Ten

On the evening of our final end-of-year meetings, our school community gathers to celebrate. It’s been a sweet year, one marked by fewer, smaller conflicts, where our credo We will know your boys and love your boys rang spectacularly true.

I looked forward every day to seeing my students, trying to teach them skills, sharing laughs at table, cheering them on.

That night, our Head of School shares a list of milestones, and my name is read (along with his own) to commemorate 10 years of service to our school. It is, of course, cliche to say It does not seem possible, and yet, here I am.

Ten years.

Though my brain ages, I am able to command it yet to think about those first few months, ten years ago.

Shattered raw from my son’s accident, I moved into the space he had inhabited only years earlier. It was grace to be able to work alongside his former teachers, gaze at his old team photos, find his name etched in pencil on the bottom of a drawer (naughty boy).

Say his name to those who knew him.

If I were to do the math, in those ten years, I have taught hundreds of students, known thousands more.

They are men now, boys no more.

Forever 22, my son will never meet these brothers of his. Never rove his old haunts, stand at fence on the new turf field, give an alumni tie to the next class of boy.

On this day, the 28th of May, the wind swirls as I write. Seeds soar through the air outside. Papers blow to the floor.

It feels like change.

What is ahead, I cannot know.

This world – this shining, heavy, glorious world – is not my home.

It was never his.

If we are lucky, alert, we may catch a glimpse of what is to come.

Not ten years, but an eternity.

He’s waiting there now.