Orientation

Two girls and a boy. Two blondes and a redhead. The future moving before my eyes, chasing down the sixth grade hallway on a night when nothing is more exciting than discovering a library and a science lab and a bank of lockers, not if you're eleven, or nearly. Not if you're with your friends.

We walked these halls once before, when this middle school building was brand new and my blonde girl was six. By my count that was ten minutes ago, though the calendar argues differently, and convincingly. She's smart, but not that much of a prodigy. Fast forward to now.

The tile is still gleaming, the glass is polished; the facilities haven't aged, though we have--less, perhaps, than we're about to. Or at least that's the popular attitude. But there's no use in dread, and frankly I'm kind of looking forward. Ignoring for a moment the logistical nightmares and the hated homework and eventually eliminated hyphenation of the boy-who-is-a-friend, focusing on the good parts, new beginnings. My excitable daughter and her plethora of plans: robots! acting! newspaper! band! field hockey! (field hockey? maybe bowling). The grown-ups strike me as knowing what they're doing--and I never give the benefit. And when they had the principal's secretary take the mike among all the certificated and introduce all the other office workers--the women who parents most often talk to, and who really run the show (I speak as the daughter of a superintendent's secretary)--they totally won this heart and mind. We walk out into the night, starved but satisfied, and agree: "This will be good."