Friends of my Heart

At 4:15 this morning the Falling Water scarf and I were standing on a street in Northwest DC waiting for the Washington Flyer Super Shuttle to convey me to Dulles Airport for my trip home.

I arrived in northern VA at 5:20 p.m. on Friday, rendezvoused with a former colleague at the Avis counter, and headed off to a retirement party for a woman I can only describe in the words of another former colleague: a math teaching deity. She has incredible skills as a teacher, but is truly gifted in her ability to take a disparate group of people and turn them into a close, cohesive, effective department. She mentored more teachers than I can even begin to imagine; she made a tremendous difference to my own career and continues to be a great role model and positive influence in my life. I can't even begin to tell you how much it meant to me to be able to go --and seeing her face when my other colleague (who'd flown in from Chicago) and I walked in was just priceless. Not only that, there were so many other close friends there--of the sort I do not have in my current institution(s). One of them hugged me and said "it means so much just to know you are real," and I know just what she meant by that. I felt very at home with my former colleagues, and was delighted to have the chance to meet the boy wizards who've become a big part of the department in its current incarnation. There were wedding and baby and child pictures to admire, and there was wonderful conversation. It was a lovely evening.

I arrived at Logan at 8:30 a.m. and headed off to meet the rest of my family at D#1's soccer game. We had to turn around and go back to the pool for the season's suit fitting (those Hydra suits are something) and the mandatory beginning-of-season parent meeting with the head coach. Now it's ten minutes to 8 and I am ready to go to bed.