… keeps going around.

During the end-of-term portfolio project in our senior honors class, Turning Toward Home: Personal Narrative Writing, Ellie asked about the peer consult requirement.

“Could I work with Jackson?”

Jackson graduated last June and three months later traded small town Thacher for big city UMichigan. We’d worked together during much of his Thacher career as, with stunning drive and talent to match, he pursued writing in various genres–and when I asked him in an email exchange last fall if he’d  visit with my two sections of seniors in early January when he was still home on Christmas break, he agreed. At the close of each of these sessions, Jackson had generously offered his fellow Toads a hand with their works-in-progress. “So, listen, if you ever want to run any of your writing by me, I’d really be happy to look at it and give you some feedback.”

Two months later, Ellie had not forgotten.

“If he’s willing,” I said, “absolutely.”

In the final, warp-speed week of the term, I forgot about this slice of Ellie’s project work–until I was reading through her portfolio. From her folder, I pulled out one of her drafts that was marked up with Jackson’s electronic scrawl. Not a note here or there, but a full-on, whole-minded, whole-hearted response to her essay.

There it was, in black and white and green: the emerging teacher and genuinely caring fellow writer in Jackson and the evolving artist in Ellie, who’d been courageous and bold and wise enough to ask for help from just the right person.

There, in my hands, incontrovertible proof of the bond between the two of them, rooted, probably without their even knowing it, in Oliver Wendell Holmes’s notion of “build[ing] . . . more stately mansions.”

(Keep hammering, guys.)