HAINES -- Tuesday morning we were working on the logistics of another school day that revolves around a senior in high school's schedule of school, basketball practice and homework, when my husband sighed, "We should be in New Orleans. We could be on Bourbon Street listening to jazz tonight."
I said, "Let's go."
He said, "We're too late now."
The next day was the start of Lent and the end of the Mardi Gras party.
Besides we spent the dream trip airfare money on vet bills for a cheerful big black dog who should be landing at our airport any minute now with a fresh bandage and more antibiotics from the animal hospital in Juneau. The last time, the vet took off the end of his toe; now it has been removed to the knuckle. At this rate, by May we'll have a three-legged dog and the homesick daughter on the phone from college will have to quit school because we won't be able to pay her tuition.
I didn't say all that to my husband.
Instead I said we could go to the Fat Tuesday church pancake supper.
He said, "No, we can't," because he had a meeting of his bicycle race committee, planning this summer's events, and I have to take our teenager to the library so she can finish a term paper in order to be eligible to play in the regional basketball tournament.
We are flying down and ferrying back from Ketchikan next week to watch her play and another daughter and our son-in-law coach. "Maybe we can hear some jazz in Ketchikan," I told my husband.
Really there's a lot of music at high school basketball games, especially at tournament time, when the pep bands and cheer and dance squads all compete. The Mardi Gras of the school season comes after, rather than before, months of wandering in wilderness. Students may miss 40 days of school a year for school activities, and the basketball season (and the sporadic winter ferry schedule) is responsible for most of that.
The Haines gym was full for the last home games of the season; we hosted the Sitka Lady Wolves for the first time. This year Sitka broke ranks with the two other big schools in Southeast, Ketchikan and Juneau, and dropped down with the small-town schools like us and Petersburg and Craig. The really small places, like Skagway and Angoon, are in another division. Still, with about a hundred students, Haines is at a distinct disadvantage fielding teams against a school with nearly four times as many.
But on Friday the Haines girls almost won. The score was 40-41. Saturday didn't go as well, prompting one fan to make up his own cheer: "Sitka, Sitka, make our day and next year move on back to 4-A."
But it was still a joyful night, mainly thanks to the Chilkat Valley Pre-schoolers, who sang "The Star Spangled Banner" before the game. Instead of turning to face the flag on the end wall, all eyes were on center court where the 3- and 4-year-olds, dressed in green and white school colors, sang with the help of their two pretty young teachers and one of the stars of the basketball team, Sam Clay.
Sam volunteers at the pre-school and she often sings the anthem alone.
You can imagine how darling this was, with one curly-haired little girl wearing a cheerleading outfit and one little boy clutching a toy, which he dropped when he realized everyone else had their hand over their heart, but then changed his mind and picked it back up. The not-quite-coordinated toddlers did their best to pair choreographed movements with the lyrics.
They waved like banners and made circles over their heads with their arms like the rising sun as they sang " the dawn's early light" and even pretended to shoot during the "perilous fight." I wished I had a picture of the parental paparazzi. There haven't been that many flashing cameras in the gym since last May's graduation.
The years from pre-school through 12th grade are like the 400-meter run, combining the child's speed with the parents' endurance. For both the final curve can be grueling. Maybe that's why these last weeks of our last child's senior year are causing us to "dig deep," as a coach might say, and why one second it seems we will never make it to the finish line and the next we are sad because it's so close. In this, I suppose, nothing has changed since I was in school, or my mother was, or even her mother was.
My grandmother was born in 1900, so she could have been a character in Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town," about a fictional village not that much different than Haines. In it, Wilder wrote, we all know there is something eternal about our time on Earth and "that something has to do with human beings." Which is why I think the pre-schoolers should sing in public more often, to remind us all how much we love the babies inside our challenging, almost adult, children and to remind us that it is wiser to keep our eyes on them, rather than on something like a flag, or a clock, or even a dream vacation pinned to the wall.
Heather Lende lives and writes in Haines.
HEATHER LENDE
AROUND ALASKA