Gail's Blog

Throughout her early years, Alix adored animals. Really, to say she adored animals is being too cute about it. She empathized, and identified with animals. She believed individual animals were her personal friends. Our next door neighbor had a yellow cat named Mandy. Or, rather, Alix called the cat Mandy. I'm not sure we actually knew what the cat's name was. Alix greeted Mandy when she came home from kindergarten, and sat on the front stoop with Mandy in the clean, clear Spring air. Alix called Mandy her "friend cat". When Mandy disappeared, Alix looked for her, and hoped for when she came back, which she did. Mandy was a friend in the friend constellation that my younger daughter always maintained. A preschool student's mother gave us a rabbit in my first year of teaching. Alix was five. This started our family's rabbit adventure. The rabbit, Cinnamon Pie, became another friend in the constellation. Soon there were too many friend rabbits to mention here!

Today was my first day as acting director of our Preschool, a school in which I've taught, laughed, scolded, danced, sang and generally made a fool of myself in the name of nurturing learning in young children for twenty years. I did not seek this sobriquette. I was drafted! So far: Our director has had troubles enough that Job should stop belly-aching, and she has not been able to do her job. The school was looking for a new director for when our director finished her contract at the end of July, but since she hasn't been around, the staff pushed for help immediately. Since I have been looking for better pay, they decided to ask the church to draft me for the dubious honor. The church said yes. I went in this morning to find other teachers rushing me away from the office because our former director had come in. She was furiously deleting her files from the computer. No one wanted me to be a target of her wrath, which I found profoundly touching. So I went into teacher mode an