Off to College

This boy came to our town as a five-foot tall freshman in high school. He was a scholar in our local chapter of the ABC Program. Such a journey!Back at the start of his time here I used to bring him over to Harvard for to bone up on his Italian with my nephew Matt. Matt was a freshman there at the time but time passed as time will do.Matt is now a senior at Harvard - and as of yesterday Rayvoughn was a freshman at the University of New Hampshire where he will study Computer Science.Even at 14, Ray was good with computers. Shortly after he arrived, he was already the go-to guy at the ABC House for PC issues.He networked all the computers and set up the wireless printer. And anytime anybody got a new Smart Phone - and we all know the Smart Phones are smarter than we are - Ray had it set and synched it up in a matter of minutes.I felt lucky. As a volunteer and then the head of the Student Life , I got to see him all the time, starting when he was just over 5 feet tall and stood up at the big Fundraising Dinner and all unbidden said what it meant to him to be part of this wonderful program.I remember when he began wrestling and found out he was good at it.That was the same time of year he wrote his History paper on the symbolic import of the Brooklyn Bridge in the years just after the ruinous War Between the States. I still have a video clip I made of him discovering all the material .But time keeps moving; we all know that. He began working for PC Quick Help and grew almost a foot and graduated from Winchester High School last June, making both his dad and his mom and the host family who sheltered him for four years very proud.

both as a 15-year old...

...and as an 18-year-old

And yesterday it was my privilege to bring him to college.And yesterday it was my privilege to bring him to college. Four trips up those stairs and my car, whcih at 10 am that packed to the gills, by 2:00 was once again empty.So shine on Rayvoughn Shion Millings! You have a world of support behind you!

The People You Walk With

It was a good first day of the year, yesterday was. I fetched a young ABC scholar just off the bus from the long vacation and brought him and his two ‘brothers’ to Anna’s Taqueria for burritos. Then they helped David carry a desk as the size of an elephant down three flights of stairs in our house. It was bound for our daughter Annie's place after 'living' here for 20-plus years.I remember carrying this desk UP all those stairs, in 1991, with only one skinny teenager to help me.“We had to saw off one of its legs,” I told David as we anticipated this job. His take on things? That the skinny teen and I must have approached the task wrong way back in the 90s. So imagine my satisfaction yesterday, when, after turning it every which way, all four of these guys concluded simultaneously that the thing couldn't POSSIBLY fit out the door of the room it was in... Unless we cut one of its leg off.Then things got easier, boy. We found the old cut, applied a hacksaw to it, got the leg off and got that desk DOWN the stairs. Well, they did that part while I hustled outside and commanded the five rear seats in my minivan to lie down flat. The next thing you knew that desk was in there.Getting that major task done AND being thus vindicated felt great – but not as good as what happened to me as with these three guys I sat over my burrito at Anna's:A woman stopped at our table on her way toward the door. Her shining face as she leaned down to me made me reach up and take her hand."Can I ask you something?” she said."Sure!" I replied."Were you once a teacher at Somerville High?”"Yes I was!" I happily admitted and then she told me her name and like magic there she suddenly was in my mind as her 16-year-old self.She gestured then toward the three young men and asked if they were my sons.A dozen answers came to my lips but the one I finally came out with felt the most honest:"They’re ... well they're the sons of my heart,"I said.And when I think of the things they do for me, like today's Herculean task, and of all the hours we have spent together talking after seeing a play or movie, or while riding in my car, and how many of their papers and essays I have looked at, eyes peeled for the run-on-sentence, the pronoun that doesn't agree with its antecedent, the pitfalls you risk falling into with too many adverbs, I realize that they really ARE the sons of my heart, and am so proud that this lovely former student took them for mine.Here they are now, Tobi Omola, Enderson Naar and Rayvoughn Millings. What great things they will do in the world one day! What great weight they mean to one day carry on all our behalf!

Last Seen Wearing....

Last weekend I took these guys to the zoo and today we’re going to attack a corn maze. It makes a nice break from working on the intricate moving parts of Honors Algebra or reading your 40 pages per night of Jane Austen.These are 6 of 8 top students who, through the National Program for a Better Chance , left their warm homes and familiar neighborhoods to attend high school in our town. ABC places kids in over 300 public and private schools throughout the country and we have such a program, supported by 80 volunteers, by countless donations  from the community and, this year, by my own small contribution as Mistress of  Enrichment, Community Service and Last Minute Rides to the Y.

Most weekends the scholars are busy studying for SATs and playing sports and writing papers but this weekend we decided to drive to my family’s summer place, together with Winchester ABC’s President Jennifer Regentz and her hubby Mike who between them seem to be doing all of the the cooking  (yay!)

And today we're doing something much more arduous than interacting with jaguars. They're  still sleeping at the moment – something about that midnight screening of  "Fight Club" I found them enthralled in when I wandered out to the kitchen to fetch a glass of water – but soon we will all get marched into a maze so puzzling it makes old Honors Algie III look easy: the famous Corn Maze at Moulton Farms.   My kids and I did it last fall and if it weren't for our son Mike with his memory like God’s own memory we'd still in there now. I'll report  back in a few days if we manage to get out that quickly. And oh yeah: Ray in his hoodie might be trying to look like some tough guy in the picture above but he's a big softie really, as you can see here with his arm around Class of  '14-er Hazees.

good luck to us; they don't even give you  a map! corn maze from the air Mouton Farms NH

Kid Writers

Tomorrow I have to drive over to Roxbury and get my box of bones back. They’re not my family’s bones or anything, though we are from there. They’re more my “I’m-in-love-with-human-anatomy” bones that I bought to puzzle over when I was working as a massage therapist. I loaned them to 826 Boston,  the awesome after-school writing center to which I brought seven of my favorite people every week this spring in order to tutor.  826 did a kind of Fantasy Forensics camp this summer and asked who had clean bones and. well, I raised my hand.The kids who come here write some amazing stuff, which gets published in real books. How’s this by Ellie Nguyen as she looks back at First Grade?  “I ran my mouth as if I had shoes for teeth. People just always seemed to be interested by what I had to say. But when the teacher told me to stand in front and introduce myself, I froze. Was I afraid to show them who I was? Did I look stupid just standing there? ‘Elizabeth,’ I finally said. ‘I was named after the queen!” Mrs. Bae chuckled a bit and bowed. ‘Well, it’s an honor to meet you, your highness.’ I knew I was going to like here.’Or this, by Cole Cartwright? “The robot’s name is Rex. He smashes cities and people. He eats cars. Police are scared of him so they go home. Rex is so giant and handsome. He even has a girlfriend. Her name is Mary. She is a robot too. The robots play together and they are happy.” Cole is a bit years younger than Ellie.All I know is when I bring my seven favorite people here the children look at them with shiny eyes as they tackle homework sheets or read stories or do a bit of writing together. Sometimes they touch their hands, or their long muscular arms. “You are my future!” I believe each one is thinking. As for me, I just watch, And smile. And take the occasional picture. :-)

though I can't claim credit for this one!

This one I snapped: Josh Winchester High 2011, with the kids:

Parade of Life

Street Fair, USA, starting with a parade which seems almost metaphorical: We line up in the high school parking, a place practically synonymous with the true starting point of life.  We are freezing and we are warm; our comfort levels change minute to minute depending on how we are dressed and from which corners the wind suddenly sneaks around to hit us full in the face.Thanks to the school Marching Bands, there is a sound track to the parade, just as there must surely be a sound track to our lives that we will one day hear, perhaps in that last moment when we start to rise and for the first time see our life whole, flying low over the lovely long stretch of it.We do not march for more than 40 minutes and yet there are incidents: A dozen dogs accompany an organization called "Canine Care" that brings animals  into nursing homes to cheer the residents  and one, an elderly bulldog, is pulled along  in a  child’s wagon – until 20 minutes in, that is, when it tumbles out and lies helpless before the man pulling it even realizes and hurries back to take it up in his arms. In eerie human parallel, a man standing on one of the floats falls from it, landing hard on the asphalt and cannot rise; cannot rise at all.  “Call 911!” “Call 911!” The sound ripples through the crowd. But a police officer on his motorcycle is nearby and we see him accelerate even as he summons help on his radio. Then, “Go around! Just go around!” someone is heard to say, and, a bit stunned, we do go around and keep on marching.Below are a few seconds of this march, featuring four of the seven young men I love very much and work with as this year’s Vice President of Winchester ABC, along with President Jennifer, seen stepping along life’s road with all the zest the enthusiasm she is known for. A slice then, just a tiny slice of that Parade we all march in every minute whether or not we know it:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98RZKMYIucM]