Email from Hannah CdeP 2013 mid-week: “Can Brittany and I come by to see you Saturday? She’s home on fall break, and I’m coming up for the weekend.” Of course. They knocked on the door late morning, bounded in for hugs, beelined for the kitchen. Both girls—ok, young women–had been part of my Golden Trout […]
Blog Archives
Again with the layers (literal this time)
Kitchen demolition is slated for next week, and my job is both simple and formidable: empty the hub of the house of everything in it, down to the last pieces of stray dog kibble in the pantry’s far corner. (Some mouse’s stash, no doubt. Bummer when he comes for it.) Knowing how good Rae will […]
18 Again
We get mocked in Southern California for our lack of seasons but those of us on Thacher’s campus this week know that while the change in seasons isn’t dramatic, there is such a thing as spring, and we all know it’s here. The mercury is rising, the California poppies are dancing, and even the Oak […]
Maximum
“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 […]
Room C Serendipity
It was Tuesday night of Portfolio week for my seniors, and I was planted at the Room C table with my laptop and my tall cup of tea, ready to help any of my English IV students who wanted a little guidance on their essay revisions. Along towards 7:30–the start of Study Hall, which is […]
Where Joni and I part company
It was in late August that I first felt the happy dizziness of seasons spinning, doubling back and oddly moving ahead at the same time. There, topping the list of my Sierra campmates, was Nan, senior prefect to the 9th grade girls who’d be trekking together for five days (six, if you throw in the […]
Plus ça change…
As I was heading from one photo opp to another on the Wednesday of Grandparents Days, gymkhana field to lacrosse, I left a scene I’ve watched too many times to count: adoring, amazed grandparents in the stands, eagle-eyed for their special one out there, riders running races or cheering each other on (often across enemy […]
The Big Warm
Remember three decades ago, The Big Chill, a breakout film for Glenn Close, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, Meg Tilley, JoBeth Williams, and–as the dead guy whose face no one ever sees, Kevin Costner? (Clearly, I’m beyond worrrying about dating myself.) The first morning the old college friends are together, each comes into the […]
Cambridge Reconnect
In Boston a couple of weeks back, as a break in the conference action–the annual meeting of The Association of Boarding Schools–Michael and I went cross-town, over the Charles, and down to Bertucci’s on Harvard Square, there to meet a handful of CdeP’s most recent grads. Over pizza and salad, Leeah (Northeastern), Trevor (MIT), Steffi […]
What goes around
. . . keeps going around. There’s probably no sense in even trying to find the first link in my personal chain of Shared Lit (not an academic course you can sign up for, but, rather, a course of action, a version of call-and-reponse, of good-reads-as-boomerangs). The latest chapter goes this way: Jackson–a senior–and I […]