Supervising

For about ten minutes that morning, the school office was so completely quiet that I could hear all the clocks ticking. I had never before experienced that level of silence in that part of the world.

It didn’t last long though. Soon the desk was crowded with phone messages and I was busy bandaging a pencil-related injury from a student in Hans’ class. That was more like it.

The sky looked like October. The wind was up. I took Yali out to the front porch at the Big House to pull a nap out of him. About twenty minutes later, it worked. He snoozed in a blanket in my lap.

When it was time to wake him, Carrie-Bri took over. “Chocolate?” she asked the snoozing young man.

His eyes popped open. “Chock-et?”

So Carrie did an emergency search for chocolate before studying under the persimmon tree for her ham radio test that evening.

Homework after school. Annie-Bea also joined us for the afternoon. Between spurts of industrious activity, the kids found it necessary to work off some energy. Sometimes that meant Yali running around the room screaming like a girl. But mostly it meant all four kids engorging themselves on goldfish crackers and some light smack talk. Because that’s how the 4th grade seems to operate.

Back home for another family dinner, quesadillas and guacamole style. And another hymn sung around the table where Puck focused on a register somewhere in the basement and Yali warbled high up there with the songbirds.