Recipe for a Smile
Josh tutoring at 826 Boston
Yesterday I drove our seven ABC scholars to Roxbury again. Fresh from school, they piled into my car and got right to work on the two fat bags of dollar-apiece regular-size burgers, 'regular' these days meaning a little smaller than the size of your head. There were the 15 burgers and four large sacks of the Dead Man’s Fingers known as fries, which, along with a cooler of milk, juice and fruit, soon made the atmosphere joyful. Joyful in spite of the cold rain and the oily slither of traffic on the Expressway. Joyful in spite of its eventual crawl and stop.
Because what did we care about traffic? We had music and full tummies and high purpose, the purpose being the chance to sit once again with the high-spirited school-children who come to 826 Boston every day to start on their homework and read and write and consider the world as only people new to the planet can do.Once we'd settled in, I sat for a bit by Cameron, who was matched yesterday with a 2nd-grader working on Whale Facts. He filled out his homework and Cam 'heard him' on his definitions while the child, with a smile bigger than Christmas, recited and only every six or seven minutes stood and make bunny ears behind Cam’s head.At other tables, Cameron's six fellow student-tutors were equally engaged, one helping with math, one reading a pleasure book with his young charge, one watching as a highly competent first grader spooled out an essay in Spanish on the important of rules in sports.Then suddenly somehow it was quarter of 6 and the day was over.We piled back into my humid and still-burger-ish car, by now as familiar to these seven as their own living rooms. The radio came on and the rest of the juice disappeared and within 15 minutes every singleone of these smart-as-a-whip teens was fast asleep. Then it was my turn for that that smile bigger than- Christmas, which I wore for the whole rest of that 50-minute ride.
cameron on the common
Cam, on a spring day sunnier than yesterday
