Day133

Collage of art exhibition examples.

Well, it's nearly all hung, just the upper school and putting out all the sculptures on the tables tomorrow, and the labeling, which Tim is always kind enough to help me with, and without whom I would go completely insane and throw the computer through the window!  I don't know how he sits there patiently going through possible solution after possible solution!  He always gets it perfectly in the end, amazing!  So now I go off armed with about 500 labels to put up tomorrow morning, thanks to my imperturbable, persistent, uncomplaining computer-genius husband.

We were serenaded by dear little 1st, 2nd and 3rd graders this morning, all practicing for the chorus concert this afternoon.  And the two teachers practiced their amazing piece, the voice filling the entire hall without benefit of a microphone, simply astounding.  So at 2 o'clock everyone filed in and 4 groups sang to us, the petite chorale, the middle school chorus, a new all boys' a capella group, and then the 9th grade.  As I watched all the parents smiling and filming and taking photographs, I remembered my own dear little things when they were that age, and how proud you are to watch your own child sing an entire difficult song perfectly, so proud you could burst into blossom sitting right there in your chair. 

I still enjoyed the concert with all my heart, even though I had no child of my own singing.  I suppose it is because they are all my children, I know them, I've watched them grow up from little things.  It is always lovely to see a different side to my students. 

Today I was putting up images when one of the 6th grade classes came in to sit on the floor and do a music crossword puzzle because they were supposed to have a music lesson then, but the teacher was busy rehearsing with another group.  They all sat down far from me on the opposite side of the gym, looking keenly at their own pictures, seeing which ones I had chosen to exhibit.  When suddenly, as if overcome by all the art, one little dark-haired boy broke away from the rest and came running over to me with his arms wide, and gave me a huge hug, telling me "You're the best teacher, Mrs Bouwer!"  This child has been having a sad time for the past month so that his parents have been called in, and maybe he said it to more than one teacher, but it warmed the cockles alright.

I needed a run badly and so went for a short sharp one when I got home at 7 this evening.  Grey cirrus fanned out in the east like a child's drawing of a sun, and in the west there was pink and gold, and above me, a dome of blue. Two cottontails ran from me, and hid, then ran again as I got closer.  Cardinals who love the twilight sang their evening songs, and mockingbirds had their last conversations of the day.  I ran about 2 km, although I didn't measure it with the pedometer, but I know the distances more or less by now. 

My portrait tonight is a very quick image, of me teetering on a ladder in the gym this evening, when everyone had gone.  I decided to just quickly see how I could hang these wire and papier-mache sculptures, and then decided to change the place they were tied to and hang them from the basketball net frame instead.  I had to hang on to the nylon fishing line for dear life because the weight of them nearly pulled me off my perch!