Generations

Back in the early days of Central Catholic, we wore uniforms. No, not the easy pull-on-a-polo-shirt-and-shorts uniform. Not on your life. The boys got off easy, but we girls were required to wear pleated skirts and navy blue blazers with knee socks. Once a month when the rank odor of well-worn blazers permeated the halls, we were allowed to dress up in civilian clothes and send our uniforms to the dry cleaner. Most of us, though, threw our skirts into the washing machine then tried to iron those polka-dotted pleats. Your eyes would swim staring down at those dots very long.

From left: Hunter, Anna, Sam
Fifty years ago, none of us gave a thought to the future. Heck, I was having so much fun in high school, I hoped we'd never graduate. Sauntering down the hallways in our pleated skirts and blazers with our friends in the early days of the 70's, none of us was looking too far ahead. The VietNam War was drawing to a close, and we were only happy that none of our brothers or classmates would ever have to go. In 1973 we lived simply in the present.

Now, more than 50 years later, not only have I taught my classmates' children, but John and I are teaching some of their grandchildren. Three of those children are in my senior English class. Sam Mueller, who lights up any room he inhabits, is my good friend Karen Pfeifer Robison's grandchild. Sam's parents, Jeremy and Kate Mueller, were also our students. "Good stock" is what we call people like the Robisons and Muellers. From generation to generation, every one of them makes everybody around them feel better than they did before.

Hunter Borges is the grandson of Barb Kosinski Bosak, another great friend. Like his grandma, Hunter is kind and devoted and inclusive. Coincidentally, his girlfriend is Anna Blake whose mother we taught a generation ago. Anna, like her sweet mom Melissa Myers-Blake, is funny with big, winsome brown eyes. I still remember sitting in the gym balcony next to Melissa some 30 years ago when she was in sixth grade. We were waiting for an assembly to start, and all the sixth grade girls were talking about the celebrities they wished they could be.

"Who do you want to be, Melissa?" I asked the quiet little girl with the single, thick braid trailing down her back.

"Really," she said thoughtfully, "I just want to be somebody's mom."

It's a joy to teach generations of families, and John and I are lucky to teach so many. Scratch very deep, and you discover the great inter-connectedness at GICC. (This is where Kate Mueller, Sam's mom, would do her uncanny imitation of the banjo from the movie Deliverance.) We're not really a bunch of hillbillies, though. We're just a big crazy and slightly disfunctional family. 

With a touch of hillbilly.

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