FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Goodness, I cannot believe that it’s been a year again.
There is something about having kids around that makes you both more and less aware of the passage of time.
You look at them and remember when you were that age, which doesn’t feel so long ago.
At the same time, your life with them around is so full that the days slip past you, and before you know it, it’s been a year, or five, or a lifetime.
Sometimes I look at them and I see Danny, but more often I simply see them. Damien must have grown six inches in the past year. High school has been good to him so far—it helps, I think, that he’s had the same best friend since he moved here.
Lenore … I have a bit of a soft spot for her.
Maybe because I see myself in her, in her quiet passion and creativity.
I do think that brain of hers gets her into trouble, sometimes.
The kids at school give her a hard time for being a know-it-all, as though knowing what you’re talking about is a bad thing.
Last weekend, I took her and a friend to the museum at the university in Burlington. Shelby is her name—a sweet, soft-spoken girl. I’m not sure they have all that much in common, though they are both outcasts in their own way, gravitating toward each other for lack of other company.
Maybe there’s a special sort of bond in that, though.
Middle school can be so brutal at times, and friendships at this age so fleeting.
Some kids might find it easier to throw their friend under the bus if they thought that there was some chance it would raise their own status among their peers.
Not Lenore and Shelby. They’re fiercely loyal to one another.
Perhaps that’s a better quality to have in common than all the rest.