“Hey, Ms. Mully. I have a question about Winter Alumni Weekend. Would you please call me back?” Stefanie–an advisee from what seems like about eight or nine years ago but isn’t–had left a message on our phone during the holiday break. Maybe it was the recording, but  to my ears she sounded exactly like the 18-year-old I’d proudly watched lope up to the dais to accept her diploma in 1996.

When I returned her call, I found out she needed a spot for her two-year-old son, Max, to take his afternoon nap that Saturday. (What? Wasn’t Max still a babe-in-arms?  Apparently not.)  We agreed that he’d snuggle in the guestroom–which gave Stef and me some time to catch up, a pleasure not fully allowed by our quick check-ins at her 5th, 10th, and–egads–15th reunions.

Tweet⁺ version: Stef’s an attorney, juggling crazy work hours, motherhood, and spousedom as I did years back. She’s as cheerful and optimistic as ever, but also realistic, eyes wide open about her own life, the state of the country and the world, her hopes to be an agent for the good in it, through her work, both paid and volunteer.

She’s changed and she hasn’t.

And then there’s Max–the real and corporeal (and adorable) change–asleep under the fuzzy pink blanket my child had cuddled in when Stef was a rambunctious 9th grader wildly carving jack-o-lanterns in my kitchen. That would have been enough for my already full heart on a bone-chilling but Ojai-beautiful Winter Alumni Day. But there’s more.

Late in the Thacher Multi-generational party that night, Stef made her way through the crowd, the well-rested and -fed Max in her arms, for a goodbye. He tucked his head into her neck, grinned, and then, with a little urging, sprang to life, launching into a toddler’s version of Domine–the sung grace known by every Thacher student and graduate. Another What?!? from me. Turns out that Stef, desperate to get her fussy baby settled for a diaper-change, had sung to him when he was just months old. Stef shrugged, grinning, too. “There was just something about it–maybe the Latin?–that would calm him down and get him focused.”

Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” to William Carlos Williams “The Dance,” season to seasons: “The dancers go round, they go round and around, the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes” traded for that little mumbling voice singing Domine.