My school teacher daughter in Corpus called to say that their school and all the others in Corpus, were on lock down. There were suspicious men roaming the city with brief cases.
The authorities weren’t taking any chances after the debacle last Friday.
She was stuck at school all day, no-one was allowed in or out. At 5pm the lock down was raised and she was able to go home.
With her finals out of the way she has more time to call and natter. I asked her a simple Mum question,
“What did you get as your grade on your finals this semester?”
An innocent question since she’d been fretting about the finals last week and wasn’t happy with one, but very confident about the other.
“I don’t know Mum, I’m scared to look…” she said.
“How are you going to know if you don’t look,” Mum, ever the voice of reason.
Today there was no lock down on the schools so she was able to go home at the end of her shift, mid afternoon. She called me and said,
“Guess what?”
It could be anything!
“Another lock down?” I ventured.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“A random guess. What is it this time?”
“The Catholic schools are on lock down.” This is Corpus so that means a lot of schools!
“Why?”
“Because the Monsignor said something to annoy someone and there’s a threat against his life. The schools are requiring all their students to be picked up by 2pm today. But that wasn’t what I was calling about,” she continued, “guess what my final grades were?” You have to be sharp to keep up with her train of thought!
This was a loaded question! Not wanting to say too high a grade and not wanting to insult her intelligence with a guess that was too close to fail I gauged her voice to be perky…so probably good news, I reasoned. I hazarded a guess,
“A’s?” Nothing ventured nothing gained.
“An ‘A’ and a ‘B'” she said.
“That’s great! Take yourself to Pooh Pooh Panda.” Our girly-goop name for Panda Express, her favourite Chinese restaurant.
“I wish…” she said, then, “take the phone to Dad, I want to tell him…”
I’m proud of my school teacher daughter who somehow manages to make ends meet when her hours are cut because she takes college classes. She babysits to supplement her income and put gas in her car and probably goes without food to pay her rent.
Next semester she may skip school in an attempt to get more hours at her school and beef up her floundering bank account..
No wonder American students seem to stay at college forever, a class here and a class there makes for a long, drawn out degree plan when you’re supporting yourself through school.
She came back on the phone to say,
“We’re having Chinese on Monday.”
“Oh, your friends do Chinese on Christmas Eve too?”
“Not usually but I told them we did and they thought it was a grand idea!”
I’m betting they’ll have tamales on Christmas day though!
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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