This evening was the Christmas program at school. I lurked in the back. Actually, since the Kindergarten was DEAD LAST in the program, I went to the Guerin Adoration Chapel for 30 minutes, thinking that at that point surely we would have made progress, but no…they had just finished all the preliminaries (bands, show choir, etc) and were getting to the 2-songs-per-individual-grade part of the program. I continued to lurk because at 3rd grade, I was going to call Michael to tell him to come and get ready to watch Joseph’s class.

Anyway, I’m standing there, and one of the older grades is standing up there warbling, and I remember that at some point in the fall, the school newsletter had asked for prayers (in a good way) for that grade’s teacher, who was traveling to Italy. So, I turned to her and asked her, sotto voce (we weren’t even in the room, people – more like the hall leading to the room) about her trip. Wonderful, wonderful – in honor of her father’s 80th birthday, the 8 children and their spouses all went and stayed in a villa outside of Florence for a week, etc. I mentioned Siena. She said she loved it. That and Lucca were her favorites, she said. I asked her if she saw St. Catherine’s head. She said no, oddly enough, they couldn’t find it. The church, she clarified. They couldn’t find the church in which the relic is kept.

(And I immediately thought…Searching for  Catherine’s Head…not a bad title.)

This teacher apparently has back door duty, and the back door is where I pick up Joseph from school. (The Kindergartners must declare a door at the beginning of the year, and every day that door is where they wait and are picked up.)

She said, "Oh, Joseph is such a delight while we’re waiting at the door. Every day he tells us the funniest stories…"

As I said…things that make you go…hmmm.

Or, as one principal for whom I worked once told parents at the beginning of the school year, "If you promise to believe only 50% of what your children tell you happens at school, we promise to believe only 50% of what they tell us happens at home."