Beneath the Wraps

          It’s been almost 40 years since Jill and her family moved out of my mom’s neighborhood.  They are the first family that I remember having moved.           It’s only been in the last couple of months that I got in touch with Jill through facebook. She has since moved back to Utah. I told her about mom and made arrangements for us to visit.           And so the other day Jill drove to mom’s house and we visited for a while.  She told me how she and mom had spent many a days visting at each other’s houses.  And made it known (for the first time) that her youngest had had a crush on me when we were younger.  Really?!  Because I had had a crush on him and wasn’t aware that he had felt the same way until Jill took us to lunch.           I think the greatest thing was watching mom’s rec...

          After the economy started getting bad, we lost our house.   We were forced to move to a much smaller house in a quite low income neighborhood. We spent the first night in our small house the last day in November. But I kept Jenna at her first school until after Christmas break.   Realistically it wasn’t a very practical commute. If the economy hadn’t forced us to downsize – I don’t think I would have questioned Jenna’s opportunity for even just being considered for another school.   We were in the same district, but the boundaries were for another school.           I had tried to transfer Jenna into the school nearest to our house – one we could actually walk to if we needed to.   But they were “filled up” and we lived “on the wrong side of the street”.   My main objective for wanting her over there was to keep her on year round.   There are fo...

          When Jenna was three, we would walk hand in hand over to the public school twice a week for a preschool class that was offered.  At age four she went for four days.  At age five we enrolled her in kindergarten.  All day kindergarten to be exact. We were also in year round school.           I would volunteer in the class room once a week. We were both happy. She loved learning.  I loved her teachers. I never had any reason to look into another school.           Her preschool teacher was great.  She loved those she taught.  And Jenna was forever learning – and socializing.  Jenna was quite popular in her class. Holding hands with Paul the first day of school.  Soaking things in like a sponge.           Her kindergarten teacher was amazing....