Perpetual youth

I always imagined that I would have three children; I had, instead, one entirely remarkable, irreplaceable, love-magic, life-giving boy.  And yet my world is still very much about children in the plural—about the kids I've been hanging, traveling, or blogging with over the course of the last 20 years.

Those kids, like all kids, grow up.  So that yesterday I heard from Moira, my beloved first student at Penn (and the inspiration for the book, Zenobia), who is now herself a teacher at the University of San Francisco, and, I imagine, a very good one.  I heard from one of my favorite young bloggers, so alive with her studies, so complete in her assessment of the world, and generous.  I stopped by the blogs of young poet-philosopher-photographer friends, listened to my son read from his screenplay-in-progress, and took note of new books for my niece Claire, who speaks from the palace of her imagination (Aunt Beth, she says, what would you do if you saw ... ).  When I'm in danger of being thwarted or unnaturally bent by corporate pressures, I step back into the classroom and teach, and when I think back on this summer's family vacation at the Cayman Islands, I think most of all of the early mornings, when my nephew and I sat side by side on long deck chairs, reading from our respective books.

Disappointments hover; they threaten to unmake us.  Curatively, always, there are kids.