Midsummer Day

Today, after driver's ed, Robert is lurking around the Walgreens looking clueless. Well, no, that's not true, looking as if he's waiting to do something only it's some sort of secret something, and he looks awkward and gangly like a fifteen year old boy. Which is what he is. Since I have come to this class the adult me is not so much on hiatus as gone. I have an odd feeling that with all the stuff I've let go of, the stuff I thought of as "me" another layer is gone. That grown up me. I'm sure it will come back, but also sure it will come back in a different way. And there is this new me, who is learning to drive a car and feels at ease with fiteen year olds, feels as if my world is starting all over again. It's as if the last decade counts for nothing and the lessons I learned of as final things are actually more like, well, conditional things, truths for a time. I get a new lease, a chance to start again.

I don't know if I'd want this chance except that it seems more like a command. Look at these people. On monday I wondered what in heaven I would do with all of these teens, now on Thursday I wonder what I can do for them because they are doing so much for me. Three hours a day and my world is changed. I am up earlier, more and more tired, removed from the life I was pleased to have, but pleased to have these people around me, all of us in much to close quarters, smelling each others breath and inappropriately launders clothing, and yet Sahne announces, "We're all one family now.... Even Adam on the end.. And he never talks."

And Adam just smiles and nods because... Well, he never talks.