Benji, rain boots, and Ewoks

The day began with an impromptu visit from Benji Bao, one of the gifts of Occupy to my life in Portland. A brilliant young man, he finished a pre-med course but then dropped out before medical school, horrified by the American health system. Now he’s a professional photographer. He gave up a morning of wage-earning work to come help me with my computer, as an upgrade had made all my photographs inaccessible and I went into a panic. He got me into Aperture again, installed Lightroom on my laptop, and explained that I need to make copies of all the originals and final versions of each photograph I want to keep, and store those in folders not attached to the editing software. First time I ever knew that. 

I hadn’t seen Bella since Christmas, and when pre-Kindergarten let out, she leapt into my arms. “Baba!” After lunch we realized one of her rain boots was split up the back and her socks were soaked with cold water (see extra), so we walked downtown to buy some new boots and heavy woolen socks (other extra). On the way she told me about her trip to Arizona, the Hello Kitty theme party and piñata her Arizona grandmother created for her, a plot summary of the latest Star Wars movie, and a lengthy riff on what it would be like if Ewoks were real and living in the trees around us. She sounds so much like her father at her age, sometimes I feel I’m in a time machine. 

When Seth was in kindergarten, soon after the first Star Wars movie came out, we lived in Baton Rouge for a year. I taught composition and technical writing at LSU as an adjunct (poorly paid, no benefits) and had no car. His kindergarten was a mile from our apartment, and my office and classrooms were two miles from his kindergarten, so I walked six miles a day and he had to walk two, no matter the weather. He would talk all the way to school and all the way home. He outgrew his sneakers and had to wait till my next payday to get new ones; on our long walks, he would limp from discomfort, but he never complained and would regale me with stories of what it would be like if creatures like Yoda were real or if we had a magic carpet to ride home on.