matching tracksuits

Such an up and down job I have. If only I had a performance car with the handling of my average day: to say it turns on a dime would be an understatement.

Two boys give me hell in the morning. In the afternoon, one of them comes up to apologize, and the other faces off against me in a friendly game of air hockey. I know the apology was not voluntary, and my participation in the air hockey game was by self-invitation, but let’s not get too picky here.

Progress will be progress in the little things, the program director has told us several times, and slowly the little things will add up.

Just before my senior year in college, I invested in a beautiful fountain pen: a Cross Townsend. I later learned that somehow I got the pen for almost half the actual price thought a pricing mistake or something. Now a new one costs roughly four times what I paid.

That pen accompanied me through Europe and was instrumental in recording thoughts about Strasbourg, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, and a number of other cities.

For twelve years, I’d never even misplaced it.

Today, at work, it was stolen. Or was it?

I had inadvertently left it by my computer, tucked in a notebook I’d been using for notes during a training session we’d had on Friday. After four of the lads had been using the computer, it was missing.

“Stealing is not beneath some of them,” I’d been told. Still, is that something one really wants to communicate to one’s students? “Alright, you jerks — I don’t trust any of you. Who stole my pen?!” Not the best way to build relationships with young men in need of help.

Instead, I gathered the lads together, told them that my pen was missing, and asked them if any of them saw it, to put it on my desk and then let me know it’s there.

A few minutes later, a boy came to ask me if I’d checked in all the desk drawers. “Maybe someone put it there — you know, like a joke.”

Sure enough, in the second drawer was the pen.

A prank? A bit of mercy? Misunderstanding or malice?

So much of our lives is inexplicable like that. Indefinable. Was this a reconsidered theft? Was it a joke? All I know is the pen was missing and then it wasn’t. Almost like I lost it…

Still, for safe measure, I unplugged my SanDisk memory stick and put it in my pocket.

I want to trust these boys, to give them the benefit of the doubt. But at what point does trust become naivety?

It takes patience and calmness to feel her. “Did you feel it?” K asks. “Yes,” I say, hesitantly: a small, quick pressure against the palm of my hand could easily be missed.

All this time, K, with her belly swelling, passed through all the early signs of pregnancy, and it was exciting for me, but still somehow distant. I’m an observer, not a direct participant. But once it became possible to feel L’s kicks, a new depth to the situation has emerged. Every day, the reality that we are soon going to be responsible for a little girl becomes more and more obvious and increasingly present. That goes without saying. But feeling L move about makes the realization all the more potent.

I dropped by the “old school” yesterday to see the kids. They were walking out into the breezeway just as I was turning to go into the office to sign in as a visitor. They saw me and suddenly I was attacked by six children in a simultaneous hug. One, who liked to call me “stupid old man” last year in times of crisis, hugged me about three times while we were standing there.

One child wasn’t there, having already gone to eat lunch with her one-on-one. I snuck up on her and simply squatted beside her and said, “Hi, [Catherine].”� She looked at me without recognition for about two seconds, then dropped her fork, squealed “Mr. Gary!”� and threw her arms around me.

That gives you a fine feeling indeed.