I had to make a trip to my local Apple store yesterday, with both kids in tow. They had the day off from school (teacher workday) and Scott took them to an admissions fair in the morning. When I was done with my classes for the day, I rearranged my office hours and met up with him in the parking lot outside his building.

Just like the old days. I like it when that happens; when I find myself slipping back into a routine that had once been so ingrained in me, and so familiar. We don't often have a reason to swap the kid-baton in a parking lot these days, but when we do it still evokes preschool and sippy cups and listening to The Philadelphia Chickens on CD on the way home.

I took the kids to the Apple store with me on our way home. My iPod won't let me play or sync my music library anymore, and I can't figure out why.  I tried to get it fixed on Friday, but despite the fact that I had made an appointment, the store was so crowded, and the genius Apple people so busy, that I had to leave before my appointment, just so I could make it to T.'s carpool line in time.

I told the kids about the set-back on Friday, over dinner. There is little L. likes to talk about more than Apple, and Steve Jobs, and quality control problems. But that night he was distracted, so he listened for a bit and then headed off to the office for his computer time. But yesterday, his belly full of his favorite pizza, he was happy to talk on and on about Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs, apparently, didn't wear deodorant.

He yelled a lot at people.

His biological parents made his adoptive parents sign a document promising they would send him to college.

He dropped out of college, but stayed on campus to take the classes he really wanted to take.

Years ago a teacher-friend advised me to never teach material that I was in love with, or that I was personally invested in. You'll only be broken-hearted and let-down when your students are dismissive or, worse yet--bored, she said. I've never really been sure whether I want to believe in that advice, though. It's true that I have felt very let-down at times when students dismiss material that I'm excited about; yet, I also firmly believe that students need to see their teachers passionate about what they teach--just like kids need to see their parents passionate about their work, or their hobbies and dreams.

Yesterday at bedtime, T. launched into a long story about something and I was only half-listening, I admit. My brain was sorting out some other things, and lying there in the semi-dark of her room was the perfect chance for all those other things to come tumbling down into the forefront of my tired brain. But my ears pricked up when I heard her say something about a door, and finding herself somewhere else.

"What? What door?"

"The door in my Spanish class," she said. "It opened somewhere else."

A surreal picture flashed in my mind. It was like a Magritte painting--a single door opening up in an ordinary classroom wall to some other place; maybe a rectangle of blue sky beyond, or a green meadow, or--who knew?--Narnia perhaps? But before I could let my imagination run away too far with this image, T. went on to describe how the door had opened up to a hallway under the school building, instead of at the front, the way they had gone in. I still don't quite understand the logistics of it, but she worked it out for herself with no help from me, and we moved on to another topic.

Something about her story jarred my memory and took me back all the way to when L. was three years old, and had just started preschool at an established church-affiliated preschool not too far from our house. There is much about that day I remember: the sight of him kneeling on the carpet next to the teacher, stacking colored blocks; the wobbly feeling in my legs as I walked away and left him there, for the first time ever; how I sat in the van under the shadow of the tall chapel steeple and cried, and felt my separation from him as keenly as I would have if he'd been ripped from inside of me. When I picked him up that afternoon I was so eager to hear about his morning, but he didn't want to talk at all.

Then, just as we had almost reached our house, he said:

I was happily typing away at my computer, and fielding questions from students who were constantly streaming into my office yesterday (big research paper due next week!) when the phone rang. It was the front office lady at L.'s school.

"He threw up," she said. "And his stomach hurts."

L.'s been coming home from school all week long with stacks and stacks of library books: four or five books or more each day. I think he's got eighteen out now since the start of the week.

"Are you sure you're supposed to have all these books?" I asked him one afternoon.

"Oh yes," he replied. "Fifth graders can check out as many books as they want."

Hmmmm....I thought. Really?

Another day I asked, "Are you sure you're supposed to go to the library every day?"

"Oh yes," he said. "No one told me I couldn't."

Last night I had one of those surreal conversations you have when you're a parent--the type of conversation you never imagine yourself having with anyone, but then, there you go, it happens, and you're standing in the bathroom with your six-year old, talking about the toilet.

It started this way:

I ushered T. into the bathroom at bedtime so we could do teeth and her bath. Someone had stopped up the sink at some point during the day and it was full to the top with soapy bubbles.

"Who filled up the sink?" I asked.

T. laughed at the memory. "I did! I was washing my hands!"

It's that time of the semester--the time when students are frantically trying to salvage their grades, and scrambling to play catch-up, yet birds are chirping, the sun is warm, and the last place anyone wants to be is in the classroom. It's also the time of the semester when I feel most like...a mom.

"What did I tell you?" I say to student after student as they come into my office, worried they failed the last quiz. "I told you to BUY THE BOOK."

"I told you you had to study!"

"What did I say to you last week?"

I was working in my office the other day and a student came by, looking for my office mate. She wasn't in, and he had a long story to tell me about why he was going to miss class the next day.

"Why don't you leave her a note," I suggested, pointing to the handy pad of paper and the pen dangling by a piece of yarn, that we keep on the office door.

Not long ago, I was at Starbucks waiting for a friend. It was an unseasonably balmy day for February, so I was sitting outside, enjoying the sun and the warm breeze. A few minutes later two young college girls came and sat at the table next to me. They were both tall and thin, with those straight up and down, sinewy bodies that all those other clothes out there are made for--you know, those skinny jeans and tight layered shirts. I couldn't help eavesdrop a little on their conversation. They were talking in a gossipy way about a friend of theirs, who was having problems with her back.

My kids have entered into what can only be described as the tattle-tale stage. They love tattle-telling on each other, it seems, and will spend more time coming to find me in the house just so they can tell on their sibling than it would take for them to just try and work things out together.

They've mastered the tattle-tale voice, too--L. got it down first because, I discovered recently, he heard it on Phineas and Ferb. The voice goes like this: "MaaaaaMaaaaaa! L. poked me with his FINGeeeeeeer!"