Post-Thanksgiving Cry

Found this in Nu's backpack

and the last item on the list 

made me a little weepy

so I Whatsapped it 

to my poor mom

and made her cry.

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The Face of Thanksgiving

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Most Improved XC

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Moar Diwali

Diwali Party at the C's

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Happy Deepavali 2015

Gor antha deepam

Konda antha velugu

(a sliver of flame

a mountain of light)

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Meet the Parents

Student event this evening, and the stories they've shared hang around my interactions with their families.

The man with the twinkly eyes lost a child to cancer.

The woman so proud of her daughter's accomplishments is herself a daughter struggling to help her elderly mother stay independent.

 So awed by how wonderful and brave people are.

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A Hug for Monday

The dress Anu Pinni sent

is happy camouflage.

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In Perfect Step

The Section Leader is 

particularly handsome.

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Fairness

At was at the XC Varsity event (filming the Girls' team). I stashed Nu in the UU kitchen, and worked the break room with coffee machine, creamer, and cookies for the homeless 'intake.'

And it was all brave, tidy, and everyone trying to be cheery.

But the family with the backpacks--perhaps the cheeriest of all--was the nub. B joked to the kids that there wasn't room on the bus and they'd be walking; the older one quipped, Again?" They didn't want to play card games but took turns on the phone. Got cookies when mom left the room for a smoke. And I wonder one more time why people like Donald Trump get to have so much cash for their tasteless crap and others don't have enough.

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Frieda

Sometime between ages 16 and 21…

First I fell in love with Ted Hughes. Then I fell in love with Sylvia Plath. Then I hated Ted Hughes,  while being mildly annoyed with Sylvia Plath. Then I took to raving against Hughes, and if you mentioned Plath's name would break down in angry tears. Then I pretended neither of them existed while reading their poetry secretly.

If that sounds exhausting,* how much more exhausting to be those intense, talented people, constantly under scrutiny and the pressure to perform.

Love Frieda Hughes' interview in which she talks about her parents. And I've come a long way from being that impressionable and emotional teenager who took everything personally, but still needed to hear this:

"To me, as a child, my father seemed to blame himself for almost everything. It was awful. A child does not want to see their parents suffer. Thousands of people all over the world every day split up, thousands of people have affairs. Not everyone kills themselves."

* Yes, it also sounds nerdy, but everyone knows that already.

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Official

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In the name of

"Friendship musical chairs"

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