Two Of Us

 My wife drove me to school last Wednesday. It's still a rare enough occurrence that we shared it like it was a little celebration. On the way there, we played Beadle, the musical version of Wordle in which you try to guess the Beatles song from listening to two seconds of audio. I enjoyed the warmth, and not just that which was coming from the heater. Outside it was cold and raining, and I considered how onerous my usual bike commute would be had I been noble and braved the elements. I thought about the way I was able to listen to the drops pelting the roof of our car and the water rushing beneath out tires and made a special note: This is a keeper.

Somewhere along the ride my wife noted, not for the first time, that she thought it was amazing how I had held on to the school to which we were heading. The school where I had been hired all those years ago. There are a lot of Horace Mann schools across the country, and three right here in the Bay Area. In another century, after I received the news that I would be heading to the one in Oakland, I strapped my newborn son into our jogging stroller and went out in search of the place that I would call "home" when I wasn't actually home. The ground we covered way back when is essentially the same route I cover each day on my bike.

Each day that it isn't pouring down rain. And some days when circumstances don't facilitate a ride in the family car, and I have to put on my rain gear in anticipation of spending the rest of the day in damp clothes. It makes me proud enough to endure the periodic suffering like all those mornings in my youth when I used to hike to school in the Colorado snow. 

But not on this day. I was safe and warm, singing along to a Beatles song, enjoying the togetherness that sometimes eludes us. I was happy to be going to work, not just for the chance to expand young minds and live through what would most certainly be a day of indoor recess, but to have a place to be.

The song we sang was Two Of Us. And we know it by heart.