In working on trying to put together a portfolio, I realized that several examples of the collateral that for which I both designed and wrote the content were missing from the meager collection I was able to gather together after sorting through all those boxes.

Today, I braved the lion's den and retrieved three of four postcards and the pocket folder I re-worked.

Well, I did not really brave the den per say...I nervously waited in the parking lot whilst one of the employees from my old job fetched the items from me and the blender that I had forgotten to bring home with me. I am a spineless wimp.

She could not find the fourth postcard, which I know is there, but I was unwilling to go inside myself and search for it. A superlative wimp, eh?

I did spend the journey there and back with my very dear friend B on the phone. I had asked my writing student to go with me for moral support. Although she initially agreed, she backed out on the grounds that she just had too much homework to do. I was hurt, therefore, when I arrived at her house afterwards to pick up her mother who was going to walk at Huntley Meadows with Kashi and I. She said that my writing student's friends had brought her home from school and they had been hanging out together ever since.

I wonder, though, if I have no right to be hurt. I had made the assumption that now that she was older and ever so much mature as a writer, that we had moved from a teacher/student relationship to one that was more of a friendship. However, I realized, in thinking about how things have been, that I am still only someone to help her when she needs it. The times I have tried to ask for help myself, knowing how skilled she has grown to be as a writer, have not worked out very well.

It is funny...my niece has returned to college after choosing a GED instead of graduating from high school (and spending a few years working only to learn that college really is the true path to better paying jobs) and I told her that if she ever needed help with her writing assignments, I would very much welcome the opportunity to work with her. Tonight, she sent me three essays. One was an assignment that she already had submitted and had been subsequently graded. She received a 104 on it (I am not sure about this more than a 100 business). The other two essays were for an assignment that is due tomorrow. She had actually written two for the one that was due, but she was not happy with either one of them. I could see why, because the writing was forced, resulting in language what was at times stilted and at other times gushingly naive. Her first essay was a wittingly written breath of fresh air that, while containing some basic grammar errors, was sophisticated in content...at least until she tried to wax poetically about the whys of her father's behavior.

Still, reading her work and seeing the less-than-sophisticated sentence structure and poor grammar, I realized anew how incredibly talented my writing student is. I suppose it should be enough that I had a hand in shaping her talent and still get to work with her from time to time.

Her mother pushed me as we walked, so I had my best time ever walking through the trails through the woods.

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NOTE: Can you find the double entendre in this entry?