he covered my jobs and made sure the kids did theirs, so I was free to luxuriate in my time with Joe. I miss that boy.
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