Unexpected Places

Zach and I are officially moving to Vancouver, B.C. in January. I'm desperately missing hot weather. Meantime I'm still working at my beloved community center where I'm learning patience, faith, and wonder. That last statement was trite, but I don't know how to put it so I'll just leave it at that.

I'm also substituting at the Bellevue school district, where I fill in for the Head Start and preschool programs, and where Dr. Seus books enable four-year-olds to exhibit their best fish faces and to bellow animal noises. During free-play preschool girls carry paper flowers and ask preschool boy(friends) to marry them. Preschool boys build train tracks and draw two-legged elephants, wanting nothing to do with marriage, except one timid boy with big expressive eyes, who tries on straw hats until the brides come to claim the hats, not the boy. He walks to the train station, tries to run his train on the another boys' track (at my urging) and causes a tantrum. He sits back, unbearably wide eyed and quiet. I can't stop worrying about him.