GO BLUE!

Michael is now a published poet!! Yay! Please do go check out his poem "Confucius" at Poet's Corner Fieralingue, edited by Anny Ballardini (thanks Anny!)

And speaking of Michael, today was the occasion of his first basketball game. Sadly, the league opener featured his school against the league's best basketball team (the best for the past four years, according to Sam, one of Michael's teammates). Needless to say, Michael's team lost. But I think lessons in competition, in being good sports, in persistence, et al are clearly being learned, regardless of "the score."

Actually, I felt myself really moved this morning as I sat on the bleachers watching them warm up and play. I don't usually spend much time around big groups of 13- and 14-year-old boys. As I watched them, all still in the midst (height?) of their youths, I saw bodies being metaphors for their development: still not fully-formed, often awkward...but often eager to experience and try. It was refreshing -- not a single jaded sensibility in the lot. Anyway, I'm not really articulating why I found the images of these boys so moving; let me just share one image of them -- uh, their backs -- as they begin opening warm-up exercises. Michael is No. 20 (he traded in his earlier number of 14 as there apparently is no famous basketball player with No. 14. Is that right? Well, that's what he thought anyway...)



Blue--my favorite color, and especially when coupled with ... Gold! Parents were instructed, by the way, not to hector from the stand. Sheesh: one person's hectoring is another person's cheering, you know what I mean? What's the point of attending a sports game if one can't get mouthey...?! Well fine: I shall try to comport moiself better in future games (yes, I was chided once...just once, though, and it was the hubby doing the chiding so I'm not sure that counts! I guess a gym is much more intimate quarters than an outdoor soccer field where, once, I had so much fun being a fan...!)

By the way, by the time this is posted, Michael will be off to his first dinner party. Hosted by a classmate, another 13- or 14-year-old boy (!) whose parents apparently introduced him last summer to cooking-from-scratch (obviously an experience my son will never get from me). Anyway, a teen's dinner party?! I get it now -- how, when it comes to children, it's possible for years to fly by so quickly! Sigh. As I finish writing this, I can hear the hubby giving a reminder-lecture to Michael about dining manners -- ah: how far we've come from an orphanage in Bogota...


UPDATE:
As regards Michael's dinner party, there were going to be six boys and six girls. So, I'd thought that seating would be boy-girl-boy-girl-et al. But, no, apparently the boys sat on one end of this fancily set-up dining table, and the girls at the other end.

But due to however the seating ended up, there was no room for Michael at the boys' end and he ended up sitting with the girls. So, I asked, did he enjoy that?

He snorted. "No!" he explained-exclaimed. "All they talked about were boys in high school!"

Isn't this all just ... classic!