lunch

She's told me this story before, the math teacher. How she had immigration all figured out--she makes a cut and dried gesture--until she met one of our favorite students, one of my favorite young people, all time. Faces and names, I guess that's the difference, how it works. Having a black friend, modern era.

"It's all screwed up," we conclude, again and more profanely, my converted friend and I. And she asks what news I have about the other students we shared, and I tell her some sad stories because while they might call, while they might e-mail, good news waits until Fall.

But we have more to talk about than school. Vacations, the merits of various big league ballparks and whether Andy Van Slyke is on drugs, to start. And then we drink some more beer. Right there's an advantage of no longer being co-workers, no longer only sharing a twenty minute school lunch break. (Alcohol is generally verboten.) One of us is going on to new and different, one of us going back to the supposedly familiar, though it's never really all the same. For one thing, I'll have one less person to help me stay sane between 8 and 3, and clearly, it's a team effort. But at least this isn't goodbye. We've got August pl*ns, two summer dates down; school's now just how we met. Minus a colleague, plus a friend; that's not an equation, but to me it more than balances.