Day 23

Many circles of my life overlap, from home to work, spouse, kids, neighbors, colleagues, students. First of all, I can see my school from my bedroom window--when I wake up, I look out the window to see the lights twinkling in the cafeteria. I can hear our head-custodian call to his staff from the loud-speaker as the night shift starts, "Miss Pat, the pizza's here."

I started working there when my son was two years old; now he he's in the seventh grade. He wasn't in my class last year, but he sat in science class right across the hall. I could spot him chewing on his pencil in the front row on test day. One of my students was in my son's play group, starting at four months old--I remember feeding her Cheerios from zip-loc bag, and next thing I knew, I was coaching her on the use of figurative language and how to format dialogue. Tuck has a friend over right now--he was in my class last year, too. I just grilled him about what writing pieces he was going to submit to my literary magazine this year because I happen to know that he's good with words.

When I checked my e-mail, I saw I was copied on a message from my husband, the soccer coach. His entire team goes to my school. They say hi in the halls between classes, do double-takes when they see my growing belly, and groan, "Can you tell Coach Rob not to run us to hard at practice? We had to run the mile in PE."

This morning, I sat in an IEP meeting with a mom I've known since the birth of my second son when we were on maternity-leave together. She and I talk almost daily as we wait for our kids at the bus stop right in front of her house. We've clinked champagne glasses at midnight for the last five or six New Year's Eves. But his wasn't the first meeting we've sat in together this year--her oldest son, while talented in many ways, struggles with school. I feel the weight of his circumstances as if we're talking about my own son.

I left my current school for four years and worked at another middle school across our very small county with some of my favorite teachers around. The four of us meet monthly for Writing Group. We cross paths at county-wide meetings. We participate in on-line courses together and gather for departmental PLCs. We read each others' slices.

These overlapping circles are like a kaleidoscope. If I squint into the light, the colors and shades shift and turn in new and interesting patterns, sometimes light and sometimes dark, brilliant, complex, and never dull.