Blog Your Blessings: 'See You in a Few Weeks'

I saw dolphins on the horizon following a shrimp boat while I was swimming this morning, and I thought of a sixth-grade boy in Waterbury who was one of my students in the summer program. He is a sweet, slight child--the kind whose bones break if you raise your voice even slightly. He is an angel.

This child's big summer trip was to go to the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut, and see dolphins. He told me this right after he told me he wished the summer program would never end. This was at the end of our third week, when my eyes were on the calendar and I was counting down to North Topsail Beach for three weeks of bliss on the beach.

His words out of the blue--"I wish the summer program would go on forever, Miss"--stopped me in my tracks. Obviously, being in a poorly air-conditioned, dirty school building with hallways loaded with janitorial junk; eating government-issue breakfast and lunch (too scary to think about); and being with a mix of kids who seemed so much larger and more wordly than he to do school work, real and serious school work, meant a lot to this kid.

He left me tongue-tied. In my clumsiness, I asked what else he had planned for the summer. That's when he told me about the Mystic dolpins.

On the last day of the summer program, as he was heading for the door, he made a hard right and survived a trip through a fast-moving river of kids focused on leaving so he could give me a big hug. The child said thank you and then, "I'll see you in a few weeks."

I'd give up anything to stay here. Except home.